These days, as I watch and listen to political pundits on right and left-leaning cable news programs, and their “man/woman on the street” interviews, and as I scroll through my Twitter feed, I recognize a familiar pattern.
Everyone is lobbing political grenades at one another as if there’s a giant cosmic scoreboard with “Democrats” on one-side and “Republicans” on the other.
My friends and I do the same thing. We try to couch our grenade-texts in humor, but we’re definitely scorekeeping.
Whenever we score-keep, we focus more on our team—whether Democratic or Republican—than on problem solving and trying to improve everyone’s quality of life. I’m afraid it’s gotten to the point where we want to defeat the other team more than we want our cities, counties, states, and country to flourish.
Among many other examples, Republicans ran up the scoreboard with their rushed Supreme Court appointment bullshit. This week, Democrats are running up the scoreboard by saying everyone that voted for Trump is responsible for the siege of the Capital Building.
Who is going to unplug the giant, cosmic scoreboard first? I will try to by remembering what my mom taught me, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Imagine the silence that would descend on the country if everyone followed that maxim.
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In normal times with normal people I’d agree. However, these are not normal times. Trump is not a normal person. And inciting insurrection of our country is not normal. I don’t like it when in times like this both sides are lumped together as if both are equally responsible—they are not.
Thanks. I definitely didn’t mean to suggest both sides are equally responsible for this week’s catastrophe. But I do think both sides have lost their focus on people’s daily challenges. And if I concede your point that score keeping is to be expected in extraordinary times, where does it end?
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