America's (un)civil war

Americans are engaged in a second civil war, a war of words that plays out every day in a million little skirmishes that add up to the equivalent of an atomic bomb being dropped on our national psyche.

Much of it is related to politics and hatred of Trump:

·      A man returning from the inauguration sits next to a woman on a plane who tells him. “You make me sick. Don’t talk to me. Don’t look at me. Don’t you dare even put your arm on that rest. You disgust me. You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re a bigot. You should get off this plane.”

·      Former West Wing actor Brad Whitford, in response to a plea for religious tolerance from Ivanka Trump following the desecration of a Jewish cemetery, tweets, “Your father is a racist birther. Steve Bannon an anti-Semitic opportunist. You and your husband are enabling hatred. Fuck your shoes.”

·      A friend and colleague whose intelligence and level-headedness I have always admired makes three or four Facebook posts a day calling Trump "dickbreath.” 

·      Madonna tells a crowd she has thought about blowing up the White House.

And how does the president, who is presiding over our tinderbox of a country, respond? He throws fuel on the fire with a nonstop barrage of tweets calling his detractors losers, failures, stupid, dopey and clueless.

Politics aren’t the only trigger for our collective anger. Read the comments under any news story about virtually any topic and you’ll see responses so cruel and hateful they will take your breath away. For instance, this morning’s Yahoo News reports that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are expecting another child, and includes a photo of his family. Some random comments: "God, his wife is ugly." "It's a shame they let this guy spread his seed on another person. Please stop him from procreating anymore." "Why does his wife go by the name of Chan? The jerk is a billionaire and all she could do is laundry and Chinese take-out."

Little wonder most news sites have disabled reader comments.

All this unhinged anger isn’t confined to any specific age group. Here in Southwest Florida, where a substantial percentage of residents are over 50, even my fellow oldsters are becoming nasty to each other:

·      At the meeting of the board of directors of my community association, members of a group that want the board to join a lawsuit they’ve filed against the developer scream “sit down” and “shut up” to homeowners speaking against their plan.

·      In a supermarket parking lot outside the entrance to my development, a 61-year old woman gets out of her car, storms up to the driver of the vehicle ahead of her who is waiting for traffic to clear before turning, and slaps him, screaming he is going too slowly. He calls the police. Newscasters interview the woman’s neighbors who say she always seemed nice.

·      Country club members are sent an anonymous email attacking the integrity of another member. The club’s management, in response, sends an email saying, “We are better than this.”

What’s the catalyst for all this anger?

Drugs? Alcohol? Because social media and the web enable people to anonymously post comments they would never make in public? Because we see so much hatred expressed online that it spills over into our everyday behavior? Because we are no longer able to distinguish “news” from “opinion?” Because we are angry with the media? Or Republicans? Or Democrats? Is it due to religion – too much or too little?  Racism? Jealousy of those who are successful? Disgust for those who aren’t? Hatred for those who are different? Arrogance? Undereducation? Overeducation? Because we now give people trophies just for showing up, so they don’t know to handle disappointment? Have we Americans always had this much anger bottled up inside but most of us weren’t aware of it because, until recently, we didn’t have cable TV and the Internet to feed us news about it 24/7?

Beats me, but we need to get a grip because all this anger, all this nastiness, is diminishing us, beating us down. Emerson said it well: "For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness." 

Now, get the fuck off your computer and go out and be kind to someone, you dickbreath loser.