They are all around us even if we don’t know they are there. I didn’t really know what hot-buttons were a few years ago; now I can’t tap out a couple of hundred words without touching a hot-button and igniting a firestorm of response. Suddenly we are a polarized people and Elk Avenue is no longer isolated enough to be immune.
Perhaps it is a matter of perception and I am over-reacting. Back in the day, a hot-button issue was whether I let my hair grow longer than GI Joe. Wild and crazy hippies were an issue when rednecks cruised Main Street using sheep shears to impose sartorial standards. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll were contentious in a society changing from the values of my father to those of his son.
Barber shops and bars are traditionally places where discussion devolves to religion, politics and other hot-buttons. I always thought that might be dangerous in barber shops where men wielded sharp instruments and respondents were captive in a barber chair. Now, of course, the discussion pool is limited because walk-in clients don’t sit around and instead must make appointments.
Bars remain places where alcohol loosens tongues, fires emotions and encourages hot-buttons. While I no longer spend any time in that environment, I remember well hot-buttons that when touched, caused venerable guzzlers to forgo their beverage and walk out the door. Politics has always been a hot-button.
It is certainly no less so now, although I suspect the definition of politics has expanded to fully encompass affairs of state foreign and domestic, government—how much, how little—and policy crafted by governance.
Since I am by no means, and never have been an outright anarchist, I concern myself with government and governance. That means, if I talk about it at all, I’m always pushing the politics hot-button.
I’m told there was a time when a majority of Americans were pretty much on the same page regarding their government, although I bet that attitude falls under the rubric of Pollyanna good ole’ days. On this point, the hot-button is revisionist history; the first generation makes history, the second generation remembers and the third forgets. Get used to it.
Perhaps every generation believes it is living through uniquely interesting times, and that future and past generations experienced bland, either good or bad times. The Great Depression, for example, was interesting only to those able to sustain themselves through the economic debacle. To everyone else, it was a bad time. We remember the Eisenhower era as a time of American well-being. But ask those persecuted under Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts if they were happy. Oh yeah: communism was a hot-button.
The relative heat of buttons varies with time and throughout history. During the Clinton Presidency, for example, the hottest button out there was Monica Lewinski…or maybe that was just an excuse. Undoubtedly, some folks hated Clinton as much as I hated his successor and set about spending millions on impeachment that had no effect whatsoever. That was a hot-button for me.
George Bush refined the art of heating buttons to a fine point. He created hot-buttons with red herrings, deflecting criticism from the Iraq War, for example, into whether and how gay people should serve in his armies. Finally, through his own ineptitude, Bush himself became the hot-button…at least in my experience.
Hot-buttons tickle my fingers now; health care reform is practically as hot as buttons get. No wonder, since the amount people pay for health insurance increased 30 percent from 2001 to 2005, while income for the same period increased only 3 percent. Approximately 50 percent of personal bankruptcies are due to medical expenses. We are a better nation than to countenance that.
The latest hot-button is President Obama’s address to the country’s school children. Conservatives fear the President will somehow brainwash kids, which to me demonstrates lack of confidence in their own parenting skills.
Ouch! Hot! My keyboard is melting.
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