The lengthy title stitches two separate musings that were four years apart. I wrote about, "When Rattlesnakes Don't Rattle Anymore", on Nov. 2015, one year before the 2016 election, followed in January, 2019 by, "Silencing of The Lambs", a year before the 2020 election. It is striking a much louder chord to me now more than ever as we witness the great division in a country once touted as the great universal example of what happens when people unite and so well deserved to inhabit a nation called The United States. This is not to disparage either party even as each is so well entrenched in opposing sides of the political track, but as a cautionary herald to all. The danger is that we may find ourselves not wanting to cross the tracks any longer as time goes on as to forget that there used to be a much greater bond and an indestructible link between all people beyond political pettiness and socially and culturally trivial squabbles.
I wrote then:
"Now then, when do rattlesnakes no longer rattle? The story may surprise you. Naturalists just recently discovered that in places where rattlers are heavily hunted, there was eerie silence instead of the familiar sounds that typically betray the presence of the snakes. Needless to say, the pickings were slim at these places but there was evidence that rattle snakes were present. What rattle snakes they caught by sight had fused rattlers that no longer rattle. The rattles are ring-like keratin tissues (similar material like finger nails or claws) that develop at their tails every time the snake sheds its skin. The rings are connected loosely to each other and when the snake shakes its tail we would hear the familiar rattle. Some of the rattlers have these appendage atrophied because of a genetic mutation. The snakes that do not rattle escape detection from the hunters and collectors and there lies the multiplying effect. As the loud rattlers get caught the silent ones thrive and go on to pass their genes that are inherited by subsequent generations. Soon we have silent venomous snakes".
Now we have a moral lesson – a metaphor of a sort in social and political discourse. One of democracy’s most important attributes is freedom of speech. It is because a democracy works when all sides are heard, discussed and decided upon by the people.
There is no good reason to silence the opposing side because once one side is silenced the victory achieved by the other is a hollow one. Whatever the means to silence one voice - be it through the media, social media in particular, or by acclimation from the loudest of voices over the silent ones, the muffling effect is real: either by over-rattling one point of view, shouting down opposing opinions or flat out shutting off the pipeline of alternative views from those they do not agree with.
Society should be careful when conditions become so dire that the cure every one wants to pursue is to silence one side in favor of another. The silencing of opposing views is akin to fusing the snake's rattlers.
The benefit of a one-sided media is at best temporary, worse is the boomerang effect. It will come back in a manner that is impossible to predict.
What should be emphasized here is that a group that is silenced will only go underground; undetectable by polls. Democracy works when all points of views are heard because an informed citizenry will make informed choices that determine the kind of government it chooses. When one major group is silenced, only one monolithic voice emerges. That becomes the gateway to oligarchy where only one class of people exercises authority over others. The silencing of the lambs means that one minority group may no longer speak or express their minds. Their silence can be claimed by the oligarchy as victory but only for so long.
I had hoped to be wrong about what I wrote about two and four years ago. Like a lot of people I had wished that I would wake up one day to a sunny political climate when all sides are freely heard so that neither side should be in fear of being silenced or oppressed just for exercising their right to speak. It should be a concern for either because political winds will blow one way, one day, and blow the other way, the next.
The New York Times proposed that the current administration create a "Reality Czar".
A quote: "The New York Times has called on President Biden to create a “Reality Czar” to shut down all dissent, which they immediately label conspiracy theories without any real investigation".
Ordinarily, we will take this with a grain of salt, notwithstanding the NY Times as the platform for such a bizarre idea from one of its columnists, but we have to wonder - hasn't any of its editors any clue at all that there was such a "Ministry of Truth" from an Orwellian world in "1984"? The word czar is such a tiresome nickname to use in any of today's government positions, if one must note that the birth of communism happened because of the people's revulsion toward czarism in a then imperial Russia of centuries past. Although this is not to be taken seriously, the fact is that there are actually people out there, from academia no less, who propose that they can be trusted to determine what the truth is.
The risk of a political and societal journey that each side may take that has no return ticket is so grave that this country may find itself passing the point of no return. All in so short a period of time compared to the over two and half centuries of history, only to potentially become historical footnotes no different from those that describe empires of long ago - gone and forgotten except as mere reminders of what could happen when the strength and stamina of a nation are sapped from within.
I must mention that the use of rattlesnakes and lambs are metaphorical from which both political parties are enjoined to make note. The eerie silence represented by rattlesnakes that no longer rattle is as dangerous as when people keep their silence and remain under ground because when they decide to come out at some future time, predicting what happens is impossible to know. It is better to know where the rattling comes from and what the rattles are about than to not know at all. Those who propose to silence the lambs from the minority or try to hunt down, oppress or extinguish all the rattling from the opposing side by curtailing their voices will eventually regret it in the end.
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