Society managed with the maturity of 4-yr olds

don’t know what happened in the past 30 years to cause the dumbing-down of discourse. It’s lazy to blame the internet–because problems started before people had email. It’s lazy to blame any one thing (though my personal favorite is blaming schools for always sticking football/basketball coaches in social studies classrooms…it’s an Occam’s Razor explanation for the lack of comprehension of government/civics).

I mention 4-yr olds because of one thing young kids do. They hear a word/expression used by adults and they immediately try and incorporate it into their own vocabulary without knowing its meaning–they just know Mom and Dad use it, so it’s important for them to learn. As an example–our oldest son as a toddler overheard his grandfather use two terms: “Dammit” and “Where the hell is ____________” and he immediately began using both. With ‘dammit’, he’d time it with jumps on our stairs–he just liked the sound of it. The other phrase he used with context when looking for specific dinosaur toys or Lego bits. He just didn’t understand the inappropriateness of the phrase.

In the past few years, that’s happened politically with the use of ‘impeachment’. The people screaming for it do not understand what it was meant for. Indeed, they don’t understand things like ‘high crimes and misdemeanors‘ as it was intended by the Constitution’s writers. This is currently obvious thru the screaming of a few Republican members of the US House (the so-called Freedom Caucus), demanding the president be impeached for actions of his son NOT actions of the president; this is in retaliation for the two impeachments of Trump for potential criminal action taken as president where some argue that the first Trump impeachment was retaliation for Clinton’s 1990s impeachment.

Notice something here? Like 4-yr olds, these politicians have glommed on to ‘impeachment’, so that it becomes the center of their focus.

It’s even more childlike. Another thing little kids do is lash out emotionally by saying things like ‘I hate you’ to parents. They don’t–all they want to do is inflict some sort of pain in an effort to get their way.

Wisconsin illustrates this. They have a new (Democrat) state supreme court chief–elected by the people as their state constitution instructs. And, as permitted by past Republican legislation, the chief justice gets to organize the court and its personnel as she sees fit. She has done that, removing a hyper-partisan Republican from a position as chief of staff. The Republican response? Demands that the chief justice be impeached for exceeding her authority. IMPEACH!!!! IMPEACH!!!! –there is no rationality, the same as a 4-yr old. Indeed, they are screaming this before she’s even participated in a single ruling.

**

All of that–just for ‘impeach’. Now look at the other words that get misused and are clearly not understood. I am not putting them in quote-marks for this.

Simple words: woke, communist, Communist, fascist, Nazi, liberal, conservative, socialist, witchhunt, Marxism, left-wing, right-wing, moderate, radical

Phrases: Black Lives Matter, the mainstream media, fake news, critical race theory, War on ____ (Drugs, Christmas, minorities, whatever), talking points, _____-denier, RINO, social justice, working class, defund the police

Each of those words and phrases has important specific meaning, but rather than use these terms for those meanings, politicians (and people on the internet/TV) attempt to use them as bludgeons–just as toddlers use ‘I hate you’.

Think about it for a moment. Do you know the difference between little- and big-C communism? Can a Communist be fascist? If Nazis are politically on the right and socialists are on the left–explain Nazism’s full name: National Socialism.

Left-wing, right-wing–politics isn’t linear. None of the people using the term would understand its origin describing the seating of National Assembly members in France, 1789.

You can be a conservative liberal…and a liberal conservative. Indeed, most Americans are actually conservative liberals. Worse for understanding, “conservatives” (I put things in quotes when using terms others use but use incorrectly…kinda like Christian and “Christian”) worship the American Revolution and Founding Fathers–the thing is…it was a REVOLUTION–revolutions are NEVER conservative…and the Framers weren’t conservative. They wanted a radical system without a king. (They also don’t realize Jesus was a radical socialist, but that’s another story)

** If we look at issues and attempt to act as adults, middle ground can be found.

Gun control–no one wants school shootings. No one wants police outgunned by criminals. So why not put restrictions in place to limit weapons to those with less firepower than regularly available to law enforcement? Why not place certain restrictions on gun ownership–an annual physical/mental health review, a drug test (for serious, illegal drugs that can alter brain perception), mandatory training every other year. –these are restrictions already in place for other things–mandatory training is required of teachers, food service workers–all over. Individuals serious about their gun ownership won’t balk at these things–they already stay up to date with safety and know that weapons/drugs don’t mix.

Do these ideas work for the fundamentalists on either side? No. But why are we permitting the toddlers to make the decisions in the American family? We’ve done that for thirty years.

Ultimately, for the good of everyone, we need to remove the kids and return adults to the top of the decision-making heap.