Editorial: Power to the ‘correct’ People?

Photo By Chase Hunter/Cronkite News

Out the door with extremism   

Column By Walt Mares

Walt Mares: Walt Mares has been in journalism since 1976 and has covered Greenlee County since 1983.

“Power to the People!” screamed the headline on the magazine’s cover.

“Return government control to the populace” it said on the smaller magazine’s upper righthand corner.

The magazine with the screaming headline and the smaller publication said the same thing: the people should be in control. The difference lay in who was delivering the message. The publication that cried out about people power was the now-defunct left-wing Ramparts magazine. The reference to control by the populace appeared on the cover of the very right-wing American Opinion, published by the John Birch Society. The front covers of both were published in the late-1960s.

What both publications seemed to actually be saying was “Power to the correct people!”

It was a time when America appeared to be turned upside down. Much of the furor involved the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. It was in many respects an ugly and very trying time in America. It was hard for many Americans to see any sort of bright lining around a dark cloud of dissent.

Attitudes and outlooks have greatly changed since that period. People are no longer denied service at a restaurant nor forced to sit in the back of the bus due to skin color. Women have entered the workforce in huge numbers. Children with disabilities now must be provided a free and appropriate public education. There are TV sitcoms where the main characters are openly gay.

Those are some of the major changes in America over the past four decades, but they are only a few of the critical giant forward strides taken in the good old U.S. of A. Greater access to higher education is among those major steps.

While we point to the progress that has and is still being made, we would be derelict in not pointing to one area in which we seem to have made little progress or perhaps even taken some backward steps. We refer to extremism, whether it is on the airwaves or in print or person-to-person communication.

We see today television commercials in which some political candidates go for the throats of opponents. Some of those messages are downright ugly, to the point of being offensive to viewers on any side of a political issue.

One of the biggest changes we have seen during the past two decades is access to and use of the Internet to influence society, voters in particular. It is attractive because it allows anonymity. It is a means by which to be ruthless – a Jack the Ripper. It allows messengers of misinformation and hatred to remain cloaked in secrecy. Some of those Jacks use patriotic phrases in their websites’ names: Eagle, Liberty, Freedom, Patriot, and Militia, just to name a few. 

Politics has never been pretty, whether it was in America’s colonial days or in most recent times. That is the nature of the beast.

Let us begin working together, be it Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Libertarians, or whatever political party. We all have much to lose if we do not.

Let us tame the beast that threatens our democracy and throw extremism out the collective door, or at the very least tamp down several notches. 

We can begin doing so by demanding of those we choose to support in the political process to tone it down. If not, we will turn them off. Let them know we will not be part of what amounts to something as being uglier than a cockfight.

There certainly are those who love the sight and smell of blood. Let us not belong to that crowd. We must insist that candidates stick to issues and problem-solving.

Power can belong to the people and government control can be returned to the populace. First, we must face a very real and great challenge. That is to set aside our personal prejudices, biases, and bigotry. The question is, how many of us can actually do that?

“Ah, but we want only to hear the truth,” or “what we alone know as the truth,” some may say. Perhaps such folk should keep in mind that truth is intangible. What may be a truth to one person or group is not a truth to others.

On the other hand, a fact is a fact. It is tangible. When will we, as Americans, acknowledge and begin to face the facts and elect our leaders based on what is tangible?

In today’s world, it should be a matter of accepting reality and the results of our recent presidential election. Flush the conspiracy theories and lies down the toilet where they belong.

On a lighter note, a fellow once commented that the only extremists he trusts are Chicago Bears fans.