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Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive.
Editorial: 10/29/99 Receiving a death threat, as the saying goes, tends to concentrate the mind
wonderfully. This latest one is the first I've gotten in quite a while, and the first
I've ever received via e-mail. It surprised me only in that I thought one had to
have opposible thumbs before using a computer. And it tells me more than I want to know
about the rise of intolerance at the dawn of the millenium.
I remember the first time someone threatened to kill me. I was in Soweto
interviewing black activists during the apartheid era. One of the young comrades didn't
want white people anywhere around, and stabbed me with a small knife. As his fellow
militants dragged him off, he threatened to kill me if he saw me again. Then there was
the Contra rebel inside Nicaragua. I'd been travelling with his unit for days. He
was upset at the lack of U.S. support for his fight against the Sandinista government,
and said maybe killing me would teach somebody in Washington a lesson. I managed to
talk him out of it.
The rest of the threats have been considerably less personal. The Ton Ton Macutes
that chased a group of journalists through the nighttime alleys of Port-au-Prince were
just looking for somebody to hack up, and I fit the bill. The pro-Noriega thugs who
almost beat me to death in Panama weren't mad at me personally. I just got in the way.
And the various bullets and shrapnel from Saudi to Salvador were just tossed up
promiscuously. Nothing personal, they seemed to say. A wise friend of mine once told
me never to worry about the bullet that had your name on it. The ones you've got to
worry about are addressed to whom it may concern.
But this one is very personal, and involves one of my radio programs that the
e-mailer takes exception to. But since he has to be right, that means everyone who
disagrees with him is wrong. And since his rightness is based in principle and
morality and truth, then anyone who disagrees with him is none of the above, and doesn't
deserve to live.
This is an extreme, but logical progression of where we are as a society.
Flipping the bird to another driver on the highway leads to violence and road rage.
To talk radio flamethrowers, liberals (whoever they are) are the antiChrist. To
black nationalists, white people are the source of all evil. Reverse the coin and
you've got white supremicists. Animal rights militants threaten scientists doing
valuable medical research on animals. Anti-abortion fanatics think it's okay to
kill abortion doctors under the heading of "justifiable homicide".
Or take Washington, where C-SPAN often resembles Jerry Springer. It's the
legislative equivalent of cross-dressing children of alcoholic satanists throwing
chairs. Clinton and the Democrats are leading the country toward immorality and
communism. Republicans are neo-fascists who're too chicken to wear their Klan sheets
in public. You get the picture.
We're becoming a society obsessed with ourselves. International news?
National news? I want MY news, MY finances, MY car care. We're not losing our
senses, though. We're losing one sense. Hearing. The ability to shut up and listen
is going the way of the ability to shoe a horse. Everyone used to know how. Now,
almost nobody bothers.
An example from Arizona might serve as an object lesson for all of us. You'd hardly
ever find a more committed, dyed-in-the-wool liberal than the late Arizona Congressman
Morris Udall. And if you want conservative credentials, it's difficult to beat
Arizona Senator John McCain. When McCain was first elected, he'd hold joint news
conferences with Udall. Why? he figured that issues that'd come up belonged to all
Arizonans, not just him, and that two points of view are better than one. When Udall
lay dying at a veteran's hospital, long forgotten in the modern sharp-elbowed world
of I'm-right-screw-you, his most regular visitor, besides the family, was McCain.
The friendship annoyed Democrats of the scorched-earth school of politics, and
outraged the self-righteous wing of the G.O.P. But both men knew something the rest
of us are forgetting. Somebody else might actually have a decent idea. You're
never always right. And life, like your TV, needs a volume control and a mute
button.
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