Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913

Deficits in Diplomacy

It seems to me that there is a lot more name-calling and mud-slinging done in politics, or at least more people seem to agree with the names being thrown about. Both parties are equally guilty. On one side you have 'cReepublicans' and on the other side you have 'libtards.' (There are a lot of other terms being used as well.)

Talk show hosts and TV personalities are also prone to this. Anyone who has watched Bill O’Reilly has heard him denigrating ‘pinheads,' while Rush Limbaugh goes after ‘feminazis.' Who could support anyone so designated? Who would want to? They’ve made people into labels who aren’t worth considering.

Each side wants to show the other as terrible for the country, either delusional or evil. In some way, they seem to think that makes them look better by comparison. To my mind, this is very childish behavior, and should not be tolerated.

During a fight over health-care reform in 1993, Senator George Mitchell, a democrat from Maine, said this: “If you call something ‘socialized medicine’ enough times it won’t make it true, but it might make people believe it’s true anyway.” This is still being practiced today, both in politics and in news reporting, and seems to be true. Most people hear something, or read it, and then believe it and repeat it, without ever doing any basic research at all to see if it really is true.

All of this just leads to more cynicism with our government in general. How can we ever expect there to be compromise or any forward motion in legislation? Each side seems to be dead set on “my way or the highway," which is why we have this ongoing threat of government shutdowns. This is terrible for all of us and puts our country further into debt.

All elected officials need to learn diplomacy and tact. They need to listen to other points of view and consider whether another way of doing things might actually be good for the people of this country. They need to shut down their followers who engage in this bad behavior.

I don’t know how this can be accomplished, but I do know that continuing the way things have been is not the right way.

 

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