This is a song about the scary things you see from the corner of your eye
Don’t you ever wonder why
We never talk about the future, we never talk about the past anymore
We never ask ourselves the questions to the answers that nobody even wants to know
Yes, the honeymoon is over
So much for the afterglow
Everclear, So Much For The Afterglow
I blog about law, medicine, family, history, and pop culture – focusing on courts and other legal proceedings because that is what we do in my office.
My first blogs were Hobbesian nightmares – attempts to explain court cases as our chosen preferred method of dispute resolution, as opposed to the mass blood spilling of epochs past.
I like to use family and American history to shed some light on our current circumstance. See, One: A Continuing Tea Party, Two: The Dreadful Night, Blennerhassett Island, The Cuckoo Bird.
Our political climate is polarized and our social fabric, if not torn, is frayed. We seem to have lost sight of any joint American purpose. As a result, we are pulling against one another in opposite directions rather than working together. The optimism of previous generations has been replaced by uncertainty, fear, and anxiety. Distrust and anger toward one another are more prevalent than empathy and understanding of each other. You might think this environment would be conducive to litigation but in my experience, this unhealthy state of affairs complicates – rather than lubricates – dispute resolution. Citizen venires (from which we choose jurors) enter the courthouse with unpredictably bad attitudes toward each other and the body politic that even they do not fully grasp. Selecting fair-minded jurors for a particular case in this environment is challenging.
While it may seem counter-intuitive, our anger issues complicate and unnecessarily burden court conflict. Some shared sense of purpose and community would be helpful to understanding one another (free of hostile presumptions about motive or intention). Trust is the lubricant needed to effectively resolve disputes in a meaningful way. Whether its the legal process or the Marques of Queensbury rules in a fistfight, the participants and observers need to buy into the process in order for the results to be accepted. Not electing crybabies who tear down the institutions that are supposed to guarantee justice for all is a good place to start.