What happened to the indivisible nation?
I’m generalizing, but up in Boston, they drive like bullies. They figure the problem is the other vehicle, which must be vanquished. It becomes a habit to obstruct other vehicles, even when it doesn’t help your own situation.
Anyone notice our country is just a little polarized? Everyone talks past each other, or shouts AT each other. No one even pretends to listen anymore. Our minds are already made up, based on whatever. We know for certain we definitely disagree with those other so-and-so’s.
Also, we are angry at those others. No matter what the discussion, we’ll stop discussing and start attacking after about two sentences, even when it does nothing to promote our own beliefs. We discuss the same way Bostonians drive.
Our new American way: Blame the unforgivable others. Unending blaming spins class warfare, racial animosities, religious judgments and ideological conflicts. We can see that our own region is also full of anger — between new immigrants and previous immigrants; between oppressed lesbian women and oppressed transgender women; between the haves and the have-nots; between the fundamentalists and the funky.
In all these cases, like Boston drivers, we could, if we chose to, see that we have a lot in common and we could all much more easily get where we want to be if we worked together. Instead we choose to blame the other. Instead of looking for similarities to make allies, we look for differences and make enemies.
Consider: Polarization could be a side effect of gerrymandering. When government officials get to choose their voters, rather than the other way around (a crime that voters put up with why, exactly?) then each district is full of voters who think alike, creating rigid, inflexible, non-negotiable positions. Before gerrymandering, each elected rep had to know how to weigh multiple points of view and negotiate reasonable compromises, and so our government in Washington worked that way, too. Now, every representative’s job is to be completely one-sided: If you don’t get your way, shut down the government. So governing is not something you do with others, but something you do to others. As Ohio Gov. John Kasich said this month about health care, “when you jam something through just one party over another, it’s not sustainable. It becomes a point of attack.”
It’s a vicious cycle. The people at the top make us crazy with frustration and anger, but they’re at the top, so they’ll never oppose the status quo, only blame the other party. So system change could come only from the bottom. From us.
How to create change? Next time you want to bite some other person’s head off, check first for any problems or goals you have in common — anything? — any area where you could be allies, with both having a better chance of arriving where you want if you work together.
Oh, and let’s insist our representatives do away with gerrymandering.
RALPH ELLIS
Fayetteville