There are songs that are much more than songs.
Songs that capture you not because of their exceptional qualities, but because of their ability to capture something of the spirit of the period, to be precise, to diagnose and to formulate.
Such is the "victim" of Ravid Plotnik, who in three minutes and a bit says what many of us think.
"It's the heretical secular infidels. It's the religious, it's the diggers who dig ... it's the radical left, it's the far right. It's Bibi, you know what? It's Bibi! ... It's everything, everything but me."
Such are we lately, and this is what our political discourse looks like.
Each side flaunts the righteousness of its way, shuts itself in on one side of a fortified wall, and launches from there verbal catapults towards the other side.
The (temporary) climax of the unconscious civil war in which we are trapped is the chain of talkbacks recently published by Zehava Gal-On in the Haaretz newspaper. Galon is no longer trying to convince, she has long since moved on to wearing the menace suit. Courtesy of similar insults raining down on various right-wingers towards left-wingers, Israeli reality is increasingly reminiscent of a scene from a Trentino film: each side aiming a gun at the other side's tip, threatening and threatening, and both grasping at death, in a struggle that promises loss to all.
The picture that emerges from recent polls is clear: no faction has an absolute majority. One can wish for one seat to be moved from side to side, but a random majority will not change the picture: Israeli society is divided between two camps, and no significant shift is in sight. There are many reasons for this situation, and it seems that one of the main ones is the transition we have made from ideology to sociology. The political debate is presented today as a reflection of the class gaps that exist in Israeli society. We used to tend to see a political position as the result of deep and reasoned thinking, but now it is presented as a direct result of our social habitat; Once upon a time there was room for debate, however sharp, for ideological questions, today such a debate is increasingly perceived as a complete waste of time. Tell me where you grew up, and I'll tell you what your position is. Infants in a development town, girls in a kibbutz, youth in a high school yeshiva or living in the old north of Tel Aviv are presented as crucial factors in shaping our identity, and in the note we put and other women at the ballot box of the next election.
This approach has a degree of justice.
Man is a landscape model of his homeland, but also much more than that.
Departure station is not changeable, while destination - yes.
Politics must first be based on ideological and value arguments and a constant attempt to persuade the other.
In politics based on social circles there is no point in exchanging opinions.
The winning party is the one whose people had more power, but not necessarily a vision.
Such a victory may ensure temporary prosperity, but also increase the vengeance of the opposing party.
The result is a political arena of handshakes rather than discourse.
It seems that the only way to get us out of the deadlock we have fallen into is to talk ideology again.
Argue about the proper treatment of organized labor, for example, or the need to separate religion from the state.
If we continue to talk about "the first and second Israel," we will not be able to move.
If we feel we are a people, we can start walking.