Good Night and Good Luck—
A.V. Walters—
There was a time when I recognized the gentle, diplomatic art of compromise, back when pragmatism seemed like a viable solution to the tensions inherent in any reasonable system. No longer. I’m afraid that, despite the fact that I’ve been unable to rid myself of this vestigial appendage, I’ve come to see reasonable as ridiculous.
You’d have to be naïve or foolhardy to think it was a rational strategy in today’s political environment. Compromise requires a willingness on both sides to surrender some, in exchange for the common good. It requires a measure of good faith, both in the negotiations and in the articulation of each side’s stated starting point. Good luck with that.
Civility is dead. And, it took any chance of an honest broker with it. We have entered the era of the stubborn stalemate, the sneak attack and the tantrum divide. We have become ungovernable.
The symptoms are unmistakable: Rogue Police Departments demanding apologies from Sports Figures, when the latter have deigned to speak truthiness; Law Schools dropping the instruction of rape laws, because it’s too sensitive; Corporations equating any criticism for their policies with Naziism; torture apologists threatening us with what the world would be without the use of their questionable talents; and, of course, the end of The Colbert Report, only in part, because extremism is so ubiquitous as to not be noticeably funny anymore.
Liberals stand, scratching their heads, impotent in negotiations because they foolishly started out with (OMG) the facts. There is no middle anymore. The raging tantrum of extreme politics has, in the name of compromise, pulled us so far to the wacko-right that the balance is forever skewed. I am at a loss for how we find the road back to civility and balance. I’m afraid that the distraction factor is the point, and that nobody is actually interested in governance anymore.
It’s too bad. Serious issues need to be addressed—Climate change; contamination of our food and water supply, the failure to address the peacetime nuclear threats of waste and operations, our disappearing civil rights. All of this stems from the death of our democratic ideals under the erosive influence of corporate money and its undermining disenfranchisement. In the wake of the collapse of our attention spans, corporations do what they will. I don’t know what to do about it. Help me here—I’m looking for a place to start.
tworockchronicles 
The answer could be A.I. But Stephen Hawking just said that if we should be careful of Artificial Intelligence because if they ( the A.I. things) are smarter what good are we? So the question then is are we actually important. Perhaps the world is better off with out us. Or If the Creatures of A.I. are created by us would they be any better.
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The problem is that, at the outset, even A.I. needs programing. Who decides? Whose flaws get to become a part of that ruling paradigm? Much like electronic voting machine software, I don’t trust anyone enough to have that power.
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I read this post not with an eye for which side of the debate you were on–and then realized I couldn’t tell which side you were on. Your point was that we’re not listening or respecting each other (sorry if I misstated your words. This was through my lens). Both sides have dug their heals in and there’s little of the real conversation we so pedantically teach our children is critical to problem solving.
I like the part about ‘compromise’. It’s a Western approach to problem solving. Other cultures value other approaches. And that’s fine. We should meet them where they are.
Happy holidays, AV. Stay warm up there in Michigan!
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I certainly have a perspective, and it’s in there. However, despite the fact that I’m no proponent of the two party system, right now I’m missing the stability that two strong parties provides. I believe that you can only have balance when each side pulls (or pushes) in proportion to the strength of its arguments. Now that our parties are splintered we’ve lost that balance. More than that, we’ve lost the discipline of true leadership.The result is bedlam. Lying in wait, and arising out of the ashes of that chaos is corporate issue manipulation. Make no mistake, the objective is to skew the issues so that truth is lost in the mix and the corporate path is taken. Look at the results of Prop 37 in California and Prop 92 in Oregon, where tens of millions spent by industry to lie about the import of the proposed legislation results in narrow corporate victories based on lies, and in spite of otherwise overwhelming public support. That is the death of democracy. Democracy cannot be sustained if money holds the key to information. Thank you, I’ll get off my soapbox now.
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