What’s wrong with us?

Since I got my first AARP card in the mail this week, I figure I’ve finally taken the first steps to becoming elderly. I’m excited about this, because one of the chief virtues people assign to the elderly is their wisdom. Older people know things. It must be because of all the miles they have logged, but the older a person gets, the more he or she understands life — even if the conclusion is that life cannot easily be understood.

I’m also excited to tell you that this older person = sage thing obviously worked. Because, less than a day after the card arrived, I woke up this morning understanding what is causing most of the problems in the world. It’s them.

You know who them is. In the realm of U.S. politics, for example, if you are a Democrat, it’s a Republican. Conversely, if you’re a Republican, it’s the Democrats. All of the world’s problems would disappear and the earth would be  a garden if we could just lock up all the Democrats, or all the Republicans. Simple as that.

While we’re at it, we have to get rid of the conservatives and the liberals. A lot of Republicans use Liberal as another label for Democrat, so we can probably kill two birds with one stone there, and conversely, Republican must equal Conservative, so that’s another two-for-one special out of the way.

So that’s my solution: If we just figure out who they are and take them out of the equation (non-violently, of course), surely whoever’s left will be free to enact their plans on how to fix America, and we’ll finally get that paradise we’re all wanting.

The only problem is people have tried that before: politically parties have taken over legislatures, or indeed, whole governments, when they saw other groups causing all the problems. For example, in 1930s Germany, they went by the name of Social Democrats. Once the opposition was eliminated, then Germany was free to usher in the “paradise” that was the Third Reich. And since so many men and women of my parent’s generation suffered and died to rid the world of that “paradise,” I think we can rule out mass bans of the opposition as a way of settling debate.

Our founding fathers were much wiser men than we seem to be. They built into our government a system of checks and balances, so a man like Adolph Hitler wouldn’t turn the country into a dictatorship — or, to be fair to their perspective, a monarchy. There are sophisticated controls to allow one branch, when pushed, to push back. The problem is, I don’t think they foresaw just how much of a role money and power would come to play in our governments. And I don’t think they knew to what extent pushing would become the rule, not the exception.

Washington today has become a joke. Were he to go to Washington today, Mr. Smith wouldn’t last five minutes before he was swallowed up by special interests and partisan politics. That’s simply the coin of the realm these days. Quite apart from their individual selfish interests, the various and sundry Republicans and Democrats have dropped any pretense of seeing the other side as “the loyal opposition,” and instead, have become the political equivalent of that old married couple down the street — the only way they can communicate is to argue. They belittle, they ridicule, they accuse, they demean, and the seek only the other side’s destruction. When a man goes to Washington these days, he’s often much more interested in hurting them and doing good for his own side than in doing what’s best for the people that sent him there. I know — that’s a generalization. But it is far too often true.

So in retrospect, I guess age does not automatically equate to wisdom. Mostly because I really have no clue how to fix what’s wrong in Washington, but also because so many of the people who are causing the problems in Washington could and perhaps do belong to AARP.

Be that as it may, I remain convinced that the United States has thrown aside the greatness of an us in favor of a lot of shrieking, divisive thems. 

When I was a young man, and even more idealistic than I am now, I watched the presidential election night results at a friend’s house. I won’t say which election, and I won’t say which party to which he and his mother belonged. But as the night fell irrevocably to them, one of them said to the other, with a wrathful relish I’ll not soon forget, “Now we’ll show them!”

I’ve thought of that every election night since then. At first, I thought that tone was simply the province of that particular party — proof that they were, themselves a them to be opposed. But now, I realize that both parties come to power, or return to it, with that battle cry on their lips. As a result, I have long since dismissed politics as an insolvable mess. As them against them. Oh, I voted every year — my duty as a citizen. But I tried to stay aloof; to not get involved. I had no desire to wade into somebody else’s fight. And besides, I really didn’t have any answers either, so why muddy the waters with my own amateurish and unschooled opinions.

Now, the “wisdom” of my years have made me realize that this was a mistake. I’ve sat on the sidelines for far too long. And, all kidding aside, I don’t know how many years I have left. I think perhaps the time has come for me to make some sort of difference with the time I have remaining.

The battle is out there. But it is also inside of us. The thems aren’t conservatives, liberals, Republicans, Democrats, or any of the various and traditional opposing forces. The thems are ignorance, poverty, greed, corruption, scorn, contempt, pride, arrogance, abuse of a dozen different kinds, prejudice, bigotry, waste, and hundreds of other sins of commission and omission. They are all around us. They are non-partisan. And they will never be stopped until the Lord returns. But they must always, always, be fought.

I am a small man, of small means, and there is little that I can do of myself. But starting today, and in my own small way, I mean to try.