I have always been a junkie. No, not that kind. I'm referring to a political junkie. When I was just a kid in grade school, I would rush home from school to watch the Democrat and Republican conventions. Not only that, I would watch with avid interest the Senator Kevauver crime hearings and the Army/McCarthy hearings with Senator Joe McCarthy. It didn't strike me as odd at the time, but looking back on those days with an adult perspective, it's obvious that I was a genuine political geek/nerd. After all, How many 12 year olds sit in front of the TV to watch Congressional committee hearings?
My purpose of bringing this up is to show that I have over a half century as an observer of the political scene. With that in mind, let me state that in all those years, all those decades, never have I witnessed such hysteria surrounding the political scene in this country. It verges on the insane and maniacal. To note: Kathy Griffith posting a picture of her holding a replica of the bloody severed head of Donald Trump; Madonna declaring that sometimes she feels like going to the White House and killing somebody; A writer for Saturday Night Live tweeting that Trump's 11 year old son is a serial killer in the making; Samantha Bee on her TV show calling the President's daughter a cunt; Rapper M&M rapping about killing the president; Congresswoman Maxine Waters urging her supporter to confront Trump supporters in restaurants, hotels, stores, etc., and tell them they do not belong there and to get out; Jimmy Kimmel saying the president should be castrated; Robert DeNiro opening the Tony Awards TV show by shouting "Fuck Donald Trump!"; Georgetown University professor, Christine Fair declaring that GOP senators deserve slow, miserable deaths, and that their corpses should be castrated.
And so it goes. There is no escaping the relentless verbal onslaught. We are being infected with a national madness the likes of which we haven't seen in our lifetimes. Thee is no escaping it. It permeates TV, radio, newspapers, books, magazines, movies and the internet. This does not auger well for the future of this nation. Why? The cold, brutal fact is this: The more politicized a country, the less free it becomes. Look at North Korea,, Cuba, China. Every aspect of everyday life in those countries is politicized. They live and breath political propaganda 24/7.
In 1966, Karl Hess, political pundit and speechwriter for Senator Barry Goldwater, published an article, in of all places, Playboy Magazine. The article was titled THE DEATH OF POLITICS. In it, Hess wrote of the dangers of an overly politicized society, and the ways in which it erodes freedom and the overall quality of life. It is clear not enough people have read the article.
One expects political babble from elected officials and bureaucrats, but we are now exposed to wild rants from standup comics, professors, movie stars, singers and anyone else who can lasso a public forum to spout their bile. Knowledge and intellect not required.
There will always be political discourse. We will always have political disagreements. It goes with the territory. But we cheapen and degrade ourselves when the rhetoric is filled with hate, lies obscenities, ad hominem attacks and calls for violent action.
We all want a secure, strong and non violent country, but these goals can only be achieved and maintained through reasoned and rational debate and the use of rational logic. A sane society cannot maintain its sanity when it rejects rational discourse in favor of abusive, irrational and vile language.
To adopt the language of immoral vermin is to become that vermin.
