As if the rioting and burning of businesses weren’t bad enough, now bowel movements are being used as a symbol of protest. It’s a perfect metaphor for today’s toxic political discourse.
It seems that anytime I look into politics as a topic for an op-ed, I find more and more ridiculous stories each time. Every once in a while, you hear something being described as a s**t job. Unless you’re working on sewer lines or septic tanks, you don’t expect that to be literal. And yet, it seems as if politics itself has gone down the crapper.
In the state of Maine, police are looking for a suspect who has been taking fecal matter from a dog and stuffing it into the mailboxes of Trump supporters. Whoever this person is (the suspect is described as a middle-aged woman riding a bicycle), they are so angry at Donald Trump that they are willing to pick up dog feces and carry it to someone’s mailbox to deposit it. I don’t think that anyone would ever call this the mark of someone who is completely sane.
Just before this came to light, a YouTuber decided to livestream himself going number two on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s driveway as a “peaceful protest” against homelessness (the video was titled ‘Poopalosi’). I get the sense that this guy wasn’t exactly known for being a classy person beforehand.
I would be completely full of crap myself if I told you I didn’t find some of this hilarious. I mean, these sorts of headlines (“YouTuber explains why he live streamed himself pooping on Nancy Pelosi’s driveway,” “Maine Police Looking For Woman Allegedly Leaving Poop In Trump Supporters’ Mailboxes”) seem like they were pulled from satirical outlets like the Onion or the Babylon Bee.
But there is a very serious side to all this. For lack of a better term, it seems like political discussion in America has now gone septic. Instead of emptying their hearts to others, I suppose people would much rather empty their bowels. And it’s not like at this point they have the excuse of a toilet paper shortage anymore.
All puns aside, these situations come across like a microcosm of political dialogue in modern day America. Mudslinging is much more commonplace than debate. It’s as if modern pundits have learned how to debate from the foul-mouthed comedian Andrew Dice Clay rather than from the celebrated politeness of the arch conservative commentator William F. Buckley. Everything seems to be completely and totally rife with hyperbole instead of sensibility. As such, everyone is stirred up to extremes as opposed to being able to think straight.
The funny thing about all of this is that I believe this is not anything partisan. Though I do think there is a lot of lunacy on the political left, there are deeper issues that permeate American culture that need to be addressed. As someone who has lived in this country all my life, I’m wondering if we’re going to enter an era where we simply cannot communicate with our neighbors anymore. Ten years ago, I could think that my neighbor was a silly hippie and they could think that I’m just a hard case, but we got along. Nowadays, we judge (and wildly condemn) our neighbors based on the signs in their yard, and get to literally pour buckets of s**t over them.
The question that I would ask is whether or not our politics define our character. By the way, I’m not even speaking of the extremes. I’m talking about John or Jane Q American who simply has concerns about things like education, safety, taxes, or other more mundane things. If we are unable to simply live next to one another with political differences, what does that mean for polite society?
Maybe at this point we need to think of the golden rule as a universal truth again, and dismiss everything else as, well, crap.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.