Weekly Comments from Dale Martin

Dale Martin

City Manager

June 17, 2016 1:00 a.m.

Dale Martin

My twin daughters graduated from high school last weekend. Like the parents of the other millions of high school and college graduates throughout the country, I wonder what truly awaits their generation.

I graduated from high school in 1981. The world was building toward the climatic end of the Cold War, but no one could foretell what the “end” would be. I remember optimistic about the future. I was excited to start my college years, earn a degree, and become an adult with a family and career.

I know how I see the world now, and it is perhaps that jaded cynicism that makes me worry about what Abigail and Meaghan are about to step into. Sadly, I see and, perhaps naively for the first time, recognize that it is hatred that has insidiously infected our way of life, our community, our country, and our world.

When I lived in Germany in the early 1990s following the “quiet” end to the Cold War, I distinctly remember a news story that highlighted deep-rooted nationalistic hatreds in Eastern Europe that had been overshadowed by the Soviet hegemony in the region. After the Soviet Union collapsed, those hatreds renewed. The story detailed how the peoples of one nation hated other nations because of generations-old territorial and ethnic disputes.

I grew up in metropolitan Detroit. The region was socially, racially, and ethnically diverse, but I never felt “hatred” emanating from any group. Obviously, differences existed, but the sense of community was still strong (and despite decades of absence, I still have a deep affinity for Detroit and the spirit of its people).

The depth of the ethnic hatreds truly struck me when I was assigned to be a staff intelligence officer. My specific area of responsibility was the fracturing of what was then Yugoslavia. It was a cauldron of hatred among the Serbs, the Croatians, and the Bosnians. Every day, I had to read and report on the roving bands that plundered, raped, and massacred simply because their victims were different. One of the unsuccessful resolutions to the conflict was to basically recognize and codify the hatreds: the Vance-Owen peace plan was designed to divide the former nation of Yugoslavia into ten states, three each designated for the Serbs, the Croats, and the Bosnians, with the final state, surrounding the city of Sarajevo, as neutral territory.

Is the same level of hatred growing here?

I do not endorse a presidential candidate’s call to “build a wall,” but haven’t we been building figurative walls for years?

Those “walls” are the internet sites we visit, the newspapers we read, and the people with whom we associate. We self-segregate and attack, in many cases with unhampered vitriol, those that are simply different. It is a growing lament as to how we have two leading presidential candidates with abysmal ratings for trust and confidence. We’ve done that to ourselves. Personally, even before the field of candidates has been reduced to the final two or three, none of the early candidates inspired me much, either.

We have reduced ourselves to selecting our “leaders” based upon sound bytes and video snippets. Questions regarding philosophy and policy are deflected to specific (and often unrelated) talking points. Then again, many of the questions posed by the media today have an editorial, or “gotcha,” slant rather than a serious journalistic inquiry: context is ignored and comments are warped.

Where has statesmanship and governance and leadership gone? Is our political environment at the national level driven by the local environment or vice versa? In Connecticut, local elections are partisan-based, and the rancor at that level mirrored the intransigence at the state and federal level. The whole system is infected with unyielding and growing disrespect and hatred.

My daughters’ first opportunity to cast a vote for the President will likely be memorable for all the wrong reasons. It will be a long summer of partisan-inspired viciousness and, in the worst cases, violence. The greater fear that I have for my girls is that the hatred will get even deeper on November 9, the day after the presidential election, and one candidate wins and the other loses.

Consider the “walls” that you have built. Recognize that we all have differences, but we also have an incredible national strength due to that diversity. We’re going to need that strength over the next five months and beyond.

Welcome to modern American adulthood, girls. You now have the opportunity to play a role in all of our futures. Don’t take it lightly, and perhaps things might just work out.