It is quite unfortunate how uncivil today's public discourse has become; often angry and shrill, nasty and threatening. Frequently poorly informed or misinformed. "Cherry picked" facts to support one's position, rather than rigorous study. Name calling, insults, lies, and unfounded accusations, you name it. Sometimes it appears that being disagreeable is the trait humans display the most.

It feeds on itself, this disagreeableness, when someone makes you their target, you want to fight back. For instance, recently I read that there are some religious groups who are advocating what I think they call "gloves on" approach to what they want. They go on to characterize humanists with "Marxist, Leninist's and a satanic worldview." It makes it hard not to get angry when you see yourself depicted (wrongly) in this fashion. One is also tempted to fire back with similar invectives.

The discussion about civility is ubiquitous and I have brought it up many times myself. But it is a subject that will never go away, and rightly so, as we should always be willing to discuss anything, including the way we discuss things.

Recently however, I find it interesting all the denials of complicity coming from all sides but especially the conservative groups. It is sort of weird that we could take all the people from the Bush administration and sit them down and show them thousands of videos of them lying again and again, and present the documentation and show them the damage they did, and they would, with a straight face look at you and say "it's all the liberals fault." But in some ways the Democrats aren't much better as those who stood by or helped conservatives will cry, "we were fooled" and or "we didn't really want to help."

To me the most unfortunate thing about this entire rancorous dialog is that it is a huge waste of human energy. If only we could channel that energy into actually solving problems. I know, I know, dream on. It is so much easier to rant and stomp your feet that to come up with a cogent argument.

Our schedule of events will soon be taking us to the summer break in June and July. While we have no speakers during the break, we do have a couple of movie nights. Those of you who might like to attend are solicited to make suggestions as to what you would like to see.

--Robert Lane
President, HoU