[Mb-civic] Scenes of rancor in 2005 - Cathy Young - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  Scenes of rancor in 2005

By Cathy Young  |  January 3, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

AS 2005 winds down, one is hard pressed to say much good about it. After 
the nastiness of last year's election, the American political scene did 
not get any better. This was the year in which much of the right was 
gripped by hysteria over the fate of Terri Schiavo, a personal tragedy 
turned into grotesque political theater, and much of the left embraced 
Cindy Sheehan, the ''antiwar mom" who turned her grief into a protest 
filled with rhetoric of hate, not peace -- two very different causes 
whose common theme was to demonize the opposition.

Even a major natural disaster, which can bring people together in the 
worst of times, became another cause for political rancor. Hurricane 
Katrina was a story not just of nature's fury but of glaring 
incompetence by two vital American institutions: the government, with 
state, local, and federal authorities passing the buck and bungling the 
rescue, and the free press, which freely spread wild tales that both 
exaggerated the victims' plight and portrayed them as lawless thugs. 
Many on the left treated the hurricane as a cloud with a silver lining 
of Bush-bashing.

Like last year, religion has been more of a source of division than 
conciliation. In 2004, it was ''The Passion of the Christ"; in 2005, the 
''war on Christmas." Yes, there were the usual excesses from secularist 
or multiculturalist zealots who took Christmas songs out of holiday 
pageants and lashed out at Christmas references at holiday-tree 
lightings. But this year, the loudest by far were the defenders of 
Christmas from mostly imaginary threats.

On Fox News, Bill O'Reilly revealed that the innocuous phrase ''Happy 
Holidays" was part of a ''very secret plan" to undermine Christianity in 
America -- a plan so insidious, apparently, that even President Bush has 
been drawn into its net: White House greeting cards wished supporters a 
''happy holiday season." This caused Catholic activist William Donohue 
to fulminate that the Bush administration had ''capitulated to the worst 
elements in our culture." Meanwhile, a guest on O'Reilly's show, the 
Rev. Tim Bumgardner, exhorted: ''Hey, celebrate Christmas -- people 
spend more money! Jesus makes people want to spend money!" Shopping for 
Jesus: There's a whole new idea of the Christmas spirit.

For a depressing scene abroad, look to Russia, where the parliament has 
just passed a bill curbing the activities of independent citizens' 
groups, and President Putin's last liberal adviser, Andrei Illarionov, 
has resigned saying, ''The political system has changed, and the country 
has stopped being free and democratic." In December, protesters against 
nationalist extremism were denied permission to march in Moscow, and 
their unauthorized rally with the slogan, ''Russia Without Fascism," was 
broken up by the police. Three weeks earlier, a nationalist march with 
openly racist overtones, to which the antifascist rally was meant as a 
counter-protest, had been green-lighted by the government.

Meanwhile, the new leadership of Iran seeks a throwback to the extremist 
roots of the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution. Western music has 
been banned; more disturbing, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly 
denied the Holocaust and called for Israel to be ''wiped off the map." 
In Israel, the withdrawal from Gaza and the possible beginnings of 
Palestinian statehood have been marred by continued violence and an 
electoral victory for the terrorist group Hamas.

In Iraq, a free and peaceful election could be seen as a sign of hope. 
Is it? Most recently, the Sunni Arabs and the secular Shi'ites have 
joined forces to protest the election results -- which apparently handed 
a victory to the Shi'ite religious bloc -- as tainted by fraud, refusing 
to participate in the legislature until a review is completed. And 
insurgent violence has already resumed.

Yet it would be premature to bury hope. If the Shi'ite bloc wins, it 
will have to rule in a coalition. A recent ABC News poll found that 57 
percent of Iraqis favor political democracy, and only 14 percent support 
an Islamic state. Despite ongoing chaos, half of Iraqis do not believe 
it was wrong for the United States to invade -- which is remarkable, 
given that no one likes being occupied, particularly by people of a 
different culture and religion. (This is why, despite all misgivings 
about the wisdom of this war, I strongly reject the view that it was a 
crime against the Iraqi people.)

The ABC poll also found that two-thirds of Iraqis expect things to 
improve in the year ahead. Let's hope they are right, both for their 
country and for the world.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/03/scenes_of_rancor_in_2005/
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