Dear Editor:
I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that in recent years, America’s political discourse has become increasingly more course and highly polarized. We live in a society today where high-ranking politicians and public figures use curse words and engage in ad hominem attacks to infinity. Unfortunately, we the people have followed that lead when engaging each other. Perhaps this is an inevitable result of the ability to hide behind a keyboard on social media, but I fear that it has reached a breaking point that threatens to undermine our relationships and our society.
To be clear, the infection is bipartisan (or, if you prefer, non-partisan). Terms like “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and “MAGAts” are used loosely and frequently. And no matter how much these terms may be deeply held by the various parties, they have the impact of dehumanizing the other individual and avoiding a conversation on actual differences regarding policy priorities by government on the national, state and local level. Today, we regularly see people (and groups of people) targeted as “mentally ill” and “retards.” We see religions mocked and even attacked as non-religions. Further, and disturbingly, the assignment of a kind of collective guilt on our social or political enemies is rampant. I think everyone understands that assigning to all individuals of a group the worse possible characteristics of the extremes of that group (whether real or imagined) is morally wrong and intellectually dishonest, and yet it happens all too frequently. I believe continuing down such a path will not end well for anyone.
In some ways, one can say that Page County seems a bit isolated at times from this kind of polarization purely because it is an area that seems socially and politically homogeneous. But that homogeneity is an illusion and always has been. Thus, when we attack the other in unkind ways, we aren’t just attacking “those people,” which is bad enough, we are attacking our neighbor. In the religious tradition I come from, treating our neighbors as we would want to be treated is the second greatest commandment — and, in truth, that’s a concept that’s shared in some way by all of us no matter the background.
Closer to home, the referendum on redistricting is thankfully ending. There have been legitimate arguments on both sides of that debate, as there are on nearly every political debate, and if you looked closely, you might have been able to discern them. But I fear some of the polarization and ugliness that was evident during that debate will linger. Despite that, I hope that we will all see that we have more in common than our differences and we all share this place that we love. Nobody’s perfect, and God knows I’m not, but in the end, I hope we can all recognize that we are all neighbors and we ought to be treating each other accordingly.
Christopher Gould ~ Stanley, Va.
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Christopher, I applaud your willingness and honesty in speaking out loud in a public forum, unlike those who use social media to discourse. It takes integrity to do so. I fight the battle every day of how we are ruining the values of what this nation was founded on, clouding it with politics and personal opinion.