One of my ongoing theories of needless partisan rancor is that we create a cartoon evil “they” across the aisle, a “they” whose bad intentions and power to create them balloon out of proportion to who “they” really are and what “they” really want. This caricature is helpful to politicians because it builds coalitions to fight “them”, even armies to defeat “them.” Reasonable compromise is the casualty.
I found an interesting demonstration of that dynamic in watching a recent Frontline: The Hugo Chavez Show.
Alberto Barrera, Author, Hugo Chavez:Chavez is in urgent need of an epic. He doesn’t have an epic story and I think it pains him very much. Chavez didn’t get to power by toppling a dictator. He hasn’t been invaded by anyone. He’s yelling at Bush to see if he gets a response. He needs great enemies, because you can’t maintain such high verbal temperature and keep saying “I’m a great revolutionary” without being dangerous.
Phil Gunson, The Economist: He’s absolutely convinced that George Bush goes to bed every night thinking of ways to assassinate Hugo Chavez.
“I offer you the hand of friendship, the same commitment to partnership as I do my Democratic colleagues,” Obama said during his opening remarks during the National Governors’ Association meeting in Philadelphia at Independence Hall, a location known for bipartisan American efforts. “There is a time for campaigning, and there is a time for governing. And one of the messages that Joe and I want to continually send is that we are not going to be hampered by ideology in trying to get this country back on track.”
Obama continued, “We want to figure out what works. That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to have some disagreements. But what it does mean is that if you can show me something you are doing that’s working or if you tell me that this program or this regulation is hampering us from doing smart things that will advance the interests of our state, then you’re going to have a ready ear.”
Apparently the CEOs of GM and Ford must have been reading this blog and listening to our advice.
The bosses of America’s two biggest car companies are promising to work for just one dollar a year, if the US Congress gives them access to a $25-billion loan.
That’s a start on The Village Square plan toward fiscal solvency for Detroit. Next, the CEO of the third biggest car company, Chrysler needs to go all in for the $1 annual salary. After that, it’s the employees’ (and union’s) turn to ante up on what they’ll do to ensure that American continues to manufacture marketable cars. After all that, we’ll talk dollars from taxpayers.
“I am aware that I am less than some people prefer me to be. But most people are unaware that I am so much more than what they see.” - Douglas Pagels.
One error we make that propels our incivility is the tendency to paint other human beings, notably those with whom we disagree, with too broad a brush.
In a discussion on the recent dive in the stock market, Bill Moyers had an interesting conversation with George Soros, the man the hard right in American politics loves to hate. Soros has written “The New Paradigm for the Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means”. Soros, having lived through the rise of fascism in Germany has been sounding an alarm for a number of years now. Contrary to portraits of him that paint him as an extremist, Soros encapsulated his philosophy this way:
Both Marxism and market fundamentalism are false ideologies. I think the only [ideology that isn’t false] is… the recognition that all our ideas, all our human constructs have a flaw in them and perfection is not attainable. And we must engage in critical thinking and correct our mistakes.
If you’ve got quotes from Soros that sound less moderate, send them on…
I think music is the one thing that opens the door to bringing people to a place where they’re all connected. It’s easy to connect to the world through music. Religion, politics, a lot of those things… they seem to divide everybody.
BILL MOYERS: We were abroad these past two weeks trying to cleanse our journalistic pipes, so to speak. We thought we could put American politics out of sight and out of mind for a spell. We were wrong.
Everywhere we went people wanted to talk about America. The Greeks, Sicilians, Sardinians, Tunisians, Algerians, and Spaniards we met, were euphoric - cab drivers, guides, waiters, hotel clerks, bank tellers. They expect miracles from America. Their own economies are imploding: layoffs, budget shortfalls, failing banks, fear spreading among the populace. They want to believe that somehow the long arm of America will pull them back. I tried but I didn’t have the heart to tell them just how much trouble their rich Uncle Sam is in.
Maybe I was wrong not to dispel their illusions about America; after all, they live on top of the ruins of long-gone empires, whose rise and fall is a far more familiar and consistent theme of history than democracy’s success. I did my best, to say that America is trying very hard right now to put our own house in order.
That self-correcting faculty, even in the darkest hours, is the best thing we have going for us. That and the knowledge that nothing we face in the months ahead is more than was asked of our parents and grand parents in war and depression.
This giant of a country is bleeding badly from savage self inflicted wounds, but what happens next is still our story to write. We can be thankful for that.
A Black Friday tragedy that should have each and every one of us thinking really hard about ourselves.
The throng of Wal-Mart shoppers had been building all night, filling sidewalks and stretching across a vast parking lot…
Suddenly, witnesses and the police said, the doors shattered, and the shrieking mob surged through in a blind rush for holiday bargains. One worker, Jdimytai Damour, 34, was thrown back onto the black linoleum tiles and trampled in the stampede that streamed over and around him… Emergency workers tried to revive Mr. Damour, a temporary worker hired for the holiday season, at the scene, but he was pronounced dead an hour later…
“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” Ms. Cribbs told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.”
“It’s important as I said on election night that we enter into the new administration with a sense of humility and a recognition wisdom is not the monopoly of any one party. In order for us to be effective given the scope and the scale of the challenges that we face, Republicans and Democrats are going to have to work together. I think what the American people want more than anything is just common sense smart government. They don’t want ideology, they don’t want bickering, they don’t want sniping. They want action and they want effectiveness.”
– President-elect Barack Obama in a news conference this week on the economy
If Abraham Lincoln could find cause for thanks as the nation split in two, surely we too can find cause now. From his 1863 Proclamation of Thanksgiving (on October 3):
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict…
