Hold on to your hats — I recently found myself agreeing with Glenn Beck.
I know. My heart nearly came to a screeching halt.
In my defense, though, it was only one paragraph of a 15-paragraph blog post on the occasion of the 4th of July. For this reason, I did not feel compelled to run to the nearest multi-story building and toss myself over its highest ledge.
Watching the Sunday morning talk shows two days later, GB’s words rang in my ears. No matter the channel, no matter the political tilt of the commentator, no matter whether the guest was an administration spokesperson or a member of the party from the other side of the aisle, the effect was the same. Take no responsibility, answer no question directly, and find a way, at any cost, to work in a finger pointed squarely in the direction of the other party, demonizing them at every juncture. Blah, blah, blah.
Maybe it’s the humongous amounts of money being poured into campaign war chests (note the pugnacious adjective) that is cementing our representatives’ well-shod feet to the political ground on their own sides of the fence. Maybe they do, after all, start running their next campaign the day after they win the election. Maybe it’s the internal factions in each political party positioning themselves for greater and swifter power grabs. Or maybe, just maybe, they truly believe what they spew every time a microphone is shoved in front of them. I am not smart enough, nor young enough, to waste any more of my time trying to figure it out.
But Glenn and I are here to say that a nation (this) divided cannot stand.
Our nation is facing crisis wherever it turns — the Middle East, healthcare, the environment, poverty, discrimination. Does it strike you, as it does me, that we’ve become so inured to these crises that we’ve given them all names just to make talking about them faster? Unfortunately, the ability to talk about a given crisis more quickly isn’t leading us to any meaningful solutions. It’s just more of the blah, blah, blah. We need purposeful, bi-partisan action.
I wonder when it was that compromise fell out of favor as a means for coming to collective decisions. We need it back. Now.
My sister and I learned the art of compromise at a very young age. One candy bar, two greedy mouths watering. One mother handing over a dull kitchen knife. The owner of the mouth not receiving the knife got the first pick of her piece of candy. If she and I could agree on nothing else, we both knew we wanted as much candy as we could get. Enter the art of compromise.
In my role as an elementary principal, I was often thankful that I’d learned to compromise at an early age. More than once, it stood me in good stead when an angry parent stormed into my office, ready to dis-articulate my head from my body over a decision I’d made, usually involving the discipline of said parent’s child. If we could get to a position on which we could both agree, for example, that said child was really a good kid who’d made a poor decision, we were on our way to a safe and acceptable compromise.
Imagine how refreshing it would be if legislators started listening to each other; seeking out commonalities and working to resolve differences in a way that served the common good, enabling all parties to emerge with a thing of value. It wouldn’t be easy, of course, and it would involve giant leaps of trust, particularly in the beginning. However, the future of our nation is at stake. It’s well past time to find a radically different protocol for conducting our political business.
Overly simplistic, you might say. Glenn and I would reply (and I’m paraphrasing here), “You got a better idea? Because what we got now ain’t working.”
If I can find something, anything, to agree with Glenn Beck about, nothing is impossible. It just takes a simple decision and a pile of dedication to make it work.
I’ll keep you posted.
