“Mountains of mud set to fly in White House race” ran the headline.
I consider myself fairly political. I have a lot of opinions. However, working for a conservative company, I am also aware that not everyone shares my opinions, as weird as that is. I know that I am several of my coworkers’ token liberal friend. I’m an anomaly in their lives, as they are in mine. We view each other with affectionate amusement, for the most part, and sometimes with some frustration. But we keep sharing weekend plans and going to happy hour, because we’re a lot more than our political leanings.
One thing we can agree on, though, is that no one wants to trudge through the next six months of general election campaign. The circus of the primaries has long since stopped being amusing. It already feels like it has drug on interminably. The very idea of “mountains of mud” for the next six months makes me want to go off the grid. Could I do it? Could I give up internet and the nightly news and social media? Would I be less angry, less hair-triggered about daily life? What would I do with my time? Would I exercise, watch every sunset? Write letters like I always mean to on the greeting cards I can’t stop buying? Write that novel?
So, if we can all agree that no one wants to go through the next six months dealing with the playground antics of the would-be leaders of our country, and that’s really a whole other issue right there, then why do we cultivate a society that not only tolerates mudslinging but watches with rapt attention? And actually, playground antics seems needlessly harsh toward our children. Because in actuality, the majority of children are pretty good eggs. I’m not always so sure about that percentage with adults.
We thrive on negativity. When we first heard the German word ‘Schadenfreude’ – the pleasure we get from the misfortune of others – we didn’t wonder at the oddities of culture and language that such a word would exist. No. We said, Yes, that exactly! Those genius Germans with their spot-on words!
We read our children books about the hatefulness of bullying. We tell them that we all carry around invisible buckets to fill with kindness. Have you filled a bucket today? And yet as adults, our jokes are often at the expense of others. Even our inexhaustible supply of reality singing and talent shows always start with the painful process of shaming the misguided dreamers first. We’ve created a whole celebrity culture of people we elevate only to hate. The Kardashians and the Real Housewives and pageant mothers and bachelorettes. New mother Chrissy Teigen was savaged on social media for first, daring to go out with her husband 9 days after having a baby, and second, and perhaps even worse, looking good doing it. Comments were brutal and extraordinarily nasty. What drives us to that? And why on earth would we care when new parents we’ve never met, will never meet, decide to go to dinner? I’m 99% sure they didn’t leave their baby alone to be babysat by the dog, so why all the vitriol?
Why? Because we’ve apparently forgotten how to speak nicely and use our words, like they taught us in kindergarten. We’ve gotten incredibly lazy-minded. I don’t think we have to take Thumper’s age-old advice, and say nothing unless we have something nice to say. By all means, we should have opinions and we should be able to voice dissent and frustration and fear. But there is a basic difference between a reasoned critique and lazy name calling. There is a difference between passionately disagreeing on an issue and debating it, as opposed to smoke and mirrors and pouring over decades of video and news clips to find what can best be taken out of context, warped, manipulated and then fed to the most gullible.
I realize that in an election year, no one should ever talk about being out of work, but I’d be just fine putting back into the job market those people on both sides whose sole job it is to find the mud, to mold it into the most splattery, distracting shape, and then launch it like a faux PSA. Aren’t we better than that? Our children are, so I have to think we were once, too.
What if we turned off the tv every time we saw something needlessly negative and let the ratings do the talking for us? What if we refused to visit internet sites whose sole function was to create partisan acrimony? What if we actively dismissed every headline that was deliberately misleading? We just said no to click bait, even when it was packaged in the exact shiny snark we so wanted to hear to feel validated in our own small meanness, our most Schadenfreud-tastic selves.
Gandhi said, “Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
Is our destiny to sit in our self-perpetuated darkness, slaves to our glowing screens, alternately spewing and internalizing negativity? Because that seems like a really poor decision. I don’t know if I could go off the grid. Probably all those greeting cards that are sitting in my card organizer (for real) and waiting for words and stamps are still safe. But I think I am going to make a conscious effort not to get lost in the babble. I already know my own mind. I don’t need anyone’s contextless 45-second video clip from 1991 to lead me toward an epiphany. Any time spent reading comment sections is only time I will never get back. Six more months of negativity will not change my vote, but it will likely change my outlook.
Words are choices. Speaking them. Reading them. Flinging them around like barbs and poisoned arrows. If my words are destined to become actions, then may my actions become a long twilight run, a hot bath, and snuggling in with a moralistic children’s tale for bedtime stories (and hoping it rubs off on me). No mud in sight.
