[Mb-civic] Scenes of rancor in 2005 - Cathy Young - Boston Globe
Op-Ed
William Swiggard
swiggard at comcast.net
Tue Jan 3 04:28:28 PST 2006
Scenes of rancor in 2005
By Cathy Young | January 3, 2006 | The Boston Globe
AS 2005 winds down, one is hard pressed to say much good about it. After
the nastiness of last year's election, the American political scene did
not get any better. This was the year in which much of the right was
gripped by hysteria over the fate of Terri Schiavo, a personal tragedy
turned into grotesque political theater, and much of the left embraced
Cindy Sheehan, the ''antiwar mom" who turned her grief into a protest
filled with rhetoric of hate, not peace -- two very different causes
whose common theme was to demonize the opposition.
Even a major natural disaster, which can bring people together in the
worst of times, became another cause for political rancor. Hurricane
Katrina was a story not just of nature's fury but of glaring
incompetence by two vital American institutions: the government, with
state, local, and federal authorities passing the buck and bungling the
rescue, and the free press, which freely spread wild tales that both
exaggerated the victims' plight and portrayed them as lawless thugs.
Many on the left treated the hurricane as a cloud with a silver lining
of Bush-bashing.
Like last year, religion has been more of a source of division than
conciliation. In 2004, it was ''The Passion of the Christ"; in 2005, the
''war on Christmas." Yes, there were the usual excesses from secularist
or multiculturalist zealots who took Christmas songs out of holiday
pageants and lashed out at Christmas references at holiday-tree
lightings. But this year, the loudest by far were the defenders of
Christmas from mostly imaginary threats.
On Fox News, Bill O'Reilly revealed that the innocuous phrase ''Happy
Holidays" was part of a ''very secret plan" to undermine Christianity in
America -- a plan so insidious, apparently, that even President Bush has
been drawn into its net: White House greeting cards wished supporters a
''happy holiday season." This caused Catholic activist William Donohue
to fulminate that the Bush administration had ''capitulated to the worst
elements in our culture." Meanwhile, a guest on O'Reilly's show, the
Rev. Tim Bumgardner, exhorted: ''Hey, celebrate Christmas -- people
spend more money! Jesus makes people want to spend money!" Shopping for
Jesus: There's a whole new idea of the Christmas spirit.
For a depressing scene abroad, look to Russia, where the parliament has
just passed a bill curbing the activities of independent citizens'
groups, and President Putin's last liberal adviser, Andrei Illarionov,
has resigned saying, ''The political system has changed, and the country
has stopped being free and democratic." In December, protesters against
nationalist extremism were denied permission to march in Moscow, and
their unauthorized rally with the slogan, ''Russia Without Fascism," was
broken up by the police. Three weeks earlier, a nationalist march with
openly racist overtones, to which the antifascist rally was meant as a
counter-protest, had been green-lighted by the government.
Meanwhile, the new leadership of Iran seeks a throwback to the extremist
roots of the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution. Western music has
been banned; more disturbing, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly
denied the Holocaust and called for Israel to be ''wiped off the map."
In Israel, the withdrawal from Gaza and the possible beginnings of
Palestinian statehood have been marred by continued violence and an
electoral victory for the terrorist group Hamas.
In Iraq, a free and peaceful election could be seen as a sign of hope.
Is it? Most recently, the Sunni Arabs and the secular Shi'ites have
joined forces to protest the election results -- which apparently handed
a victory to the Shi'ite religious bloc -- as tainted by fraud, refusing
to participate in the legislature until a review is completed. And
insurgent violence has already resumed.
Yet it would be premature to bury hope. If the Shi'ite bloc wins, it
will have to rule in a coalition. A recent ABC News poll found that 57
percent of Iraqis favor political democracy, and only 14 percent support
an Islamic state. Despite ongoing chaos, half of Iraqis do not believe
it was wrong for the United States to invade -- which is remarkable,
given that no one likes being occupied, particularly by people of a
different culture and religion. (This is why, despite all misgivings
about the wisdom of this war, I strongly reject the view that it was a
crime against the Iraqi people.)
The ABC poll also found that two-thirds of Iraqis expect things to
improve in the year ahead. Let's hope they are right, both for their
country and for the world.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/03/scenes_of_rancor_in_2005/
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