Do What I Say, Not What I do

God may be dead for most of the so-called "enlightened" West, but He appears to still be alive and well(?) in the Middle East. The battle over the Holy Land between Israel and Palestine continues to rage on and is a very contentious issue that I think would be better for me not to weigh in on because really neither side is innocent nor more guilty than the other. I will stop with a simple recommendation of this doc, which was very well done and is getting all sorts of international recognition.

Last week I went to a screening of this movie that was attended by the director Julia Bacha, as well. After the film she did a question and answer portion about the film and about the climate of the news media and entertainment today. I have nothing but respect for people who risk their lives to help "bring the war home" in movies like this one, as well as another really good one I saw recently about Afghanistan called Restrepo. It is very easy, from our comfortable haven in America, to forget the dire struggle our service men and women are going through on a daily basis, especially as our current wars have kind of lagged on and have lost the attention of the news media.

What I really want to talk about though doesn't really have anything to do with these movies, nor the wars that are going on, but instead with this "Attention Span" problem. On the surface, it would seem to be a slightly more trivial issue, but I feel that in the long run its consequences will be felt much more acutely than any sort of blowback resulting from these latest "foreign policy adventures." It has to do with a disconnect—not just the average citizen's from the realities of war, but, even more deeply, the average Individual's disconnect from reality itself.

During the question and answer portion, the topic of Attention Span of the average American today was brought up. The typical demons were blamed: commercials, multi-tasking on the internet, text messaging, the increasingly quick cuts used in Hollywood-style films. Bacha even admitted that one of her next projects would be a series of Shorts because of this very problem. She said she had found that even Budurs' meager 70min running time seemed problematic for some people.

And then, to really drive the point home, I looked to my right at the attendee sitting next to me and, I swear to God, the jack-ass was on his Blackberry checking his Facebook! I was completely astounded that this moron, first-off, could not see the irony, but even worse was so oblivious or obstinate that he did not find something wrong with his behavior. I mean this is a no-brainer; even if he had something really, really important to check on, he couldn't at least wait another 20 minutes till the talk was over? Or if he was so uninterested in the discussion, why wouldn't he just leave? And don't even get me started about how many phones rang during the movie and the discussion, as well. How hard is it to remember to turn off the ringer?

The degeneration in Attention Span is definitely a most worrisome trend, but this lack of even the most basic level of respect is absolutely abhorrent. This problem goes all the way to the top of our social hierarchy too. Remember our esteemed members of Congress tweeting during the President's State of the Union address last year? I realize that we have a Culture War going on that disagrees on just about everything, but can we at least use a little bit of Common Sense and form some sort of consensus on this issue. Agree or disagree with the President, he is still the Commander in Chief and deserves at least some basic level of respect. These esteemed members of Congress were acting like bratty little Middle Schoolers passing the 21st Century equivalent of notes behind the teacher's back. Is it a wonder how our children act in schools these days?

When People Resort to Name Calling

Last night I went to see Charlie Gibson, the former host of ABC’s Good Morning America and World News with Charles Gibson, speak about the increasing polarization and incivility of the media and the rise of political niche-ization of cable networks. If you are not familiar with Gibson, he was the interviewer who asked the so-called “gotcha” question to Sarah Palin in her first major television appearance after her nomination for VP about how she felt about the Bush Doctrine.

It was an interesting evening with some thoughtful analysis about the current state of American politics and how the media shapes our world-views. There, of course, were the requisite attacks on Fox News’ brand of political coverage, with its self-proclaimed assertion of “Fair and Balanced” coverage contrasting with the obvious reality of its not so subtle bias; followed by the lamenting of the death of Objectivity—or at least the attempt at the suppression of the Subjective—in news coverage. He also shared a very telling anecdote—I call it anecdote, as opposed to fact, because he willfully acknowledged that he was severely approximating these statistics, despite their relative accuracy—about how our Primary System and Off-Year Elections usually workout:

The country can roughly be broken up into ⅓ Republican, ⅓ Democrat, and ⅓ Undecided or Moderate. During Primaries, the only ones allowed in many states to vote are people registered for those two parties. Also, in general, the majority of people who are active in politics are the people with the most extreme positions—whereas most people in the Center are generally satisfied by the Status Quo, or are just too busy to care, therefore do not get involved in the process. This means that the candidates who then trickle-down into the General Election or who are voted in during the Off-Year Elections—to which barely anyone pays attention—are those with the most extreme Ideologies causing the Moderates to choose between the lesser of two evils—both of whom they probably don’t generally agree with. You then get the fringes of both parties representing the country, who hold the most extreme Left/Right positions that can find no source of compromise in order to govern our nation.

This analogy seems to make a lot of sense to me and alludes to something I have mentioned before about how “the meek voice of compromise always seems to be drowned out by the angry shouts of Commitment and Moral Indignation because Passion speaks louder than Reason—and has an actual agenda and game-plan for implementing its goals.” But this “Live and Let Live” attitude of the Moderates is perfectly consonant with Americans’ basic conception of Rights: the idea that we have the Right to believe anything we want as long as we respect everyone else’s Right to do the same. I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your Right to say it. But this has no longer become acceptable for the extreme voting blocs and is the foundation of our so-called “Culture War.”

The Right is now being defined by its Christian, American Exceptionalism proponents and the Left is defined by the Cosmopolitan, Life-style Libertinism advocates and never the twain shall meet. The Middle is mostly defined by economic issues and their vote “swings” back and forth depending on the crisis our country happens to be facing at the time of a major election. It is hard to say where there could even be a source of compromise between the two extremes, at least as far as some sort of unified American Culture.

Another significant insight about current American voting patterns brought up by Gibson was the rise in homogeneity of counties, as high as almost 60% in many of them, who all vote for the same candidates. Gibson for all his probing insight into many other aspects of contemporary American trends, for some reason, could not come up with an explanation to this one. This really surprised me, especially in light of his awareness of the increasing niche-ization or balkanization of the American populace because I think these two things go hand-in-hand. As our opposition to political opponents becomes more and more uncivilized and divisive, of course we are going to cluster around those with like-minded Beliefs, Goals and Life-styles to find an anchor in a world gone mad.

This is also just an extension of our current search for Community and Culture because that is exactly what those two things mean—a shared set of assumptions which unites and binds a People. And, as the old grounding of these assumptions becomes ever more problematic, we are going to naturally gravitate towards and seek out like-minded people, who share the same Values and Goals as our-Selves. Unless we can find some new source to re-invigorate our old motto E Pluribus Unum, then this is a trend that is only going to be amplified to an even higher percentage.

It also doesn’t help that Marketers now divide us up in the same way when they talk about Target Markets and Demographics and then use Life-style Marketing that imprisons us in these constricted personalties and existences. As we increasingly learn to define our-Selves through Life-style choices, we begin to loose our sense of broader Community, Nationality and even Humanity. We become the narrowly-defined niche and our every action is expressed through this awareness.

It is hard to imagine what we will be able to use for the new foundation of Community, now that “God is Dead,” but this does not mean that it is not possible. Is Life-style really the best thing we can come up with, or can something more meaningful be found upon which to build the world of tomorrow?