Americans increasingly hate each other

I’ve previously mentioned that my mom has resigned from the Environmental Commission. See Blanche Krubner resigns from the Jackson Township Environmental Commission. She served for 46 years, from 1973 to 2019.

It was difficult for her to resign. She has many happy memories of working with good people to keep central New Jersey a safe and happy place to live. She protected the drinking water, so we could drink from the faucet without having to worry about pollutants.

In the early days, the Environmental Commission was a lot of fun for her. She worked with great people. Some were Democrats and some were Republicans, but back then party affiliation did not matter. Everyone was friendly. They all saw themselves as neighbors who were working together to ensure that their neighborhoods stayed safe and clean.

Although national politics has often been full of controversy, the controversies never manifested at the local level. In my hometown of Jackson, everyone was friendly, and there was a feeling that all of the parents had to work together to be sure that their children had beautiful forests to play in, clean air to breath, safe water to drink. None of this was controversial. And though my mom was clearly on the Left, no one ever accused her of being a leftist, since there was the universal assumption that, because she was a citizen of the United States, she had the right to be a leftist if she wanted to be. Everyone had the right to have their own opinion about politics, whether that was right or left.

Diversity of religion was respected. The town had many Catholics and Protestants and Jews. In 1918 a very large group of Russians moved here and established a Russian Church. There was a growing group of middle-class blacks who moved into the suburb where I lived, and they brought their own Protestant churches.

My father told me that when he grew up in New York City there were fights between Protestant and Catholic boys, but I never saw anything like that in my hometown. I don’t recall a single fight about religion. Many of my peers were secular, but even among the religious, there was no particular anger.

Even controversial topics were handled in a respectful manner. My father served on the school board for several years during the 1970s. He fought for two main issues: he wanted to see more science education and more sex education. At that time the community simply accepted that the schools needed to expand sex education. I’m certain this would be more controversial today.

Keep in mind, these were volunteer positions. My mom was not paid, my father was not paid, they were simply trying to be good citizens. Year after year, they volunteered their time so that the local government would work well. At the local level, it is this volunteer spirit that is essential to democracy.

All in all, there was a widespread respect of our differences and our diversity.

This began to slowly change during the years of President Bush, and then more quickly after 2008. That is when the anger showed up, the local version of what would soon be called “The Tea Party”. The local government became an outpost of extreme Republican government. This was a group which, for the most part, represented the real estate developers. An aggressive plan developed, to use up all the green spaces in the town, to cut down the trees and put houses everywhere. Regulations that were meant to protect the water basin were increasingly ignored. The law was first bent a little, and then later ignored completely. Houses were put on smaller and smaller lots. By 2016 the real estate developers had taken over and felt free to push their agenda. It is curious how the rise of this group coincided with a much angrier form of politics.

My mom began to find the meetings of the Environmental Commission more and more stressful. The language used against her became shocking. One time someone stood up and called her a “bitch”. Such language was utterly unimaginable in the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s. That old sense of mutual respect was gone.

The meeting halls filled up with extreme right-wingers who seemed to be perpetually angry. Oddly enough, what could have been dispassionate discussions of scientific matters, such as how to keep toxic runoff from getting into the water, were instead treated as issues of moral outrage by the right-wingers: they no longer saw that my mom was trying to protect the children from toxic water, instead they attacked her for limiting their “freedom.”

After 2009, my mom found herself forever in the minority, with less power to keep the town safe, less ability to protect the forests or the water. The situation became increasingly sad, as everything she’d defended for 40 years was damaged.

Especially at the local level, it is weird to have such high conflict meetings. In theory, these people are neighbors who should know each other and trust each other. But trust among neighbors is fading. And also, it’s become more common for people to live in a house for only 4 or 5 years and then move elsewhere. In that sense, people are nowadays less permanent. They do not become true citizens of a town. They do not set down roots. They do not get to know their neighbors. They are only passing through.

I’ve often read that President Trump is just a symptom, he isn’t the real problem, and when I consider how politics in Jackson have changed, I have to agree. If even neighbors can hate each other, and local politics get poisoned with hate, then the problem is much bigger than Trump.

When I was a child my parents frequently hosted dinner parties, and people all over town, from all walks of life, got invited. Some were Republican and some were Democrat but nobody really cared back then. Nowadays things are different. Trump supporters are so full of an aggressive anger, it would be very strange to invite one to a party — and that’s not commentary about Trump, but it is commentary about the people who give their loyalty to Trump.

We now live in a country where neighbors look across the street with paranoia and fear and hate. I’ll share two different anecdotes about incidents with two different neighbors. Same houses, but two neighbors, separated by 40 years.

Back in 1974 the USA still had 4 auto companies. AMC was still in business, even though they are now forgotten. My folks bought an AMC car, because it was cheap. AMC cars had an automatic transmission, but it was really badly done. Quality in American cars was bad back then, which is why Japan gained market share.

Anyway, back then all American cars had carburetors instead of fuel injection, and of course carburetors don’t work so well on really cold mornings, so my dad was in the habit of going out and starting the car a few minutes before we needed to go anywhere. On this one morning, he went and started the car, then came back in and served all of us breakfast. Normally us kids walked to school, but my dad had some errands to run, so he was thinking this time he’d drive us.

Then my dad went to put something in the car. But the terrible automatic transmission from AMC had decided to put itself in reverse, all on its own. So, while we were eating, the car had rolled down the driveway and across the street and up over the curb and it smashed into the fence of our neighbor across the street. Embarrassing for us.

My dad went up to the McKinney’s, who lived there, knocked on the door, explained the situation to David, the father of the home. They sort of laughed about the poor quality in American cars. My dad said “Send me the bill for the fence” and they shook hands. Dad drove us to school, then took the car to the shop to be looked at. Later, the neighbors got their fence fixed and showed the bill to my dad, who paid it.

That was how things worked in 1974. Neighbors made an effort to be friendly. Many years later, the McKinney’s moved away. Various families came and went. In 2012, some new neighbors moved in. They were a Catholic family, a big family, they had 5 kids living with them, though 2 of the kids were in their 20s and might have gone off on their own, but were still at home. They had some loud fights, screaming and yelling, which I could hear from my mom’s house, but otherwise they kept to themselves.

In 2014, I took a bus to Jackson, and I arrived at the bus stop, late at night, 2 miles from home, so I call my mom and ask her to pick me up. My mom pulled out of the driveway in her minivan, and apparently she backed up a little too far, so the back of her minivan scraped the car of the daughter who lived at the house. My mom was not aware of the scrape, but the daughter saw this from her bedroom window.

My mom picked me up from the bus station and we went back to the house.  I made coffee for both of us. I was telling her about my week in New York City. Then the police arrived. Our neighbors had accused my mom of a Hit-And-Run accident and they want to press charges.

I was astounded. It was just amazing to me that our neighbors would call the police instead of walking over, knocking on the door, and explaining the situation. A small scratch on the car? Mom could have just written a check. That’s exactly how my parents worked things out with neighbors 40 years ago.

Anyway, my mom apologized to the police and the police went to the neighbors and suggested this was a normal accident to be handled by insurance, rather than the police.

But I continue to be amazed that anyone would think it was normal to treat their neighbors like that. My mom was not a random person, out on the highway, who swiped their car and drove away, never to be seen again. My mom was their neighbor, someone they had to share the street with for many years. What sort of insane paranoia would cause a family to turn to the police as a first resort, rather than a last resort? And why would they think this was a matter for police, rather than the insurance companies? Where did such blind anger come from?

I seriously think there is no hope for our national politics, when relationships among next door neighbors have become that hostile.

The trend line is worrisome. I remember in 2005 I was worried about some of the authoritarian tendencies in the Bush administration, especially stuff like the Patriot Act. And I was wondering, hey, if we keep going in this direction, then where will we be in 10 years? And apparently the answer was Donald Trump. And the same question holds, where will we be in 10 years? If in 2019 it is totally normal for the President of the USA to lead a crowd that is chanting “Lock her up!” then what will be normal in 2029?

Mind you, in saying all this, I’m aware that in some areas local politics have always been torn apart by controversial issues, especially issues around race. When I was a kid, cities like Boston were torn apart by angry fighting around school busing. Racial tension has always run high in the USA, and it has sometimes torn cities apart.

But nowadays the problem seems to be spreading to all subjects, not just race. If racism was the Original Sin of the USA, what does it mean that such rage is now contaminating almost every relationship in our society?

Especially on issues of race relations, the 1960s and 1970s and early 1980s were a hopeful time. There was a sense that perhaps the USA would eventually heal the horrific racial divisions that had torn it apart from the beginning. But it now seems the opposite has happened: the poison that was once confined to racial issues has now spread to every aspect of the American political experience.

I don’t know what happens to a country when neighbors hate neighbors. How do they achieve the kind of cooperation necessary to build a vibrant democracy?