One too many litmus tests

here is no escape from the need for human beings to want to put people and things into tidy categories. When babies arrive from the womb, their brains immediately begin to try to make sense of their new world by dividing things into this or that: Mom or me? Toy or food? Animal or vegetable?

This tendency - whether out of innate need, reflex, or habit -- can of course become problematic, even pathological (IMHO). I must admit, however, that I am no different than anyone else. It's so easy to unthinkingly categorize all the pesky details of our hectic, overscheduled lives, including the people.

The one that has begun to put me over the edge, however, is the uneasy political undercurrent that has become ever- present in even many casual social and work conversations. The one that has almost everyone thinking red or blue. It seems even some people I have known for years without ever once having had the need to discuss our mutual opinions about the latest political uproar or scandal now have a need to know where I "stand."

In the press and on numerous webposts, people all along the political spectrum complain about some other group, someone else - with an opposing opinion - having a litmus test. Regardless of the issue, no matter what party has their man in the White House, the other party is held up as provocateurs, worse than has ever been seen, oh the outrage.

While I have never lived in a country so politically askew and potentially genocidal as Germany in 1939 (or to be more specific, its leaders), I have seen Dachau, and have no patience with anyone who would take history so lightly and resort to easy character assassination by comparing the president of the United States to a true monster. And I have seen firsthand where extremist fundamentalism leads (having lived in Saudi Arabia), so have less patience with neo-McCarthyism.

But I don't let the other side - if there is such a thing -- off the hook. (There are the Libertarians and Independents to be reckoned with, of course). What was it George Orwell once said in a little book called Animal Farm? "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts abosulutely." Another book has an interesting take on how American political parties miss the point: God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, by Jim Wallis. (Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Bono review the book, among others).

What is most disquieting is how much I have seen the acceptance of casual (thoughtless, vitriolic, in-your-face) politicking slipping into every day life in the workplace, among friends and in popular culture. Along with it have come the requisite assumptions and questions about one's own position along the political spectrum, and much less tolerance for hearing something other than the questioner's own political persuasions. (Insert strident rant here).

Sometimes the Luddite in me longs for simpler times, the so-called "good old days."  The days of sitting on the front porch in smalltown Toppenish, Washington circa 1940, eating warm pie with freshly-churned ice cream, greeting the neighbors and sharing it with them. The sort of times my mother describes of her high school days. I'm not sure it actually happened, but that's how I picture it. I'm also quite sure various neighbors had pretty opinionated views on FDR's election in 1940, what with it being his third term, World War II looming, the shadow of the Great Depression still lingering and his New Deal sparking controversy.

Is it any worse now? Perhaps we just know more about the latest political battle or fallout, or we know it more omnipresently and instantaneously. The genie is out of the box. We just need our culture and social skills to catch up.