This is a follow-up to my August 21, 2021 blog where I parachuted into the alien world of COVID denial. This time I tumbled into misinformation, confrontation, and anger.
Penni and I recently visited Ohio for my in-law family gathering honoring a member’s significant milestone. It was a wonderful four-day visit, but some jarring behavior at the Saturday evening celebration reminded us how we each stick to our comfortable tribes, and how disconnected we can be from the reality of people in other tribes and to our shared humanity. Here are some happenings at the gathering.
► A relative reads congratulatory letters from family members who couldn’t attend in person. One letter lists the many US presidents elected during the honored member’s lifetime. It’s just names, until the current president, where the word “crooked” slid in before “Biden.“ This brings chuckles around the room. It seemed a completely unnecessary introduction of political divisiveness into what was an otherwise congenial milestone recognition event.
► An eight-year-old girl is sitting on Penni’s lap, her father standing nearby. Penni is painting a happy picture of California saying, “You might like to visit sometime. It’s sunny and warm. You could play on the beach and splash in the waves.” With a sour face the dad suddenly interjects, “And you have Newsom.” — another, jarring, completely unnecessary, politically divisive comment.
► I mentioned my Tesla rental car to a distant male relative. He snaps back, “Biden is financing projects like Tesla. Building them makes more carbon dioxide than regular cars. The batteries only last three years and cost over $20,000 to replace.” I was stunned by the speed and intensity of his response and the misinformation.
► I’m talking with a statewide elected official and mentioned that I don’t believe we are going to manage climate change until we stop the pollution at the source, with corporations generating so much of it. He replies that, in the last ten years, corporations have mostly cleaned up their pollution. I realized that this could be the beginning of an argument, and I’m not into arguing. Is he possibly thinking of the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire in Cleveland and their successful remediation efforts, while I am thinking about the continuing dumping of carbon dioxide and methane that are accelerating climate change? I gently step aside.
These four snapshots describe the interactions, but not the strangely unfamiliar feelings the evening brought Penni and me. I realized later how “crooked Biden” likely comes from the widely believed but unsubstantiated claims of Republicans as they press to impeach President Biden for supposedly profiting from his son’s misguided business activities. The insertion of Governor Newsom might have sprung from the red meat, base-bating November 30, 2023, so-called ‘debate’ between DeSantis and Newsom. The Tesla, “batteries only last three years” is untrue, but perhaps commonly inferred by right-wing media. Lastly, I realize I should be more specific when I refer to corporate pollution. There has been some progress in cleaning up more visible killers such as arsenic and benzene. It’s the continuing invisible dumping of carbon dioxide and methane that’s dangerously tilting our planet’s ecological balance.
But more than these details, what disturbed us most were the speed, intensity, and number of the confrontations and the obvious rage behind them.
Though they would instantly deny it, these appear to be deeply unhappy people. How did our culture move to a place where so many feel so alienated and disregarded that they need to assert themselves through anger and confrontation, rather than through care, listening, and understanding?
Penni and I did not expect this, probably because it’s not part of our everyday experience in our own little bubble, the San Francisco Bay area. “Our people” don’t listen to a media where shrill voices paint a black-and-white, for-or-against picture of a tribally divided America.
I felt conflicted because these are family members I love. I don’t want to fall into the polarizing pit being dug by conflict-loving media and see them as “other”, although for sure they listen to and believe a very different version of our complex American culture.
We are one tribe, Homo sapiens. What we share in common vastly outweighs our small differences. Yet we often focus on these differences, jumping too quickly to judgment, arguments, and blame. As skilled followers, are we simply mimicking our national leaders who stoke our conflict for their gain?
This visit to middle America reminded Penni and me that confrontation and rage won’t bring progress on our humanly created problems. There is no one to blame for growing global issues. We are in this together. We are all downstream.
Only listening, goodwill, understanding, and finding common ground will bring us needed solutions.
Thank you for reading.
Barry
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