solutions require action

complaints are insufficient

What seems like a million years ago when Gerald Ford (yes, we had a president Gerald Rudolph Ford who stepped into the breech during a pretty wretched period) lived in the White House, I started my career in a different branch of the federal government from where I retired last year. It wasn’t a good fit but I learned two paramount lessons still serving me well.

First, we serve the taxpayer and need be responsible with their contributions, most of which they provide grudgingly. I have always tried to uphold that which I find relatively straight forward.

Second, it wasn’t enough to identify problems because one must also offer, insufficient or humble as it may be, a solution to move the process of governing forward. Governing is done by people like you and me; for all the ridiculous hype and rhetoric I have heard over the past few decades as if government employees emptied out spaceships from a distant universe, all branches and offices of government employee citizens like you and me. Universal truth. Just like those who like raisins and mushrooms, both of which should be banned from kitchens, people have different preferences, views, and priorities. (I suppose some of you wouldn’t like my penchance for hot sauce, either, hard as that is to believe) But we have to collaborate to govern: that requires compromise and conversation.

One of my longest friends who reads this from sunny California asked me yesterday what we should do as I proclaimed it insufficient to blame others for our failure to protect our children and society as a whole. She was absolutely correct to ask that because, in the end, it’s the solution(s) that matter the most. So, thank you.

I don’t have a fixed answer to pull out of my pocket though I fear somewhere in America there will be another mass shooting today. But, I see this as a time when we need apply small steps, as that is all I think is feasible now, in building momentum towards a solution. As you know, I heartily support the Japanese view of kaizen, small but sustained gradual improvement.

Before I start, please pile on with thoughts! The point of Actions Create Consequences truly is not for you to hear me but for us to converse. I confess I am not original in probably any of these but perhaps that is the point.

And conversing is the first thing we need do. For the past twenty years, or perhaps thirty when Bill Clinton’s election so infuriated those who hated him, we stopped talking to one another. We—on the left, on the right, in the middle, and everywhere else—decide on a particular attribute someone has, then we decide we fear (we often couch it in the passive ‘are offended by’ but it’s fear) it with the intention of destroying it. Our language (mine included, I am sorry to acknowledge) is too often hyperbole when we could simply state our difference, then let it go.

The attributes we are choosing, however, to fear are way too often immutable. That is a real problem. I genuinely believe this almost ubiquous yet I must confess the more readily available examples are on the right as I cast about to explain. Religion has become one of those attributes we fear. Let me say that another way: instead of religious orientation or beliefs which are actually ideas that can and do morph are now seen in this country overwhelmingly as a basis for hatred of others. Do we hate the people ascribing to the religion or something else? This matters a great deal. Religion can be changed but it’s become so ingrained in us to hate people whose religious allows or supports things we don’t. That is pretty close to immutable.

Religion is not the sole attribute but it is one that can change upon deep reflection. Strikes me as something we ought ponder as a reason for hatred.

Skin colour is immutable for certain. But that is a more powerful question: why are we determined to hate people based on a characteristic that is inalterable? Ought we be asking what our objectives are instead of about one’s race? I fully understand race can be clear but it’s also rarely as simple as colour of skin. That is why people are fascinated by genetic tests so they can find out what is not obvious.

In the realm of political movements seeking to control power, the truth is absolutely clear that we are a blended society. Call it naive but not talking to someone because of the colour of her skin is at its base ludicrous unless one thinks living in a bubble for 81 years is desirable. Yet that is where we are.

We need additionally to watch our language as I said earlier. Harsh comments leave bitter impressions about those with whom we disagree.

The reason we need talk with one another is there are now 335,000,000 of us with more coming along daily. It’s bloody hard to imagine finding five people with exactly the same views (escept that we are correct which we all think we are) on the top 100 public policy questions facing this country. If I am correct, how on earth do we get a third of a billion people sharing the same country to act like a nation much less progress into an ever more complicated and complex future?

Congress, among its other responsibilities, used to be a body where we saw discussion and debate and truly exchanging ideas. Campaigns were a manner of discussion but today often focus on vitriol with nothing constructive at all, nada. We no longer have that in Congress, we no longer have it in schools, and we no longer value it. That is a recipe for misunderstanding someone else’s cherished views while precluding any collaboration on policy—such as gun policy. There are lots of reasons but we absolutely need to think hard about who we elect to office on the issues mattering to each of us. If we think our views are not synonymous with the views and priorities of a candidate, we each have to decide whether we care more about sensible gun laws versus some other sexy issue like woke-ism or aid to Ukraine or anything else. What are we really seeking?

Democracies operate on rule of the majority but that isn’t where we are right now on guns. Why not? Because we have each voted for candidates whose concerns often revolve around polarising rhetoric about others’ intentions and attributes without focusing on what is necessary to be a problem-solver. I KNOW every candidate says she or he will work with the other side but how often does everything else that candidate says indicate a desire to eviserate the other side? Come on, gang. Let’s not be crazy here: governing requires compromise within a wholistic view of a desired society. Yes, there are people who want a fully-armed society but that is not the majority at all. Someone wins and someone loses each time we have a political choice but this is too often failing to consider long-term implications of short term votes.

We need be involved. It’s our country, not someone else’s. If we turn over governing to the pols, then we are guaranteed we will have fewer of our individual concerns met. And no, I am not guaranteeing that being at every local meeting will reach the goal you or I want but I am saying that we will be far less surprised by outcomes we dispise.

Of course we are all busy. Of course we have other concerns—children, commuting, eating well, caring for aging families, reading columns like this, etc. etc. etc. etc. But we are not quite as busy as we all profess as we find plenty of time either to whine about things or fear. We could each contribute a few minutes daily to writing our Representatives or Senators to show we are about prohibiting every person in the country from buying an AR 15. Voices matter. They do and these folks desiring to return over and over and over actually listen a lot. But the louder voices get more attentnion.

One final action that perhaps we have most missed in the past. We need focus on small gains rather than see anything other than banning guns entirely as failure. I realise that is risky but we need to focus on the lives we can save by even reasonable small steps.

I realise this is exceptionally small potatoes but it’s a start. I remember telling a counselor in 2000 or 2001 that I couldn’t do something until I got my mind in order on the topic. She said no, it’s clear in psychology that actions drive thought rather than the other way around. I couldn’t believe it but in the 23 years since I always remember that and it’s clear she was right. So, let’s get moving if we want to do anything on gun safely.FIN