ubiquitous surrender

partisan designations abound

Two long-time ACC readers took time to respond to my opening yesterday noting two folks dropping this column. I should have said, I suppose, that I have had people drop before. One was a prominent China scholar who likely found I did insufficient discussion on the Middle Kingdom for her interests while the few other people who disabled their accounts for whatever reason—substack.com generates a message regarding anyone signing up or dropping—may have decided they lacked time to read, found it too boring, found it too interesting (ya never know) or worried I was abusing my cats by photographing them too often. I only suspected these two dropped yesterday because of my column Monday but I have no proof other than timing.

I decided when a former colleague, someone I travelled with to China several years ago, disabled his paid subscription that I would not pursue it with him, though I was mightily tempted. I was curious about what I could have done to keep his loyalty but decided I owed him the right to end the subscription if he so chose. I continue writing personal welcome notes to new subscribers, however, because I genuinely want them to understand my sole intention: to expand civil, measured discourse on the panoply of issues confronting our world.

I oppose unmitigating partisanship because it is corroding everything about our system. In particular, it is seriously undermining any ability to function as a society. Over the past decade, it has severely weakened virtually all attempts for bipartisanship—which by its definition means ‘representing, characterised by, or including members of two or more parties’—on matters for the entire country.

Again in a country with 340 million individuals, it is laughable to expect a single view, a single accent, a single preference for barbeque (although there is no barbeque except Kansas City, of course), or a single political voice. Yet, that is what we hear as the desired outcome for so many figures on the political stage. Let me say this again: many figures on the stage, not merely from one party or the other although I think the Republicans have more of this behaviour right now. But don’t kid yourself: the far left was so hostile to anyone by Bernie in 2020 and retains a decidedly driven voice within the Party. But it’s a voice rather than the voice.

My fear about partisanship is we are using it as an excuse for the hatreds too many people are harbouring because of anticipated differences rather than knowledge of people or their actual views. I fear we are not even giving people a chance but too many of us are judging others based on what we assume their partisan preferences are and mean. I am not sure we bother finding preferences, by the way, but assuming we know them.

Actions—developing assumptions without testing them—creates consequences.

Those assumptions creating approvals or disapprovals are leading us to ignore truths and falsehoods.

They are leading us to sanction hateful acts towards people because of extended assumptions about preferences, actions, and motivations in the purely conditional sense of the English language. This includes how we react to close relatives and friends we have known for decades. It also pertains to those we have never even met but assume we know by hearing of their anticipated political stances.

Partisan designation has become an absolute designator for support, for dismissal, and for distrust. We are excusing hatred as if it were normal and acceptable.

Listen to this fall to hear whether political candidates still say they will work across the aisle. I suspect we will hear far less of that as the idea of working with the other side now is seen as despicable failure rather than the apotheosis of successful democracy. Our language is increasingly shifting from describing humans to animals, if not extraterrestrials.

Uh, no, we are all still humans. It’s 100% the case, even if we are not acting like it. We are humans.

We cannot fix our country if we continue this childlike behaviour. Are you or am I rewarding politicians who behave this way? Every bloody time we vote for someone who throws in the towel to engage in this behaviour, we are reinforcing it.

Listen to what we are saying as a country.

Don’t tell me it’s just the other woman or guy: are YOU doing it as well? Are you stopping someone in a conversation who engages in anti-semitism? Are you walking out of a conversation belittling the hard working Guatemalan-American guy working four jobs so he can send his kids to private school? Are you lauding bipartisan negotiation with a call to support your Senator when he talks with the other party on a piece of legislation?

What are you or I doing?

If you believe that the shattering rhetoric about other people destroys our society, then stop participating in every single way you can.

When Jews sought to build a Jewish state in the face of anti-Semitic pogroms in the Pale of Settlement at the end of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, a single Jew largely argued he would not continue speaking Yiddish or Polish or any other imported language. Eliezer ben-Yahuda worked day by day, step by step to create modern spoken Hebrew as the lingua franca of Jews in what is now Israel. It did not happen overnight but it happened by repeated actions and persistence in the face of lethargy by others.

I have noted here several times that service dog training relies completely on positive reinforcement without providing even the smallest hint of reinforcement to negative behaviours. The same is true for how we can change our politicians current behaviour if they want to represent us. We hold the power, not them.

We can walk away from the current hatreds, distrust, utterly dehumanising rhetoric an assumptions if we want to. We currently don’t seem to care but it is shredding our society. We are empowering people who seek to destroy all this country has built because they are unwilling to look for inclusive manners to discuss differences. Attacking someone for differences is never a solution and is unsustainable over the long term as differences exist.

Differences are normal human intercourse, friends.

And they always will be. Can we manage differences through perpetual litigation, creating parallel school systems, dismissing someone because of her state or region of origin as either naive, uneducated, or liberal? These are meaningless terms we have empowered to substitute for analysis, thought, and exchanging of ideas.

We can change this if we want to.

Punto final: if we want to do so.

A friend wrote me the following last night that is worthy of a reminder to all of us, regardless where we are on the political spectrum (which after all is a spectrum rather than a yes or not vote):

‘… a number of Russians whom I knew told me that "It is no accident we got Stalin."  If almost half my fellow citizens {in the United States} continue in effect to ignore the constitution and  laws in their vote, it will be no accident that we lose our rule of law and our liberties.  I fully agree with you that this should not be a partisan question.  That it clearly has become one for many people bodes ill for our country.’

I agree with my friend above and don’t want to sacrifice the most fundamental steps of this country for my kids, grands, and others.

Are partisan designators without any further consideration really worth plunging us into the horrors of losing our rule of law and our liberties? That is what we are hearing too often and where our hatred across the political landscape are taking us.

Actions create consequences—good and bad. Are we really so weak we are going to throw two hundred fifty years of work away because we see the other side as so evil? We have the power to strengthen what behaviours we want, then policies can follow.

You and I have that power right now as Dorothy had the power to get home to Kansas but thought it was elusive. No, but we have to be disciplined to support what we desire rather than falling prey to the unseemly, taking the bait for the destructive voices anywhere we hear them.

Thank you for reading this. If I sound urgent, I feel things slipping away from us as a society. What do you see? What actions have you taken lately to reinforce the good? Share them, please.

Actions create consequences is my humble attempt to spur conversation. I am not always right nor is anyone else. But, I am always right if I only talk with myself. This is your chance to talk with others in a measured, safe manner.

A pro pos my feelings, the fog set in at about 0515 this morning. I could not see the Maryland State House across the Creek, much less the Academy lights.

Be well and be safe. FIN

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