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Lamenting the overheated political rhetoric of our time

I would welcome authentic discussions in which candidates exchanged thoughtful views in measured, civil tones and spent their time—and ours—spelling out competing approaches to problems bearing on the common good.

(us.fotolia.com)

“A man that’d expict to thrain lobsters to fly in a year is called a loonytic, but a man that thinks men can be tur-rned into angels by an iliction is called a rayformer and remains at large.”

That bit of wisdom concerning the limitations of the electoral process was coined by Mr. Dooley. A purely fictitious creation of author Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley held forth on many subjects—politics included—from his perch in a Chicago pub. The Dooley sketches first appeared in newspapers and were collected by Dunne in several popular books.

I thought of Dooley recently as I read a memo the executive director of a retirement community sent residents, cautioning them to mind their manners in an election year. It read in part:

In the coming months, it will be essential for us to demonstrate respectful behavior to each other, even when we disagree. Derogatory, discriminatory, or harassing behaviors will simply not be tolerated. That is not who we are. We strive to be kind, caring, inclusive, and respectful.

Did the executive director see trouble brewing? Did the memo work? Who can tell?

One thing seems certain. Our politicians lately have been setting a bad example (again?) for the rest of us via their so-called debates. I for one would welcome authentic discussions in which candidates exchanged thoughtful views in measured, civil tones and spent their time—and ours—spelling out competing approaches to problems bearing on the common good.

What we have now instead are name-calling contests better suited to the schoolyard than the debate hall.

Noteworthy, too, is the candidly self-critical report by the Secret Service concerning its failures in security procedures in connection with July 13 rally in Butler, Pa., near Pittsburgh featuring former president Donald Trump. Trump was grazed by a bullet, two other people were critically injured, and one person was killed. The gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper. And if that wasn’t enough, just the other day, yet another would-be assassination—this time at a Trump golf club in Florida.

It is hardly news that among the consequences of political campaigns are heightened passions. Appropriately tough security is part of the necessary response to this fact of life. So, too, are tougher gun control laws. And so are serious, binding commitments by candidates to tone down their rhetoric. No one will be any the worse for these measures, while the nation as a whole will be a lot better off.

Even in the sequestered setting of a retirement community, its director judged it imperative to urge elderly residents to avoid causing trouble by expressing “derogatory, discriminatory, harassing” views of one another in an overheated political environment.

Good advice. Too bad it was needed. And as this is written, there’s a month and a half to go before the election. We shall see how “kind, caring, inclusive, and respectful” of one another the memo’s recipients—and others, too—will succeed in being.

I have no foolproof suggestions for avoiding the kind of unpleasantness envisaged here—except for the obvious step of swearing off political discussions in politically mixed company. In addition, putting aside spiritual reading or whatever they do with their spare time, people who get hot under the collar in political arguments would do well to ponder another bit of wisdom from Mr. Dooley:

“A fanatic is a man that does what he thinks the Lord would do if He knew the facts of the case.”


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About Russell Shaw 301 Articles
Russell Shaw was secretary for public affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference from 1969 to 1987. He is the author of 20 books, including Nothing to Hide, American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America, Eight Popes and the Crisis of Modernity, and, most recently, The Life of Jesus Christ (Our Sunday Visitor, 2021).

22 Comments

  1. How do you have pleasant political conversations with people who are not only in favor of killing one million unborn babies, but actually want to increase the killing? I believe what we need is more moral outrage. We need more moral preaching and teaching, not dialogue.

    As an example, with regard to IVF, the USCCB statement was that “we do not condone this.” That sound like a pleasant enough statement that would not offend those who are in favor of it. It is also a statement that won’t accomplish anything.

    We are in a moral war today. I do not believe that pleasant comments and discussions will accomplish anything.

    • Winston Churchill, in a time of dire national and international necessity, recognized the indispensability of strong rhetoric and so “sent the English language to war.”

  2. The essay doesn’t deal with the current threat to good citizens. The problem today is not intemperate speech, but the determination of establishment elites, in all institutions, who are determined to destroy anyone who tries to encourage open inquiry and pursuit of the truth.

    Exhibit A: a beloved teacher of generations summarily fired by her establishment employers at her school: https://www.thefp.com/p/spence-teacher-sues-after-firing-france-hihab-ban

    Government agencies, big churches, big pro sports, big NCAA sports, big media, big education, big universities, big pharma, big medicine, big IT, etc etc are all run by rich Jacobins who work every day to subvert the truth, and threaten anyone who dares seek it. The schools and universities live and serve inside this web of deceit by teaching young people to distrust and even hate the principles and traditions their parents love.

    Just look at the behavior of all of these establishment institutions during Covid:
    A – Churches abandoned the faithful and shut their doors.
    B – Medical Schools cooperated with the govt to stifle free scientific inquiry and punish.
    C – IT companies (hugely dependent on Chinese labor to build their hw products) eagerly cooperated with govt agencies to censor and smear and destroy the livelihood of journalists and doctors seeking the truth.
    D – Fed and state governments shut down our country for 2 years, but kept their liquor stores and casinos open fir tax revenues.
    E – The US Military refused religious abstentions to soldiers and servicemen who opposed “the jab,” and kicked them out of the service.
    F – The Biden Admin and the entire Fed Govt forced private citizens who were contractors to get the jab or be fired from their contracts.
    G – And the Catholic Church establishment, including the Pontiff Francis and the US Bishops, went along with the Govt, and failed to stand up for faithful citizens who opposed “the jab.”

    The main problem facing us as citizens is not that people are UNWILLING to communicate and persuade in a civil manner, but rather the elites of the establishment who live to make sure we are UNABLE to talk about the truth.

    Just ask the legal establishment this question: Is there any reason that ordinary citizens should not be alarmed be alarmed to learn that Los Angeles prosecutors and investigators excluded the coroner’s autopsy report in their report on the 1968 assassination of RFK?

    Or ask the CDC and Big Pharma and the Med Establishment this question: Is there any reason ordinary citizens shouldn’t be outraged that the government and hospitals are now mandating Hepatitis B vaccination for infants at birth (and many other jabs), when Hep B is known to be contracted in only 2 pathways: sexual intercourse and intravenous drug abuse?

    We are face-to-face with an empire of liars.

  3. Chris in Maryland: Thank you for taking the time to bring us back to reality. This talk about “overheated political rhetoric” is simply a distractor.

    This year (and for the past elections since the Clintons entered the political arena) the contest is not between Republicans and Democrats or Conservatives and Leftists; the contest is between truth-tellers and liars.

  4. From the article: “A fanatic is a man that does what he thinks the Lord would do if He knew the facts of the case.” Is only the shallow perspective and dismissive of legitimate concerns and issue, What say your Mr Dooley to Antifa, BLM, pro-Hamas, Hamas Terrorist to active vandals attacking the People of God world wide. Maybe “Without God all vandalism, terrorism, anarchy is as enouraged as it is permissible”.

  5. Mr. Shaw is assuming that God’s grace is offered to all people, including Americans, so that we are able to treat one another with love AND truth. That is not an easy balance to maintain and it has never been an easy balance to maintain. But for Catholics who believe that “I can do all things in him who strengthens me” it should be possible. More than possible, it should be an outstanding quality in any discussion on any subject.

    • You haven’t talked with a female Harris supporter who has had an abortion and unreservedly demands the right to abortion up to and after birth, have you? Or. for that matter, with “people who are not only in favor of killing one million unborn babies, but actually want to increase the killing”, as Crusader noted above.

    • Not all people who confess Jesus Christ, receive Baptism, and profess the Creed, etc., are capable of benefitting from God’s grace. Anyone demonstrating manifest grave sin (supporting death to innocents, for example) cannot at the same time be full of sanctifying grace. It is doubted that such people would even recognize grace if it came in the form of a man risen from the dead, heading from heaven on a cloud, surrounded by glory, accompanied by choirs of angelic beings visible to naked eye, emitting fragrance more beautiful than any otherwise known. No. Those with hearts more hard or rigid than rocks or more lukewarm than milquetoast know little more than nothing and can reason even less.

  6. Exhibit B:

    ABC whistleblower affidavit posted 1 day before the ABC “debate,” exposing secret side deals made with Harris, the “next-up-DNC-Manchurian-Candidate-of-TyrannObama-Rex,” here:
    https://issuesinsights.com/2024/09/20/why-do-media-think-democrats-are-worth-cheating-for/

    Alas, I am sure Mr. Shaw means well, but he is addressing the smaller hurdles existing 20 years ago.

    The Communist Atrocity Part of China (and other enemies of free people yearning for justice and truth) l“owns” the levers of the US and western establishments. These entities depend on the revenue and secret deals of the China Communist Atrocity Machine:
    – ABC, owned by Disney, which does the bidding if the CCP in exchange for revenues via China;
    – Disney, as explained…
    – The NBA, which forbids players to speak against the CCP atrocities, for revenues…
    – Apple, Microsoft and Google, which do the bidding if the CCP so that their management can be “Millionaires-Billionaires,” their companies only existing at their level due to the CCP’s slave labor market.
    – US political families including Bush, Biden. McConnell etc etc, who do secret side deals with CCP-owned corporations.
    – Our Catholic establishment of Pontiff Francis and Secretary of State Parolin, who labored for years with the decades-long help of the sociopath sex abuser McCarrick, who somehow managed to “fulfill his duties” as a Bishop of Metuchen-then Newark-then WashDC-then retired, by traveling to China to do “important stuff” leading to the “Francis-Parolin-Secret-CCP-Accord.”
    – US Ivy League and “Jesuit-Ivy-Wannabee” Universities that take reviews and grants from the CCP.

  7. On a specific note, Mr. Shaw’s appreciation of “the candid, self-critical Secret Service report” on its failures of 13 July in Butler offers an unwarranted payment of trust to the politically-appointed leadership class if the Secret Service and its “supervising” department at DHS.

    Mr. Rowe at Secret Service is part of the problem, not part of the solution. He has this week declared the second assassination case “a Secret Service success.” That is appalling, “pull-your-pants-down-Elmer-Fudd-govt-establishment psycho-babble.” Rowe should be investigated and demoted or fired for being an unaccountable and incompetent fraud.

    No candid and honest citizen should tolerate the patently obvious and reckless endangerment decisions of the Biden-Harris-Mayorkas-Cheatle-Rowe, to expose Trump and RFK jr to death, which is done for just one reason: “GOVT-as-intimidator-of-anyone-opposing-their-continued-rule.”

    The giving of appreciation to GOVT executives politically appointed who willfully endanger the lives of opposing political candidates, and the choice for simultaneous fault-finding against behavior of ordinary citizens, is (while I believe unintentionally so by Mr. Shaw) tantamount to asking Catholic people to perform as “useful idiots.”

  8. It fills me with anger when abortion is justified. Murdering an unborn, defenseless baby is NEVER justified. I pray that God opens their eyes to what this really is.🙏🙏🙏✝️✝️✝️🕊🕊🕊

  9. On the unwarranted grant of trust given to the Secret Service establishment…

    Exhibit C: a Secret Service Whistleblower tells Sen. Hawley of MO that the Secret Service leadership failed to provide resources known to be needed at the golf course, including pre-sweep of the perimeter, and posting agents in open line-line-of-sight security gaps already identified by the Secret Service.

    The empire of deceit would be content to see Trump and RFK jr dead. That’s the reality. Rowe is criminally negligent, and so is Mayorkas.

    The establishment is intent on silence or death for all who refuse them submission.

    • Chris in Maryland: What surprises most is how easily the voting public becomes inured to evil. But, then again, the country tolerated an across-the-board Gestapo-like response to Covid.

  10. On the unwarranted grant if trust given to Secret Service Leadership by (I’m sure well-intentioned) Mr. Shaw:

    Exhibit C: new whistleblower on Secret Service death-threatening negligence in second assassination attempt at the golf course in FL: https://www.foxnews.com/video/6362164419112

    Rowe (SS) and Mayorkas (DHS) determined to let Trump and RFK jr get shot and killed if that’s what it takes for Riwe and Mayorkas and company to stay in power.

  11. Four quotable musings on the untruth of political rhetoric:

    “It is not calumny nor treachery that does the largest sum of mischief in the world; they are continually crushed, and are felt only in being conquered. But it is the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partisan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast that black mystery over humanity…” (the 19th-century John Ruskin).

    “. . . I often doubt whether it would not be a gain if every word of moral significance could be banished from the law altogether. . . .” Earlier, he had written: “I think that the sacredness of human life is a purely municipal idea of no validity outside the jurisdiction” (Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in the 1895 Harvard Law Review; cited in Mark de Wolfe, ed., The Pollock-Holmes Letters, 1874-1932, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1942, Vol. 2, p. 36).

    At the 2015 World Meeting on Families held in Philadelphia the depth of this crater was surveyed by Rick Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Church:

    “In today’s society, materialism is idolized, immorality is glamorized, truth is minimized, sin is normalized, divorce is rationalized, and abortion is legalized. In TV and movies, crime is legitimized, drug use is minimized, comedy is vulgarized, and sex is trivialized. In movies, the Bible is fictionalized, churches are satirized, God is marginalized, and Christians are demonized. The elderly are dehumanized, the sick are euthanized, the poor are victimized, the mentally ill are ostracized, immigrants are stigmatized, and children are tranquilized. In families around the world, our manners are uncivilized, speech is vulgarized, faith is secularized, and everything is commercialized.”

    “[We] come to see that the winning side of the so-called culture wars has no interest in rational or equable conversation about the neuralgic issues of our time. I use the word interest advisedly. They have nothing to gain by it . . .The aim was never rational coherence, or even a concern for the common good. The aim was power: to get what they wanted, to keep it, and to crush those who would question their right to it” (Anthony Esolen, “Speak Truth to Power,” The Catholic Thing, December 29, 2016).

    Citations lifted from Beaulieu, “A Generation Abandoned,” Hamilton Books, 2017. https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/03/29/a-generation-abandoned-why-whatever-is-not-enough/

    • I was there when Warren spoke those words. He was one of the highlights of WMOF 2015. He touched all the bases , and that was when there was only 2 or 3 genders to worry about

  12. The American people have truth staring them in the face wherever they look. But when a morally corrupted electorate looks out onto the landscape, they are incapable of seeing truth staring right back at them.

    The hearts of too many Ameticans are corrupted with evil – evil thoughts, evil deeds, evil intentions. Again, I ask, can a constitutional Republic last long in the hands of so many evil-doers?

    None are so blind as those who cannot see & who will not see how mired in evil their lives are.

  13. I’ll be philosophical on this overheated issue of overheated political rhetoric. Though it’s not to say that there may [not] be real wisdom contained. It would be very nice if there were no cries of outrage, heated confrontations. Would it be good if there weren’t cries of outrage, heated confrontations? On the level of personal sanctity I agree with Russell Shaw.
    On another justified level there’s just cause to contend with measured ferocity. The murderous policies advocated by some [which most seem to agree by vote] for abortion, government policy of abducting children against the will of parents to sexually mutilate them. Rage on the part of parents, including blessed fire on the part of Bishops and clergy.
    My model for this is the Apostle Paul who revealed a gamut of emotions in his ministry, and who Christ allegedly calls My glorious Paul [according to Catherine of Siena]. If the diabolic earthly proxies of Satan can attack sanctity and innocence with fury, we certainly can respond with righteous fire. The good? Example to all of the polarity between good and evil.

  14. And of course, the burning highly combustible question is the legitimacy of Pope Francis’ claim that all religions are pathways to God. We can answer the question by further specification with another question that narrows our object, knowledge of God. Can God be known by reason excluding revelation? This specification was acknowledged by none other than the Apostle when he condemned the Romans for their unwillingness to accept that knowledge evident in nature and available to reason.
    Indeed, no one can claim that Aristotle did not come to the reasonable conclusion that there is a God, a just God as were to lesser degree the earlier findings of Socrates and Plato. What of other cultures? Ancient China held belief in a singular monotheistic God called Shang Ti. From these two cultures the Greek and Chinese we may infer that most religions possessed findings and direction that putatively were oriented toward knowledge of God, although falling short. Finally, we cannot state with any veracity that all religions are pathways to God. We do well to show a bit of fervor on this matter. God, creator and savior is revealed exclusively in his son Jesus Christ, whose full revelation necessary for salvation are found exclusively in the Catholic Church.

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