Faith in the U.S. & Us

ESSAY: Political ambition is not a negative trait. We are self-governed. We need people who want to serve the public good. We need to restore faith in ourselves, our leaders & our government.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I wrote this essay during the presidential campaign of 2016. The observations and perceptions recounted here have mostly come true. It is an honest message that still should be heeded.

(Michael Flippo - stock.adobe.com)

To my fellow voters who have lost faith in our government:

I have followed politics and the state of the world ever since I came of age. My generation demonstrated against an unjust war. We faced down bigotry and racism and fought for civil rights, women's rights, worker rights, migrant rights and gay rights. We watched as moral leaders were assassinated - Dr. Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Malcom X. We saw our political activists jailed for civil disobedience and secretly investigated and publicly harassed by the Nixon administration. We also saw a courageous press bring down a truly corrupt president and his henchmen.

Please understand that political ambition is not a negative trait. We are self-governed. That means we need people who want to serve the public good.

In order to hold office, concerned citizens need to become politicians. They need to appeal to as many voters as they can. That means tailoring their messages for different audiences. They need money to run campaigns and reach the electorate. That means they have to be adept at asking others to support them financially. None of that is inherently wrong.

Once elected, our representatives in government have to gain influence in their legislatures. That means they need to make compromises with those with opposing viewpoints. Sometimes they have to accept part of a solution over no solution. This is the nature of governance in a representative democracy.

No politician in my lifetime has been pure. Not pure of soul. Not pure of heart. Not pure of mind. They are humans, with human failings. In order to succeed they need to be dogged. They don't need to be dogmatic.

On top of that, as much as we would all like to live in peace and prosperity, the world is, and has always been, subject to strife, greed, poverty, illness, ignorance, intolerance and violence. Those are powerful forces. They can not be wished away. They have to be confronted by our leaders.

So, like it or not, the representatives we elect have to find ways to face those evils and do their best to protect us all from the world's darker instincts. Different men and women of different character and different motives face the world's travails differently. The worst of us exploit others. The best of us try and work for the common good.

For the better part of my adult life, men and women in government treated each other with respect and conciliation, even when they disagreed about the best course of action for our country. They held congressional hearings to gather expert evidence. They drafted bills which they then debated and amended. In cooperation, they reached compromises that became laws.

In my later adult life, that all began to change. We moved into the age of accusation and demonization. We are living now in a time where almost any and all compromise is seen as capitulation. Politicians on both the Right and the Left are holding onto entrenched positions, mostly extreme policies that are unlikely to ever get bi-partisan support.

There was a time when opposing politicians would try to persuade the other side to their point of view with reasoned argument. Then things hardened. Instead, each side began to demean the opposing viewpoint, calling into question its very veracity. That moved to mischaracterization of their opponents' ideas and the integrity of the opponents themselves. Finally, we are in times when many politicians' real agendas are masqueraded. Their intent is to deceive the electorate in order to advance their hidden agenda.

We also live in a hyper media environment. Misinformation moves at the speed of a keystroke. A government office holder can expect that his or her every word will immediately be misrepresented by their political opponents and misunderstood by the voters. So, they have to be very careful with their words.

This is a very long way of saying that we have been asking very much of the people who represent us in the corridors of power. For the most part, the electorate paints all politicians right now with a broad brush. They see them as controlled by their donors. They see them as beholden to corporate interests. They see them as dishonest. They see them as "ambitious," that ambition considered unseemly.

In fact, there are men and women of good heart holding and seeking public office across our nation. They are doing their best to do what is right for their constituents and for the nation. They deserve our respect and gratitude, not our endless criticism and unreasonable expectations. …

We live in an age where campaigns of misinformation are repeated around the world and are meant to assassinate the character of men and women who the most crass of us seek to prevent from leading us into peace and prosperity. It is the forces of evil cabals at the heart of these campaigns of deceit, in service to greed and power.

We, the People, are the government. If one wanted to bring about a fascist regime, one would first demean the press, causing the electorate to lose faith in their credibility. Then one would demean the government, causing the electorate to believe that all politicians were corrupt. Then one would demean their political opponents, causing the electorate to believe that they were deceitful. That is what is happening.

So I ask my fellow voters to put the blanket condemnation of the press, government and the Democratic party aside. They are cynical Right-wing attempts to distract and distort. Put aside the conspiracy theories and the accusations that the electoral process has been corrupted. It has not.

I believe, right now, we need a period where we come in from our fringes and find some centrist common ground. From there we can move in the direction of tolerance, understanding, opportunity, education, environmental stewardship, justice and prosperity.

Peace around the world may be our most challenging undertaking. From the dawn of man we have gathered into tribes. We still do. It is always us and them. I think it always will be. But that can't stop us from living amongst each other unafraid, with respect, understanding and tolerance.

2023 Addendum: Truth has been a casualty in the past seven years. Dishonesty, disinformation, distraction, distortion, deceit, fear, bigotry, hatred, prejudice, discrimination, criminality and cynicism have all been willfully enabled, emboldened and empowered. Perversion of political power has become an effective weapon. Insurrection and political violence have become real in the United States. Our democratic republic is facing the existential threat of falling and becoming an autocracy. Fascism has become an actual possibility in this nation. Now, more than ever, “We, the People” must prevail.

We actually are all in this together.

Love,

David.