A country even more divided

11/28/08

Funky Winkerbean/Tom Batiuk - November 28, 2008<br> Charlie: "Mr. President. It's been rumored that the CEO of the Westview Band Boosters could walk away from the collage of the band boosters Rainy-day fund with a golden bumbershoot. Do you think that the band booster bailout needs some form of congressional oversight?"

GWB: "There's already been too much oversight, Charlie... I mean this whole crisis was an oversight by my administration from the get-go."

Doonesbury / Garry Trudeau - November 28, 2008
B.D.: "Palin can be tutored, Boopsie - She's got lots of time to prepare!"

Boopsie: "It's not an SAT test, B.D. You can't just spend the first 40 years of your life being woefully ignorant of the world and how it works... and then suddenly announce you're prepared to become president because someone crammed you with bullet points!"

B.D.: Why NOT? Bush did!

Boopsie: "Take a few seconds with that one. I can wait."

BOSTON LEGAL - tv drama
Then there was the recent, post-election, "Boston Legal" episode on TV, in which the attorneys agreed to defend a woman who was fired because she voted for John McCain. Turns out that the boss, the guy who fired her, also voted for McCain but he felt that the woman employee needed to be fired not because of her vote but because she was stupid. The woman wasn't smart enough to articulate her reasons for voting for McCain, other than she liked Sarah Palin. The boss was made to appear boorish and self-righteous, while the woman he fired was portrayed as ignorant and flighty. Of course, the viewer had to feel sorry for the law firm staff forced to defend these indefensibly pathetic drones of the right-wing.

There's a disturbing pattern emerging from the opposition, these same Bush-haters who should be grinning from ear-to-ear, happy as larks, in a permanent state of joyful delirium are, instead, burning to destroy the losers.

I wrote about this last week, but these examples, plus the vicious attacks by commentors on news blogs, concern me even more. How are we supposed to co-exist with people who hate us?

Gees, that sounds eerily familiar, doesn't it? The plea for "Can't we all just get along?" is falling on just over half the country's deaf ears.

When president-elect Barack Obama said that he will be president of all the people, I wonder if he realized that he has inherited the loyalty of millions of people who let their irrational hatred of George W. Bush blossom into a maniacal and unfettered loathing for anything non-liberal or non-Democratic - or anyone who didn't vote for Obama.

Obama will not only have to figure out how to handle the enemies abroad, like Ahmadinejad, Zawahiri and Chavez, but he'll need to deal with those Americans who are avowed enemies to 46% of U.S. voters, the people who wanted John McCain as the president.

I've experienced the vitriolic hostility myself and it was scary. It was as though they felt justified in their vengeful brutality, as if I was a serial-killing child-molester who deserves to be hung.

And I don't think they're all secular people who are hating us. I spent the evening with a woman who also loathes Bush and I think she is religious; she began dinner by saying a Thanksgiving prayer.

How do we communicate with people like that, for example, who have apparently abandoned their values and are no longer motivated to treat their fellow human beings with compassion?

How many church-goers will justify spewing hateful invectives at someone sporting a McCain/Palin t-shirt?

We're living in a hostile atmosphere, a place that is new to me, a very uncomfortable place, to be sure. I can think of one analogous historical similarity, though, like the Jews living in Europe in the 1930's, or the Jews living almost anywhere outside the U.S. today. Blacks living in the old South would understand the feelings of hostility.

Am I exaggerating? Blowing this out of proportion? I don't think so. But our new watchword should be vigilance. Harder still because the enemy looks a lot like us.