All my friends and family know that I routinely contribute essays to The American Spectator, essays that should make my position on the issues of the day perfectly clear. At the same time, I make a concerted effort not to import my political and cultural positions into my personal interactions. At this point in my life, most of my family members and friends share my conservative outlook, but there are notable exceptions, and I hope that will always be the case.
Memes matter, and they matter all out of proportion to the truths they might or might not portray.
One of the saddest aspects of 21st century life in America has been the politicization of, well, almost everything. I’m old enough to remember a time when our personal identities were shaped by all manner of things, not just our political party affiliation, or our passionate commitment to some great cause. The passing of Jimmy Carter reminded me of this, calling to mind experiences from my youth in Georgia.
My parents and my aunt and uncle — my mother’s sister and brother-in-law — were incredibly close, the best of friends. But during Carter’s years as governor, and even more during his presidency, they found themselves totally at odds about him. My aunt and uncle thought the world of him, my mom and dad came to detest him. But by a quietly attained mutual agreement, they banished discussion of Carter from their shared lives, and went on being there for each other in all the ways that mattered most.
I’ve tried to follow their example, sharing political and cultural observations on a personal level only with my wife and a handful of my closest friends. A by-product of this, however, is that I still have friends who I know occupy political space far removed from my own. We just tend not to talk about it.
Still, sometimes this becomes unavoidable, and the current ICE round-ups of illegal immigrants have become such an occasion. One friend, a woman of a notably progressive persuasion, just posted a meme on her Facebook page, linking an ICE enforcement action with a quotation on forced roundups from “The Diary of Anne Frank.” But almost simultaneously, another friend posted a meme that juxtaposed two pictures. The first, a crowd of women and toddlers, is labelled “What the media wants you to think Trump’s deporting,” while the second, a picture of some very scary looking young men, is captioned, “who Trump’s really deporting.”
From what I’ve been reading — and I’ve been trying hard to follow this story — I can only suspect that, with a focus on bad actors such as Tren de Aragua, the latter meme more accurately describes the current state of things. But my purpose today is not to document ground truth concerning raids across the country — don’t have the resources — nor is it to adjudicate a debate between memes.
Instead, I simply want to make two distinct, but related observations. The first is that memes matter, and they matter all out of proportion to the truths they might or might not portray. The old saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words” and this has only become more apposite in recent years. The unavoidable truth is that, as our collective attention spans grow shorter and shorter, a clever meme assumes vast power.
My second observation is that I wish this wasn’t so. No, I don’t mean to bemoan the power of memes, nor do I criticize anyone for sharing them. I’ve trafficked in meme commentary a bit myself, writing an article prompted by a meme juxtaposing a poor African child, grubbing for cobalt in a nasty pit, with a smug and entitled Greta Thunberg. What I regret, instead, is the extent to which the political has invaded every aspect of our lives, including the things that make us laugh or make us angry.
This plants me firmly on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, I applaud the ever-expanding opportunities that we all enjoy to express our beliefs. I’m foursquare behind the benefits of having “democratized’ self-expression, and my instinctive reaction is to say, the more the merrier. We’re all the better for a society where everyone has a chance to make their voice heard.
But on the other hand, I yearn for the day when our lives in this country, indeed our lives across the Western world, have been re-centered. By this I mean a return to other passions at the center of our lives and our daily interactions. The best part of my life comes with caring for our dogs, from riding motorcycles with my wife and sharing detective shows and a cup of tea in the evening. It comes from sharing an overseas adventure with my adult daughter. It comes from following the ups and downs — lately mostly downs — of my favorite football teams.
And if we must share hard times, let more of it revolve around caring for each other in times of sickness and moments of loss. Let’s be there for each other, not as “allies,” not in idle displays of support for the latest popular movement, but because we see each other’s humanity and reach past our differences to embrace it.
We need to find our way back to what once was called “the American way of life.” Yes, I know that the so-called “good old days” hid much that wasn’t good. But I reject the notion that it was unrelievedly bad. One of my Spectator colleagues recently called an end to what he described as our “Cold Civil War.” I hope that he’s right, that the torn fabric of our lives can finally be mended, that we can come together once again.
I wish that our favorite memes involved our pets and our children and grandchildren. I’ve had quite enough excitement in my life, and I’m reminded that the famous Chinese saying, “May you have an interesting life,” is not a blessing, but a curse.
READ MORE from James H. McGee:
Enough with Leftist Fantasy — Hitler Is Really Dead, and He Should Finally Be Buried
President Trump and Peace in Ukraine
James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His recent novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region. A forthcoming sequel finds the Reprisal team fighting against terrorists who’ve infiltrated our southern border in a conspiracy that ranges across the globe. You can find Letter of Reprisal on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited.
