Renaissance Redneck: The baby and the bathwater

By DAVID KITTREDGE
By David Kittredge

As I pondered subjects for this week’s column, I kept being pulled back to an idea that has been buzzing around my head like midnight mosquito for the past few weeks. There is a spirit of self-righteousness overshadowing our country that is coupled to a tyranny of unforgiveness. These two self-inflicted stupors are creating a stench that is permeating many facets of our lives, which detracts from the real problems we are faced with. Foremost, is our plight of overcoming COVID-19 which has exacerbated our situations of joblessness, homelessness, isolation and mental illness.

Unforgiveness is a situation that is not only inconsiderate and unreasonable to the targets of our resentment, but the inability to forgive is an unhealthy condition for people.

From federal to local government, politics have degraded into Alinskyite attacks that are now common, where politicians now, rather than debate the issues, attack each other personally, in a childish manner, which often includes name-calling. This behavior only piles onto our strife no matter what side, the right or the left, happens to be acting out their particular hissy fit. Many politicos and pundits are sitting on what they think is the moral high ground, but all have skeletons in their closets which are soon found out, as the proverbial worm turns.

Since Headline News Network was founded in 1982, we have been bombarded with a 24-hour news cycle which must be filled with something whether it be factual or balderdash, just so long as the cauldron is filled. When the new eternal news cycle was established, the viewers were enveloped with a mind-boggling cyclone of global problems, which now seems to have devolved into a tornadic pinpoint of daily, repetitious talking points, which are drilled into our psyches until they linger like a detested disco song of yesteryear. Perhaps you Boomers remember the airwaves being saturated with the aural abomination known as “Disco Duck.” I suspect most of you have your own “love to hate” little ditties.

The hastiness of the internet has created a new norm in news where bloggers, reporters and pundits race to publish stories that are often not fact checked but blurted over the Ethernet as gossip posing as fact, which is often overlooked, because folks often want to believe, if the narrative fits their endeared suppositions.

Thirty years ago, the Catholic Church was outed for heinous crimes against altar boys and thus the trust was broken between the public and the Church ministry. These suspicions of the Catholic Church have spilled over to all of Christendom, covered by a net of perceived superstition which has eliminated many of the moral stop gaps and the beacon of light that we lived with for centuries. With these recent notions, a vacuum was created which seems to have been filled by the “beautiful” people of wealth and fame. There is now no moral high ground stance for the Church, but the baby was thrown out with the bathwater and now instead, we are preached to by politicians, sports stars or the fatuous and vacuous of Hollywood. Remember, there is no vow of poverty with this new pack of moralists who peer down at us from their self- appointed perches, with their squinted eyes, veiled with self-righteousness, while trying to determine our motives and reasons.

We are all sinners; we have all made mistakes in the past. If our behavior is criminal then we should be held accountable, whether rich or poor. Unfortunately, it seems the rich are often held less accountable than the poor, probably because they can afford the best lawyers, or can afford to bribe whomever to look the other way, as has been the case from the beginnings of the judiciary system. But once justice is served, if in fact, it is served, those criminals who have served their sentences and, or have paid recompense, should be forgiven, after a period of trust building.

So, let us climb down from our high and mighty precipices and begin again to love our neighbor, as we love ourselves. Amen.