Humans are not rational but emotional according to neurosciences. This is hard to believe. Reason separates us from the beast therefore there is no doubt that we are the only rational being that walks the earth. Yet we are also very emotional beings. When we are very frightened or extremely angry, we tend to be irrational. The beating of Rodney Glen King by Los Angeles cops caught in video left an epic of this irrational anathema [the cops were said to be prompted by extreme anger or overwhelming fear for their safety] that challenged the humanity of our fragile society.

In this most celebrated court trial of 1992, winning the case was not enough. Winning friends was much more if as the Gospel teaches Christians the world over, we can just get along.

How to win an argument and lose a friend is not what I am writing about. What I am writing about is just the opposite. One may win a debate but lose a friend and in victory, grieve and cry, so to speak. For, attrition is discomfort, war is death, love is life; in this light, amity is the seasoning of life. The thought of losing a friend is a terrible loneliness, and to some of us, it is worse than death.

This kind of loss is akin to losing a dream, like losing Mary Stevenson’s footprints in the sand left by the Invisible that carried you on his shoulder when no one was there after you lost a fight, and you were down and out.

The litmus test to these axiomatic platitudes let alone divine truism that I have just introduced is when we as a nation quarrel over how we love or hate America. Like what I wrote in other similar articles, the war in Iraq relates to how we feel about Uncle Sam. We are ten feet tall where we stand, whether we are for or against the war. The good thing about it is that if we lose the debate yet are able to smile and shake hands, there is hope.

The truth is, we cannot afford to be too radically villainous to one another to the point of self-destruction … we are just combatants of principles in our version of democracy, in our vision of freedom and liberty in this part of the globe.

But to a great extent, our passion when we argue whether or not our troops should come home, like the recent wildfire of San Diego, California, burns far and wide as if to cover to the last inch the breadth of the ever widening great divide.

Surprisingly, we are implausibly challenged by this elementary problem many of us hardly noticed: The art of civil and cordial argument is very hard to emulate and even harder to learn, especially if by nature one is too rabidly adversarial and incorrigibly opinionated at the same time, but contentious or amicable or distastefully unlikable, we are helplessly magnetized towards our dispute like how moths are attracted to the lamp, and it does not matter whether or not we get burned in the fire of public opinion.

In public debate, we tend to take pointed criticism as a personal offense. Most often than not, we end the argument with a shocking discovery that our differences are infinitesimal. This is definitely not good to one’s rising blood pressure, and bad to the nerves of America. Sociologist opined that it was not bitterness but neurosis and paranoia [fear of the unknown], which took the most out of the irreconcilable North and South differences before the rural folks, notably the farmers where politicized, who then left their homes and marched down the prairie with a curse and a gun.

We frequently reminisce this bloody chapter of our history without ever forgetting that The Great American Civil War had more than 600,000 fallen heroes on the take, whose blood drenched the battleground to unite a divided nation, and nourished the concept of a democracy under the government of the people, for the people and by the people.

As the exchange of views about America that we either love or hate detours towards personal hissing and drifts towards name-calling thus graduating into a slam-bang of personal animosity and hostility, the widening chasm of disagreement becomes an abyss that only then we realize that the South and North Poles are really not located in the same quadrant of planet Earth … that is if we no longer have this doubt that our critics who surprisingly disagree with us with such unbridled innocence if not unforgivable ignorance are not really from this planet but from Mars.

How we alienate ourselves from each other that much not only incredibly astounded me but also extremely disturbed my calm, peace and quiet in this kind of virtual anarchism. When I think about it in my private moments by the fireplace, I gasp breathlessly, and when I saw myself in a haze of doubt and skepticism if I myself was a silent partisan in the controversy, my jaw simply dropped with utter disbelief. We go to school to learn the basic refinements of life, the art of self-discipline, civility and niceties of our personal relationship with our neighbors in particular, and with our fellowmen in general, and from kindergarten had learned good manners and right conduct … in short, we were taught how to be human and humane [more so on how to be polite and compassionate], but in the heat of the argument we snap and lose our cool and turn ourselves into extinct habitués of the zoo.

In the great divide, we ask ourselves nonchalantly if not out of malice how and by what meanness we are exclusively identifying ourselves from the rest in the animal kingdom. To our shocking discovery, we see the same way carnivorous are identified by the food they eat. We sink our fangs on principles and make mincemeat out of our opponent.

We are either red or blue in politics. In the battlefield of our differences, those who hate America camp out in the radical side of the great divide. Known as the left-leaning progressive or liberal ideologues, they are in an everlasting search of a new paradigm; the norm is static and temporary, while they are dynamic and contradictory, philosophically free to roam in the wilderness of individual rights, liberty and freedom where reality is relative and, as a concept, truth is open-ended.

The so-called Guardians of the Realm, the conservatives in Lincoln’s camp that lean to the Right, claim that they are the defenders of institutionalized American ideals and traditional values. They are proud in declaring that our forefathers impregnated these birthmarks in the womb of freedom and liberty when they founded this nation; from the other side of the great divide, they preach their beliefs and pontificate their concerns of what might become of America if they are not in control … if the ship of state is left to the wind uncharted and unmanned. They believe in divine intervention when ungodly challenged, and premise their arguments on “In God We Trust”.

We are either in this side or that side of this great divide. And we are committed to the side we chose, which is why most often when we clash with opponents in public, our civility spins out of control. When it does, the outcome is ugly.

Corollary to Rodney King’s concerns if we cannot get along, divided, are we going to win the war in Iraq? If we lose, will it mean a war in the homeland? It is fearsome to even think about, more so if and when this comes to pass.

On the other hand, if we win this war, is another war unavoidable … the bombing and invasion of Iran inevitable?

There is this rising hate-America contagion. Because of it, we are likely to lose the war whichever and wherever that is – war in Iraq, war in the homeland or elsewhere… anywhere.

“Nemesis…” a radical book written by Chalmers Johnson -- a call in the wilderness to demonize America, which in effect is similar to a call to arms to overthrow the government, and implode the “evil empire” from within -- like many other several scholarly written hate-America discourses, has to be reviewed to give the average American a chance to decide whether or not America is truly evil that should be erased from the map. In this book, many disagreeing Americans believed the country is being lampooned to a serious injury if not to death. This is pointed out in my published editorial review. At least this wounded nation must be allowed to breathe.

Our main concern is not how to restrain the discontented from hating America, but rather how to prevent this country from falling apart out of discontentment, and worse when public combatants relish on the aggravation of the conflict, their hands reaching at each other’s throat. And all of these depend on how we argue our peace, nay compromise with our adversaries across the great divide to earn our peace.

To back this up, I stand four squares on my belief that anyone has a right to say that this government and its supporters are his/her own mortal enemies. Anyone’s freedom to love or hate, what not to believe, not whom to believe, not why and when to believe is also my freedom of choice to love or hate, what, whom, why and when to believe as I please. We are our own universe. This is how I would end our animosities in a public debate with neither a winner nor a loser.

To me it is more than enough if our differences of outlook in life in this great divide are publicly discussed with respect, and much more concluded in a polite and cordial manner. In this home country where we reside and live for good, we cannot be as irrational as dogs and cats are that break the chinaware and makes a mess out of the furniture in the house.

After all, we are the only rational beings on the planet.

© Copyright Edwin A. Sumcad. Access October 27, 2007.

The writer is a veteran diplomat-journalist for more than 45 years and a recipient of excellence awards in journalism. He is a former Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations; he is also an economist, a lawyer and an ASEAN specialist on fiscal policy and regional industrial cooperation. His human interest writings and editorial insights appear in other publications and published in several websites. A brief comment may be e-mailed to ed.superx722@yahoo.com.sg. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it