Curmudgeon's Corner
cur-mud-geon: anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
Extremist?
A person who holds extreme or fanatical political or religious views, esp. one who resorts to or advocates extreme action.
There are several threads found on the page of Germantown Now where this blog is found. If you read, or have read, the comments that stream on and on, you will find that one side has been labelled 'extreme' because it doesn't agree with the other side on the issue of voting for or against the people running for seats on the school board in today's election.
What passes for political discourse today has devolved to a dangerous low. That is probably part of the statewide devolution of political discourse, which may well be affected by the national trend in the same direction.
There seem now to be no more people who are conservative, since they have become extremists by definition. There are seemingly no more people who are liberal for they have become progressives by self-definition.
By way of these labels, I have apparently become one 'who holds extreme or fanatical political or religious views'. And here I thought I was 'only' conservative. Goes to show you how wrong you can be, I guess.
Must we be so rabid about our belief system as to abhor the 'other side'? Is there no longer the possibility of open and free discourse without someone jumping to the use of such definitions about someone else? When that bomb is dropped, there is simply not much room for continued discussion.
It has seemed to me that we were, at some point not far removed from today, able to discuss things about which we held strong views without resorting to the ultimate weapon of language...that curse that ends the discussion.
Will we be able to track back to that time when we could talk about things political and religious without becoming irate and unable to control our emotions?
I hope we can do that, but I am becoming increasingly concerned that we may have crossed over the line of demarcation where polite and considered conversations will only occur amongst 'our own kind'. And, if that is the case, we will have lost a great deal.
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