I began my last column with a quote from a new book “Our Common Ground.” Author Diane Hessan wrote “The assumptions we make about each other … our attitudes, our values, and our rigidity — are horribly inaccurate.” And I wrote that today’s column would continue with more of Hessan’s findings from her longitudinal study of 500 politically diverse Americans.
My last column elicited responses from both side of the political spectrum that prompt me to change my mind. One of my “Blue” respondents wrote “I agree with the positions she [Hessan] said were shared by a majority of Americans on a range of issues about a variety of issues but that a fringe of people in both major political parties are hijacking the system and preventing meaningful legislation from passing.”
One of my “Red” respondents wrote “Hessan was right on how Reds and Blues characterize and generalize each other and that both are wrong.” Those were momentarily rewarding responses. But then my Red correspondent continued with “I also appreciate that it was a rare John Bos editorial that did not attack Trump or Republicans. There’s hope for you yet!!”
Hope for what? This was from a person I have come to respect and have had numerous occasions with about the issues that appear to be the cause of the Red/Blue divide.
So, I ask myself; am I “attacking” Trump or Republicans by saying that I have never before witnessed a political party working so assiduously to control the outcome of voter preferences? Or am I stating a “fact” that some people don’t want to acknowledge much less hear? The fact is that inadequacies in some state voter regulation laws have allowed for fraudulent voting (but not in any numbers that could change an election) so the new requirement to assure a valid name and address to prevent voting in more than one precinct is called for. Can there be any opposition to voting requirements that make it easier for all legitimate voters to cast a ballot? The evidence is revealing that opposition.
The always present question is who and what information do you trust?
Daniel Ellsberg, the now 90-year-old whistleblower who famously leaked the Pentagon Papers study to newspapers in 1971, said “Trust is not an appropriate attitude to have toward a public official … it’s vigilance. I think that right now we need a public vigilance doctrine.”
Vigilance, in one dictionary, is “the action or state of keeping careful watch for possible danger or difficulties.” Keeping careful watch requires learning the facts and knowing what is real and what is false. “Distinctions between believable and unbelievable, true and false,” Rebecca Solnit wrote in the New York Times on Jan. 9, “are not relevant for people who have found that taking up outrageous and disprovable ideas is instead an admission ticket to a community of an identity.” Which, in turn, reminded me of David Leonhardt’s recent statement that “Partisanship is a helluva drug.”
These “communities” or “identities” exist in both the radical left and radical right. Both identities work to achieve some kind of solidarity with similarly oriented political organizations. Take, for example, the “Proud Boys.”
Conservative and liberal ideologies have evolved from the rights of the individual vs. the power of the government. Left-wing beliefs are liberal in that they believe society is best served with an expanded role for the government. People on the right believe that the best outcome for society is achieved when individual rights and civil liberties are paramount and the role of government is minimized.
An objective assessment of the previous Republican administration reveals that the “power of the government” was maximized at the expense of the people whose interests it claimed to support. Over the past four years, both Trump and many of his political appointees were notably hostile toward science, particularly the science around our climate crisis and the coronavirus pandemic. Trump often shunned science during his term, including when he touted a hurricane projection map doctored with a Sharpie and once speculated during a press briefing about the benefits of ingesting bleach to battle COVID-19. Is this an attack? True or false?
Solnit again: “For American democracy to endure, we must demand that our leaders and candidates uphold the ideals of freedom and adhere to high standards of conduct.” Is there any reasonable adult living in America today who cannot see the abysmally low standards of conduct by all but a few Republicans? Is this an “attack” or a fact?
True or False?
“Connecting the Dots” appears every other Saturday in the Recorder. John Bos is a contributing writer to “Green Energy Times.” His columns about our climate crisis have been published in other regional newspapers. He is the editor of a new children’s book “After the Race” available on Amazon. Questions and comments are invited at john01370@gmail.com.