The summer after my sophomore year, I spent some time working at a nonprofit writing out by hand thousands of addresses and thank you letters. While my hand was cramping and my handwriting was deteriorating, I had a lot of free time to listen to anything I wanted to on the radio. I decided to spend most of the summer listening to the partisans of talk radio—Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mike Malloy, and a few others. I wanted to find out why so many found these radio shows hosts compelling.
I learned three important things. The first is that blind, extremist partisanship is ugly in any form that it comes in, regardless of whether it's on the right or the left. Secondly, everyone likes to make politics a lot more interesting than it really is. The attacks, the personal drama, the "us versus them" mentality is all, for the most part, concocted by the media because it makes politics a lot more digestible; it's much easier to listen to a news story about dueling politicians than one on the intricacies of financial regulation.
The third and most important thing that I discovered is that neither side gives the other the benefit of the doubt. Rush Limbaugh is not an idiot, as much as I want him to be. He has a theory of government that he vociferously defends, even if it's always jumbled up inside derisive, partisan attacks. Yet he always believes the worst in Democrats, convinced they're doing everything that they can to bring about an apocalypse.
Because so many of our politicians and political commentators are just like Limbaugh, assuming the worst of those they disagree with, everyone ends up talking past each other and accomplishing nothing. Share in my idealism for a moment. Thousands of people in Washington, D.C., state capitols and other places around the country work every day to pass laws and run the government. Every congressman has an office full of staffers doing everything they can to shape the laws that govern our country to be the best that they can be. Regardless of who is in office, the White House is full of young, well-meaning people who believe they are helping the president make the country a better place.
The thing that no one ever admits or remembers is that both sides, the right and the left, Democrats and Republicans, are doing what they honestly believe is the best course of action for the country. Politics, the opaque film we put on our discussions about policy and legislation, is all about forgetting the good intentions of the other side. I really think Republicans believe that protecting an individual's right to own a gun will be better for the country. I really think Democrats believe that society can and should expand our social welfare net because everyone will be happier and better off if the government is there to catch us when we fall.
The people that I don't want running my government are those Democrats who can't comprehend why many Republicans see the right to own a gun as vital to a free society, or those Republicans that can't understand why Democrats believe a social welfare net seems like one of the best things a society could do.
Giving the other side the benefit of the doubt might sound like politically unwise concession making. Isn't politics the "art of the possible"? Why reach for a higher political discourse and risk losing the political battle of the day? After all, aren't we all just self-interested actors seeking our own well-being? How can we be expected to bequeath what political gains we have made to a political party whose ideals and values we despise?
It's so simple to demonize those with which you disagree. It requires so much less effort to work against an enemy than to try and work with a friend. I understand that. My suggestions for reforming our discourse and politics since I began writing for the Orient have been unabashedly idealistic, often without an obvious, or even obscure, route to a good solution. My 1,100 words every week have only been enough to talk about where I see us ending up, rather than how exactly we're going to get there.
I haven't been trying to reform the politicians who work in Washington or the media that writes about them (because, unfortunately, I don't think any of them read my column). Instead, I've been hoping to change at least a mind or two here at Bowdoin. Some of the students you go to class with and eat lunch with every day will be leaders in our society after they leave Bowdoin's hallowed halls.
How we learn to approach the world here at Bowdoin and the lens through which we view society will affect countless lives. My goal has been to reform the discourse of my family, friends and those of my peers whom I have never met but hope to have inspired at least a moment's discourse. If we can't establish better political ideals at a place like Bowdoin, how can we expect anything better from the rest of the country?
According to a recent Pew poll, the number of people that trust the government today is 22 percent. Congress's approval rating is at 22.5 percent. And yet, the whole House and President were elected in the last two years and all Senators were elected in the last six. It's possible that only 22.5 percent of the country voted for worthwhile Congressman, but a lot more likely that our expectations of government have become completely unreasonable. If we approve so little of the people we elect, why do we elect them?
Throwing stones at the establishment is much easier than trying to build something yourself. I can sympathize with those who feel fed up with an unresponsive government. I want my tax dollars spent well and my government to work hard for me. I don't want more government than is needed. But I also want to work at trusting my government and the officials I vote for (and even the ones that I don't vote for). Skeptics will always have another doubt to throw at idealists and another compelling reason to complain about the way things are. When we contemplate the state of government, today always seems dreary and tomorrow's forecast seems worse.
But what we forget and what skeptics push aside is how far we have come as a country since our inception. For whatever reason, Americans have always believed that we were exceptional. We have always possessed a quirky idealism that we were destined for greater things than the rest of the world.
Our country's short history has been bumpy, but we still look back on it and most clearly remember everything that went right. What we're missing is an infusion of faith that tomorrow can be better than today and that the tools to make that happen are already in our hands. I don't know how to change our culture so that we prop up those who are tolerant and reasonable rather than those who are unthinkingly partisan and cynical. But it surely starts with the individual.
I want more people voting in every election and more people voting with their minds rather than hearts. I want our politicians to talk to us like adults, rather than pander their rhetoric to the most disinterested and least informed among us. I want my peers and neighbors to find news that focuses on substance rather than style. I want moderates back in the Republican Party and Democrats who are more fiscally responsible. I want us to work through and with our government when it's called for and find initiative to improve society by working outside of government when it isn't. But most of all, I want more respect for differing opinions and differing parties, and I want rigorous debate on a national stage among the rational and well-intentioned when real disagreements arise. And then I want to put it to a vote.
Does this really sound so outrageous? I think we'd all agree that substantive, respectful discourse would be better than polarized, petty politics. To be sure, being idealistic isn't impractical because it's wrong; it's impractical because so many people are unwilling to go that extra step and hope for something that they can't yet see a path to. Like any political movement or idea, it only seems foolish because not enough people have subscribed to it yet. There's no better place to start ascribing to more civility in our discourse than right here at Bowdoin.
The difference it would make for our democracy if we showed more respect for and truly believed in the good intentions of those we disagreed with would be incalculable. It's not so hard to talk to those you disagree with so long as you're willing to be respectful about it. Nothing I've said will end disagreements (and I wouldn't end them if I could), but it will make disagreeing yield such better and more productive outcomes.
Thanks for reading, Bowdoin. I hope the pages of the Orient continue to serve as a meaningful place for discussion and debate. To future writers of these pages, I only ask that you work past political debates that don't accomplish anything. Find a way to make Bowdoin's political dialogue more robust and meaningful. Help Bowdoin learn the fallacy of absolute dichotomies in politics.
And since I've got your attention for a few more words, I have one final, absolutely unrelated request to make: tell your family whether or not you want your organs to be donated. Lots of people out there need transplants and most organ laws around the country will put your power to donate in the hands of your family if something happens to you. Your family has no way of knowing if you want to donate unless you tell them, and the sticker on your license isn't always enough.