Jim Perdue, Guest Columnist
I recently had a phone conversation with my older sister, who lives in a retirement community in Texas. She retired from a long career in education and moved from the Midwest to get away from the cold winters. One of her favorite activities is playing bridge, and she belongs to a bridge club. She went on to tell me that one of the ladies had made the comment, “democrats are communists.” My sister answered back, “I’m a democrat, are you calling me a communist?” I got the impression her comeback contained a little anger. I don’t know where the conversation went from there, but this is the kind of conversation we need more of in this country.
If we rely on TV news commentators and politicians to form our opinions of “the other side,” we’ll only become more divided.
Then there’s social media building the momentum to demonize the other guys.
Some fear we are headed towards political violence, maybe something approaching civil war. The media stirs things up and likes to create drama. It’s good for business, for ratings, which equals money.
Politicians use fear to get their support and get reelected; it’s good for business. I don’t know how many emails I get from politicians from both parties wanting me to donate money to their campaigns; republicans calling the left communists or socialists and if we don’t stop them, they will destroy our democracy. Democrats use the same tactics, calling republicans racists and fascists, and if they are not stopped, they will destroy our democracy.
I guess we’re doomed, but I have hope that if we communicate with each other, we’ll probably realize that most democrats and republicans are not that far apart when it comes to what they think is important.
There’s a story about a king and queen, and when they looked over the castle wall and saw their subjects fighting with each other, they looked at each other and smiled. Why? If their subjects were fighting amongst themselves, they wouldn’t be coming after them, they felt safe.
I’ve heard it said, don’t waste a good crisis. Such as the pandemic. Many people believe it gives the government an excuse to have more control over us. Mask mandates. Vaccine mandates. Lockdowns. It’s hard for us to push back against Washington, or even Sacramento. One of the scariest government actions to occur happened in Canada, when Trudeau announced he was locking protesters’ bank accounts. One article I read said an elderly lady’s bank account was locked because she made a small donation in support of the truckers’ protests. Orwellian?
Still, I have hope. We have power locally, if we show up to city council meetings and let our thoughts and opinions be heard. We can attend school board meetings and do the same. We don’t need to be violent or try to get our way with intimidation. Just be heard. We can write letters to the editor of our local paper, while we still have one. ■
