Recently, during a discussion with Annabel, she brought up a question: How can we get people excited and committed to working together politically, rather than just continuing this cycle of blame, negativity, name-calling, and obstructing the other side?
The first part of this answer, as I have been saying for quite some time, is to look past all of the partisan vilification and get back to seeing the real truth: that in reality, most (if not all) of us want the same things. We want peace, we want a world where no child goes hungry, uneducated, or has to go without adequate medical treatment. We want a degree of financial stability and prosperity for our families, our businesses, and our country. In reality, our disagreements are little more than a difference of opinion on how best to accomplish these things.
If we take politics out of the issue, we all know and accept these ideas as being shared by all but perhaps a very few people in our society. However, as soon as we throw political allegiances into the discussion, very large percentages of the population suddenly stop caring about children, are warmongers, are fiscally irresponsible, or have no respect for the property of others. How can this be?
I think the truth of the matter is that it isn’t people that are uncaring, it is the political parties. If we watch the actions of both parties with an objective eye, we can clearly tell that neither party has a monopoly on being right or wrong, neither party has a monopoly on ethical, moral, or even legal behavior, and most alarmingly, neither party is really putting much effort into representing the best interests of the nation and the will of the people. As a distraction from that simple truth, the parties create an environment of “the other team is evil,” and we feed into it. We feed into it, they feed off us, and the cycle continues until we see the frenzy and furor that we see in our political environment today. And in the end, it is all a distraction.
Throughout my life I have had friends that I disagree with politically – in the past, we were able to discuss our differences, argue our points, and walk away as friends. At worst, there were those where we mutually agreed to not discuss politics, because sometimes the discussions got a bit too heated. But in the past year, I have lost 2 friends (by their choice, not mine) over political disagreements – in one case, because I did not think that our recent health care legislation was effective and the other because I could not support the half-truths and “universal condemnation” of every single thing that our current president does, no matter how innocuous. This extreme partisan polarization we have been seeing over the past few years is poisoning friendships, poisoning families – and it is poisoning our nation.
Who benefits from this polarization? The simple answer is that it only benefits the parties.
I like to think that the majority of those who become involved in the Coffee Party see things somewhat similarly, and want to be a part of the solution. So how do we do it? How do we make those in office begin working together to find solutions, rather than just trying to expand their own power and influence at the expense of the rest of us?
The answer, to me, seems obvious. We cannot afford to be Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives. Instead, we have to be Coffee Party members. We need to be more like our founding fathers hoped that we would be - citizens who may have a difference of opinion, but a common goal. We need to be civil in our discourse with each other even when we disagree, and we need to be dedicated not to those differences of opinion on how to achieve the goals we all share, but to focus on those goals ourselves. Once we accomplish this fundamental change within ourselves, we can then demand it from those we elect to represent us. We need to form our own opinions on issues based on facts and reason, not just based on what our party tells us we should say. We need to vote for candidates not based on what letter appears beside their name, but on the strength of their platform – and that platform must be of substance – it should say “vote for me because…” rather than “don’t vote for my opponent because he is worse than me.”
To bring about change, we must change ourselves first.
