I don’t know what the solution is, but here’s the problem: Certain forms of communication and activity are becoming a routine part of public life. It is hurting us and our traditional way of governing. Not just in Washington, D.C. or in a neighboring state, but right here in Berkshire County.
A caller told an innkeeper that she wanted a room for the amount she wanted to pay. (I wonder if that would work at the car dealership.) When she was declined, she called the innkeeper “obnoxious” and cursed her.
Someone wrote to explain that he tried to treat another person with respect, but it was impossible since that other person didn’t give him his way. His demands were clear and a threat was implied for noncompliance.
Good grief. When did we become so entitled? When did we add insult and threat as an ordinary part of common speech?
At town meetings where applicants do not get their way, they call lawyers, sue volunteer public servants, and call them “woodchucks.” They are outraged that they cannot do as they please; they surprised that laws are there to circumscribe behavior.
Okay it’s a problem, so what’s the solution?
Trumping
Folks no longer accept legal decisions or willingly abide by the law. They hire lawyers to find a way to get their way. Call it trumping—it is upping the game.
For example, a job applicant promised in a job interview not to pursue elected office if given the job. The applicant got the job Santos-style, pursued elected office, and bragged there was nothing anyone could do about it. A lawyer said so. If true, the result would be that the employee would answer to a board of directors the employee appoints and have a supervisor the employer could fire. Ridiculous, right?
Crazy? Funny? Sadly not. It is a well-crafted plan, a handbook, to undermine our way of life. A carefully crafted and loudly articulated way to get into our pocketbooks and onto our seats of power.
More Trumping
If we think about it, we know the elements of the plan: lying, bullying, demonizing, disrupting, challenging fact, attacking well-respected institutions and people, and always escalating. Demonizing the opponent is how soldiers are made ready to kill. Attacking the institutions that enforce the law is a way to allow laws to be broken without penalty. Is any of this an acceptable part of civil intercourse? No? What is the solution?
Part of the playbook is developing emotionally-charged but fact-free answers to any confrontation. Sometimes called doubling down, it is to turn any solution against those suggesting it.
One defender of the dismantling said, “No one cares about your f*cking fact checking.” It is alliterative, oddly amusing, and it is also dangerous. Fact checking—knowing the truth as a baseline for discussion and decision making—is a mandatory first step to governing, to problem solving, even to living longer. What if we forget why truth and facts were important?
Consequences
It is more than defending democracy, though that is mandatory. It is also defending our equilibrium. Cognitive dissonance is caused by conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. For example, challenging everything heretofore deemed a given, breaking behavioral norms, or defying the law without suffering a consequence. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort and requires some alteration to reduce anxiety and restore balance.
New ads tell us adults suffer from chronic fatigue. Really? We used to call that a symptom of depression.
Our children are also suffering. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the percentage of our children who suffer anxiety and depression has almost doubled since 2003. One in six children between the ages of two and eight suffer some mental, behavioral, or developmental problem, https://discoverdentalhouston.com/ativan-lorazepam/. Almost 20 percent of adolescents consider suicide. An astonishing 73 percent—let me repeat that—73 percent of adolescents report feelings of hopelessness.
The I-statement
Psychologist Karen Horney wrote about the tyrannical shoulds—the rules under which we live. One rule that I lived under was: “Do not,” my sixth-grade writing instructor said, “use the pronoun I.” But here and now an I-statement would help.
I am a retired therapist much more interested in human behavior than politics. Readers often think that I am on one side of an issue or another. Usually, I am on one side or the other of how people argue the issue. We have been living with the problem—the solution is not who wins the argument, it is how we argue.
Now Great Barrington is split around the airport. Are the folks on the other side really evil? Is it necessary or wise to demonize them? We only have about 130,000 people in the whole county. That’s not many, we need them all. It is not win or lose, it really is how you play the game.
After the last few years, can we remember when winning wasn’t everything, when money was not the deciding factor? Once upon a time, in this area, there was comity and acknowledgement that when the issue is settled, we will still be neighbors. Friendship, neighbors, good behavior were more important than which side wins.
A friend said, “Once we all knew how to act, knew right from wrong, knew what one was not allowed to do or say. It was in our DNA.”
Solutions
Looked at one way, from the first day after the Continental Congress, some argued against democracy. Looked at another way, since the 1930s, outsiders have infiltrated to corrupt and convince us democracy is weak and ineffective.
- They have never gone away but we can and have always caused them to go to ground.
Actually, democracy is the most unique and kindly way ever found to deal with the masses. Every form of government must deal with the masses. Only democracy deals with the masses by including them, respecting them, and sharing power with them.
- It really is how we play the game.
- Games—the playingfields of Eton or the sidewalks of Berkshire—teach the truth and the rules
A stick, a ball, a sheet, and a marble taught us we were not entitled, we were part of a play group or we were asked to leave. We were not better than anyone else; the best we do, on a good day, is hit the ball farther.
We had a sheet and threw it over a table to make a fort, and inside we governed. We had marbles and a crack in the sidewalk and knew we weren’t exceptional, we were merely a small group squatting on the pavement.
When we played, we were learning how to act as adults. We didn’t have all that fancy electronic stuff that cost money. We didn’t demand it look real. We didn’t want to escape into drugs and alternate realities. We didn’t have a mom overseeing play groups and choosing our friends. We accepted and rejected others based on the rules of the game. We had a stick and a ball and made up the rules—lessons in fairness and good behavior. We had a sheet and a table and imagined the rest.
