The aftertaste of democracy

So, here’s the thing that’s most disappointing to me. It’s not that one side or the other wins this race or that race, control of a legislature, or anything like that. There’s going to be a normal ebb and flow for that sort of thing, which we need. (Granted, it IS hard to believe that the same country that elected Bill Clinton twice could also elect George W. Bush twice.) It’s that the level of discourse, political and otherwise, has become so polarized, so vicious, so filled with hate and intolerance on both sides that it seems that anyone who could conduct himself as a gentleman, who could allow that maybe the other side’s point of view isn’t insane, who could express even the slightest of doubts would be eaten alive in half a news-cycle and spit out the other side (“Goodbye, Governor Dean!”).

It’s hard to know the truth of this because it coincides with my coming-of-age, so to speak, but it seems that things really started to get polarized with the election of Ronald Reagan. Now, I wasn’t any too thrilled with Jimmy Carter, though now I feel a bit of nostalgia for someone who would rather scold me and tell me to put on my sweater when I’m cold than tell me what kind of medical therapy I’m allowed to have based on his theological beliefs. We were rattling our sabres over Afghanistan, and as they started up draft registration, I felt betrayed by Carter — betrayed that my Democratic government would start to mobilize the Selective Service in order to show “resolve” toward the Soviet Union. (Don’t get me wrong — if there had been a draft, that would have been an entirely different thing. This was a surrender of our rights in order to show that we COULD be called up, if it became necessary.) Reagan opposed conscription. It was that simple for a 20-year-old male at the second peak of the Cold War. (Unfortunately, I got the chance to feel betrayed a second time when Reagan maintained the draft registration system.)

But almost immediately upon Reagan’s election, a particularly nasty partisanism came to a boil, and with rare exceptions, it’s been there in national presidential politics ever since. I listened for eight years as my many more-liberal-than-me friends decried the evils of The Great Communicator (applied to Reagan, an insult; later applied to Clinton by the same people, praise), and while I had no great love for the draft registration betrayal and his utter slashing of my student aid, neither did I believe he was responsible for crabgrass, the hole in the ozone layer, or my chronic hangnails. As I watched leftist arguments devolve into the silly (I mean, you really do have to expect people might tune you out when you take on the Mercator Projection as a tool of imperialism), I became more and more disillusioned with the level of discourse. Again, this was going on from both sides. Bush 1 wasn’t that bad a term in those ways — he was more moderate and didn’t seem to pander to the religious right as much as his predecessor (and successor). Then came Bill Clinton, and discourse was reduced to the baying of angry hounds. It hasn’t gotten better since.

I’ve had significant training in conflict resolution. My job puts me between people and what they want to do every day. I am often expected to broker compromise. I like doing that. It’s a good way to serve the people. But in our political discourse, we’ve jettisoned compromise — anything less than total domination is considered failure. The idea that both sides get a little is now almost incomprehensible, because that would mean that one side doesn’t get everything! We have truly become a land of INtolerance, on both sides. We have supporters of both candidates screaming that anyone who supports the other side must actually have something wrong with them, and treating them as such.

And so for a while today I really just had to put my head down. Not because there’s no change — I didn’t expect there would be — but because the results on the national level will just reinforce the already dug-in positions of both sides. One will say: “A-ha! We’ve got a mandate! Our power is growing, and we must be on the right track! That means our opponents are on the wrong track, and must be stopped” And the other side will say, “Our opponents are on the wrong track, and must be stopped!” And there’s no willingness to find any middle ground on anything.

So, here’s my little wish for the next four years. I wish we could all accept that people who disagree with us are not necessarily evil, that they are not necessarily out to do us harm, that they may in fact have a legitimate point of view. And I wish we would then argue for our own points without vilifying the other side. If I want government to get out of my public library records and to leave the science to the scientists (which we used to call conservative values, by the way), I need to argue that point without labeling people who don’t feel the same way as hopeless, dangerous troglodytes.

Because, really, the idea that I would be nostalgic for a presidential scolding is just too much to bear.