Oh Yeah? Sez You!

I think I got it figured out. I know who to blame. Or what. Or whom.
   Anyway... the level of discourse in politics and society in the US has been steadily declining for years now, and it's reached its nadir in the refusal of elected members of Congress to do their jobs. Somehow, some way it's come down to people screaming at each other and making a worldwide calamity out of something that should be a pro forma exercise. And which was a pro-forma exercise for decades.
   It's getting me down. Wearing me down. I want to fight the good fight but there are just so many demagogues on both sides that trying to find the truth in the middle is a mind-numbing slog. I do blame Baby Boomers - much as I blame them for almost everything bad they're leaving for my generation to clean up - but they're not the only ones at fault. No, there's a more insidious force at work here, one behind the scenes, something that eats at your soul and your psyche*, gnawing like a worm at a corpse.
   Reality TV.
   Bear with me, I'll explain myself. What's the most prevalent thing on reality TV? A contest. A zero-sum contest, there's a winner and a loser. Or a bunch of losers. But only one winner. No compromise. No getting along, no shared destiny or mingled fates. If I win you, by necessity, must lose.
   That's one thing. People seem to think that everything involves a winner and a loser and if you're not one you have to be the other. Real life isn't like that, real life is shades of gray and degrees of compromise. Only spoiled brats who throw temper tantrums think they deserve everything they want immediately.
   Another thing - reality TV also involves a healthy doses of trash talk and backbiting. Our entertainment comes in bitter little sound bites now, people playing it up for the camera and saying things to millions of people they would never say to someone face-to-face.
   This is our political commentary. A bunch of talking heads making meaningless points about irrelevant subjects. It's safe, no one has to think about anything difficult or make a real decision, they just have to carp from the sidelines. The better the insult the more imaginary points we score in a game that ultimately everyone loses. We're a nation of Monday morning quarterbacks, geniuses with 20/20 hindsight and Perez Hilton viciousness.
   And what does all this meanness and infighting get us? Resentment, and a strengthening of the desire not to be seen as weak or as the loser. It's a death spiral, two eagles locked onto each other and unable to fly but unwilling to let go because the other guy might get the advantage. So they both crash to the ground.
   We need to get past this garbage, and the first thing that has to go is reality TV. It's all crap anyway, and it's all the same. And it's slowly rotting our souls from the inside out.


* interesting classical fact, psyche is a Greek word that means soul or mind or that indefinable essence that makes a human being.