A personal resolve to try to be more balanced

Trey at Jackson’s Junction caught a very good blip, and it’s really a keeper, from a compilation by MSNBC.

After signing off, last night, I spent a lot of time thinking about the lessons of this pope, and where I fall short in them. Basically, I fall short all over the place.

JPII managed to see people – first and foremost – as human beings, as imperfect created creatures, loved into being and called by their birth to vocations which are – ultimately – meant to love and serve the Creator and each other. He did his work without ever wallowing in a mentality of “us vs them.” Except, of course, when he talked of “them” as an entrenched establishment needing reform or correction…or conversion.

But even then, John Paul understood that the establishment was still made up of imperfect created creatures, loved into being and called. He taught that and lived it as example for the rest of us.

I think it is very easy – incredibly easy – for those of us who have been raised in an era wherein everything is reduced to the political, and wherein the scorched earth mentality of the last 12 years (or perhaps longer, but I have only been really paying attention for that long) has been burned into our consciousness and our reflexes by incessant media exposure, to stop thinking of those who reason differently as fellow created creatures, and to see them more as merely, “the bad guys.” And that is to our detriment, both as a society and in our personal lives.

I have written about this before – just recently, in fact – and have admitted that I too am guilty of it, of reducing an opposing voice to a caricature, and reflexively dismissing it. I fear it is something we all do, to a ridiculous extreme. I can read Joe Marshall’s liberal rants and want to answer them…but often as I move to do so, I’ll realize that in answering his rant I am instead repeating it back to him, but from the other direction. I have had people come here and accuse me of demonizing Michael Schiavo, only to have them defend to me their own demonization of President Bush, and thus we fight on in an endless and pointless circle. “We YOU do this and say THIS!” “Well, YOU say this and do THAT!” “Well, MY demonization is based on FACT, but YOUR demonization is based on FEELINGS!”

Thus the sandbox battle goes on, and I have to think Satan enjoys it very much, because it is so wasteful and it stuffs our pride so chock-full of vainglory and a gluttony of ego.

The other guy is bad. The other guy is an idiot. The other guy is EVIL.

What was it St. Paul said…”all that I hate, I am become…”

This is not to say that nothing should be commented on, that nothing warrants criticism, particularly if it is well-thought out and rendered without prejudice. But that’s not what we’re doing, most of us. We’re mostly not doing it on the blogs, and they’re mostly not doing it on the cable networks or at the NY Times. Rather, too much thought, too much criticism is rendered with extreme prejudice and – in too many cases – a genuine desire to push the other side off of a proverbial cliff.

What cartoons we have become. Left and Right are becoming and endless loop of Roadrunner/Coyote, Bug/Daffy confrontations, with each side switching roles at a breakneck pace. “You’re detttthpicable!” is the shared line we lisp back and forth.

If John Paul the Great has taught me nothing else (and I warrant that before I die, I will come to realize he has taught me – and all of us – quite a lot) I hope that – beginning with a long night of soul-searching last night – he has taught and will continue to teach me about seeing the decency and humanity in another person, even if that person is so far removed from my own understanding and reason that my instinct is to get a rhetorical shotgun and announce the start of “Wabbit season!”

This is not going to be easy. Every time I read Maureen Dowd in full Yosemite Sam mode (“Ahhhhhhhh hates that varmi’t Bush!”) I know I’m going to want to respond in kind. I’m Irish – some of this cannot be helped! :-)

But I am going to try to learn. I’m going to try to discern when there is just cause for going in with both barrels loaded, and when, perhaps, there is a better argument to be made without succumbing to the “us” vs “them” rhetoric.

“We” need it, I think.

UPDATE: Sincere condolences to Eleanor Clift on the loss of her husband Tom Brazaitis. May angels lead him into paradise and bring comfort to her in her sorrow.