Dealing with our bully culture

"I sense that the balance of power in the house and senate and the rollback of the neocon agenda is only part of the job ahead, as the country has been inundated with bully culture, the culture of greed, for at least a dozen years. For many young professionals, that’s all they know in their working lives — the attitude of winner takes all, bigger smashes smaller and do it if you can get away with it. It might take a while to allow another more humane culture of getting along and nurturing each other and benefiting from each other’s skills and knowledge to rise from the ashes. At present ashes are pretty much all there is. Social animals know better than this — they seem to instinctively know that there are limits to what the bosses and the alpha males can get away with, and that cooperation within the group is how the group survives. Checks and balances — something that’s been missing for a while.

I sense this culture every day, on the streets and in the media. Every time a cop car from my local precinct runs a red light or speeds down a one way street the wrong way (just because they can, no other reason) and every time an SUV with darkened windows muscles other cars, bikers, old ladies and kids out of way — sometimes narrowly missing pedestrians as they run a red light — well, it’s all been sanctioned by Bush and Cheney and the senators and congressmen who allied themselves with these bastards. They reflect and encourage one another. Push in line, build your building right in front of someone else’s, destroy a neighborhood, be a winner, a survivor. To me, those reality shows “teach” bully culture — that’s the lesson that is imparted — and that includes ones like Laguna Beach, which seems to promote backstabbing, lying, duplicitous behavior and entitlement — all in a world where no one works.

If these are the Republican ideals (and judging by the rampant corruption and entitlement in congress and elsewhere one would have to say it is) then changing the politicians will not clean the sheets. Not overnight."

Source: David Byrne's Election Day journal entry.