In the back of my mind I was still mulling over the metaphoric aspects of the previous post on “Highlights and Shadows” when I listened this morning to Frank Bruni on Margaret Hoover’s “Firing Line” show where he solidified my thoughts on how we view our political and ideological extremism.
While the skilled artist works the opposing poles of blackness and whiteness into subtleties and nuances that produced the most beautiful portrait imaginable on a flat surface; the extremes of the two opposite colors still existed on the paper as boundary areas.
Because of my living this long, I have seen how society tends to pendulum back and forth between the opposing poles of ideological thought and political activism: liberals/progressives versus conservatives/right wingers, social reform versus economic competitiveness, egalitarianism versus elitism, and on and on.
Ruling parties last for awhile until the opposition gains enough strength to send them packing; and then puts in their own party’s sympathizers until broad dissatisfaction with that new rule grows into a counter-attack movement against it. Back and forth they go, but in the process they push social progress forward tiny steps at a time, like gears slowly turning behind the clock’s face-piece.
The key point here is that an active society is in a constant push/pull state—never stagnant, always penduluming back and forth between the two most vocal extremes of view; just like that old-time grandfather clock that relies on swinging the pendulum back and forth to shift the gears above it to advance time: second by second, minute by minute, until the hour hand slowly grinds forward into the next day and the day after that.
What Bruni was saying about this particular political/ideological/social climate, is that we are in The Age of Grievance, which is his actual book title. ‘Victimhood’ has achieved historic popularity now; and being ‘pissed off’ at something or someone (or everything and everyone) is the desired norm for many in our world at present.
Endless whining and righteous anger are the standard modes of operation in today’s social media environment. Some have made it their life’s work producing ‘RAGE blogs’ and propagandistic media to combat what is actually happening in TRUTH around us. Why believe TRUTH when you can believe ‘what you want to believe’ instead?
As Bruni suggests, maybe it’s time to pull back on the reins and bring this galloping horse to a stop before proceeding further down the most divergent path available to us. Here’s a quote from a reviewer of the book, The Age of Grievance:
“Bruni deftly dissects how grievance came to pervade American life, with each political tribe attempting to ‘out-victim’ the other in increasingly ostentatious ways, leaving us in a kind of hellscape. If you are tired of hearing from entitled blowhards who have achieved success far beyond their merit yet still believe they are oppressed and you hope instead for a society that values humility, this is the book for you. Alternately funny, depressing, and pointed, The Age of Grievance is much-needed reading for the self-righteous Ivy Leaguer and the red-hatted insurrectionist alike.” —Tim Miller