I'm Pretty Sure We Aren't Going to Have a Civil War
We are in the midst of a transition from liberal to conservative ideology like we have in times past
It seems as if this distrust came out of the ether and instantaneously.
Americans have always fought with one another—over ideology, over injustice, over resources, over control. That's who we are in our DNA. As John Winger declares in Stripes "We're all very different people. We're not Watusi, we're not Spartans, we're Americans. With a capital "A", huh? And you know what that means? Do you? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts."
Mutts scrap with each other. It is as it ever was.
What seems and feels different is our almost wholesale, across the aisle distrust of our institutions. Americans suddenly don't have trust in government, the law, the media, public education, the electoral process.
…both trust and respect are given, not earned.
Fifty years ago it was the Right with conspiracies of foreign powers corrupting our nation and the Left who warned about the corruption within. Now it's flipped—the Left claims electoral corruption from Russia and the Right complains of internal forces stealing votes.
A few days ago, the lofty New York Times Editorial Board published a piece in favor of a culture of open discourse entitled America Has a Free Speech Problem and oh, how the shit hit the fan!
Nearly 3,000 comments later and countless Twitter take downs by the strident on both sides of the ideological fence, we are left with the fact that none of us who still read the NYT trusts these fuckers further than we can share a paywalled article.
Michelle from Atlanta writes:
"Couldn’t believe I was reading this headline in NYT, but I couldn’t get past the third paragraph. Complaints about the right trying to ban books, censure teachers and stifle discussion is laughable because that’s what the right has been doing for years, just not via the legal system."
Theresa of Vermont sounds off:
"I am stunned to read this. Free speech is protected in the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from restricting speech, protects the right not to speak, and protects against government censorship. It does not protect a speaker from accountability and responsibility for their speech."
T. Thompson of Baltimore waxes on:
"This editorial is appalling. Clearly, the Editorial Board is feeling touchy about the widespread ridicule of its recent decision to characterize as a political crisis an undergrad's discomfort at expressing her opinions in class. I guess you need to be reminded that the 1st Amendment does not guarantee the right not to be "shamed or shunned.""
I was listening to a podcast and the guest made an interesting point:
The conservative/liberal Yin Yang relationship is cyclical. Every 50 or 60 years, any democratic society flips from one to the other in often turbulent ways. The conformism and conservative view of society's issues as being Order vs Chaos reigned supreme from the Civil War until around the late 1950's when the excesses of conservative dogma pushed the country into a corner with McCarthy and the Red Scare. Nonconformist tendencies started massing and the liberal perspective of Have vs Have Nots took hold. The next 60 years has been populated with an increase in individual rights, support for those on the margins of the majority, the unshackling of chains on blacks, gays, and Cubs fans and here we are, at the tail end of the excesses of liberal dogma.
Anyone sitting near the center sees an increase in conformist attitude from the strange laws banning CRT and Trans ideology from public schools to the obnoxious culture of personal destruction when in any disagreement of any aspect of the New Left Theology.
From both extremes, the method is incredibly conservative if not a bit lunatic in lack of reflective capabilities.
The NYT op-ed closes with this:
"Free speech is predicated on mutual respect — that of people for one another and of a government for the people it serves. Every day, in communities across the country, Americans must speak to one another freely to refine and improve the elements of our social contract: What do we owe the most vulnerable in our neighborhoods? What conduct should we expect from public servants? What ideas are so essential to understanding American democracy that they should be taught in schools? When public discourse in America is narrowed, it becomes harder to answer these and the many other urgent questions we face as a society."
So maybe it isn't trust we lack but mutual respect.
Or both, I suppose.
Here's the thing, both trust and respect are given, not earned. We have this weird transactional perspective on both and the idea that I will respect and trust you if you earn them from me is in error.
I give trust and by doing so am trustworthy. I give respect and by doing so am shown to be worthy of respect. If you betray my trust, you lose it forever (because even if your wife cheats on you and apologizes, you'll never really trust her when she tells you she's 'just going out' again). If I show you respect and you treat me with disrespect in return, I'll likely ignore you in the future as that is like me giving you an expensive present and then finding it in an alley somewhere. You ain't getting another present after that.
Without a mutual sense of trust and respect, we're kind of fucked for the transitional period we're going through currently. We'll get through it just like we got through the shitshow that was the late sixties. How much damage is done in the interim is entirely up to each and every one of us who calls himself American.