After watching the RNC convention this week, I can't help but feel astonished and troubled by the vice-like grip that the "culture wars" place on one's consciousness.
I can feel myself devolving. I can feel myself getting suckered. I can feel the distortions and the corruptions that turn complex realities into simple dichotomies. It's a slimy, sweltering, tense existence that leaves my eyebrows furled and my eyes gazing intensely, hypnotized by the circular logic, the back and forth, the personal drama. But ultimately, I find myself suffocating and desperate to shout out at the top of my lungs, "Stop!"
Stop the madness. Stop the ugliness. Stop the hyperventilating.
Why can't we find a better way?
Surely, we can hold a deep reverence for the past as well as an abiding hope in the future. Surely, we can admire and accept globalization while still acknowledging what is uniquely American. Surely, we can agree about the sanctity of life. Surely, we can agree about the importance of personal liberty. Surely, we can find positive ways to change that still uphold and respect the traditions of the past. Surely, no one deserves to be vilified; no one deserves to be talked down to; no one deserves to be disrespected. No one deserves to be judged without first being understood.
Why do we have to be so uncivil?
To hear Mitt Romney use the word 'liberal' as if it were somehow randomly and magically a perjorative term, reminded me of the fictional ravings against the Star-Bellied Sneetches. I was left wondering, Why are we supposed to hate them, again?
Human beings are so amazing and so amazingly similar. And political consciousness is such a small part of that consciousness that it's hard to understand why we elevate it to such a dominating discourse.
It's time to take the politics out of politics.
We are all adults. We are all sentient beings. We are all loving and selfless creatures.
And it is this conviction that makes me so afraid, so disturbed by the idea of being swept up into this warped sense of reality where every sundry detail is part and parcel to some great intense struggle. So much drama. My great hope is that the conversations and narratives that will accompany this next set of elections will help get certain ideas percolating in the national consciousness. And the humanizing norms of the future will begin to reveal themselves.
