By Austin Savage

My patience had officially been exhausted. 

So I brewed a pot of coffee, put on the most comfortable pants I own, and burned all my incense at once while blasting out some Enya.  It didn’t help…

I found myself struggling to maintain my sanity, both personally and socially, within the ridiculous confines of this culture.  In fact, I had even been made to feel guilty about my struggle for sanity by those who can only feign genuine affection, whether it is affection for this country or for me personally, in an attempt to mask their sad self interest.  Which only served to make me struggle even harder, thus accelerating my frustration/struggle/guilt cycle and ensuring that reason and behavioral civility were destroyed between all involved parties.

Now, I am not naïve and I am most certainly far from perfect, but I am pretty capable of being honest with myself about what a major league @—— I can be.  In fact, for the most part I have been unrepentant about it.  Not that I enjoy the behavior myself, so I write this with some thoughts careening in my noggin that may not be kind.  Fair warning has been issued; proceed boldly…

Perhaps the most painful thing about our present state is the continual perpetuation of belief in American society that we are all victims.  We all, I include myself, find it much easier to feel that our own behavior, although flawed, is somehow blameless for the circumstances that we find unappealing in our daily lives.  We all know this on a personal level.  Perhaps we have a soul crushing mind numbing job that only serves to break our spirits and scrape together enough money to pay for our iPhone bill and Netflix subscription, which we cannot live without.  There is always the former lover or friend who demonstrated some crappy behavior towards us, allowing us to ignore the fact that we chose to engage with this person in a very intimate and vulnerable fashion.  We love with the demand of having it be requited.  We open up under the assumption that disappointment should never occur and will not be tolerated when it appears in others.  These engagements, whether financial or personal, are grounded in self-interest as is almost anything we choose to pursue in life. We rise every morning and go to work because the comfort of constant Facebook access is of vital importance and we invest in others because, like any investment, we expect a profitable maturation through time and effort.  Comfort, both physically and emotionally, breeds a certain stasis.  This stasis is often called “security” or “stability.”  We want it, and we want it bad.

The interesting thing about the shaking of security, once our stability is gone; is that we have to find a cause for our disorder. An entropic existence is not one that we can throw our arms around easily.  The simplest and most comforting response is to victimize ourselves and place the burden of blame firmly on to an outside entity.  We do this on a personal level, and it is most certainly visible on the local and national level.  Once we have been victimized by the outside source our next logical progression is to oppose it with all our might, to ensure that it is destroyed and that we will never be victimized again.  The best way of going about this is by spreading fear. 

For example, how many exes do you know who have been described in less than flattering terms?  These people have essentially been reduced, in the victimized mind, as lacking in any redeeming human quality.  Yet, objectively, they contained enough redeeming qualities to be worthy of engaging with in the first place, no?  The “victim” finds it easier to reduce the offender to a series of worthless, immoral, inhuman actions as opposed to an equally complex, confused, and suffering soul.  Essentially those that have moved the ground beneath our feet are incapable of the same distinct human failings that we are, thus the ease with which we can tear them down when they prove to be less than perfect.  They were more than the average human when they were providing us with comfort and less than the average human when their failings have ruined our investment.  It most certainly is a terrifying position.

This reductive behavior has carried over beyond personal lives and into public policy.  The amazing alteration is that in public discourse our ideals are beyond the fallibility of human failings.  The god-like reverence with which people speak of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” makes those words irreproachable.  Concepts cannot fail us, ever.  It is best and most comforting to keep concepts clear and simple.  Democracy is doubtlessly considered the superior form of government in American society.  The concepts of Marxism, Socialism, and Communism are trigger words for “un-American,” “oppressive,” and “evil.”   (Yet the Sultan of Brunei and other minor monarchies never seem to come under fire as oppressive.)  This is why the debate on health care in America has taken such an awful turn.  It is a complex issue, one that does not fall easily into rhetorical slogan throwing.  Its issues deal with fiscal responsibility, moral imperatives, and historical significance.  Yet in a society that works from absolute belief and then selectively construes facts to justify the previous existing belief (Don’t believe me?  http://www.livescience.com/culture/090826-healthcare-debate.html) we must break down any opposition into fear inspiring symbology. 

On the 46^th anniversary of the 46^th Street Baptist Church bombing, under the term of a mixed race president, we must break down this public de-humanization of those who don’t fit into our mold and ideals.  What is the genuine basis of this fear?  Is Barack Obama genuinely bent on destroying America?  Is increasing the deficit by providing health care justifiable?  Is it more or less justifiable than increases made in financing foreign wars to defend “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?”  Are the Conservatives genuinely fueled by racism?  Or is it a more complex fear of a rising urban/minority/poor/gay population that is challenging the pre-existing urban WASP identity of “real America?”

These are pretty complex questions.  Ones that should be dealt with in all their difficulty, not shoved under the umbrella of simplification that leads to hateful, fear fueled behavior, like the kind exhibited by Congressman Joe Wilson.  It is debatable that his shout of “you lie,” was inspired by his fear of black people, but there is absolutely no doubt that his outburst stemmed from the imagined prospect of some dirty lazy illegal Mexicans getting treatment.  Wilson seemed absolutely furious at the idea of someone “un-American” being treated by us at the expense of the taxpayer owning another plasma TV.  Why?  Because if they are not us, they are less than human, and that is a terrifying world indeed.