Intractability, Extremism and Hate are consuming America.

I abhor radicalism and extremism.    In no particular order: Radical Islam, Fundamentalist Christians or Jews, Al Qaida, Qanon, the Far-right, the Radical left, raging feminists, rabid Second Amendment supporters, zealous anti-gun fanatics, and those trying to push their fanatical LGBTQ agenda down everyone’s throats.      

The problem with each of these groups is that they leave no room for compromise.  It’s all or nothing.  Take it or leave it.    Each want power and privileges accorded to their respective members and acolytes, to the detriment of all others.     No matter how radical or bizarre, every fringe group has it’s advocates or lobby, and with the internet, a platform and the ability to reach out and touch like-minded individuals so as to radicalize them even further.  

We have fervent transgender supporters who want men who identify as women to use any bathroom they want and compete in women’s sports despite their natal sex.   They decry the lack of fairness, despite the fact that testosterone is performance-enhancing drug and estrogen is not and their participation in women’s sports is anything but fair to biological women.   They want 99% of society to be disenfranchised so they can go, do, say and act any way they want, without any consideration for how their particular demands exclude, offend or inconvenience anyone else.   

I recently spent a significant amount of time in what is arguably the most liberal city in the most liberal state in these United States; San Francisco, where I observed a complete lack of authority or respect for almost every social norm.  

People riding the ever-present bicycles, electric scooters, and motorcycles drove through red lights with not so much as a glance at cross traffic.  They simply knew that the vehicles with the green light right-of-way would stop for them as they broke the law.  I watched a vehicle run seven red lights in a row, with no regard for the safety of others.   The police told me they are not allowed to chase any criminals fleeing in cars; the bad guys simply know to run the red lights so the cops can’t catch them. 

I watched a naked man changing his clothes on the sidewalk in broad daylight and saw the waste left by the homeless urinating and defecating on public streets and walks.   I saw broken down RVs with people living in them, permanently parked on city streets, causing neighborhood blight and blocking the locals from parking, and huge garbage-filled homeless encampments all around the bay area.    

I talked to a police officer who told me that he ticketed a person injecting heroin in broad daylight only to have a complaint lodged against him for interfering with a person “self-medicating.”   In other parts of the country, a hard drug user would be arrested; it seems that in San Francisco, the most it gets you is a ticket.    Every police officer I spoke to was looking for a job somewhere else!  

I saw mile after mile of homeless people camped on the sidewalks in tents and shelters made of scrap building materials or packing crates.   They destroyed the landscaping, went to the bathroom on the sidewalks and lawns, and threw their trash on the ground wherever they were, with no regard for anyone else.   On Fisherman’s Wharf, I saw crazed people punching, hitting and head-butting walls, accosting tourists and throwing chairs from restaurants into traffic.     And everyone acted as if it was normal. 

Every morning I watched a small army of municipal workers with brooms, electric blowers, pressure washers and vehicles converge on Fisherman’s Wharf to clean up the piles of trash, discarded food and human waste deposited overnight by the homeless.   And they did this seven days a week because the garbage was everywhere.

I spoke to several police officers, residents and people who worked in the City.   They all told similar stories.   They said the City of San Francisco pays to put the homeless in hotels, provides daily laundry service, and delivers three hot meals a day plus marijuana and hard liquor to all who want it, while providing a monthly stipend and extra money to any that have a pet.   The City provides needles to the drug addicts, who are obviously not concerned about safe disposal of those same needles.   City workers are routinely injured and/or attacked by drug addicts and homeless when trying to clean up these areas. 

I was told that if you come home from an evening out or a weekend away and a homeless person has moved his belongings into your car, your RV or your house, they will not be charged with trespass or made to leave.  They have squatter’s rights, and you will play hell getting them removed, and if you have a property, home or apartment which you lease out, it’s virtually impossible to evict a tenant who hasn’t paid rent for months or years.

San Francisco is a sanctuary city where illegal aliens are welcome and can get a driver’s license.   The radical Democrats are alive and well in California, and it’s completely out of control. 

And I saw the same or worse in Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon. I’ve seen dozens of people camped out in trash-infested camps under every freeway overpass in Austin and homeless camps on the sidewalks of Portland so large that the sidewalks and some green areas are unusable by taxpaying citizens. I don’t know what the homeless advocates are thinking, but it’s clearly not working.

Then we have the rabid right, the MAGA Trump supporters, QAnon and the White crazies who want us to return to a country in which black and brown people are openly considered less than human; where white people make all the rules and reap all the rewards, because “It’s God’s will.”     We’re seeing a rise in Christian nationalism where ministers and politicians are going beyond policy debates to meld American and Christian values, symbols and identity, to subjugate anyone who’s not White and Right.

Not long ago, Florida Governor DeSantis signed a law which gives immunity to people who drive their cars into crowds of protestors.    It seems that a gathering of three or more people can be labeled a “riot”, and if they’re blocking the road and you’re in fear, you can just run them over with your car.   These are the same people who deny that the January 6th insurrection was anything but a gathering of love-filled patriots and tourists.  So, if you are brown and you assemble peacefully, you’re a rioter.  If you’re white and you assemble violently and people are killed, you are not.  

The Posse Comitatus Act is a Federal law signed on June 18, 1878, which limits the powers of the Federal Government in the use of military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States, but, but it hardly matters, as the police have now become an army.  In the last two decades, we have seen police departments around the country supplied and equipped with military armaments and vehicles of war to use against American citizens.  

We’re living in a country where it’s almost a weekly occurrence for mass shooters to murder multiple people. Increasingly, these crazed lunatics are targeting minorities and even small school children with assault weapons, because they’re unhappy with their rambling, raving manifestos about minorities, CRT or the Replacement Theory.   Road rage with guns on American highways is epidemic.

The pro-gun people won’t give a single inch on gun control.  They won’t support stricter background checks, longer waiting periods, red-flag laws, the elimination of the gun show loophole or a single solitary measure which might help save lives.   Nothing, and no number of dead children is enough to make them consider doing anything but loosening gun laws.    They complain that the government is trying to take away our guns, but the fact is that the laws regarding firearms are much less restrictive than they were 50 years ago.  Many states now allow concealed carry without any kind of training or licensing; all in the name of the Second Amendment and the “Right to carry”.  It seems that my right to carry is more important than your right to breathe.    

We have blithering idiots, including the Mango Mussolini, claiming the last Presidential election was fraudulent, despite some 60+ cases in the nation’s courts, and numerous investigations which found otherwise.  Just this week, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Georgia received less than 4% of the vote and immediately claimed that election was fraudulent.     We now live in a country where it will become the norm for every Republican who loses an election to claim fraud.    With the disputed election of 2020, the seeds for the destruction of the American electoral system were planted; those seeds will grow and thrive with every new unsubstantiated claim from the right.

Just like the Radical Left, the Far Right is completely out of control.

I was fortunate to grow up at a time in America when people were less selfish and more polite; it wasn’t all about me, me, me.   There was a time when we as a society generally conducted ourselves in a manner which benefited society, even when it inconvenienced us.   We cared about others; but those days are long gone.  

The only thing most Americans on both sides now agree on is that “my rights are more important than your rights”, “my opinions are facts, yours are just opinions”, “What I want is more important than what you deserve”, “My convenience is more important than your safety” and “My time is more important than your time.”

There was a time in the United States when people with differing political views could have a spirited discussion at the dinner table.  Now people hide their political viewpoints for fear a gun will end the conversation.   We live in a country racked with tribal politics and neither side is interested in reaching across the aisle to find a solution which helps to benefit all.  

It used to be that we Americans watched the news to learn facts so that we could make an informed opinion.   Now, social media feeds and so-called news programs like Fox News and OAN spew nothing but vile, racist, hate-filled opinions in many cases devoid of any actual facts.  Lies, conspiracy theories and hatred are now what passes for news.   It’s all about ratings and making money, with absolutely no regard for the damage caused to our society and nation.  The so-called news people are nothing less than profiteers and traitors.

President Biden is seen as a doddering old fool; ineffectual at best, and prone to gaffs which leave nobody with the feeling that he’s guiding our country in the right direction, but he’s a vast improvement over Donald Trump; a petty, name-calling, arrogant, sociopathic, money-grubbing, self-serving, racist criminal.   A poor choice either way.

It’s become all or nothing in all things American.   Many of our elected lawmakers are more interested in spewing outrageous lies and conspiracy theories to capture more time in the spotlight than do their sworn jobs, and It’s only going to get worse.   We have become a country of partisans instead of patriots.  The Marjorie Taylor Greens, Ilhan Omars, Paul Gosars and Kevin McCarthys will only proliferate, like actors in a racist, hate-filled soap opera. 

We are going to see a time where the side that controls the government will undo everything done by the previous party.   We will swing wildly back and forth as each party which has the majority will impose its radical policies on America, without any regard for the country, only to have everything undone when the American people tire of the stupidity and elect a majority of representatives from the opposing party (who will then repeat the process.)

For the last 50 years, the United States has been moving to the right, but those days are coming to an end.   With the boomers dying off and the browning of America, we are seeing a time in the not-too-distant future when we will be headed left, and this is sending the radical right into paroxysms of fear and paranoia.   Passing restrictive voting laws, gerrymandering and other machinations are the last attempts of a gasping-for-air Far Right wing.

Just as a car will crash if its driver turns the steering wheel first to the far left, then the far right, our country needs to find a way to center itself on the road to the future, or America will crash and burn.    We need some intelligent, patriotic lawmakers to take the wheel and steer us straight and true down the roadway, but to do that, we need some intelligent, patriotic, centrist voters to elect the right people, if they still exist.   

The right wing and the left wing are two sides of the same American eagle, and no bird can fly with only one wing.   Is it already too late to fix this?