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November 04, 2006
When Hyperpartisanship Trumps Humanity
It is perhaps appropriate that in the days leading up to November 11th, Veterans Day, a controversy has arisen over the use of flag-draped coffins in campaign advertisements. America has a bittersweet and in many ways dysfunctional relationship with those who manage to return from distant battles in exotic places. If the war was popular and they are lucky enough to return whole, we celebrate their homecoming with parades and brass bands. They are quickly assimilated back into the mainstream of American life, the living punctuation to those lofty ideals expressed on dusty parchments in the national archives.
But some are not so lucky. They do not return whole. Some return with pieces of themselves missing either literally or figuratively; their eyes fixed on some distant nightmare beyond our ken, and these we are not so comfortable with. They do not make us feel good about ourselves. They are a reminder that war imposes heavy costs, a constant and troubling reminder that our protectors - and by extension we ourselves - are vulnerable.
Recently I found myself troubled by the question of what happens when we become so absorbed by our own concerns that we lose sight of our own humanity:
This morning I was disturbed by a piece in the New York Times. I think I was too close to the subject. Sometimes a writer reaches for the mark and just fails to convey what she feels inside.But Raven did that, so much better than I could ever hope to, in two killer posts. The first describes a well-intentioned visit to a wounded ward. Oddly, I didn't see the Times article as malicious. In fact, I saw empathy there, for Petty Officer Kirby, for his anger, his pain, his confusion.
But I also thought it betrayed a stunning self-absorption, a failure to think about how what one was doing might impact others, and more than anything else, a complacent assumption that someone else's suffering is some kind of spectacle that is, or ought to be, on display and not respectfully allowed a little space, to let them cope with what most of us would find almost impossible to endure. Is our "right to know" really so all-fired important?
Can we not find it within our hearts to grant them some small space?
The same thing seems to be going on with the war over the use of flag-draped coffin imagery. Everyone, it seems, is outraged. Dale Franks writes:
You would think that after watching politics for so long, my hypocrisy meter would be so desensitized that this would hardly even budge it, wouldn't you?Well, guess what, Republicans? You don't get to scream about how unacceptable it is to exploit our dead soldiers' coffins when the Dems do it, then resort to it yourself, simply because you can no longer avoid the stink of desperate loss that's hovering around the House, you vicious hacks. This is disgusting, and you deserve to be pilloried for it.
Keep repeating it until you become used to the sound: "Speaker Pelosi".
Jimbo, too, is thoroughly disgusted:
I'm not sure the Repubs were ever live to me, but yeah. Screw them too.
Raw Story is, of course, all over this too:
Question: When is it okay to run a political ad with images of the flag-draped coffins of soldiers? Answer: When you're a Republican. Back in July, the National Republican Congressional Committee held a press conference to denounce its Dem counterpart, the DCCC, for running a web ad showing such coffin imagery. Many other senior Republicans, including House majority leader John Boehner, condemned the ad, and it was a raging controversy for days until the DCCC pulled it. But guess what: Now there are not one, but two Republican ads which show an image of flag-draped coffins -- and one of them has been paid for by, yep, the NRCC. More after the jump.
Reading all of this outrage, our duty is clear. We must condemn. Fortunately we have always been proactive in this regard, hence our Blanket Denunciation Policy:
The half vast editorial staff here at VC wish it to be known that we proactively denounced, condemned, abhorred, and otherwise distanced ourselves from whatever outrageous utterance/action caused you to read this Blanket Denunciation Policy long before you got here. We are all over it.Moreover, we are thoroughly disgusted with our fellow bloggers for failing to follow our sterling example, it being the obvious duty of all conservatives to search out and condemn, whether in advance, contemporaneously, or after the fact, any and all rude acts or instances of insensitive (aka “hate”) speech on pain of being assumed to be a narrow-minded, Bible-thumping racist, misogynistic homophobe who drinks kitten blood from the purloined skulls of Native American infants.
Joking aside, it occurs to us that while denouncing the practice of using flag draped coffins is something which ought to be done, wasting time hurling epithets at Democrats in general or Republicans in general for doing so only adds fuel to the fire. What is called for at this point is for both the DNC and RNC to come together and agree that such tactics are off limits.
Wouldn't that be nice? And as long as both sides are saying, "This is just more evidence that [insert party here] are despicable human beings", that isn't terribly likely to happen.
The truth is that both sides, and not a majority of the parties involved, but just a few parties, have allowed hyperpartisanship to overcome their basic humanity, and we need to get back to a place where we no longer accept that kind of behavior from our own leaders.
The dead and the wounded of this war are not tokens in our petty political skirmishes. They and their families can still be wounded in the crossfire as we take potshots at each other, and that is something we need to keep in mind.
Because they have already given enough.
Posted by Cassandra at November 4, 2006 08:07 AM
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Comments
I am somewhat amazed that you haven't received more comments, Cassandra.
It seems to me that making political partisan hay out of the returning remains of armed forces members is way out of line. Shouldn't that be the exclusive domain of the family and that member's unit?
But then, can there be anything that political parties do that can possibly surprise us? And, not to put too fine a point on this, the question applies equally here in Canada, as it does in the US.
Sometimes, both our political processes are just too sorrowful to accept.
Keep up the good work Cassandra.
Posted by: George at November 4, 2006 04:30 PM
Feh. There's a *reason* I didn't post the excellent picture I took at Corporal Unger's comittal.
It was a perfect Polaroid Moment.
And I deleted it.
Because Laura Unger deserved better than being an internet icon, however small.
And I took no more pictures. Because if you really think you wanted to see it, you should have been there.
The pictures I did post, of the cortege, were of small town America, and warriors, honoring one of their own, in shitty weather.
A pox on all the sorry bastards.
Posted by: John of Argghhh!!! at November 4, 2006 10:09 PM
"...they have already given enough."
More than that...they've give all. Consequently, they are due respect, such that they cannot be used as pawns in this sick game called "politics" any longer...
Posted by: camojack at November 5, 2006 07:27 AM