In the last six years, America has been asked to live in an either/or framework, as embodied in President George W. Bush’s 2001 statement: “You are either with us or against us.” Frankly, this is very powerful rhetoric. It has been known to create solidarity where there was none. It can help create a sense of nationality, and to affect a call to arms. But it is one of the most dangerous calls ever invented by humanity. Cloaked in a guise of unity, the either/or call divides—neighbor against neighbor—nation against nation. It is a division that quickly gives way to exclusion as it demands adherence to a singularity of thought and being, regardless of the consequences or correctness of the call. It creates, simply, tragedy. This is not an American call. This is not an American ideal. Regardless of past faults, the American call has always been a call for plurality. The acceptance of difference, deliberation and democracy. Democracy can’t exist in an either/or frame, nor can America demand or promote democracy using this mistaken call to division. And yet, for the last six years, this is exactly what the current administration has tried to do. And with this call, with this insistence, our nation has been divided against itself, divided against its allies, and tragedy has touched thousands. Not only with the war in Iraq, but here at home in the United States.
We have gone from a balanced federal budget to a skyrocketing deficit, which leaves Americans vulnerable to competing national interests. As with all debt situations, we must ask ourselves, what will happen when our creditors come to call? How will we repay our debts and at what cost? Will more social programs, designed to help the least but still deserving citizens in our community, be lost in the shuffle? Other issues hang in the balance as well. The National Coalition on Health Care reports that approximately 46,000-48,000 thousand people are without healthcare in this country (See the NCHC Report ), and more people still rely on insurance policies that hardly cover costs when serious illness strikes. We find ourselves at the mercy of private drug companies and medical insurance companies whose major concern is their financial bottom line—not the bottom line of a human life. We also face a crisis with natural resources, such as our reliance on oil. However, even with all the rhetoric from the current administration regarding the need to find alternative fuels, little incentive has been offered to car makers to change their designs or to convince Americans to embrace a new direction. We are asked to use less gas, but are not asked to create new national habits. This, in turn, impacts our environment. Why, I find myself asking, have we abandoned our commitment towards lowering greenhouse gasses when it has become abundantly clear that we are negatively impacting our environment and contributing to global warning.
There is, of course, the war in Iraq. The most dividing of all issues. How do we honor our new found responsibilities there and, at the same time, allow the Iraqis to take control of their own country? How do you fight a war on terror, a war that has no set geographic location? How do we rebuild international relations that have been polarized because of this “war on terror?”
These and many more issues (cultural, economic, political, and international) demand not a division of interests, an either/or frame, but a community of conversation, debate, and the creation of new habits not only in Washington, but among all of us citizens. The problem with the either/or equation is not only that it calls on us to make a choice between two polar opposites, but it suggests that there is an absolute end product, an end to the conversation. Yet we know, from our own daily lives and realities, there can be no true end, only the hope of an end. This hope propels us to create evolving solutions to evolving problems. This is the hope, I believe, that results of the 2006 election articulated. It is also the hope that Hillary Clinton offers us. An invitation to continue the conversation is an invitation to end an either/or articulation. Let’s ready ourselves for the challenge. That is, after all, what democracy is all about.
They know that we’d be stronger if we werent divided. But it would cost the Pols power, and that’s what really matters in Politics. It’s a lot like unions or religions. Whatever the original intent of the organization, the higher up you are, the less interest you have in the goals of those members who “put” you there, and the more you have in maintaining your position of power. (this is naturally, a generalization, but it seems to me to be 99%). This situation is abetted by the rather shallow attention paid by people to things not happening in their immediate vacinity (such as politics) and how easily that attention can be diverted. Witness the whole gay marriage flap; if ever there was a non-important issue (comparatively), gay marriage would be it, and yet how much conservative thinking was channelled down that path rather than the less useful paths of budget-balancing or something more impacting on daily lives like that.
Divide and conquer. Humans love a fight more than we care to admit, and this partisan bickering is our 21st century galdiator ring. And just as the colosseums were part of crowd control then, so is this “social divide” part of our harness now.
Dave, I suspect you are right and God knows democracy works in part by creating division. But we are just in such a crisis that the either/or line we have been fed for six years must go. I am just hoping we can start to come up with answers. By the way, thanks for stopping by. I have been boxed in with work lately and haven’t had much time to be blog friendly.
As much as I’d like to see a woman president, I don’t trust Hillary as far as I can throw her.