The angry men
As I was walking up the road I met an angry man.
Even at some distance on the quiet country lane, I could see he wasn't happy. His gait was something of a stomp, and as he neared, his countenance was dark and forbidding. Nevertheless, I hailed him.
"Hello, sir," I said. "Is everything all right?"
"No, everything is not all right!" he snorted. "Nothing is at all."
So I asked him what was troubling him, and he proceeded to tell me.
"This country is sliding downhill on a greased sled," he said. He railed against a left-wing Congress bent on creating a socialist state, against an administration doing everything in its power to make government so big it controlled everything. He said the gutless Democrats in power were getting ready to abandon Afghanistan and would let foreign terrorists overrun this country. He was mad about health-care reform, the federal bailout of the banks and the auto industry. Nothing, he said, was going right.
"It's gotten so I can't sleep, I'm so disgusted with everything," he said.
I wanted to talk to this man, discuss some of his issues. But we were so far apart in our beliefs, and he was so agitated, that I decided against it. I told him I hoped he found some peace, and went on my way.
I had walked less than a mile when I met another angry man. His look, too, was black as storm clouds and as he strode toward me, the dust flew from beneath his feet.
"Hello, sir," I said. "Is everything all right?"
"Nothing is right!" he replied, and given my last encounter, I wasn't going to ask the cause of his angst. But he launched unbidden into an explanation.
"The Democrats are driving me nuts," he said. "Here they are with the biggest mandate they'll have for years, maybe decades, and they're just letting it slip away!"
He was unhappy that health care reform was coming to a vote in such a watered-down version that it left out a public option. He was angry that after a year, Guantanamo still held uncharged and untried prisoners. He was furious at the drawn-out withdrawal from Iraq, and he was livid that President Obama was even considering a massive escalation of the eight-year war in Afghanistan. He couldn't believe Congress was still dragging its heels on climate-change legislation and that there has been little progress in moving environmental legislation forward.
"This is making me crazy. The American people give the Democrats the authority to make powerful, positive changes, and they dither and dawdle and squander this chance!" he said.
I wanted to talk to him, tell him that while I agreed with many of his positions, he had to give the system a chance to work. But before I spoke, I saw a look in his eye that warned me off. I wished him well and took my leave.
As I walked along, I thought of the two angry men. And it began to bother me more, and more. After a bit, I realized I was stomping down the road, scowling. I am, I thought, just another angry man. And that made me sad.
What happened, I thought, to civil discourse? When, exactly, did the political process become so polarized that shrill, personal charges and invective became the currency of political campaigns? When did we stop looking for honest debate over public policy, in favor of bizarre litmus-test pontification of allegiance to the right or the left? What has happened to the Americans who could be socially progressive but fiscally conservative, or those who identified with a party for many reasons but felt comfortable taking every issue on its merits, rather than infusing it with ideology and running it up one flag pole or the other? When – and why – did politics become the moral equivalent of cage fighting?
I had no answers, as I walked the quiet rural road. But I did have another question: If this doesn't change, what is to become of us?
