“Why Can’t We Talk?” by Sydney Williams
Ambrose Bierce, in his 1906 The Devil’s Dictionary, provided two definition of the transitive verb “Defame:” 1) “To lie about another.” 2) “To tell the truth about another.” People of myriad cultural backgrounds have long had difficulty communicating, as Rudyard Kipling expressed in the first two lines of his 1889 poem “The Ballad of the East and West:”“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great judgement Seat;”
Most politicians do not communicate honestly. They promise one thing while campaigning and promote another when governing. Speaking before the 2004 Democratic National Committee, Barack Obama embraced unity: “There is not a black America, a white America, a Latino America, an Asian America; there’s the United States of America.” But four years later when he became President, he chose discord over unity. In the words of Jason Riley, writing in last Wednesday’s The Wall Street Journal: “…he started talking about racist policing and black voter suppression, and he embraced divisive racial provocateurs… All the colorblind talk went out the window.” Mr. Obama is not alone. Politicians on both sides have long campaigned on the promise of unity and then ruled with a “divide to conquer” strategy.
We are sorted by identity into “hot issue” buckets, like race, gender, immigration, climate and abortion. For example, if one does not agree with the preferred woke policy prescriptions of President Biden, one is a racist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, a denier or a sexist. Case closed, no room or time for debate. Social media companies, instead of being impartial arbiters permitting the free exchange of ideas have closed Twitter accounts of conservative “deplorables” and declared opinions contrary to what is currently “woke” to be “harmful” or “hurtful.” Given their political leanings, this has meant that conservative speech is shut down. The same thing is true on college campuses where speeches by conservatives are cancelled.
I was reminded of Bierce’s definition of “Defame” when reading an op-ed last week by Greg Sargent of The Washington Post. Mr. Sargent sees risk to our democracy coming from the right; I see it coming from the left. The truth is that despotism can come from either the left or the right, as we know from history: Mao’s China, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany and more recent examples in North Korea, Iran and Venezuela. It is extremism, regardless of whether right or left, that should concern us. And we should never forget that a failure to freely exchange ideas abets extremism.
But perhaps things are not so bad as I fear. Over the 232 years since George Washington was elected our first President, the United States has been tried several times: On August 24th, 1814, the British burned the White House. During the years 1861-1865, the United States fought a Civil War that left about 700,000 dead, when the country was less than 10% of its size today. We have suffered economic collapses, including a decade of depression in the 1930s. We have lived through periods of violent racial and religious prejudices. American soldiers have gone overseas to fight (and die) for freedom in at least eight wars. We were attacked on our homeland on 9/11 by Islamic terrorists. Yet, the United States has always rallied when down. As Churchill observed, in a backhanded compliment: “Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else.” How long will it take for politicians now – when governing, not campaigning – to admit that we are Americans first, rich or poor, black or white, female or male, believer or non-believer. Will they speak without hyperbole? Will they be tolerant or patronizing? In the third and fourth line of Kipling’s opening stanza in the poem quoted above he offers hope based on mutual respect:
“But there is neither East nor West, Border nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth.”
But that is not us today. There is no mutual respect. We are more politically divided than at any time I can recall in my eighty-plus years. And what discourse we have is too often uncivil. Either you are with me, or you are against me, to borrow a phrase from George W. Bush. We cannot agree on problems that should be easy to resolve. For example, no nation can exist without borders, yet we cannot agree on how to handle the thousands of illegal immigrants who daily cross our southern border? The earth’s temperature is changing, yet the subject has become so politicized that reasonable people cannot discuss adaption, or man-made versus natural causes. COVID-19 has been ravishing our country and the world for almost two years, yet debate is not allowed as to its origin or even its science. The Constitution gives the right (and duty) to vote to all American citizens (who are not felons) above the age of 18. Proof of age, address and citizenship should be all that is required. Why should that be so difficult to implement? Inflation has become ubiquitous, but one side says pass the $1.8 to $5 trillion Build Back Better bill and inflation will recede. The other side says inflation is a function of deficit spending paid for by monetary expansion. Is not that something we should be able to discuss? One side claims racism is endemic in our white-supremacist nation. The other says that to treat blacks as needing special attention is condescending. Are we only to listen to one side? Do we only hear what we want to hear? The economy has been recovering for over a year, since 2020’s second quarter debacle; yet pessimism permeates the country, as can be seen in birthrates below replacement. Why? Francis Fukuyama famously declared “the end of history,” with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 and victory for a democratic, liberal West. Now, thirty-two years later, Russia is in ascendancy, China is militarily expanding in the Pacific and interning its Uighur citizens, while the West questions its foundations of individual freedom and free-market capitalism. History is storming back.
Extremism on social media platform gets thousands of “likes.” Extremism sells books, newspapers and cable news. Yet most Americans, I am convinced, are moderate in their politics, leaning slightly left or slightly right. Most are patriots who love their country and who want to live peacefully. Most admire the success the United States has had over its almost 250 years of existence, and most recognize what a marvel the Founders created. They know we are the envy of the world. Our nation is not perfect, but that was something the Founders also knew – they created a “more perfect union.” In Philadelphia, the Founders had different agendas and represented different parts of the country. If they had been unwilling to debate, where would we be today? We will never agree on all issues, nor should we. However, as Joseph Joubert stated in the rubric that heads this essay, we must be willing to debate all issues. Why can’t we talk?
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