Bitter Politics It is so hard to watch what is going on in politics while keeping quiet. There are a lot of people who want to answer some of the posts on social media which have to do with politics, but just don’t want to get into that vicious give and take. It’s funny, but I can’t remember when opinions which had to do with politics were as strained as they are now. It seems to me it is just short of going to war. Unfortunately, this is destroying the country. When one side causes something unpleasant to happen, they blame the other side instead of trying to fix the problem. It used to be people in government would compromise. Neither side would get everything they wanted, but both would usually get part of it. So many times, I see things posted on a site which just makes my blood boil, but I avoid those posts and make no comments. When posts like this were made in the past many of them were what they used to call baiting. I remember when someone reacted to one and from that time on, he was tortured every time he went on social media. The part of the story that made me laugh was when he found out his torturer was nothing more than a kid doing this for kicks. There is a valuable lesson here. Unless you know someone personally, you really have no idea of the age of the person who is putting the post up. If I remember correctly the kid I was talking about was twelve years old at the time. In times past democrats and republicans actually used to talk to each other and some were friends. They made deals. Sometimes some of these deals went against the principles of this country, but they did them anyway. An example of this was in the election of local judges. The two parties would come together and if there were four judge vacancies each party might take two and what would happen was when the judges came up for election each would have the lines of both parties so they couldn’t lose. This is easy to check. I don’t know what is going on lately, but go back 30 or 40 years and you can see this in some places. I listen to what is being said by some of our senators and representatives and some of it is stupid and at times so vicious I can’t believe what I am hearing. Some of the ideas are so impractical and, in some cases, would totally bankrupt this country, I can’t believe this is what these people really think is good for us. There just wasn’t this large a chasm between the parties years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I never believed everything I was told. A case in point was when the local leader asked my mother to make telephone calls for him and told her he would pay the bill. I was only a kid at the time and telephone calls in those days were far more expensive than they are today. She made many calls for him and he never came back to pay. That is more or less what would happen today. There have always been unfulfilled promises made by politicians. One gets used to this. They were pretty much made by both sides. This has been going on for thousands of years. They probably told the workers who worked on the Great Wall of China if they helped build the wall, they would get bonuses and such and all many of them got was a grave under the wall when they died from the hard work. We see this today with the way some people are treated. Take our veterans for example. When I went into the U.S. Army, I was told the army would always take care of us. There were agencies which we were supposed to be able to go to when we got out, to help us with medical problems, education and such. Instead what we have today is neglected veterans in many cases who don’t even have a roof over their heads. In September 2018 an article came out in the Military Times saying the suicide rate among young vets has increased 10 percent. When research was conducted in 2016 it was found the suicide rate for veterans was higher than the general population. It was found about 20 veterans a day commit suicide. No one can tell me these vets are being taken care of. One thing which is missing between the parties is educated political debate. I am not talking about shouting and threats, I am talking about intelligently stating your opinion and if it isn’t agreed with a rational argument being put forth. There was much more of this in the old days. I don’t remember many people being shouted off the floor or being cursed out or threatened. This might have happened occasionally, but nothing like today. I don’t know why anyone would want to go into politics today if they really examined what they were getting into. There is no lack of people however to run for these jobs. It has gotten so bad there have even been death threats made and politicians stating it would be better if someone was dead. This is not to say this has never happened before. There were times when people in government hated each other so much they had a duel. That was how Alexander Hamilton met his end. He was shot and killed by Aaron Burr. Burr was angry because when he ran for governor of New York he was defeated by Morgan Lewis and Lewis was backed by Hamilton. Politics was directly responsible for Hamilton’s death. In those days if you turned down an invitation to a duel people would have thought you were a coward, so you were forced to either duel or live your life in disgrace. In 1817 a man named Armistead Thomson Mason was elected to the senate at 28.5 years old even though you were supposed to be at least 30 years old. He died in a duel with a political opponent after he left the senate and ran unsuccessfully for congress. The races had caused several duels among people and he was killed in a duel with his second cousin. Are we heading this way again? Will violence take over the political system? Several years ago, I wouldn’t have thought this way, but with all the unpleasant recent events it does seem like it could happen. Nancy and Donald, put your back together, walk 20 paces, turn and fire.
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