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.

Now that we have had an election...

Yesterday, within fifteen minutes, two people demonstrated exactly what is wrong with political discourse in this country.  Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, who has lost all of his post-9/11 statesman aura, stated that the U.S. and New York government combined response to Hurricane Sandy was worse than Hurricane Katrina.  Then, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean decided to aver that if Barack Obama lost re-election it was due to incidents that were anecdotal at best and gossip at worst.  These two guys are supposed to be leaders but they were doing their best to divide this country. 

We have now re-elected a President, selected a Senate and a House and now it is time to heal the rifts in this country.  Since most of you who read this are opinion leaders, as my friends, I ask you to do your best to raise the level of civic discourse.  We cannot look to others, such as current and former elected leaders do it, we have to take the initiative.

How do we do this?  Let’s not continue the time honored legacy of “if it comes from my side, it is o.k.”  The above stated case shows where there should be concern from the left and the right about what their spokespeople say and how they say it.  Yes, I do believe that there was a effort on the part of conservative office holders to have a more favorable electorate.   But, nobody is complaining about the process here in Illinois where we have to show picture identification (as President Obama did when he voted) and the relatively short amount of time we had to vote early.    But somehow, the same rules were greeted with hue and cry around the country.  Could it be that Illinois was not a swing state and had a Democrat as Governor and Secretary of State?

Part of this defending of one’s side is behavior that is disrespectful of our government and our process.  No President since the start of the 20^th century has been heckled from the floor of Congress, had his birth called into question despite overwhelming evidence that he was legally born in the United States and had a statement interrupted by a member of the U.S. media.  This President also had to deal with people questioning what he was spending on state trips.  This is the leader of the free world and there are several people, both foreign and domestic, that would do harm if they could.  Regardless of party, the President of the United States must be protected.  This isn’t fair politics. This is ginning up support for your view, it is libel.

Meantime, because those on the President’s side of the aisle, because he did reach out to Senators and Representatives across the aisle and had, of all horrors, Republicans in his cabinet he was derided as spineless.  Since there was not going to be a single payer health system, he was seen as a sell out.  Immigration reform didn’t happen, the prison at Guantanamo Bay is still open.  He was a fraud.  Then you sat on your hands during the mid-term elections.  This isn’t politics, it is bratty, I didn’t get my way so I will pout antics. 

I respect that fact that conservatives believe in less government, more local control of resources, bubble down economics and laizez-faire policy.  Also, I know that on the left there is a philosophy that we need a centralized government to oversee  and guard against corporate excess, protect the environment, guarantee human rights and a tax structure that demands more of the wealthy.   But, neither side has a corner on the market of patriotism.  Neither side is un-American.  Putting a flag on your lapel or on your front porch is the easy part.  Respecting your opponents view is the difficult part of our democracy.

Today, as you read this, regardless of who you voted for or backed, you did not lose.  We all won.  A election  selected a government in process that had integrity.  What we need to do now is stop our media from hyperventilating, stop throwing mud at our neighbor and start demanding a higher level of discourse from all of our elected officials.