A Warning

by Anonymous

There is only so much the public can absorb. When everything is a crisis and a scandal, the end result is that nothing is. Americans are fed up with the cacophony, becoming numb to it. We are looking the other way, which has caused us to lose sight of what is important in the national debate.

“No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.” —James Madison

Will Durant argued that the laws of nature—including “the survival of the fittest”—apply to global politics. In nature, cooperation is one of the keys to winning any competition. We cooperate within our families, our communities, and societies in order to overcome threats. We must do the same on the world stage, sticking close to our allies so the United States not only survives, but thrives.

The epistemological crisis means Americans can’t find common ground because they can’t agree on the same set of facts. The president fudges the truth so frequently on so many issues that we have difficulty reaching a common starting point when we debate one another. Consequently, Americans can’t move from the what to the so what—from the facts of a problem to a course of action for how to solve a problem. Even the little lies President Trump tells, when repeated over and over, have a big impact by gradually changing public perceptions of what is true and what matters.

We must remember that we are whom we elect. “Like man, like state,” Plato wrote two millennia ago. “Governments vary as the characters of men vary. States are made out of the human natures which are in them.” The government of the United States is whatever it is because the people are whatever they are. The nature of one man, the president, is not what shapes the collective attributes of a nation. It is the other way around. Our views, our aspirations, and our morality are what define the republic and are meant to be reflected by the people we elect.

Americans do not need to grasp blindly in the dark to find the boogeyman that is haunting our civic lives. We need only to look in the mirror. Our representatives are not the source of Washington’s problems. We are the ones who pick them. If you can give the Founders credit for anything, the democratic system reflects the public mood. When we are willing to compromise, our representatives are, too. When we are angry and unyielding, partisan and greedy, they will display the same traits. As a result, we are getting the presidency we deserve and the Congress we deserve. Is it not obvious that elected leaders are mimicking our behavior? Their snarky attacks and Twitter jabs sound a lot like the text messages we send, the comments we make below news articles, and the condescending memes we post to Facebook because it’s easier to fire rounds from behind a digital wall than hash out problems face-to-face. It’s no wonder people think Washington is broken. We are broken.

To start with, we need to restore a climate of truth by clearing the air of misinformation and changing how we report, consume, and share news so we aren’t living in different realities. We must also relearn the art of “agreeing to disagree” with people whose political views we don’t share, rather than alienating them. If we escape our echo chambers it will make it easier to cooperate on issues large and small. It’s likewise important for us to begin reassociating in person.