{"id":257859,"date":"2016-12-28T11:04:24","date_gmt":"2016-12-28T18:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=257859"},"modified":"2017-01-21T20:39:26","modified_gmt":"2017-01-22T03:39:26","slug":"a-call-to-lay-down-our-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/12\/a-call-to-lay-down-our-weapons\/","title":{"rendered":"A call to lay down our weapons"},"content":{"rendered":"

COMMENTARY:<\/strong> We all know that politics in America\u00a0is broken.\u00a0Everything connected to our political process has degenerated\u00a0into a pitched battle. No matter where we look, we can see a different front of this battle.<\/p>\n

\"Todd

Courtesy photo<\/p>

Todd Ringler<\/p><\/div>\n

The very existence of many media outlets is for commentary on this\u00a0battle. From our politicians we hear a thousand different versions of \u201cus vs. them.\u201d And most disconcerting of all, in our broader culture\u00a0we have reduced the discourse to some form of 0 and 1. Rich vs. Poor. Black vs. White. Church vs. State.\u00a0Corporation vs. Union.<\/p>\n

The boundaries our U.S. congressional districts are nothing less than the physical demarcation of these battle lines.<\/p>\n

Why? Why have we reduced our\u00a0political discourse\u00a0into intransigeant warfare? Deep down, I think it is because\u00a0most of America is scared. The geographical boundaries of our nation\u00a0are not the barriers they once were. Terrorism, global trade, off-shoring, the internet, climate change, immigration,\u00a0population growth \u2014 these are real threats to the livelihood of the majority of Americans, and each of us see these threats from our own personal perspective.<\/p>\n

At the same time, these global forces\u00a0are collectively an\u00a0existential threat to America\u2019s place in the world \u2014 each of us sees this as well. The world is changing faster than we, either individually or collectively, can adapt. At a visceral level our instincts tell us to pull back. To pull back from the world. To pull back from each other.<\/p>\n

Our basic instincts entice us to find\u00a0comfort in \u201cknowing\u201d that we are correct while, at the exact same moment, completely discounting the person sitting next to us who is equally scared and equally sure in their own\u00a0thinking, which might be exactly the opposite of ours. Our current warfare-based\u00a0politics exploit these fears, with all sides suggesting that the world is a dangerous place, it is us against them, and to say, “come with us, we\u2019ll protect you.”<\/p>\n

Our fears and trepidation of living in a\u00a0fast-moving, globally-connected world are well founded, but our instinctual response to self-segregate into warring\u00a0factions is\u00a0misguided and destructive.<\/p>\n

The argument here is not for nonpartisan politics or even less partisan politics, but rather for the development of a political culture that, at its core, is built around the notion of substantive\u00a0engagement. Engagement across cultural, ideological, community and socio-economic boundaries. Engagement politics acknowledges the different values brought to the table by different constituents. At the same time, engagement politics acts to forge consensus on the evidence, the facts and the\u00a0truths as we know them, on any and all issues.<\/p>\n

Engagement politics is the arduous process of really\u00a0seeing an issue through someone else\u2019s eyes. Engagement politics is an acknowledgement that the casualties from the status-quo, pitched battle are just too high and inflicted disproportionally on the American public rather than its\u00a0practitioners.<\/p>\n

Many might say that \u201cengagement politics”\u00a0is how politics is meant to be practiced and, in the not-so-distant past, how it was practiced. Well, maybe. If so, that only makes the\u00a0current state of affairs more unacceptable.<\/p>\n

Engagement politics is not a\u00a0euphemism for\u00a0center politics. Center politics is just a place on a reductionist definition of the political spectrum. Center politics has no more likelihood of finding\u00a0the correct path\u00a0forward\u00a0than the \u201cleft\u201d or \u201cright.\u201d Yes, to the extent that center politics infers true\u00a0consensus and community\u00a0politics, there is value in the center. But, negotiating at an ill-conceived center that, in reality, only represents \u201cnot far\u00a0left\u201d and \u201cnot far\u00a0right\u201d is foolish and futile.\u00a0Practicing politics at the center can be just as partisan and ineffective\u00a0as the politics\u00a0we are practicing today.<\/p>\n

How do we realize\u00a0engagement politics? My guess is that\u00a0it won\u2019t be quick or easy. We have been weaponizing the battlefield\u00a0of partisan politics at an exponential rate\u00a0for three decades now. The current\u00a0landscape is too entrenched, too incentivized and too armed\u00a0for the factions from any side\u00a0to see any reason to change. But here are three first steps toward de-escalation\u00a0that anyone of us can adopt:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Make a nonpartisan publication your primary information source. Support that publication with dollars, either a subscription or a\u00a0contribution. At the same time, abandon the red-meat \u201cinformation\u201d sources. These are the equivalent of junk food \u2014 we might\u00a0feel good while eating it, but it\u00a0does not have the nutritional value required to support the growth we need.<\/li>\n
  2. Seek out reputable\u00a0news sources, columnists, op-eds, friends and family members that\u00a0represent a diversity of views. Engage in their perspective. Understand\u00a0their values. A willingness to understand an alternative position is not a sign of weakness. In fact, we once referred to it as a sign of maturity.<\/li>\n
  3. Engage with your local representatives: school boards, city councilors, state representatives or senators. Just pick one. Meet with them. Ask them to speak about issues that are important to them, in their words, from their perspective, built from their values. Then ask them hard questions in a civil manner. This is about engagement and understanding, not persuasion and\u00a0conflict.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    After many years of practicing these\u00a0seemingly obvious and easy first steps in engagement politics, we might have the courage and trust to lay down our weapons and\u00a0to think about the system-level reforms that are needed to get our democracy working again.<\/p>\n

    Todd Ringler is an aspiring policy wonk and recovering partisan living in Santa Fe. For more see\u00a0toddringler.me<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Our instinctual response to self-segregate into warring factions is misguided and destructive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":276147,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[3268,134],"class_list":["post-257859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-journalism","tag-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}