Ending Our Political Wars

If you're tired of all the fighting in Washington, maybe you should quit being a willing audience for their power games. After all, they're doing it to curry your favor and that of the others whose support they vie for.

Every time you take sides in their battles you fall prey to their arguments pushing one button or another, tightening their hold on the reigns of power.

If we truly want peace in our world -- and lasting solutions to the problems that afflict us -- we need to let go of what we think or want, and shift the way we see and go about the process of our governance.

The reason we fight is simple. We are each individuals and see things differently. Some of those differences as minor, allowing us to overlook them to form alliances with those who share our views on core issues.

On the other hand, we find it hard to reach common ground with those who see our differences as major, particularly when core values are at stake.

The Poison in Our Political Process
This is the idea behind political parties, whose members generally see their (and their party's) quest for power as paramount to their individual positions on the many issues that arise in the course of our political affairs.

Yet ideologically, party loyalty and addiction to power often takes precedence to core values and positions on key issues. That's why they flip-flop so often, depending on who's in power.

Yet their battles always play out the same way. They come up with this plan or that program to supposedly fix a problem, ignoring the flaws inherent in their proposals, not to mention unintended consequences that will result. (Let's ignore for now the possibility that they don't even have any idea of what's in it, being the product of some back room deal or submission by a helpful interest group or lobbyist who "just happens" to have proposed legislation they can use.)

They then round up the support of the party faithful, and try to pick off a member or two of the opposition to claim a bipartisan effort. And of course, the other side fights tooth and nail against it, at least so long as the bulk of public opinion isn't in favor of "doing something, ANYTHING" and they think they'll suffer if they don't go along.

Rarely if ever do they tell us all of the interests behind the bill's passage (or opposition), their relationship to those interests, or acknowledge the down side that might result if they get their way.

Instead, they work through exaggeration, as if this proposed bill is the only way to solve the problem at hand. And then they go about a legislative process designed more to ram it through than open it to reasoned debate on all sides of the issue (and not just those represented by the two parties).

Then they go about trying to convince us, the people, to take their side so they can vote on it in clear conscience without risking voter backlash or loss of campaign contributions.

They push one hot button after another, each designed to motivate this group or that to support their effort or at least oppose the position of their opponents. Fears and desires are tweaked at every turn, wrapped in hyperbole and ad nauseum arguments that rarely play out to the extremes they present.

Politics in practice is little more than an evolving public relations campaign of immense proportion, fueled by the interests of those who work behind the scenes, to get us to act in the way they want. Through polling and focus groups, they know which buttons to push for which groups, and send out their surrogates to hammer home their carefully crafted talking points of the day.

And of course, the media lets them, encouraging their fights by pitting one side against another, and providing hosts and guest commentators who will help us "see" that which we're missing, always with the effect of keeping the battle going regardless of who wins.

So what do we do? We dutifully sit there and listen, occasionally screaming at the TV or getting into fights with our friends and loved ones whose hot buttons are different than ours.

And all the while, we avoid meaningful debate on the substance of the issues.

If we really want to solve the problems, we need to set aside our beliefs and practices, fears and desires and start to talk to each other.

Until we can acknowledge the validity of their beliefs and points of view and find a way to solutions that meet their concerns as well, we will never find solutions that last. Instead, they'll simply harbor their grudges until their side is in power, and then they'll take their turn ramming their side's half-baked solutions down our throats, too.

I highly recommend you begin to look at the buttons being pushed in you, and decide whether they are actually helping the effort to find solutions to our common problems. If not, you're the only one who can do anything about it. Until you do, don't expect things to change.