The Delusion of Collusion Is No Illusion

When I saw the headlines and news bulletins over last weekend when AG Barr released his haiku summary of Special Counsel Mueller's investigative findings and the reaction on both sides of the aisle and across various media platforms it provoked, I guessed (correctly as it turns out) without too much hard work that this would be a car crash in an attempt at civic civility and comity. And it has been and continues to be. It's really proof positive that we cannot outrace our own animus, ignorance, prejudices, and fears. 

As a kid in New Jersey, we had a rule for our cut battles (the put-down contests we gnomes and trolls engaged in on our front stoops after school to make us feel like we were somebody): no mothers. It served us well all those years ago, but it looks like we've abandoned that in the present day for the more universal scorched-earth approach that's too often been the default since the dawning of the time.

In recent years we had a 'village idiot' as President, a person many insisted had grifters and grafters for advisers. As a matter of fact, there were days, if not weeks, at a time when it was hard to find anyone who had voted for this man-much less voted for him twice.

But, in a way, that was okay because, on the other side, we then had liberals (I don't have a keyboard with a sneer font, because that's how some always say this word ) who somehow tricked us into electing a person whom some claimed wasn't even an American (GASP!)

And now, so consumed were so many as to whether the current White House occupant was a Russian mole or a Putin plant that we've forgotten completely about his mental, moral and ethical, unfitness for the position he holds, to say nothing of his absence of any qualifications whatsoever. 

Of course, all of the above is to some extent hyperbole and purple prose and it should fall under the heading of 'sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me', except words do hurt if you pile enough of them on top of one another and never correct, rebut or refute any of the mischievous misstatements and lies set loose in the heat of the moment. 

Speaking of heat when did the melting pot reach the boiling point and of more immediate concern, what are we (ALL) willing to do about it? We are not so much a nation as we are a revolutionary idea-a proposition so absurd on its face that almost no one, anywhere on earth at the time we told His Majesty to pound sand, gave us a snowball's chance in Hades of succeeding.

And yet here we are, not just an idea, but an ideal for the rest of the world, but so filled with self-hatred we cannot and will not encourage or improve ourselves at a moment so precarious, that we haven't been here in since perhaps the less than Civil War.

We didn't invent this form of government-but we are its poster child to the world. Remember the faded slogans on the walls from back in the day? "Ballots not bullets. Choose or lose." What happened to the power of ideas to change lives? When did we decide to stop believing in the majesty of the thoughtful voice?

Too many men and women since our founding have sacrificed their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor so that we could claim as our own, the right to be disagreeable and hateful towards one another, to EVER dare to decide to behave that way.

Each of us knows better. We must learn, or learn again, to respect the opinions and beliefs of others even when they are different from our own (even when they are wrong), and return civility to our civil conversations. Intolerance of others has led to insanity in our past on this planet. It doesn't take a lot for that to happen again, or too many to make it so. 

-bill kenny