Public Political Discourse

I once was an avid newspaper reader. At times I read two dailies and luxuriated in the Sunday editions. I pored over background articles and developed a sense of context for the issues. I read opposing views on the Op-Ed pages. It was a treat to view how minds worked in different ways on the very same basis of fact; or not!

As opinion pieces grew in number the Op-Ed page grew to two regularly, then expanded with letters to the editor, then even more pages devoted purely to opinion. Eventually reporting protocols shifted a bit, and then morphed into style pieces, so much so that it was increasingly difficult to determine if the article was news or opinion.

As the trend increased the reader was forced to read much further to determine the who, what, where, and when of an article. I don’t mind analysis but I do appreciate knowing when that portion of an article has begun or ended. It seems a polite protocol to observe.

I care a lot about the news. And I still love newspapers. A few of us in our community bemoaned the lack of a reliable, regular community newspaper when the fourth one bit the dust. So we started one. That effort is now over three years old.

A community needs a newspaper to inform everyone on the same basis; announcements of deaths, events and news items that have widespread relevance. Feedback channels are important, too. Just taking time out of a busy routine to consider a philosophical point or a common life experience has its place in our paper. The paper is a reflection of a community’s face, character and dreams. It’s a good thing and worth working for.

With that said it must also be stated that newspapers must be held to a high standard of truth and representation of same. They cannot know all things at any given time, but they should strive to report accurately and fairly. Truth is truth. Work to keep it on track.

This is a long prologue to the article I wanted to write: an observation of our nation’s political discourse.

The objectives of politics can be summarized in these statements:

1. To elect a candidate who will represent a set of views held by a large group of people (a political party, a political ideology, etc.)
2. To elect enough candidates who, when taken together, will act in concert and control the mechanisms of a government unit to support a set of views held by a large group of people (a political party and/or ideology)
3. To amass control (power) with which to enable implementation of a political agenda

We will define power as the ability to have sway or influence over the majority. Power is the ‘means to an end’.

The content of political discourse changes from era to era. It is the specifics of what we say we believe in, or why we support certain public decisions, or the rationale behind our actions taken in many walks of life having public impact. A table of contents of our topical political discourse would look like this:

• Role of government (options of ideology)
• Government Role in our lives
• Regulatory limits
• Managing the Economy
• Individual freedoms
• Many more!
• Economic goals
• Social goals
• Quality of life
• Many more!
• Theological beliefs, goals
• Foreign Policy goals
• Many more!

You get the idea. But if you actually sat down with a pad of paper and pen to doodle a longer ‘table of contents’ you would run into what I did: sorting through the topics at first appears huge, so many options; but then logic begins to reduce the number into categories. Suddenly it dawns on you that there are very few actual topics. There are a few ways of thinking about all of the topics, and those become the primary items around which we can organize our thinking and discourse.

Because every person comes to these discourses at different points of their lives and social consciousness, to say nothing of the conclusions they have come to along the way, our discourse will be highly variable. The same discussion held an hour later may be hugely different as well! Just think what a difference it will be like a year later. Different experiences added to the mix, different people at differing life experience points, differing historical perspectives, and the list of variables expands ad infinitum.

These factors make our public discussions difficult at the least; disturbingly violent at the maximum. Thus little is decided. We move instead by inches toward the unknown.

In this context many have become cynical. Others have turned mute. A multitude of false prophets inevitably appear. But one thing becomes certain. Not much gets accomplished other than the devaluation of the process and the objectives. Sad and shameful.

How do we make sense of this? How do we rescue public discourse? How do we as a society improve our understanding of key issues? How do we preserve our ‘meaningful march into history’? Are we doomed to fail at this? Or can we meet the challenge?

I will lay out hopeful steps in future postings. Stay tuned!

November 3, 2011