~a column by Colleen O’Brien
In this new century, we live with a few dilemmas, most of which have to do with what side we’re on. As with the watershed of the Continental Divide, or, closer to home, the M and M Divide (Mississippi/Missouri), we’re all slipping down one slope or another, looking back across a chasm at the other guy. It’s as if we’re perched on the edge of a Grand Canyon – a giant hole of a divide with no way of getting across. Congress, another large hole, teaches us how to be divisive.
Non-agreement is the fabric of our country, and people decry it.
But, it’s always been thus. We are not a homogenous population; we come from everywhere and our ancestors brought their countries with them. Everyone’s a foreigner someplace.
A friend of mine visited in the Cotswalds in England and returned with stories of how well people got along, how all were on the same page, how serene it was visiting there. “But I wouldn’t want to live there,” she said. “Nobody has an opinion different from her neighbor. It’s the most homogenous place I’ve ever been, and it got very boring . . . everyone was alike.”
Since we don’t have that problem, the current divides appear gargantuan, and these divides make quite the list – climate change, evolution (still!), immigrants (perennial), fossil fuels vs. sustainable energy, public schools or charter schools, big government or small government (and some are interested in anarchy, which is another definition for Congress), organic vs. GMO, confined pigs or, as my son at 4 said the first time he was in Iowa seeing animals hanging around farmyards rather than sitting sedately in pens at the San Diego zoo, “Dad! Those pigs are loose!”
This is an incomplete list, but I only have so much room.
The critical dilemma is not that we have dilemmas but when we get tired of the discord and opt out: “I quit reading the newspaper because it’s all bad news.” (duh) “I don’t watch TV news because they never tell me anything.” “It’s all opinion, not news.” “The problems are too big; no one can solve them.”
It is an easy place to go, the land of the uninformed. I certainly have problems of my own without being burdened by fixating on the ills of the democracy. Let’s just watch a ballgame, I say!
But, we all compromise privately on a daily basis, so what’s the big deal about compromising on how our country is run? Subsidies for wind energy as well as for oil drilling? Or simply making the tax system equitable? We are a country founded on hard-fought compromise; seems to me we could back off our pride somewhat and work on a little more give instead of all take.
The smaller the group, the easier this is, no doubt. And it helps when we all come to the table with goodwill rather than my-way-or-the-highway points of view. And it doesn’t hurt to cultivate a sense of humor, which is different from a sense of wit. A witty man is clever, but someone with a sense of humor is what we love because he can laugh at himself. (If this happened in DC, voters would really think the media liars.)
The danger is in giving up, opting out, letting the discordant win. I’m not sure what the answer is, but staying informed and telling our reps what we want are important routes to take for a representative democracy.
It’s not an easy way to govern, but it’s better living than in totalitarian regimes and dictators. We do get to vote – even women, Native Americans, African Americans and people who don’t own property – none of these could vote under the initial Constitution. Compromise has brought us a great deal. That we’re not an oligarchy yet is only that there are enough who stay the course and try to work it out.
One would think that more news of what’s going on in Washington would be a better thing for our democracy – freedom of the press was something fought for. But, really, so much of our media is not news, just blustering. This has been true for two centuries, so we should be practiced at separating the chaff from the wheat. It’s only when we quit paying attention that we become endangered. If we let it go, soon we’ll be getting only chaff.
Little doses, that’s how I take it. With plenty of poking fun, laughing at the blowhards. Choosing one’s battles, whatever one’s interests. And remembering something Thomas Jefferson said —
“If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs . . . Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors shall all become wolves.”
