A recent hit single by the country artist Taylor Swift asks the ultimate $10,000 question in a breathtakingly simple way as she wryly queries, "Why you gotta be so mean?" I freely admit the song hit me in visceral way. It's quite a catchy tune as well, say what you like about Taylor Swift, but it cannot be denied that she is a gifted singer/songwriter with her finger squarely on the pulse of tween America and in this case, an emotional 30-something. Seemingly Ms. Swift had some kind of forehand knowledge of the daily frustration that I encounter when confronted by the continual breakdown of polite society.
For instance, the other day when entering Hwy 417 via SR 434, I had to quickly merge into oncoming traffic causing me to inadvertantly 'cut off' a fellow driver. Mind you, it's a two lane road so he could have just as effortlessly come up adjacent to me in the 'slow lane'. In my situation, from the way I was approaching, it was the left/'fast lane' or risk missing my exit entirely. It wasn't actually 'cutting him off' but just forcing him to take the slower lane initally. Apparently, this wasn't to this 'gentleman's' (and I use that term loosely) liking for he immediately pulled in the left lane behind me and proceeded to aggressively tailgate me all the way down the highway. And I do mean tailgate, as close as he tailed me, I could make out his eye color and whether or not he was wearing contact lenses! Then as I signalled to exit left he suddenly sped out behind me and then pulled right over in front of me, missing my vehicle by inches, squealing his tires and giving me the international one finger salute while shouting epithets out the window. All because I pulled into a lane a fraction of a few sections earlier than him.
Some of the first stirrings that I was dealing with something more societal than just being inconvenienced by people talking on cell phones blocking the aisles in grocery stores came as a result of the behavior of spectators here in Orlando during and in the days after the Casey Anthony Trial and the antics of the media and trial attorneys themselves. There were the fist fights breaking out in lines as people queued up trying to stake out their seats in the 'Media Trial Event of the Decade', the sarcastic posturing of prosecutorial attorney, Jeff Ashton during Defense Attorney Baez's closing remarks, the removal of one female spectator ranting at Ms. Anthony during the Voir Dire proceedings, and the further removal of a male spectator 'giving the finger' to Mr. Ashton during the actual trial. At one particularly shameful point in the proceedings, Judge Perry had to threaten to hold both Mr. Ashton and Mr. Baez in contempt after Mr. Ashton laughed at him during closing arguments and Mr. Baez called him out. After the trial, it got much worse with people ranting on line in the most bloodthirsty and vitrolic postings I have ever seen. So acrimonious were the invectives that people hurled on Ms. Anthony's jurors that Judge Belvin Perry was forced to seal their names (the jurors) for 4 months in an effort to let the public anger die down and keep them safe after several death threats were reported. It was in hearing media pundits like Nancy Grace excoriating the jury for failing to come through with the verdict she felt was just and correct.
To this day, one need only to glance through the 'Rants and Raves' (R-N-R) section of Craigslist to read the comments of people libeling and slandering Ms. Anthony, Mr. Baez, Mr. Ashton, Ms. Drane-Burdick and Judge Perry depending on what side of the argument they are encamped on. For that matter Craigslist's R-N-R section is, in of itself, an epic piece of mean-ness where the angry hordes (posters) gather to pick on the weak, disenfranchised, racist, gay, or physically challenged like vultures swarming over a particularly choice piece of carrion. To read it, is to despair that we've regressed from a polite society so alarmingly that nothing short of a counter-revolution would restore us back to our former selves.
Then there is of course, the debt debate earlier this summer which offered up the more seamier side of Washington party politics but served as another reminder of the angry partisanship on both sides.
While he had his faults and certainly his critics, (mostly angry liberal revisionist history types) one of the great things about President Ronald Reagan was his ability to 'cross the aisle' in an effort to meet the needs of the American people. He gave a little and they gave a little and they were able to find common ground and places the needs of the citizens above party politics. But now all you have is finger pointing and scapegoating on both sides and nothing gets accomplished. It's all about which PAC is coming across with how much money for the next political campaign. And the ends justify the means. If it means slandering another congressman's (Paul Ryan) plan and questioning their very intelligence, so be it. If it means distorting the facts, calling him/her names, alleging he/she is a radical, if I have to crawl over their very bones to reach the office, then that's what I'll do and no amount of mean-ness of behavior is an obstacle provided I reach my ultimate goal.
All of this got me to wondering if I am alone in my thinking? Is it merely a side effect of the depression I've been dealing with? A symptom of the feelings of isolation and disconnect from society which results from not being 'out there' every day through the medium of employment? So, as is my want I set out to research this topic. When I queried my good 'friend' Google, the question "Are we becoming meaner as a society?", it responded with no less than 792,000 hits. Clearly others like me are also pondering this question in our numbers. Some of the stories I read in my research were heartbreaking, incidences of bullying like the story from a Fox News affiliate last month detailing how Nadin Khoury who was brought to the US 10 years ago to escape the Liberian Civil War, was left suspended by his coat from a seven foot high fence after being punched, kicked, beaten and dragged to the fence in a Philadelphia suburb. The ultimate irony in this is that his mother brought him here to the US to escape the violence being wrought in his own country.
What have we come to in this country? And my unanswered question, my greatest fear is...where will it end?
No comments:
Post a Comment