An Open Letter to This Country The Day After
It was quite a day yesterday. Our president was reelected, and his challenger beaten. Senatorial and Congressional races decided with wins and losses on all sides. State and local elections occurred and incumbents go back to work and new leaders prepare to take office. Ballot measures and propositions were voted down, and up. I guess it could be considered a successful election in that votes were cast, things were decided and now we get to move forward regardless of our excitement or disappointment level.
And I’m tired. I’m tired of the rhetoric. I’m tired of one person or group demonizing another. I’m tired of people being indicted as foolish, or uninformed, or stupid if they don’t support a particular candidate, or agree with a particular political view.
Regardless of my fatigue, I do have some requests of different folks going forward. I don’t expect the people requested to do what I ask, but I hope these requests serve as a reminder to each of what is needed and foundational to your role in our society.
To our elected officials:
1. Congratulations. You’ve been given an(other) opportunity to serve your constituency. I hope you do that…serve, I mean. One of my biggest takeaways from this election is that in every race; national or local; state or city; significant numbers of people didn’t vote for you. Democrat, Republican, or Independent, there are people in your district who didn’t cast a vote for you and support your election. Your gut reaction may be to thumb your nose at non-supporters and do the things that you know they don’t support. That’s expected on some levels. Part of us having political opinions is that we see things differently than others and move towards programs or policies that are remarkably different than those who oppose us.
But those people you disagree with are still people that you are called to serve. And frankly, serving another is unselfish. When we serve others, we are required, by the very definition of service to put other’s needs before our own. You will say that you are serving the majority (the ones who elected you) and meeting their needs. But as I grow older, and I believe wiser, I understand that serving well is best shown when I can care for and be empathetic towards someone very different than myself. It’s easy to care for and serve your friends. It’s harder to care for and serve those not your friends. It’s hardest to care for and serve those who are your enemies. Someone supernaturally wise once said something very like that, and I agree with it. If you want to be a great elected official; not a good one, or influential one, or powerful one, but a great one; find ways to care for your enemies. Sit with them, speak with them, find out why they are passionate about what they believe and passionately against what you believe, and work to include what they think into your policy and work, and you’ve taken a step toward that greatness.
Abraham Lincoln spent considerable time trying to serve the people of the South even while the Civil War was on. We call him (arguably), the best president in the history of our nation. If the best was willing to care for and serve his enemies while they were trying to destroy him and what he represented, can’t you learn a little something from him?
2. Speak truth and truth only. It seems astounding that this needs to be said, but obviously it still does. You’ve been given the public’s trust…trust being the key word. We trust you to be straight and on the level with us. We’ve created an entire industry, complete with multiple partisan websites to fact check what you say. That’s sad. It’s sad that the fact checkers spin what gets said to say what they want, but it’s more sad that public trust has been violated enough that we have fact checkers.
Speak truth to us, your constituency. Speak truth in the House, the Senate, the boardroom, the city, county, or state chambers. Speak truth in your office, on the campaign trail, in committee meetings, and at home. Truth is never not the best way. You can work out the double negative, but for whatever reason, too many believe that a stretch here, a fib there, a spin to the left, or a dodge to the right is okay.
The problem comes in us not believing you. Not just when you lie, but in when you say just about anything. So many lies and spins have been used over the years that many of us don’t trust elected officials to say the truth ever. Most senators have staffers whose job it is to manage the information so that only a certain message gets shared. Congressmen have advisors who try to control the release of information. The president’s press secretary is always very good at marketing a message. Even local governments build relationships with the media to share information favorable to one view or unfavorable to another.
Call it what you will, but that’s not truth. That’s spin. And I’m dizzy. Speak honestly. Speak sincerely. Speak clearly. If you start to hear yourself get called ‘slick’, ‘smooth’, ‘slippery’ or you are compared to a used car salesman, you have a problem.
3. Work together. This also shouldn’t have to be said, but in our present political climate, it obviously does. I know what you are going to say. The other side doesn’t want to work with you because their supporters are closed minded and demand that they ‘toe their party’s line’. That may be true, but if you want to be a great councilperson, supervisor, congressperson, senator, or president, you’ll find a way to work with even those sorts of people. If we are learning nothing from our present economic, and cultural situation, it’s that we’ve got to learn more how to build relationships and partnerships with people remarkably different than us.
Invite your biggest political opponent to a BBQ at your house. Sit down and find out more about their history, their family, and their dreams. Share yours. I know, I know, you’d be opening yourself up to political blackmail. But you’d also be opening yourself up to a political partnership that we need a whole lot more of here. We need people who disagree, but have mutual respect for each other. We need people in leadership who sincerely send Christmas cards to people they debate against regularly.
Frankly, we need you to be better at serving than you are right now. We need you to find a way to serve all of your constituency finding ways to move forward for the sake of all of them, not just the ones you agree with or are in political alignment with.
To the Citizens:
You are disappointed, or excited about the way things went. You are encouraged, or frustrated. Regardless, your responsibility as a citizen doesn’t end when you get your ‘I voted’ sticker. It just begins.
1. Care for, pray for and communicate respectfully with your elected officials. And yes, that includes the ones you didn’t vote for. Many of you are people of faith. Good. Pray for your officials. They need God’s wisdom. I know that many of you don’t believe that the person you disagree with isn’t following God’s Will. Okay, but God’s Will was that they would be where they are. If that’s His Will, they’ll serve only according to God’s plan. Pray for God’s presence in their offices, committee meetings, and policy discussions. Pray that they’ll pursue some of things talked about above. Pray that they will understand their responsibility to be better at what they do out of a desire to serve others.
Send them letters that speak of your desire to see them succeed as a public servant. Let them know when they do something right, and respectfully disagree with them when they do something that you believe is wrong. Let them hear that they matter, and that how they do what they do matters. Listen to them when they speak and try to see them as people trying to do what they believe to be right. Some will succeed. Some will not. But as a citizen, our responsibility is to support and pray for those that have been placed in power. I read that somewhere. It’s pretty important.
2. Be a better citizen. Okay, things are happening that you may not like. Taxes are too high, or there are not enough government programs. Government is standing in the way of jobs or they are not helping enough people who don’t have them. Then get involved. And I’m not talking about petitions or political parties.
I’m talking about caring for others. Care for others around you more than you have before. Again, we need to come together more than we need to draw lines that shouldn’t be crossed. There are the poor in your community who need people with whom to build relationships. There are unemployed in your community that you can help in rebuilding their dignity. There are veterans in your community who need to be encouraged that they matter now that they’re home and sometimes more than a little lost. There are lonely retirees in your community who need to have coffee with someone who will show them care and concern.
Government may be able to help with these things, but they will never be the solution because we are. We as a community and as people who hunger for relationship are the answer for many of our political and social ills. Some might say that government is creating barriers that make it impossible to solve these challenges. I disagree. Nothing is impossible. Prosperity and a future of hope and goodness are possible. I read that somewhere too. For us as citizens to believe in that more than we believe that ‘things are going downhill’ is an important step that many of us need to take.
3. Learn how to dialogue again. Remember how your parents used to tell you, ‘figure out how to get along with each other!” when you and your siblings were fighting? We need that sort of chastisement again. We use labels and slang when we talk about people we disagree with. Conservative and Liberal have become dirty words depending on who you are. We use phrases like “How could anyone in their sane mind believe that?!” We say things like, “People like that are going to be the downfall of this country!” Guess what, no matter who you are and what you believe, someone’s saying that about you too.
For us to gain the wisdom to see each other beyond the rhetoric and verbal vitriol as someone who needs others and is working to figure life out is hard but necessary work. I’m not saying that we have to buy in to what another might believe or say. There are things that I think are wrong and I think someone is wrong to believe that those things are okay. But if I just condemn the other as closed minded and foolish, I lose any ability whatsoever to have understand them. I also lose any ability to see that I continue to be a work in progress and that I haven’t got everything figured out.
Please, stand up for what you believe in and be clear about it. But be willing to listen to another as they do the same. Find places of common ground if there is any (puppies or kittens are cute is a good place to start) and work from there. Understand that there’s a good reason why they believe what they believe just as there is a good reason for what you believe.
Love one another, just as you have been loved. That’s another good thing that I’ve heard that I think helps us understand how to interact with even those we don’t agree with.
To the Media:
This is the hardest one for me for a number of reasons. It’s so frustrating to change channels or shift new sites and read remarkably different stories on the same events. I know some would say that one group broadcasts truth, and another…..not truth, but I think it’s more complicated than that.
I’ll only say this. Be journalists. Remember in Journalism 101 when you were taught that a story is the facts shared in an unbiased, neutral fashion? Practice that. There’s nothing more frustrating to me when I listen to or read media and I can tell in less than a minute what your judgments are about the information you’re sharing. You’ve used words and phrases that don’t inform a story, they bend it. Instead of someone being a Conservative, they’re ‘right wing’. Instead of someone being Liberal, they’re ‘pro-tax’, or ‘pro-choice’, or ‘pro-something else you don’t believe in’.
The problem is that you form people’s thinking when you do that. MSNBC and Fox News have moved from being information sharers to information shapers. I’m not okay with that. A country that is fiercely built on the Freedom of the Press shouldn’t be okay with that. To hear one network criticize another networks coverage as biased and politically bent isn’t constructive (Several networks on both sides did that last evening). Be journalists; unbiased, information sharing journalists who give us the events clearly without spin. We need that as a citizenry to move away from the polarization that is becoming more and more rampant. Some of you may be offended by this view because of how much you believe in what you hear from your news sources, but if we only hear the news from one perspective and that perspective has a bias, we’re not hearing all that we need to hear to make sound judgments as good citizens.
I’m sure that I’ve offended many here. Political discussion is by it’s very nature sensitive, but please, do me one favor; if there’s a perspective that you want to share different from what I’ve said, please engage in respectful and constructive dialogue. To demonize, personally attack, or ‘unfriend’ someone just because they see things differently, isn’t helpful and doesn’t help any of us move forward in our dialogue as a community, or a country.
