On civility ...

A small rant. It's scary to see the views coming out after the election. In a story about an increase in gun sales in Cortez, one person is quoted as hoping Obama is impeached quickly. He's not even inaugurated, and she wants him impeached! Forget the transgressions of the incumbent, who I'm guessing she would not have wanted impeached for anything, why do we have elections? It's so, in a vague, general way, the will of the people can be expressed. And the rest of us are supposed to accept the results and work within that context, whether the process gives us a Bush or an Obama.

Another guy quoted raises the old fear that the Feds are coming to take our guns and says people are buying guns so they can resist that when it happens. Another urban myth, like Obama is a Muslim and a socialist, but one that people are willing to believe at the deepest level.

A letter to the editor recently called Obama a terrorist and exhorted all true Americans to help put the nation back on the path to being a Christian state.

If I were teaching civics in a local high school, I would use the local newspapers as texts for what citizens say they believe and want to see, as compared with the way our system is supposed to work.

What really bothers me is the use of enemy language ... us against them ... that appears to be increasingly prevalent. There is no question that the Bush administration ran on that premise, stated in one form or another over and over again by the president himself. Now, there seems to be a resurgence of that narrow way of thinking at all levels for all kinds of issues ... "My way or the highway," and you are my mortal enemy if you don't agree with me!

Maybe Obama will be a lightning rod that manages to overcome that way of thinking once and for all, but I doubt it. It's too deep-rooted. Sad. Dangerous. Unamerican. tv