"Lighten Up"

                                                                     Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Lighten Up”

August 8, 2021

 

“There’s a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing.”

                                                                                                                                Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

                                                                                                                                Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852

 

 

It is not that I am without concerns, for everything that happens today is a ‘crisis.’ We live on a planet that has been around for 4.5 billion years. Over that time, it has been warm enough in Connecticut, where I live, to host dinosaurs and cold enough to place it under thirty feet of ice. By the time of the last ice age, man had been around for tens of thousands of years. He adapted. Yet today’s changing climate is said to present an existential challenge for the planet. “Woke” governments and large businesses demand diversity, equity and inclusion, but what they really mean are uniformity, unjustness and exclusion. Universities, once places for inquiring minds, have become venues for intellectual conformity. In sports, men, as transgender women, compete against biological women. Merit has fallen victim to social equity. What gives? The United States was founded on principles of personal liberty and the rule of law, derived from the Enlightenment. Should we let what has taken 250 years to create devolve into darkness? 

 

We should not. We need to lighten up. The political atmosphere has become nasty. In an essay (“Old Glory, new anger”) in the August issue of The Spectator, Peter Wood wrote: “There is the wrathfulness of the political left, stemming from visceral hatred of Trump and his supporters.” As for the Right, he noted: “Their complaint lies far deeper as they see the purposeful destruction of American values by an elite that bullies and derides them.”  Friends and family members are no longer able to air political differences without one being called a racist and the other a toady. If we are to survive as a free, decent and independent people, composed of myriad races, religions and nationalities, political leaders, the media and universities must promote tolerance and mutual respect. To achieve this, they must encourage traditional American values, like family formations and public schools that teach. They must reaffirm the values of common sense, responsibility, hard work, merit and reintroduce civility and humor.

 

The political spectrum is linear, with autocracy at one end and anarchy at the other. Understanding that, we should know where on that line our own political philosophies lie. Fundamentally, our differences are simple. Progressives believe equitable progress is best achieved with more government involvement. Conservatives believe in what Margaret Thatcher said in Gdansk in 1988: “Economic freedom and personal freedom go hand in hand.” The first depends on the ability of a few hundred senior bureaucrats. The second relies on millions of people making millions of decisions. There are gradations of belief. A few extremists are clustered at either end, believing in either the benevolence of autocracy or the benignity of anarchy. Mainstream media would have us bunched (along with them) at extremes – the “woke” on one end and “deplorables” at the other. Most of us, however, lie within a few degrees of the center. But anger divides us, and communication is difficult.

 

Abetted by vitriolic, non-stop talk radio, biased cable and network news commentators, ignorant Hollywood and sports figures, sanctimonious university personnel, politicians who see both profit and votes in discord and “woke” corporations who just want to get along, we are being pushed, unwillingly, toward extremes. Our minders are puritanical, meanspirited, stupid and humorless. For students, fear of not being politically correct has meant withholding healthy emotional release. On college campuses political debate is discouraged and mental health distress is rising. A 2019 study by the American College Health Association found that 87% of college students expressed being overwhelmed. To improve conditions, the Association suggested empowering students, launching wellness campaigns and offering a “decision tree.” Absent from suggestions were open debate or fun and laughter, the latter being a well-known antidote to tension. Remember the old Reader’s Digest column, “Laughter the Best Medicine?” But in 2018, the threat of censorship kept Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock from performing on college campuses.

 

Humor that disparages should be shunned. But the ability to laugh is important. Mark Twain looked at politics through a lens of humor: “Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress…But I repeat myself.” P. J. O’Rourke once wrote on the differences between Democrats and Republicans: “The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then get elected and prove it.” Political correctness, which abjures humor, has infected all aspects of our lives, including the National Football League. Dan Mitchell, economist and former senior fellow at the Cato Institute, recently forwarded the following: “Redskins change name to ‘Lizard People,’ to better represent the population of Washington, D.C.” 

 

Would today’s politicians be offended and find jokes about them hurtful? Would they cry ‘Victim?’ Perhaps, but so what? They are public figures, light on wit but heavy with hubris, so subject to satire. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s quote in the rubric speaks to politicians whose dancing around truths can be a source of fun. Laughing at oneself can be endearing. Lyndon Johnson once said: “Being President is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but stand there and take it.” Ronald Reagan used humor to deflect criticism from opponents. In a 1984 debate with the 56-year-old Walter Mondale, the 73-year-old Reagan said: “I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” In recent years, that self-abasing humor has been missing from political discourse. Obama, Trump and Biden are noted for egos, not for laughing at themselves. 

 

Peter Wood ended his piece: “Despair breeds wrath and that fire, once ignited, will engulf us all.” If our “betters” in politics, the media, campuses, “woke” corporations, the sports world and the entertainment industry fail to dispel the anger that envelopes our nation, which is my assumption and fear, then the responsibility to find light in this darkness falls upon ourselves. Turn down the news, pick up a Wodehouse novel, watch a Bob Hope movie, take a walk in the park, try “forest bathing,” as Peter Wohlleben wrote in The Heartbeat of Trees. Visit with family and friends. Just stay off politics and discover what you have in common. Laugh. Life is short. Those of us in the United States and in other free nations are fortunate to be alive and to live where and in the time we do. To go through life angry is self-defeating.

 

Most of us have beliefs that cluster toward the center of the political spectrum. It has been, more than anything else, the media, and especially social media, that has divided us. We are after all fallible. No one, not the President of the United States, not the senior Senator from Kentucky, not the Congresswoman from California’s 12^th District, knows what the future holds. But we should not let the darkness of despair overwhelm us. We should read, watch and listen to the news with healthy skepticism and a lively, restorative sense of humor. We must lighten up.