War

So I've been trying for the last few months to understand why there is so much incivility and craziness in our civil discourse recently. Two people in the cast confirmed that Brown supporters had set fire to neighbor's Coakley signs and replaced them with Brown signs. I mean, what is that? Why so much hysteria, so much hate and fear mongering, so little actual conversation.

A day or so ago, somebody made reference to the familiar parallels between the U.S. and Rome in it's final days. It's an old song, but a very accurate one, and it suddenly occurred to me that this was what is was all about. Rome was a war state - perpetually at war for more than a two centuries. And now we are pure and simple a war state, too. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the so called war on terror. And this war-mentality has permeated every piece of civic life. Nothing can be a conversation, a dialogue, a process. Nope, everything is a war and the people on the other side are the enemy, even if they are fellow Americans. In fact, that's worse because they are traitors to whatever the true principles of America we decide are important.

I have to say that I think part of the problem with what the Democrats have been doing is that they are not good at war. The left-centrists have been trying to work with the right in the old-fashioned art of compromise, and the right is not interested. Nor is the left who want Obama to be a warrior for liberal policies. Now maybe that is what he should have done - said "Mandate! full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes!" The whole compromise thing is certainly not working because nobody wants to compromise - they want to destroy the enemy.

But do we really have to be at war with everything? Is that really the American way?