I do get angry. I try not to, but I am weak and I get very, very cross, especially when people disagree with me. It is a terrible failing, perhaps, but it might seem occasionally that it is born out a very real and sincerely held belief that I am right about everything. I promise that - on some level at least - I do accept that other people are allowed to disagree with me and that they may even be correct to do so. What actually infuriates me is the possibility that they might be unable to concede the same point to me.
Take, for example, his holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who swept into the United Kingdom this week. Infallibility is in his job description, for Darwin's sake, so it's inevitable that he is going to upset people whilst he's lecturing to them about the evils of their atheism/homosexuality/feminism/AIDS prevention methods. To make matters worse, his (literally) dogmatic approach to these issues has caused his opponents to adopt similarly uncompromising attitude, with 'militant atheist' Richard Dawkins now leading a cadre of hardline extremists. Both sides are now well dug in to increasingly entrenched positions.
The same thing has been happening politically here in the USA for years, of course, but the divisions have widened dramatically since the election of Barack Obama. Without a Republican president, the right has no responsible authority figure to keep it on the leash and so various unpleasant types like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and the Tea Party movement have seized the opportunity to push their more extreme agenda. Last month Beck led a rally of, possibly, several hundred thousand people at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC - ostensibly to reclaim the civil rights movement for white, right-wing Christians.
What disturbs me most is that all sides, in all these conflicts, see themselves as the victims. The leaders, possibly, are overstating the perceived threat posed by their opponents so as to energise their base, but the effect on their supporters is dramatic. Here Tea Partiers are genuinely afraid that the gays and the Muslims and the socialists are coming for them. Liberals feel swamped, scared that the political system is being run by Big Money and Fox News. Muslim American citizens have to put up with the terrifying antics of half-wits like Terry Jones and his mooted Qu'ran burning, whilst the non-Muslims majority is largely horrified by the thought of a mosque at Ground Zero. In the US, atheism is a dirty word whilst in the UK blasphemy is still a criminal offence in Scotland and Northern Ireland. At the same time, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Pope does genuinely believe that his religion is under siege by the forces of "aggressive secularism".
I can't say how many of these myriad fears are justified, but it can't be true that all sides are simultaneously so greatly threatened. But this is the nature of the debate: polarising and utterly poisonous.
And I'm guilty of it myself - I read the news I want to read, because it reinforces the positions I've already decided to adopt. I forward on opinions and stories, but I only send them to friends that I know will be predisposed to like them too. And if I do get into a conversation with someone who thinks differently to me, I've already closed my brain down to the possibility that I might be persuaded.
But then, the only other option would be to get very, very angry.
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