Politics has become a college football game. Washington, DC is now the stadium whereupon we watch, with morbid curiosity, the spectacle displayed on CSPAN (our 24 hour political ESPN) between the Donkeys and the Elephants. It’s a grand affair. All the sports stations have their commentators: Hannity and Tucker Carlson for Fox, Maddow and Todd for MSNBC, and Cuomo and Lemon for CNN. They give us their obscene, malcontented version of a play by play, replete with off handed comments that would get Howard Cosell fired, and we complain about how our team is the best and our “opponent” sucks. At night, after the daily back and forth between Democrats and Republicans, both on TV and across the web, we all go to bed tired from the day’s festivities. The problem is, there is no fun tailgate to go to, no beers and brats ahead of the big game (except maybe election nights and primary season), but in the end there is no relief from the constant bitterness and hatred. It’s a new game, every day. 365 days a year. And the fans are really getting tired of the bloodbath. Constant political injuries to our favorite players are making it hard to watch anymore. Many of the good players have retired because the injuries to their reputations and constant battle against dirty politicians has worn them down. This is where we stand. Or rather, wallow in the mud that is Washington politics. It is reaching a breaking point.
Partisanship and the degradation of communication have been the biggest contributors to our horrid political discourse over the last few decades. Starting with Newt Gingrich and the Republican insurgency of 1994, partisanship has reached fever pitch. Maybe we just don’t see it publicly, but there seems to be absolutely nothing getting done in the legislative and executive branches. Solutions and compromise have fallen victim to petty bickering and stagnation. Sometimes stagnation is good, but most often, it just grates on the soul of our nation and turns us into bitter citizens, indifferent to the winds of politics we feel we cannot control with our votes. Partisanship has also led to all or nothing ideologies. In these cases, the rhetoric basically calls for us as citizens to blindly follow the leaders of our respective teams and only have eyes for their views. They will tell us how to think and how to vote. Without their infinite wisdom, we are bullied into believing we will lose the game and we must trust them or else the end of the world is upon us. This has led to entrenchment like nothing we have seen since the heady days of World War I in France, only this time, the enemy has burrowed into our collective psyches and taken up residence.
Social media, in a way, has fueled a whole new level of unaccountability and miscommunication for the modern politician or political pundit. We can now hide behind the veil of liquid crystal displays and smartphones, televisions and keyboards, buried in the world of our own minds, our own rhetoric, or our own thoughts without a care as to who we hit with our intellectual poo. I have been just as caught up in the melee as the next person. I work hard to hold myself to a higher standard. Delete is our friend. But, in today’s world, this makes no money. Sensation sells and everyone is an online capitalist these days. Info is free, but that purchase price comes at a cost: intellectual honesty and truth. Infighting is what makes social media such a money maker, as well as a valuable tool for political division. We must stop.
The time has come to start healing our divide, or America will destroy itself from within. This will not be a Civil War like was fought over 150 years ago. No, this will be one far more detrimental because the soul of America will perish faster than you can type, The End.
“What we have here is, failure to communicate.” – Cool Hand Luke
Reality Politics 