Partisanship may have been stronger in the 1850s, 1930s or 1960s, but the parties themselves have never been weaker. They are less functioning organizations motivated by a patriotic vision of what is best for the country—or even themselves—and more like competing brands willing to change their products based on whatever will sell this quarter. Though it may seem like an oxymoron, the country’s extreme partisanship is actually a function of this party weakness. Healthy parties mediate passions and reject passing fads in favor of long term success. As party power has diminished, media organizations have moved in to fill the void. Many news outlets do the work once properly carried out by the parties: opposition research, ideological messaging and even political organizing. As a result, much of what passes for political journalism is really party work by proxy.
-- Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes, Why The Dispatch
...there you go — that's what we need more of (a model of citizenship and leadership for our young people to follow)! S
urely, the only way to disagree isn't by everyone returning to second-grade....Weakness is often an easy target for the self-proclaimed strong. But, strength isn't the same thing as animosity, which seems to be what we have far more of today than anything else. Real strength doesn't stoop down this far. And, one reason I think this is true is the money that has followed this weakness and is being used against us to simply make more of it. And, we don't seem to realize it (or care).
We, quite simply, have ourselves to blame, despite our attempts to foist it off on something else — media, government, liberals, LGBTQ+.... Can't we think of anything or anyone else (when will we finally run out of options and only have to face what is looking back at us in the mirror)?
We have ended up a caricature of real strength (the kind that has character and
courage in the face of disrespect and violence). Even basic decency is now more largely derided than simply a knock-off of authenticity.
Bought and sold so many times, we don't even realize that it is simply we who are buying our own destruction. The sellers actually know better, but they do it anyway...just because they can get rich off that we keep buying it.
The amorality of it, itself, is what is so immoral about it. Murder is always, in the end, as lethal to the perpetrator ...because they don't even see the suicidal nature of it.
This is not leadership. This is pure and simple pandering to our lowest common denominator and, perhaps, the truest form of weakness.
Sometimes there’s nothing quite like losing something to clarify what you want (or need). I'm afraid that's exactly what it's going to take (significant loss), if we can no longer even rationally consider that we are the them we are so convinced is the problem.
Could there be any greater evidence of a lack of real faith — evidence that we don't believe in anything greater than our own need to vanquish (before it vanquishes us)?
Remember that we are braced by a God who is too big for one-dimensional truths, and this is a good thing. It’s not that we hold paradox; it’s that paradox holds us. We are held in a deep place. An ample place. A generous place. Though we might fear paradox, God does not.
