The Shorthand of Anger and Ill Communication

Much of our national dialogue is beginning to resemble the type of communication that takes place in a very bad relationship that has evolved over the years to the point where one verbal cue sets off a simmering tirade. For example: "All I did was bring up A, and next thing I know you're yelling at me about B." Or: "I know what that tone in your voice means."

Any longtime significant other will gain the capacity to push our proverbial buttons. But if you're lucky you don't end up married to a spouse - or otherwise secularly attached to a significant other - who spends most of their time, along with you, in a hyper-reactive state, ready to feel offended or go on the attack with these elaborate, and cutting forms of emotional shorthand.

No, strike that, it's not only luck, it's effort: You must be vigilant and ready to work to find useful and positive ways that conflict can be truly defused or made productive, not avoided or repressed. This I've leaned, in part, from now being married to miraculously wonderful spouse who shares a keen eye on how things should or shouldn't work. (Years ago, however, I had some relationships that were a nest of these kinds of problems.)

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Our national debate is like a bad relationship.

This is obvious when I read Michelle Malkin post about the New York Times article set to run in Wednesday's edition about gun control. Of course Malkin could "call it" in advance - and of course the NYT would pump the same dismal policy point that has animated the boomer-generation Left for 40 years. As soon as the news blipped across the wire - 32 dead in college shooting - any acute observer of our national dialogue could write the script for the next several weeks.

How long will it take before somebody begins clamoring for hearings about the Bush Administration's gun control policy? Part of this is driven by partisan hate - part of it is driven by a reflexive notion that the government needs to respond to everything tragic and make a law that will somehow prevent it from happening again.

Either way it's depressingly familiar, and neither side is working to avoid the predictable downward spiral. All we should be doing, for many weeks ahead, is letting these families grieve and eventually begin healing. The parents have a right to be angry and righteous (or not - everyone handles this differently) but everyone else should put away the negative communication and loud, advanced arguments.