For some older readers

[veronica_rich]

At the age of 38, I've only witnessed a certain amount of things in history, of course. So I'm curious about something, from people my age or older, who can speak best to this: Do you think the political rhetoric/discussion/debate in the U.S. today is more ... incindiery, or charged, uncivilized (use your own word to basically mean "less diplomatic/calm") than it has been for decades?

I'm just curious, not only in the wake of Arizona last weekend, but as something I've wondered for the past several years. Some of the remarks and rhetoric and arguments and words I hear now as a matter of course are the kinds of things that back in the 1980s, I only truly remember from shows like "D.C. Follies" or "Spitting Image" - parodies of politics, exaggerated for comedy.

Comments

[zagzagael.livejournal.com]

I have been watching CNN with my mouth hanging open. Perspective much??? I am actually a bit floored that you've asked this question - why aren't the journalists asking this?????

My father was a Vietnam vet - he was spit on when he returned to America. If my mother even mentioned - with four children under six, alone - that he was in Vietnam she was shunned from mother's groups, coffee klatch's etc.. She entered a gorgeous braided wool rug she made in a craft fair, titled "Waiting for my Soldier", while he was In Country and was disqualified from the show. The rhetoric was much much much much worse in the 60's. MUCH WORSE.

I cannot believe that the Dems are using this ill person's illness and horrorshow to further their own crap. *gag*

[joey112.livejournal.com]

I'm a Vietnam era vet and was always treated fairly and with respect. Just so you know that was not a universal reaction.

[zagzagael.livejournal.com]

I am so glad to hear, j, that your experience was so vastly different from that of my father and those he flew with.

[hippediva.livejournal.com]

That was by no means the reaction to vets anywhere around NYC or the tri-state area. And I remember the rhetoric of the 60's---the kids and protesters were pretty vitriolic, but no public figure ever spoke the way any of them do nowadays.

[zagzagael.livejournal.com]

Boston.

[weyrlady.livejournal.com]

It's not really crap to suggest that people be civil to each other.

[zagzagael.livejournal.com]

True. They just need a mirror, don't they? Thanks!

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, I have to agree somewhat that the Idiot Radical Right's talk hasn't helped things at all. Disturbed people are going to do disturbed things sometimes, but making triggering rhetoric easily available at all times can't make it better. However, I have to say I've had enough of the harping on it by the Left - the same way I had enough of the harping on 9/11 by the time Sept. 13, 2001, rolled around. The constant barrage is pissing me off.