I wrote this a week ago and with the help of a friend refined it to make it worthy of a post. The recent lying meme making it's way to the press made me pull back but maybe it's still worthy of a post because I touch on other areas that I think are missing from our national conversation.
More than at any time in my life people are talking about politics. That’s good. Let me quote Plato in his of-the-time wording -
"The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by lesser men".
Needless to say this is not a time for lesser men and we want to change it, so we are talking about it.
But I want to talk about something else now for a while. We’ve had many great and not so great conversations but one thing I’ve realized is that we all want the same things whether we are Republicans or Democrats or Independents. We want to live our lives free to provide for our families and share with our friends. None of us have aspirations to be the President or become the next Warren Buffett. We mostly just want to be left alone to enjoy life. In this quest our children and grandchildren are a crucial part of the equation we all construct to either create or find a place in the world where we are free to live this life. We want them to have the same or better opportunities for their lives.
What’s got me to this point was reading an article by Glenn Greenwald talking about the media. While reading it I wondered how, given the dramatically different campaigns of Obama and McCain, we could disagree on who we would vote for. From my perspective of paying very close attention and studying politics and running for office there is no real choice for those of us who believe as we all do. The divergence of character of the two campaigns could not be more clear to me. I wondered why everyone else didn't see it the same way.
Greenwald’s article helped me to see why. Glenn is among other things intensely interested in the media and the role it plays in our society. In this article two journalists are having a conversation. One of them says to the other -
"To move to a Greenwaldian debate about the duties, obligations and frustrations of the press -- well -- read elsewhere if you want to play that game. I'll abstain".
Further down the article the other journalist says -
"As for the duties and obligations of the press, unlike Glenn Greenwald I don't talk about that stuff because I've had the opportunity to work alongside a lot of journalists over the years and know that, self-righteousness aside, working journalists don't in practice operate as if they have any particular duties or obligations beyond the basic self-interest that drives people in all lines of work".
I was stunned. Finally, the question of media bias and constructing dishonest narratives had been answered – they don’t care. Some do, I know. Some really are biased, I know, but most don’t care. They simply allow the winds to blow them around like leaves.
What makes this so telling and important is that I know that our national conversation and the narratives we embrace are shaped by the many things but one of the most important is the media. People have to lead their lives and unless they totally immerse themselves in politics and governing then it’s a real struggle to figure out what’s what. Compounding this problem is our political persuasion which leads us to absorb one message or the other depending on what "side" we want to win. Most of us don't put team before country. That’s a given. But most of us have gravitated to one side of the center of the political spectrum even while trying really hard to remain objective and fair. Easier said than done, isn’t it?
So, what’s going on and where do we start? Some observations I've made:
Over the past 25 years I have witnessed the decline and change in our national character and the nastiness of our national conversation.
Many of us are all old enough to remember when our parents and teachers and adults talked about, taught and practiced the Golden Rule – Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Many of us are all old enough to remember when lying was one of the worst thing you could do. It was so bad that our mothers or other adults would threaten to wash our mouths out with soap.
Many of us are all old enough to remember when saying "damn" would result in the same soap mouth rinse.
Many of us are all old enough to remember our parents saying "If you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all".
Many of us remember when a handshake in a business deal was a bond and the papers were a mere formality.
What happened to that world? What happened to that society? What happened to those ideals?
I don't want to go back to that time and maybe those ideals didn’t really exist. No, surely, they didn’t exist absolutely but the national conversation and our national character embraced these as ideals that we wanted to strive for. Our leaders and the media lead us in that conversation. They encouraged us to practice those ideals and share them with our families and friends and neighbors and others.
And then guess what? We became the most powerful country on earth and its moral leader with those as our ideals. Let that sink in. Go back and repeat it to yourselves and let me know if I’ve got it wrong.
Did those ideals help us or were they just parallel other more important factors? I don't know but they didn't hurt.
It is no secret that most of what we see on TV or hear on the radio or read about in the papers or read on the internet pretends that none of these principles apply to us anymore except in a very few places. We have become above such naïve concepts and think we don’t need them any more. That perception is why we talk about declining morality, slimy lawyers and crooked politicians. We see the world and our country as gone off the deep end and our society corrupted by greed and selfishness. I see that and you see that -- yet in our family and personal lives we are surrounded by love and caring people. Part of that is that family is strong and our friendships chosen to enhance our lives. Why is there such a disconnect?
As a country and as communities we have no direct control over others so we expect our leaders and politicians to keep the rest of the world of greed and selfishness out of our world. Our politicians practiced partisan elections but governed as Americans while urging us to follow the principles we all still live by. Cops were nice guys and firemen were heroes. Businessman gave us goods and services with a smile and a handshake was their bond. It was not absolutely true but we wanted it to be and we thought it was worth striving for.
Now winning and power and money are all that seem to matter. Our political culture has become nihilistic, devoid of real meaning and values. Lying well has become admirable and playing fair is for fools. That's not the America I grew up with. It's not an America I accept.