Be Civil, Will You!?

My dear friend, Craig, has invited me to a reception on the current atmosphere in politics and how it has become, to put it lightly, rather uncivilized.

Follow this link to read about it. The Beacon Journal has been running articles lately about civility and, I have to tell you, I'm interested.

Below are some of my thoughts about politics of late and the mud slinging that has become common place.

1. Politics is serious business. The decisions that our leaders make affect our lives in very noticeable ways. How much we make, whether we can buy a house, our health, just to name a few. But the way our government is run and how races are run, you'd think they were all in junior high gym class locker room.

Name calling, slandering, misleading information, or just outright lying is the new norm. At least no one is getting caned anymore but hey, that might make a come back soon!

2. It has become this way because we have allowed it to. We, the people, vote them into office. And I can tell you, they run hateful (not "negative", let's call it what it is) ads because they work. If the first guy that ran a hateful ad didn't get elected, do you think they'd still be running them? Of course not!

In today's reality show like political arena, people love to see the infighting, the wrangling, and the back stabbing. Every word that is spoken is analyzed and an opinion formed on it. If he's "your guy", you defend it. If he's "the other guy", then you attack and point out how this obviously shows how dumb/unqualified they are.

We want an 8th grade blood bath and that's what they give us.

3. The lies. Oh the lies. Lying has become the norm and bending the truth in ways that would make a gymnast jealous has become a regular occurrence. There are whole websites that exist purely to help one sift through all the B.S.

When did lying become okay? When did we come to expect it? Why do we allow it to happen? We'll write our senator about a piece of legislation that we think might affect our pay check, but when they lie through their teeth and we know it? We let it slide because it's "politics as usual".

I'm excited for this forum and to see where it goes. All is not lost, I hope.

Rev.