This Morning I Wrote Myself A Note

And the note was just one line. It said "on the day Adolf Hitler came to power, France had no government." It is a historical fact. France was so chaotic that on the day Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor in Germany the French government had fallen and its replacement was still "in the works". No point to it, really, just something that kept coming into my head. You know France in the 30's was a political madhouse. There was killing and fighting between the two sides that dominated French politics in those days. People died for - and what's more important to note is that people actually killed in the name of - ideas and opinions. Their own countrymen. People who spoke the same language and had the same cultural memory.

There had been a civil war in Spain in those times, Franco's Falange Party fighting against the Republicans. Brutal stuff. Each side armed by foreign powers in a kind of dress-rehearsal for what was to come later, only everybody was from the same country. You wonder how things get that out of hand.

When ideas mean more than people life gets cheap.

Someone who is a voice for one idea dies and the people of the other idea are happy. All kinds of de-humanizing language is thrown back and forth. Labels are assigned to the other side. Names. Demeaning traits. And everybody joins in. It's the average, unexceptional part of good old human nature. Not the angels part. I'm dirty with it myself.

When you stop seeing the humanity in someone it's easier to kill them.

People get caught up in the moment. Strident voices cheering this side or the other side on. Compromise is impossible because any move toward the other idea is seen as betrayal. Dogmatism trumps Pragmatism. Pragmatism carries a negative connotation. Better traits are ascribed to those who believe in the ideas expressed by your side. This idea is common sense, the other idea is goofy. This idea does the most good, the other idea ruins everything.

Bricks get thrown through windows. The sides stop talking. People start carrying guns. There is yelling, not conversation. After all how do you communicate with robots or animals or the mentally deficient?

That was France in the 30's alright. Quite a mess.

Changing gears just a little... wow, there's a big mid-term election this year. Did you know that? You know, if I was a cynical man, I'd say this was going to be a very violent year in America. I'd say someone's going to die this summer and - what's worse - someone is going to kill. I'd say it was something that had to happen because no middle ground is available to anyone. Compromise is out of the question. The idea that politics should never get in the way of our mutual defense isn't in the language anymore. There are people with ideas spoiling for a fight.

When ideas get hot, they tend to get solid.

And when communication isn't heard over all the noise, communication sometimes turns into bullets so it can't be ignored anymore. It's all over history. We duked it out once before in this country ourselves, and we STILL can't agree on what the fight was all about. And it would be a mistake for one side to think the other won't fight back. It seems everybody's ideas are solid little things right now.

But I'm not really a cynic. I'm an optimist. This is America. We drive our cars with courtesy, we listen to other people instead of just waiting for our turn to talk. We use polite language. We're better than that.

We're certainly better than France.

Aren't we?