Election Shows Lack of Trust and Respect

Back in 2000, I was at a meeting in Providence, RI when the news channels were live with showing post-election confrontations over the vote in Florida. I was horrified and said to the people I was with that our country was as divided as it was during the Civil War. Strong statement. The people I was with thought I was overstating things. After watching this campaign season and the aftermath of this election, we are certainly more divided as a country than we were sixteen years ago and we are heading down a dangerous path.

There is a complete breakdown in trust and respect. Start with our view of the news media. MSM (mainstream media) is the pejorative that is used by conservatives for the longstanding outlets of journalism, be they newspapers, radio or television, that are the longstanding reporters of news and information. Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart and other organizations have grown out of this distain for traditional media and are looked down upon by liberals. All of these outlets need to be more transparent and show how they gather and edit news. All would be wise to follow the adage of Roger Kahn that journalists only have to follow one side of the story, the truth. That means not reporting false statements in the interest of fairness or simply going after ratings by airing the latest person to yell fire in a crowded theater.

This lack of trust and respect goes to a number of institutions as well. Ratings of congress are at an all time low. Both of the presidential finalists had high negative ratings. Our distrust of and disrespect of our opponents is so high that either candidate, including the President-elect, will have a hard time governing. We see protests in the cities from the opponents of the President-elect. Given all the talk about a "rigged election" system from the right in the days leading up to the election, had the result been different, I guarantee the losing side would be out in force protesting as well.

Frankly, the results of this election show that the system is not rigged. The chicken littles were proven wrong and need to go out to the public and say a huge mea culpa. This talk was dangerous and only added to the incineration of trust and respect in this country.

There is raw, visceral hate right now. We cannot survive this kind of strife as a nation. Waiting around for one person, some kind of savior, to lead us to the promised land is not going to heal this country.  Nobody, including any of the candidates for President or the currently elected congress, has the capacity to be the bigger person, acknowledge the deep divisions and reach out to opponents to fix the fissures.  That leaves the task to us.

What I mean is that, regardless of interest group or political slant, you are going to have to get outside your bubble, your interest group and state your case. You are going to have to do so by logically explaining your view, citing facts and sources and not defaulting to some amorphous "They say..."
You are going to have to do so to people who do not agree with you and who may be discourteous.  It means not "unfriending" people who do not share your political views on social media. Also, it means walking in the moccasins of your opponent. Trying, however difficult, to see their point of view. Don't wait around for someone to get elected president four years from now.

This breakdown in trust and respect is not just happening here, it is a world wide issue. Brexit, the defeat of the peace treaty with FARC in Colombia and the bombastic government of the Philippines are examples of how far the disease has spread. In the first two cases, the electorate did not feel leadership had the citizen's best interests at heart. Perhaps all of this is the unforeseen circumstance of the interactive era. Worldwide, we have all just built our own bubbles.

All of us, as citizens of a great country, have to do a lot less yelling, eye rolling and exclamations of "whatever." We need to get outside our comfort zone, understand that people do not take what we say at face value and build our cases. If we do not take personal responsibility for elevating the discourse in our country and building bridges of trust and respect, we will deserve our doomed fate.

Stop Celebrating the Rogue Mentality

We will remember the days after July 4th, 2016 for their jarring tragedies. Once again, we saw excessive force used against citizens and once again, we saw someone take the law and justice into their own hands. Both are wrong and both feed a cycle that can lead to a breakdown of society. It is up to all of us to step in and break that cycle and make our neighborhood, city, state and nation better places to live. But, there has to be a massive change going forward, we need to stop celebrating the lone hero.

Over the course of the last few years we have seen video of too many innocent people getting killed by police. At this point, a reasonable person inserts the sentence that "most police are good people and do their jobs." This is true. However, the destruction of trust that events such as the shootings in St. Paul, MN and Baton Rouge, LA hinder any effort to make the streets of our communities safer. In Chicago, past false confessions brought on by brutal police abuse and the video of an innocent victim, Laquan McDonald being murdered by a police officer, have severed any connection of trust  many residents have with the police.

Why did this happen? In almost all cases, a bad police officer wanted to be a hero, took procedure into their own hands and decided to be a rogue. In the aftermath, their colleagues are left dealing with the community relations problems and the citizens are dealing with the breakdown of order on their streets. In Chicago, we are seeing this manifest itself in a huge increase in shootings. Police morale is said to be at an all time low here and in other American cities. There are two sides to improving morale. We need to realize that police are citizens, like us, and not ostracize people in uniform. On the other hand, police forces across the country have to tackle and eliminate the glorification of the "Dirty Harry" lone officer. Policing is a team effort, not the purview of a lone dispenser of their view of justice.

Also, there are way too many guns on our streets. With too many people, with too many agendas using them. Vigilante justice is completely Un-American. We have glorified the myth of the Wild West. People taking the law and justice into their own hands is completely unacceptable. It was wrong of a person to take a rifle and start shooting police officers in Dallas, TX for the crimes of other officers in other cities. It is wrong for an individual to shoot another person on the streets of our major cities, because of the perceived injustice of getting "dissed" on social media. Yes, that is the reason many shootings take place in the United States.

Unfortunately, we hear the "dog whistle" of "it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun" as a defense of the right to own firearms in the United States. On CBS Face the Nation this weekend, the police chief of Dallas, TX gave this clear insight, "In the fog of a firefight, it is impossible to know the good guys from the bad guys." Having more guns on the streets of the United States, one for every man, woman and child has turned too many places into shooting galleries. We need to start getting guns off the streets and make them far less available. We have to stop merchandising the message that there was a better time and place when people took the law into their own hands with a gun. The history of the United States, particularly as we moved west is replete with lawlessness and injustice done at the point of the gun. It is not a mentality or a time that should receive esteem and glory.

In Chicago, there are citizens banding together to work with other neighbors such as Mother's Against Senseless Killing (MASK). While the founder of this group Tamar Manasseh is a hero, she realizes that peace is a team sport. We need to realize that our safety, and the future of our society is a team sport. Don't expect government to makes streets safe. Get to know your neighbors, hold events to build community. Do the peaceful outreach. Let's celebrate the pronouns of We, Us and Our and downplay the pronouns of I, Me and My. Law and order, justice and social justice cannot be achieved when a a rogue goes vigilante. Peace only happens when we act together.