I am furious.
...for two reasons, both of which I will elaborate over the next couple of days in a three-part series concerning signs by which a breakdown of our social engines is recognizable. In the first two, I will discuss two symptoms, both tragic in varying degrees, and in the third will attempt to delve into ways forward if our society is to continue and heal. For healing is what this madness needs. Thus, as before, I'm furious. There is no other way to say what I felt when I heard this: an Arizona congresswoman shot (perhaps fatally) in her own state. Along with the rest of the nation, I think I am in a state of civic shock. I would like to go ahead, in the strongest possible terms, and ask those who do not respect the democratic process by which our country is governed to go ahead and leave it--don't let the TSA agent hit you on the way out!
Our country was founded on the idea (which I confess I doubt sometimes) that the collective voice of the people would nearly always make the best of possible decisions at critical junctures. It is not a perfect way to govern; it is still better than most other ways I know about. The popular voice delivered a drubbing to the democratic party this past November, in a country whose political climate was in such flux that, for a democrat to win, it would have to have been pretty clearly the vox populi that did it. It does not matter whether I like it, although from what I can see I wouldn't have minded the Arizona congresswoman much at all. Rather, it matters whether I believe in this country's founding principles enough to endorse the rule of those I did not vote for, simply because I believe in the instruments of this country's governance.
Not that I believe politics is much more than a blanket full of holes: I don't. I confess to doubting approx. 95% of what I am told by politicians, because the nature of their profession makes it advantageous to lie to such a degree that I tremble to think of how I'd respond to such temptation. Corruption is almost always the human response to power. And yet we in the US have been protected for the most part from the worst abuses of power by a Constitution that results, albeit imperfectly, in the balance of corrupting interests against each other. I am not naive; I am merely savvy enough to see that things are not as bad as they could be (note: see Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Iran for as bad as it can be). Our republic has led a charmed life, but we are mistaken if we believe that the fact of privilege ensures or implies its continuation; all societies can break.
Politics is what happens when human relationships are forced beyond communities of which individual humans can be an active part. It is therefore necessarily generalizing and diminutive. And although our ability to harness seemingly infinite amounts of information has given us the appearance of greater connectedness, the vital signs of human community have grown not stronger but weaker in the advent of network. The human mind simply is not as capable of processing information as a computer is of receiving it. This has had the strange effect that we are now insufficiently knowledgable about even more stuff. And let us call this like it is: there is a very good possibility (in fact I predict it will prove to be true) that the motive of this shooting will turn on some point of political discussion about which this shooter was ill-informed. It is clear that he was unstable, yes; but it is also clear that the pitch of rhetoric in the state of Arizona during the last year has produced a pressure cooker of ignorant rage. Indeed, for some time ignorance and rage have seemed to be all the two parties shared. Both sides of the immigration debate have concentrated far more on talking past each other than on defining their terms and trying to reason in those of the other.
This abortion of communication roots most profoundly in the narcissism of which people are all in some measure possessed. People who are successful in relationship have learned to mistrust that narcissism and criticize themselves with others. The inability to do that is the quintessence of childishness. We recognize the beginnings of adulthood in young people who are learning empathy, concern, compassion, and responsibility. We naturally do not trust anyone in a dispute who assumes none of the responsibility for it. For reasons I will discuss in part three of this series, life in the public sphere has divorced itself from these basic expectations, and it has become common to treat political discourse as a simple game of us vs. them, such that parties have been able to assign a perfect blame for every societal ill to their opponents. This has the appearance of critical thought, and those who engage in it often claim they are merely being reasonable. Yet critical thinking is that which helps us see that in most human conflict, blame is not unilateral. Contemporary politics is just not done this way. And we must all own our part of this problem, if we are to engage it correctly.
I pray this congresswoman will survive all this. I know my anger at it is justified; I also know that whether or not I have learned from this will be displayed not in how I declaim the taking of political shots but in how I participate in and assist the creation of a more mature conversation in the future. Lord, make it so--and my anger will have served a worthy purpose.
For a blanket with holes is better than none at all.
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