Us Versus Them · Reason and Balance

[ANALYSIS AND OPINION]

I was listening to a very wise and savvy now-retired political leader talking to a group of folks who at one time or another were probably his supporters. He was discussing a hot button issue which has once again reached center stage in the political arena. In essence, he was telling his audience to quit yelling at the other side (and calling them names etc.), and to ask them to “help” you. Namely, he told them to ask folks having a different opinion, to help them solve a problem that should be treated as being shared by both sides.

Similarly, I remember when I worked in a quasi-governmental independent entity many years ago (that fancied itself as being somewhat enlightened) the agency heads would every now and then strongly encourage, if not require, us to read a particular book or to go to some seminar or whatever basically trying to get us all to be able to better able to get along with the general public and particularly with folks who might otherwise be our adversaries. In particular, I remember the book “Getting to Yes” and I’m not sure if it was that book or not but one thing we were encouraged to do was to try to avoid being adversarial. In short, one strategy they strongly encouraged was: Don’t sit across the table from your opponent. Go around and sit beside them; at least figuratively speaking. Again this was to encourage us not to treat the situation as us-versus-them, but to create an atmosphere where the issue was treated as a joint problem to be solved by both sides.

I’m not sure the above approach is always possible. However, much better efforts need to be made to at least try. And a huge first step in doing that is not let any politician get away with name-calling and labelling as way of painting the other side or a particular politician as the “enemy” or someone not worthy of respect. It’s okay to disagree with someone on one or two of his or her positions on individual issues but it is not okay for anyone to engage in name calling and/or to disagree with them merely because of who they are or what party they belong to or because of their race or religion etc.

For example, I recently saw a Youtube video where one Congresswoman said something like: “Hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s really upset some [ here you can just insert in the blank the label liberals or conservatives, progressives, wokies, Trumpsters, or whatever]”. Another political pundit even wrote a book once titled: “How to Talk to a [again just insert a label reflecting someone somewhere on the political spectrum].” Naturally the title of the book itself, was intended to denigrate and insult folks not sharing a political viewpoint with the author, while at the same time firing up folks that already shared the author’s opinion.

One of the dreadful consequences of having high profile members of the media and political leaders talk like this is that after a certain period of time, substantial portions of the general public become brainwashed into automatically thinking that way themselves on every issue in every imaginable situation. Then the focus of every discussion, debate and argument immediately becomes us-versus-them and/or “winning” and attaining and/or keeping political power. Unfortunately, however, actually solving our country’s problems becomes less important. We shouldn’t kid ourselves. Name calling if done long enough and often enough works—and is a great cause of today’s societal dysfunction.

And for decades now radio and cable TV especially have flooded the airwaves with a constant barrage of invective name-calling. And, simply put, it has poisoned the political climate in this country.

The point here is that under most circumstances, if the speech, argument or articles conveys an “us-versus-them” attitude it’s really just rabble rousing demagoguery and an attempt to rally support to crush the opposition by whatever means possible. It’s emphatically not problem solving, and is annoying, insulting and/or threatening to folks having a different opinion. In any event, it’s not helpful in terms of actually finding a solution to the problem that is dividing everyone. Voters should not reward rabble rousing politicians with their vote even if that rabble rouser’s views are consistent with their own. Why? Because electing rabble rousers are only going to increase the divisions in this country.

And, it has become increasingly obvious that healing today’s political divisions is the biggest problem we face. Failing to do so may well have catastrophic consequences not only for our democracy but also our national security.

It’s not evil or wrong for anyone to disagree with someone else as long as their reasons for doing so are not illegal and they aren’t trying to destroy our Constitution and/or the democracy it has created. Beyond that one can only hope that reason, logic, math and science all balanced with some sort of empathy for the human condition will guide folks to a workable solution to the many problems that they face. In short, no one should be denigrated just because they disagree with you. And we all should avoid the temptation, so prevalent today, to look at the world as being divided into us-versus-them warring camps. Let’s solve problems one at a time and focus on whether a proposed solution has merit regardless of who proposes that particular solution.

David Dixon Lentz June 20, 2022