Copyright Artvoice
Hate… Trump’s Logic, and Reason In today’s tumultuous times, perhaps the one thing most of us can agree on is that almost half of us disagree with the other half on nearly 80% of the critical issues: taxes, health care, the economy, immigration, crime and punishment, sexual orientation, abortion, and the size of government. The leaders of both parties seem unwilling to give an inch on their respective demands, and the result is that most of us are the ones paying for their seemingly intractable positions. Especially for those living on the edge, the edge is cracking. As citizens of this country, we are being held hostage by the very people we elected to represent us. After listening to spokespersons from both parties, and all of the “talking heads,” on TV and radio, I’ve come to believe the underlying cause for much of the atmosphere of dread is paranoia. Paranoia is the unwarranted or delusional belief that one is being persecuted, harassed, or betrayed by others — occurring as part of a mental condition. A mental condition that is devoid of logic and reason and based on fear and speculation. Fear and speculation that is presented as fact by the media and our representatives. Which begs the question: What’s the end game? Who wins, and at what cost? The tagline for the 2004 film Alien vs. Predator… “Whoever Wins, We Lose” has stuck in my mind ever since I first saw it. More so now than ever, because it perfectly captures the dysfunctional quagmire of American politics, especially within the U.S. House and Senate. What’s even sadder is that the issues tearing us apart are the same ones I’ve been hearing about for over sixty years. No one really seems to want to fix them… instead, they keep being used as weapons in the endless joust for political power. And tragically, many of us keep believing that these politicians truly have our best interests at heart. After decades of political theater and an education system that has majored in failure, we’ve become a nation where many of us think with our hearts instead of our minds. The result is a generation of voters shaped more by emotion and feeling than by reason or an understanding of consequences. We’ve become a society of “Wouldn’t it be nice…” rather than one grounded in reality. It makes you wonder who the Alien is and who the Predator is. And is there a world in which we can coexist? For the sake of future generations, one can only hope that we can see past the artificially induced paranoia and return to a world where logic and reason make a comeback, and at last become a country that agrees to agree!
