Rodney King is quoted (misquoted, paraphrased) as having said "Can't we all just get along?" He didn't say that. He said "Can we get along? Can we all get along? For the kids...?" The misquote is a very small matter, but there's nothing wrong with getting things, especially quotes, right.
Jake Tapper of CNN was interviewing Jon Stewart, who was talking about various things, when Stewart said "I think the media does a terrible job at de-escalation." I listened to this bit of interview while I was exploring a publication called The Daily Beast, which had run another story about how the mainstream media in a sense brought us the reign of Donald Trump, in part by having suppressed or distorted some comparatively "non-liberal" things some liberals said, or trying to bury reasonable things some conservatives said, and then setting up everyone for the backlash when the "whole truths" came out later. And the worst part of this backlash, according to The Daily Beast, was the introduced, then amplified, proposal that the "mainstream media" were not to be trusted.
It turns out that this kind of reaction or response from people is very common. Individuals are limited -- sometimes much more limited than they would be willing to admit -- and they latch onto whatever is presented, and sometimes react with resentment if they find they were misled. Or they have a vague sense of their limitations, and they react automatically and initially with rejection of what is presented, because they somehow sort of know it's over their heads, or don't want to be "pushed around" by better informed people. This would be a great place for one of my favorite jokes -- the "keep your f***in' jack" joke -- but it takes too long for the space of a blog post. The point is that people commonly either adopt or resist, inordinately for the circumstance, and it's not an adaptive way to address things.
Sometimes, though, inordinate, and incorrect, reactions are the goal. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist" to understand why the media do a terrible job at de-escalation. They literally make money on escalation. And that's setting aside if the media outlet in question wants to promote a liberal agenda or a conservative one. That was The Daily Beast's point.
So, why am I talking about Rodney King, Jon Stewart, The Daily Beast, and one of the best jokes ever? Because they all refer to the same problem, and we have that problem. For a collection of reasons, people seem to have a tendency to adopt polarized positions about things, and it's not an adaptive or successful way to solve problems. It replaces working together with fighting. And all of the people at any of the extremes are wrong. If they're not wrong about the substance of their argument, then they're wrong to make adversaries out of people who should be their partners, at least of sorts.
There are probably enough examples, but let's take, again, 6th Avenue. Some of us conceptualize what amount to drastic changes in 6th Avenue in BP. I'm relieved to report that no one, to my knowledge, goes to the other extreme, and says there's no problem. I certainly don't say there's no problem, but in a way, I represent a position that is fairly far from the the other extreme: I say we should only pursue the least changes that I, for one, think will be effective at solving the problem (which I more than agree exists, and which I wholeheartedly want to solve).
But it becomes interesting when someone like BrambleWitch, who started out advocating for the more drastic changes, offers conclusions like "Just to be clear, the State (FDOT) is not going to reduce the lanes on 6th...Some of the local Commissioners seem to think that they can get FDOT to put in stop signs. In my opinion, that is delusional and would not help anyway." And when she tells Commissioner Art Gonzalez, who has lived in BP for five years, "I have lived near this corner for 28 years...[and] when we had the attitude about 'don't even think about speeding' this street was a very minor problem. We probably had less (sic: she means fewer) officers then, it was the intention of CARING." And she advocates for enhanced enforcement, and presumably to instill again the "Don't Even Think About Speeding" mantra, and the signs to go with it.
What's curious about that kind of movement from BrambleWitch is that it doesn't seem to move others. We're more devoted to these crusades, and adhering to extreme demands, fruitless though BrambleWitch says they are, than we are to working together, compromising, and getting along (with each other).
And to complicate matters, perhaps, we have to get along with more than each other. We have to get along with everyone who passes through here. Most of them use the PUBLIC STREETS that are here, and some of them might like what they see enough to want to come live here with us. We don't have enemies, except for the mischief-makers, and the people who forget that they're driving through someone else's "home." That's why we, as is true of more or less all municipalities, spend half our budget on the police.
We have a Village that's hard to support, because of the low tax base, and we have hurricanes, and we have streets that flood, and we have train tracks that are too nearby, and we now have airplanes flying low and directly overhead. We have problems enough. We don't need to be problems to each other. "Can we all get along?"
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