Through with politics for a while

The level and tone of political discourse has become so ugly, accusatory, uninformed and intolerant that I'm making a conscious choice to remove myself from the political arena for awhile, both publicly and privately. I've never seen or heard anything quite like it in the years I've been following politics.

We seem to have lost our civility, not only towards the politicians we don't like but towards each other as well. The "in your face" bad manners and outrageous behaviors of people at the town hall meetings being held across the country should be an embarrassment to us all but unfortunately it isn't. We bow to the all-knowing rants and raves of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck on the right and Keith Olberman, Chris Matthews and Rachel Madow on the left without ever fact-checking anything they say. If it touches some emotional chord in our psyche, which is exactly what it's designed to do, we become their own personal shills, repeating their mantras word for word to anyone we can find. In the process, far too many discussions that turn political also turn personal and one becomes a "bad" person simply for holding a political position or supporting a politician the other person doesn't like.

Certainly there have been times in our country's history when we have seen and heard similar raucous words and attitudes from our politicians and our citizens but we have also had stretches where we simply agreed to disagree in a more or less respectful way. We're at the extremes of the former today with hardly any sign at all of the latter.

I wrote a column a few years ago in which I referred to then President George W. Bush as Dubya, a moniker that originated with Molly Ivins, the deceased political columnist from Texas, Bush's home state. A day or two later, a particularly critical letter to the editor about that column appeared in the newspaper, castigating me for my "lack of respect" for the President and advising me strongly that, like him or not, he was still our President.

Where are those voices of outrage today when our current President is called a liar, a cheater, a non-citizen, a Nazi, and the new Hitler? I sure haven't read any in the McCook Daily Gazette recently.

One of the least popular Presidents in the last 50 years or so was Jimmy Carter and I didn't think much of his presidency either. But just because someone isn't our favorite person doesn't mean they never speak the truth and I certainly think he did the other day when he said that the raw anger that Obama evokes in so many people is nothing more than racism disguised as political dissent and it's hard to disagree with that opinion. Racism is still alive and well in America and it's still alive and well in Southwest Nebraska. It's difficult to get through the day if you're anything other than a hermit without hearing the "N" word used and more often than not, you hear it used several times by several different people.

Nowhere has political commentary and discourse reached the low that it has with the health care debate. Political commentators "cherry pick" certain items out of the debate, dress them up in colorful euphemisms like "death panels," and then peddle them to their minions of selective deaf and blind followers who they know will repeat the message or the phrase over and over and over without doing any fact checking on their own at all.

We have become a nation of sheep, herded around in any direction the shepherds choose to point us because we hang on their every word and accept their declarations as absolute truth. I've always assumed we were given brains to use but far too many of us opt out of that privilege, simply becoming the mouthpieces of the media kings and queens we worship.

This is especially sad because it's not that difficult to find out the truth. There are many publications and sources that present balanced perspectives on both sides of a particular issue and all we have to do is exert a little effort and energy to find them but far too many of us don't. When we're trying to get at the truth, we have to look at ALL the evidence, not just those bits and pieces that support our own opinions, biases, or prejudices but most of us never do.

I've been around politics my whole life. I've worked in political campaigns and ran for office myself and the one unfortunate constant that is always present is that most people on both sides of the aisle don't seek the truth; they seek their own truth. They embrace only those things that support their own perspectives and conveniently ignore the things that don't. It's been that way forever and there's no end in sight.

I used to watch the political talk shows every Sunday morning on television but I don't anymore because no one ever listens to what the other person is saying. No one ever says, "You might be right." Democrats and Republicans sit side by side, and rather than listening to what the other side is saying, they're spending their time putting together their own rant when it comes their time to speak.

There's an old saying, "the more things change, the more they stay the same." There is no area of our lives where that is more obvious than in politics and I'm just dog tired of it.

So I think I'll retire from it. At least for awhile.