Lest you mistakenly believe things are improving outside the relative safety of your living room, allow me to review just part of the Arkansas Online headlines from last week:
"Pizza worker fatally shoots would-be robber outside Little Rock bank"; "Naked woman arrested after breaking into home"; "Little Rock high school student shot, robbed of shoes"; "Victim quizzed on rape, robbery at Little Rock restaurant"; "Little Rock teen shot multiple times in drive-by shooting"; "Man choked mom to unconsciousness for changing channel"; "U.S. Air Force veteran identified as pedestrian killed in North Little Rock hit-and-run"; "UAMS pharmacy student shot outside Arkansas Department of Health office building"; "Man robbed at gunpoint while inside vehicle at Little Rock apartment complex"; "3 take $300 worth of clothing from west Little Rock sporting goods store"; "1 Arkansas man charged, 1 sought after 2 forced to dig graves at gunpoint"; "After chase, Arkansas circuit judge arrested"; "Ex-judge faces sentencing for trying to bribe officer with 2 cases of Bud Light"; "10-year-old boy drives to store, leads officer on chase."
It's safe for me to assume the Happy Days of Leave it to Beaver and My Three Sons regrettably are gone from our rapidly changing democratic republic. It feels as if we've regressed rather than moved forward as a society.
Accordingly, it's an equally safe bet that increasing numbers of us have decided the better part of prudence and wisdom in the year 2017 is to spend a day earning our concealed-carry licenses. Recognizing the increasing prevalence of crime, the government of neighboring Missouri now wisely allows its citizens to carry a personal weapon for protection without requiring the time and expense of acquiring a license.
Sad it's come to this over such a relatively brief time, isn't it? Any ideas why, valued readers?
A bad stumble
I was among those who hated to see newly elected Washington County Judge Joseph Wood stumble badly out of the gate from the brouhaha over ignoring the county's hiring policy in not rehiring County Attorney Steve Zega and replacing him with a less-experienced ally.
It brought to mind my time digging into ugly good-ol'-boy Illinois politics for the Chicago Sun-Times.
The county's personnel committee voted 4-1 against Wood for the way he summarily replaced incumbent Zega with buddy and political supporter Brian Lester.
But the committee's finding carried no weight when it came for forcing Zega's reinstatement, especially since the court already had approved Lester for Zega's position. Quite a mess, eh?
If that weren't a sticky enough wicket, some on the Quorum Court also found issues with the way Wood failed to follow equal opportunity policies in firing four county department heads without properly reviewing their qualifications.
In that regard, it was revealed that Wood offered Lester the county attorney's position before even interviewing Zega to retain the job he'd held under former Judge Marilyn Edwards, according to a news story by reporter Scarlet Sims.
Quiet a mess, and one that easily could and should have been avoided with only a modicum of forethought and propriety.
I'm hoping Wood learned from this overly impulsive start. If not, there doubtlessly will be plenty more words written to fill newsprint in months to come.
Our ugly divide
I don't much care for the uncomfortable sense that I've been herded into hardening my political beliefs to accommodate a destructive and ugly "us-against-them" attitude. I know I'm not alone. As a nation, we've allowed ourselves to become increasingly antagonistic, rude, downright obscene (and outright mean) to fellow Americans with views different than our own.
It's difficult to pinpoint exactly when our collective hardening into mutual antagonism began.
My late Uncle John Paul Hammerschmidt of Harrison frequently said that, during his 13-congressional terms representing the state's 3rd District, he never regarded himself as anyone other than the congressman eagerly serving everyone in his district.
He also talked of how Arkansas Democrat Sens. J.W. Fulbright and John L. McClellan at the time did all they could to welcome him to Washington and assist with his transition in every way possible. It was normal in those times to forge bipartisan legislation across the aisles with the best interests of all Americans and our nation foremost in mind. For the most part, they truly strived to put America first.
John Paul retired in 1993, so the destructive shift into rancorous politicization of everything must have crept into our lives together sometime afterwards. I just know the split that's developed (whether calculated or not) is ugly and destructive.
I also know the young men and women who've sacrificed their lives over the decades to preserve our individual freedoms and way of life (that include free speech and peaceful assembly) didn't care about the political views, financial status or race of the comrades beside them when bullets and scraps of angry shrapnel filled the air.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 01/29/2017