What We Can Do Now

Again I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun.

Look, the tears of the oppressed - with no one to comfort them!

On the side of their oppressors was power - with no one to comfort them.

And I thought of the dead, who have already died, more fortunate than the living, 

who are still alive; but better than both is the one who has not yet been, 

and has not yet seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.

-Ecclesiastes 4: 1-3

Tree of Life Synagogue was not far from where I went to seminary.  That doesn't really make it any more tragic to me than the numerous other incidents of mass violence that have wracked our nation over the past few years, but I guess it does sort of deepen my own sense of dread.  It brings me to contemplate the limits of rationality when it comes to things like this.  As I read the papers this morning, listening to people trying to make sense of the whole thing from various angles, the voice that keeps coming back to me is one from the very Hebrew Scriptures that both Jewish folk and Christians hold as holy.

Granted, the "preacher" of Ecclesiastes, is far from typical, and certainly not the "go to" adviser if you need some cheering up, but he is a bracing bit of reality that I find I deeply need in moments like this.  Ecclesiastes is sort of like the Blues, it doesn't make you feel better, but it does make you feel less alone.  That's an important thing, because being alone is what allows you to become like that guy who shot those people in the synagogue and the one who mailed those pipe bombs last week.  Alone you feel like all "those people" are against you, and sooner or later, if you're alone long enough, everyone becomes "those people," even nice Jewish people in Squirrel Hill going to services on the Sabbath.  Of course it doesn't help if you insulate yourself with hate spewing internet sewers and only watch news that tells you all the things you should be afraid of... constantly... 24-7 with increasing foam around the mouth.  But to tell you the truth, people went crazy with hate and fear before any of that existed, all it really takes is alone-ness, or in more specific terms, the absence of community. When you are isolated, you tend to consume hate with more gusto.  When you do not regularly see other people, and relate to them, and make the effort of connecting with them, it is far too easy to de-humanize them into the enemy.

In that state, people tend to see those who practice community as particularly galling.  In addition to simple logistics of getting people when they're all together, at church, synagogue, rock concerts and schools, there is also the probably unconscious pathology of attacking the very thing that you need, but which you do not have.

As dangerous as it may be, community is the only cure for this disease.  Witness the grace, even in mourning, of the communities that suffer like this.  Mature religion will always give people a different way to respond to this problem.  Remember when the families of those people who Dylan Roof murdered forgave him?  Remember the Amish who forgave the Nickel Mines shooter?  Give Tree of Life time, they will also astound you with their grace.  It's hard to say how, but they will; pay attention to them when the shock and awe are done with.

Immature religion will clamp down and tense up and try to harness the fear and hurt of a moment like this to bring down the curtains of control.  Many people will tell you that armed guards and increased security are the solution, that is not only untrue, but an evil distortion of what communities of true faith hold as their deepest value.

Jesus, who was Jewish by the way, said it this way, "Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for may sake will find it."  That's not endorsing wanton self-destruction, it's all about control and whether you must be in control, or give that control over to God. If you trust, if you love, if you live in faith, you are truly alive.  If you live in fear, hate and anger you are more dead than you even realize.  That's what we have to tell ourselves, over and over again, in moments like this: love is dangerous, do it anyway; community is difficult, do it anyway; forgiveness can be heart-wrenching, do it anyway.  It's not because it's the obvious reaction, it's because it's the only reaction that will ever heal this broken world of ours.

Louder Than Bombs

So now there are bombs being sent to noted liberals all over the place: George Soros, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Robert DeNiro, Joe Biden, and probably more to come.  None of them have reached their target, none of them have harmed anyone... yet, but this is yet another widening gyre of a culture war run amok and the casualties in the long run will not be minor. This is not Donald Trump's doing, at least not directly, I don't think even he would sanction this sort of terrorism, but the response to it is, once again, deeply disturbing.  The Fox News contingent is fainting and hand-wringing, all the while muttering under their breath about "false flags," and how this is just another conspiracy to make Trump look bad or sway the election.
At some point though, when your only explanation for things is a bizarre conspiracy theory, you might have to admit that perhaps you're not on the right side of things. When your explanation for everything unfavorable to you is a result of "the media" spinning things in a certain way, you might at least acknowledge that perhaps there is some truth contained in the overwhelming corpus of what can still feasibly be called journalism. Journalists and opinion columnists do sometimes see things clearly.  For instance, this piece appeared in the NY Times today.  No doubt, Trump apologists will say that it's just liberal propaganda or fake news, but it makes a balanced point about the rhetorical practices that have taken over our political arena lately.  It does not blame Trump for the pipe bombs, but it does blame the fear mongering and violent tone of his rhetoric for creating a scenario where an unhinged individual becomes more likely to act out.
The guy who opened fire on Republicans playing softball last year, shows us that the same thing can happen on the left as well as the right, however, I do not recall Democrats making excuses for that or blithely ignoring it as though it was just inevitable and moving on to other things.  Trump, as usual, postures as a tough guy, and in doing so feeds into precisely the sort of zeitgeist that catalyzes this sort of thing in the first place.  All of the people on the bomb list are people who are frequently blamed for the imaginary ills of our society, and we have seen other examples of this: Soros is secretly funding the refugee caravan coming from Honduras, Barack Obama is a secret Muslim who wants to institute Sharia law, Hillary Clinton... I don't even have time to list everything that Hillary Clinton has been accused of, so let's just say Benghazi and leave it at that.
My point is that irresponsible rhetoric has been setting the stage for this sort of thing for years now, and honestly both sides have a hand in it, but one side is more red (take the implication for what it's worth).  Part of this is simply a function of identity, conservatism has a built in reactionary streak that sees change as bad and which always seeks to maintain the status quo.  Conservatism is the favorite haven of those who are already doing well, those who have the power, the money and all the "rights" they want.  Liberalism, at least in the classic sense, looks towards improvement of the status quo, sometimes it even gets around to being altruistic, so that it seeks improvement for everyone.
Honestly, a healthy, functioning society would have both impulses at work, but we do not, at present, have a healthy, functioning society, we have a large scale version of the Jerry Springer show.  Right now, the Liberal side of things is hanging by its fingernails to some idea that civility might be possible. It is a very diverse body though, encompassing everything from libertarians to communists, and within that diversity there are many who think, as Eric Holder expressed last week, "when they go low, we kick them."  That's a bad idea, because if we do that, we let the bully win.
Trump, and by extension, the entire GOP have become bullies, they have the power, and they are not afraid to use it.  People who haven't had the bully's fist aimed at them often look on with approval or disinterest.  Very rarely will anyone stand up to a bully on behalf of someone else.  Trump seems to have only one very narrow sort of self awareness: he knows who to target.  Soros is an easy target for the MAGA crowd to hate: he's rich, he's a New York Elite, he's a known liberal, and to top it off, he's Jewish, for any of the latent anti-semites in the gang.  Hillary is demonstrably hate-able to large swaths of the population.  Obama and Biden? Well, I have a bit of a hard time finding any explanation to dislike those two other than flat out racism, I mean disagree with them maybe, but dislike, or even hate them?  That's tough, but not apparently impossible.  Which is the point, when you can convince people that Barack Obama and Joe Biden are dangerous enemies, unless your last name is Bin-Laden, you have crossed into Jim Jones territory. Robert DeNiro? Fughettabahit.
But this is where we are, I have a feeling it's going to get worse.

Go Gently

We don't yet see things clearly.  We're squinting through a fog, peering through a mist.

But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright!

We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us.

-1 Corinthians 13: 12 (The Message)

Thank you Eugene for all that you have done for me.  We met one time, at a conference, when I was just barely out of seminary.  You were the star of the show, but you didn't seem very comfortable being the center of attention.  I was struck by your gentleness and the way you seemed humble and quiet in the midst of quite a bit of fawning by pastor types like me.  I had read so many of your books at that point that I felt like I knew you, and I suppose I did in a way, your books are honest, and I will always hear your quiet rasping voice whenever I re-read them.

I had already mourned the fact that you stopped writing, but I felt like the world was a better place with you up there in Montana on that beautiful lake.  Now I must accept a different vision, that you are home with God, you have completed your baptism and come face to face with the Savior that you served in so many ways.  I think your service through writing has rescued the Church from much silliness and formed many of us into better pastors.

I have read your memoir and I know your life was long and full of goodness.  I know that you did not fear this day, but rather, with the gift of faith, looked forward to glory, and seeing God clearly.  I am happy for you today Eugene, but sad for the world that has lost your wisdom and your presence.

Your writings will be a gift for years to come, thank you so much for leaving them for us.

When you see Fred Rogers, tell him "Hey Neighbor!" He got to me a lot earlier than you and taught me a lot about what it means to be kind.  Not that it's a competition, but you two really make Presbyterian ministers look good.

Thanks again Eugene, your life has made a difference.  Enjoy the Resurrection.  

See you there after a while,

Mark

What If?

One of the hardest things to do in dealing with conflict is to honestly consider the fact that you might be wrong, and that the person with whom you are in conflict might be right.  It goes against our nature, it causes us to ignore obvious data points, it leads to confirmation bias, and generally creates the right conditions for us to act like jackasses.  Watching bits and pieces of Trump's 60 Minutes interview and reading the various opinion pieces about it this morning, I was struck by the fact that he just might believe himself.  For some reason, this makes me feel just slightly better, but that better feeling is highly relative.  Do I feel as good as I would have if Obama was still President, and I had a dignified and diplomatic President who could speak eloquently and demonstrate some actual emotion besides anger? Well, no, but my overwhelming impression of Trump on most occasions is that he is a con man pulling one over on a whole lot of people, which makes me despair for the greater political situation.
What I'm thinking now is that perhaps he really believes that all of his actions are genuinely for the good of the country.  He really is trying to make America great again, but it's sort of like when a toddler is trying to make Mom breakfast in bed: messy and probably not going to taste very good. I'm not exactly sure which is worse: huckster or true believer, they both may in fact be quite dangerous.  I'm also not entirely sure that Trump isn't just playing a convincing true believer, in which case he conflates the dangers of both.
I guess what makes me feel better about the true believer angle is that the truth has been such a punching bag for the last three years, and at least, if he believes that his strong man act: populism, nationalism, isolationism, protectionism, etc. is really in our best interest, then at least reality will have a shot at proving those instincts misguided... or maybe not.  Maybe I'm wrong in my liberal progressive ideas about creating a better world through cooperation and lifting up the oppressed.  Maybe this universe does operate by the rules of Ayn Rand, and self interest is god.  If that's true then the Trump way is probably not such a bad idea.  We should be strong, we should beat up on anyone who isn't us, because they're looking to do likewise. I'm not above that sort of misanthropy, in fact, I rather enjoyed it for a very long time.
The thing that won't let me really revel in it though is this thing that keeps coming up in the book that I read every day.  The idea that self interest is not god, and in fact God is God.  Not only that, but God is not capricious and vicious like some people seem to think, but rather God is full of justice, steadfast love and mercy.  The reason why God creates is so that everything that is can show the love that moved God to create in the first place.
You would think that people who believe that Jesus is the reliable witness to that love would get the picture: the way to victory is not strength but weakness, the last shall be first and the first shall be last, blessed are the meek... you know that guy.  But from the first disciples onward, some folks still got it exactly wrong and piously set about trying to win and accumulate power and make things in their own image, even while proclaiming to follow a crucified Lord.
I guess what makes me more sanguine about Trump being a true believer as opposed to a cynical con man, is that it means he is just another Herod, or Caesar or whatever, he doesn't ultimately matter that much.  Maybe I should have known that from the beginning, maybe I should have known it about politicians I agree with.  I still think that we should try to make the world a better place by loving our neighbor rather than trying to take advantage of them.  I still think that the goal of humankind ought to be community rather than empire, but then again, maybe I'm just whistling past the graveyard of our hubris.

Persecution Complexity

Forgive me, but I'm going to bombard you with a few links to some things.  The first is the source material upon which the other three are commenting, a study called Hidden Tribes: A Study of America's Polarized Landscape.  It's 160 pages long, and if you really want a pretty good summary of what it says you can read an article in The Atlantic, which approaches it from what I would call a Liberal/Moderate perspective.  But also give a moment to Rod Dreher's take on it from The American Conservative as well as the Libertarian spin from Reason.  I don't have the time or the inclination to sort out all the neurotic tendencies of each group, but what I find interesting is that they are all approaching this information as though it is a sort of revelation about the American people.
The findings of the study indicate, to put it in layman's terms, we are not as crazy as we look, but we do look pretty crazy right at the moment.  Oddly enough, I think all the commentary agrees on this: there is a large majority of people out there who are simply tired of this bull-pucky. They are tired of being called out and told to check their privilege, they are tired of rage-muppets like Sean Hannity, they are really tired of Donald Trump's twitter habit, they don't feel like they deserve the constant scolding and lecturing that they get from the PC police.  In short, and I can identify with this, they would not mind if the single digit percentages of both "progressive activists" and "devoted conservatives" were rounded up and shipped off to a large penal colony (unfortunately Australia is no longer available), to fight it out Thunderdome style.
Oh what a wonderful world it would be, but alas that solution would be pretty Nazi-esque and some new and cursed fringe elements would probably take up the mantle of driving us all crazy from both sides afresh. So, here we are America, over 80 percent of us, somewhere between "traditional liberal," and "traditional conservative," who honestly don't have that much that we deeply disagree upon.  We have let ourselves be hijacked by partisanship and paranoia.  Every one seems to feel persecuted, especially if they peek into the opposite echo chamber. How did such a small number of us get the power to make the rest of us miserable?
As with all power, it was given to them by the consent, or at least the tacit acceptance, of the "governed."  We have turned over sober assessment of our national struggles to those who profit from sensation and vitriol.  Good journalism is trying to make a comeback, but it's now got lots of competition.  Just look at the differences between the various responses to Hidden Tribes, they all kind of like what it says, but they lead with sensationalist (and smarmy) headlines: "Woke elite have no clothes!" that stoke up the people who already agree with them to draw clicks. Don't get me wrong, it's good to have a variety of voices taking on the data of something like this, but the sanest voices have to compete with the rhetorical equivalent of a drunk street preacher wearing no pants, and the internet degrades our ability to tell the difference.  It's good for us to realize that the center may just actually be holding, but I think that the center is holding sort of like the parents of two difficult toddlers trying to have a nice dinner, which is to say, not very well, but no one has gotten stabbed with a fork... yet.

Soreness

Growing up, I was never really an athletic kid.  The thing that I did learn from my misadventures in Little League was how important it was to be a "good sport."  The first lesson in good sportsmanship is how not to throw a tantrum when you lose, but at some point it is important to learn how to be a good winner as well.  As it turned out, the things that I tended to win in life were more mental than physical in nature, and in that arena it is even more important to learn how to win gracefully.  In the world of competing ideas, presentation and demeanor can be supremely important.  In my line of work, I have had to realize that being right is not even 50% of the job description.
"Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing," is the mantra of a sociopath.  It is the path to wickedness.  Thus, here in the wake of the Kavanaugh debacle, I feel like we are losers, all of us.  The gloating of the winners makes them appear to be insensitive to the plight of people who have experienced sexual assault. This is multi-faceted: they refuse to believe that it happened, the oldest and most familiar form of negation, they may call her a liar, they may simply say that she doesn't remember it correctly.  Worst of all they may, in fact, find her credible, but simply not care enough to delay or even halt their march to victory.  I feel like the responses to the whole scenario I have seen on social media, while they do not add any clarity to the truth of what happened so long ago, tell me an awful, awful lot about the people who double down on scoffing and self-righteous anger.
On the side that feels like they just lost, there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Suspicions (perhaps even hopes) that the legitimacy of the Court is on the wane, vengeful fantasies about voting all the bastards out, and general vilification of those who have dug the bunker of white male privilege that much deeper, have been pretty common over the past few days.  I feel the sort of stomach turning futility of this whole affair.  I have felt it before. It is what Psalm 40 refers to as the miry clay, that sucking pit or bog that just will not let you move and threatens to drown you.  It is indeed hard to be a good loser when that involves explaining to my daughter that the highest level of our justice system may have two men who were credibly accused of treating women badly sitting on its bench.  I understand that accusations are not proof, I understand that we need to have protections against false allegations, this is true and important.  But any quest for the truth was beggared by the limitations of the investigation that eventually took place only because one Republican man grew a temporary spine.
It is unfortunate that the spine was not a permanent addition.  It is unfortunate that many Republicans (not just Susan Collins) had reservations that needed to be put to bed for real, and still decided to just plow ahead.  It strikes me that this decision was too important to be made as quickly as it was.  If I were Kavanaugh I would want every possible measure taken to verify my innocence before becoming a permanent public figure, who will, rightly or wrongly, become synonymous with sexual assault and frat bro misbehavior.
Time will tell what happens as a result of this. It may be that the last retrenchment of white male hegemony was simply the digging of a grave not a fortress, but I am not sanguine that the days of McConnell, Grassley and Trump are at an end. We may be on the verge of outing and holding the Harvey Weinsteins and Bill Cosbys of the world accountable, but the system that enables them and even protects them is not going to go quietly.  To think it will just fade away is naive and perhaps even dangerous to the cause of justice.  I know every time I see Clarence Thomas, I can't help but think about pubic hairs and "Long Dong Silver," I consider his judgment to be less than Supreme Court worthy.  Kavanaugh will be a similar case for me, even if I give him the benefit of the doubt that he actually didn't do what Dr. Ford said he did, and he was just a rowdy drunk frat bro doing rowdy drunk frat bro things, as many more corroborating witnesses attest, I still think he needs to own up to who he was. I doubt the veracity of his characterizations of himself, and while dishonesty with oneself is certainly not rare or disqualifying, it does not give me many good feelings about what has just happened in our country.
He is where he is, and we are where we are.  At this point nothing can change that.  My lingering angst right now is that the whole affair was so squalid and rancorous, how can we be proud of what we have wrought?  Win or lose, how can you be happy with how we got here?

L'etranger

I remember reading the opening of Albert Camus' L'etranger,  in French IV as a senior in high school. It opens with something like, "My mother died, whatever."  I was rather more interested in finding out what the book had to do with The Cure's song Killing an Arab, but I remember being struck by the starkness of that opening.  It was really my first introduction to existentialism, and I was reading it in French, because my French teacher, Mrs. Beachy (aka Madame Plage) was awesome.
Looking back, I realize that the course my life took was rather shaped by reading things.  The books that shaped my thinking, and sometimes warped my thinking are important, but not always fun.  Reading Sartre's No Exit, actually lead me to re-evaluate what I believed about heaven and hell, and left me open to the more hopeful visions of C.S. Lewis.  Reading The Catcher in the Rye and The Sufferings of Young Werther, taught me that perhaps teenage angst isn't really that noble of an emotional state.  The existentialists, along with Dostoevsky, Emerson and Thoreau, led me to an understanding that people are fundamentally estranged from one another, and yet, we must struggle against that estrangement.  "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," wrote the Walden hermit.
There is this little blurb in the NY Times this morning, which seems like just a data point in the ongoing saga of human estrangement. I'm not a great fan of statistics, nor a great believer in polls, but the upshot of that Upshot, is that a whole lot of people, on both sides of our current Left/Right divide feel like a stranger in a strange land.  47% of Republicans (who currently control all the major levers of power in the government) and 44% of Democrats, feel like the country is completely out of their control. How is that possible?  Well, objectively, it's not. Just like Holden Caufield's romantic self destruction, it doesn't make any sense.  By the time you get done reading Goethe, you realize that "young Werther" is a whiny punk, we need to get over ourselves.  We are not the underdog any more, none of us. We are the Roman Empire that Caesar himself could only dream about, we are also possibly a more entrenched dystopia than Orwell could have imagined, we are also Aldous Huxley's Brave New World on a level that few have fully apprehended.
We are a big humanity sized mess.  Old white men sitting in the seats of power deny the experiences of the young and the oppressed and the female.  Money rides roughshod over all of our systems.  The power-hungry and greedy take brutal advantage of anyone and everyone at some point or another.  As Emerson said, "Things are in the saddle and ride mankind."  But existential despair is not in order, because we have a situation here that has never existed in the history of the world, we have the capacity to change it, possibly without violence, because for all our flaws we still have a voice and it is a voice that far too many of us choose not to use.
In almost exactly a month we get to vote.  I daresay this is probably the most talked about, and maybe the most important "mid-term" election in the history of our country.  But the trends of voter turnout, especially in non-presidential years are pretty grim.  Roughly half of our eligible voters will not show up. Because I have read existentialists I know why; these people are convinced that nothing they do matters.  Maybe it's because they have been sated and sedated, maybe it's because they have been oppressed and depressed, maybe it's because they have abandoned all hope, but I know this, their estrangement is not an iron fact, it is a trap of their own mind, and it is one the world will suffer and the powerful will encourage and sustain.
I think what I may lamenting here is the dying value of Liberal Arts education, even if it doesn't lead to marketable skills, it does in fact lead to being able to understand the world as it really is outside the 24 hour news cycle. If you read enough, you will notice that none of our struggles and estrangement are new things, and when you realize they aren't just afflictions of the present historical conflagration, you have a valuable shred of hope to hang on to: this disease is not usually fatal.  Chronically depressed sociopaths, dissociated psychopaths and nihilists, are characters we should read about, not personalities we should emulate, and certainly not characters we should elect.  Read more, vote, watch less TV news, shalom.

The End of Argument

Sometimes I like to argue, sometimes I really like it, sometimes I really can't help myself.  That is at least part of why I spend time writing this blog, because there are arguments that I need or want to make, which are not things that I would use my pulpit to put out there.  Sometimes my arguments here make my wife Michele nervous, because while I do draw a line between what I am willing to say here and what I would say from the pulpit, not everyone will appreciate that there is, in fact, a line.

I have found lately that argument is becoming less enjoyable, and I think it's because we have lost something crucial in our public discourse. Donald Trump is an incarnation of what has gone wrong with us.  As I have said before, he is not a cause, he is a symptom, he is an embodiment of our arrogance and our narcissism, he is a manifestation of our tendency to let our own insecurity blind us to the truth and deafen us to Wisdom's voice.

Last night at a rally, he finally got around to mocking Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, for him it was pretty mild, but he clearly fed into the notion that all of Brett Kavanaugh's accusers are nothing but "evil" Democratic operatives, trying to derail a good man. Funny how people who are so very sensitive to the possibility of false accusations are willing to believe something so false in response.  I have said from the beginning of this that the truth is going to be beggared by this process, and that is in no small way because of the strong desire that each side has to confirm what they already believe to be true.

Last week changed very little, the liberal tribe believed Dr. Ford, the conservative tribe believed Kavanaugh, and got a special little charge out of the venom that he and Lindsey Graham brought to the proceedings. That extra little flourish of spiteful rage, was what poker players refer to as a "tell," an almost unconscious action that can give away a player's status. People can have "tells" for different things, sometimes it's when they're lying/bluffing, sometime's its when they know they have a good hand, sometimes it's when they're conflicted.

The decision that Kavanaugh and Graham both made to come out with bile and "righteous" indignation, was calculated to firm up the position of those who already support Kavanaugh.  These two men are both savvy public figures that to read either display as spontaneous would be naive. Their anger was a tactic, and it might work. Trump has demonstrated the immense power that white male grievance can wield in our current situation.  He has repeatedly demonstrated that the only people he really needs to please are the people who will chant with him at his rallies and swell with pride at his latest display of arrogant ignorance.  I think he is, contrary to some opinions, fairly happy with his 40% approval rating,because he has figured out that 40% is what he needs, especially if he can simply outrage, discourage and disgust his way into some of the swing votes.

You see this in the attrition of moderate Republicans, voices who would have wanted more time and more truth to be a part of this moment of consequence, many times just get in line with the tribe, because they know if they don't they will be left without a political home. You cannot persuade people in such a predicament that they should stand courageously for the truth (unless they're about to retire).  That's why we don't seem to be able to argue very well any more, no one really feels safe in advancing their opinion if they are going to run up against people who will simply reply with dogma and rage.

I have noticed a rather disturbing symmetry on two sides of the current tribal divide.  Right and left are both dedicated to portraying the other side as hostile and irrational.  The left will point to Fox News, Breitbart and such as "echo chambers" of conservative talking points and breeding grounds for various and sundry conspiracies about the "Deep State." But the peculiar thing is that, from a right wing perspective, the Washington Post and the New York Times along with pretty much the entire system of academia are doing the same thing in reverse.  Also symmetrical across the divide is the lament that the enemies of the cause are the ones who are playing hardball. Bill Maher often laments on his show that the Republicans have broken faith with our national institutions by doing things like blocking Merrick Garland and blatantly endorsing the numerous lies and half truths that spew from the White House these days.  Oddly enough, conservative commentators make similar claims about Democrats, as we saw erupt out of Kavanaugh and Graham last week.

The problem is that there seems to be no lack of bad faith to go around.  Once you start gouging eyes and hitting below the belt the behavior is contagious.  I'm not equivocating behavior here either, I will admit to some sour behavior on the part of Democrats, going back to how things went during the Clinton administration, but it was Newt Gingrich who really pushed us over the edge of one of those dreaded slippery slopes. He decided that the argumentative, yet productive, relationships of say Reagan and O'Neil were unacceptable and that adversaries must be treated as enemies.  The GOP has always been a step ahead on the way down, leaving the Dems playing catch up, and even occasionally pumping the brakes.  Once Trump happened the brakes failed for both parties. Dirty pool looks different depending on which side of the aisle is playing at the moment, but it is still dirty, and is mounting to the point where it may be a threat to our Republic. We can't argue anymore, because argument requires good faith between the adversaries. Faith in anything other that tribal identity and brute force is lacking at the moment.