Peace on earth and good will toward … Oh, right, that’s out the window these days. How about this then: peace on my patch of the earth and good will toward people who agree with me.
For reasons sociologists will spend lifetimes trying to sort out, political and religious differences are no longer just sensitive subjects that could provoke arguments at inopportune times — the dinner table, social gatherings, the grocery store or the gas station — they are the matches for our very short fuses.
We have reached the point where a disagreement is no longer a matter of two parties refusing to see things each other’s way, while still remaining on speaking terms, it has become the source of intense personal dislike and worse.
Case in point: not long after the national election, a driver pulled into a local gas station and engaged in casual discussion with an attendant about the election results. As is the case throughout the country, they disagreed on the outcome.
Rather than each having their say and leaving at that, as would have been the case at one time, the conversation erupted into a screaming match, complete with unflattering characterizations of each other, as if volume and personal insults would win the day.
These people didn’t know each other, and yet became embroiled in an intensely personal conflict because … well, there is no good reason except that maybe we all are inexplicably angry about something, or maybe everything, and are looking for a fight.
Yet, here we are, repeating what has become a naive and meaningless platitude this time of year: peace on earth, etc.
It’s a shame that we don’t really mean it, because life would be so much better if we believed in that as easily and with as much passion as we seem to with everything else that feeds whatever our anger happens to be.