Maybe because we're busy, maybe because we just don't pay enough attention, and most likely because we don't care-we've devolved from what my wife's countrymen call the "Land der Unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten" (the Land of Unlimited Opportunities) to No Country for Old Men (or Old Women or Young Men or Women, For That Matter, and Don't Get Me Started on the Kids, Those Brats!)
So much for getting along by going along. Now, everyone gets in line and the line always forms behind me, whoever me is on any given day. We see it in traffic--try yielding at a busy intersection of traffic circle (or "roundabout" as they say in England, or rotary as they say in New England) and you'll need to fill out change of address cards for your mail because you won't be going anywhere. Try getting a moment to yourself at an ATM-you need to be skilled in moulage and make yourself up to look like a leper to keep the guy behind you from standing on your pants cuff (even more awkward if you're wearing shorts) and my list could on and on.
We don't seem to discuss very much very often for very long anymore. It all becomes a race to see who can get in the first punch, verbally or otherwise. We no longer disagree without becoming disagreeable. I'm not especially interested in your opinion and a generation ago I would have been polite, but today, boom! like that we're done and I'm outahere. Not only are we not sticking around for the answers, most of the time we're not even hearing the questions. Gilda Radner's Roseanne Roseannadanna would smile, it's always something.
That so much of our information comes from sources which celebrate the opposite may also contribute to our ongoing shortages of civil courage, concerned compassion and common courtesy. As the former Mayor of New York City, Ed Koch (Edward just reads so alien, even he never uses it), observed recently, "There is no acceptance of dissent anymore." The person I support for an elected office may have only a slightly better grasp of geography than Mike "I'm not a recluse" Tyson, but your guy/gal doesn't have an American flag pin in that lapel! And we can exchange invective about prayer in classrooms, gun control or the current state of our health care system, foreign policy or domestic issues (please ask your waitperson to bring you our full menu of Today's Hot Buttons). We can yell at each other because it's easier than speaking to one another.
And as long as we have pollsters determining positions, sound bytes instead of solutions, we'll continue to substitute diatribe for dialogue. While all of us will be the poorer for it, none of us will be any the wiser. And when the day comes when we awaken, or more likely are awakened, from our own self hypnosis to a world we do not recognize and cannot control, it will be too late to find someone else to blame (which is really America's Great National Pasttime). Sadly, it won't keep us from trying anyway.
-bill kenny
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