How do we work together? That seems to me to be the question for this new year. We’ve certainly spent more than enough time learning how to disagree.
Just ask the United States Congress how much they know about that. I’ve learned a lot from them about disagreement and not working with others. U.S. history teaches us this country was built on compromise, a system of give-and-take and, above all, an underlying mutual respect for the person sitting next to you. The idea was that if our representatives worked together, the country would work better.
But you know what’s a great example of our country’s compromising values? The $1.3 billion that lawmakers cost the U.S. government while they were holding the debt ceiling hostage in 2011. The threat of a potential debt downgrade nearly blasted another hole in our already-precarious economic system. The $1.3 billion was the minimum loss estimate. But what’s ironic is they did it all over again on the fiscal cliff.
A message to Congress: The next time there’s another chance to have an incredibly vacuous argument about whether or not to move the country forward, please remember how much money it costs to bicker.
But Congress certainly wasn’t the only one teaching class in recent years. My man Mitt Romney sure gave his fair share of classroom lectures. I learned from Romney that changing your opinions to please people is a good way to try to get ahead in the world. I learned that if you work towards avoiding peoples’ concerns, rich folks will give you lots of money to keep doing it. But most importantly, I learned that caring 47 percent about anything gets you nowhere — sorry Mitt.
I mock what I watched this November, but it’s not with pleasure that I do so. I love this country and I find it disheartening that the 2012 presidential election reminded me more of a censored Jerry Springer episode than a contest between great men of great intent and aspiration. President Obama lost the first debate not because Romney had any content to his argument, but because Obama underestimated Romney’s capacity for obfuscation and his determination to reposition himself — yet again — to suit the mood of the general electorate.
It’s sad that we live in a time in which people are so uninformed and uninterested in working towards a common good and that politics is now a form of entertainment — or blood sport — instead of the respected form of civil service that produced great men and women in our history. How can it be that we claim to be the descendants of the “Greatest Generation,” a group of people whose great strength lay in their understanding that, at times, individual sacrifice and compromise are necessary in order for everyone to be better off?
Two months ago, a gunman in Connecticut mowed down 27 people: 20 small children, six teachers and his mother. This happened three days after a gunman shot up a mall in Oregon and in the same year as fatal mass shootings in Minneapolis, Tulsa, a Sikh temple, the midnight showing of a movie, a coffee bar in Seattle and a Halloween party on a college campus. Twenty-seven, two, six, three, six, 12, six, two. That’s a body count of 64. It’s time to ask again: How do we work together?
It’s time that our political system answer that question and learn to live within the times — not expect the times to live with them.
Our age is being reshaped by mass communication and mass communication is where change will begin. I loved that after every presidential debate, Facebook turned into a political forum for ideas and opinions on the candidates’ performances. That shows me there is hope, that people are interested. All of you who put up statuses that told me to keep my politics to myself can get lost. We need discussion.
That’s how we will begin to make a difference.
Next time you read about something you think ought to be recognized and changed, I want to hear about it. My friend at Northwestern University wants to hear about it. The Herald wants to hear about it. Chances are, people you never would expect to care want to hear about it.
In the end, it’s simple. Whether or not we solve the issues of our time will be the ultimate reflection of whether or not we can learn to work together — you, me, our congressmen, our professors, the deans, our new president — we is all of us.
Danny Delaney ’15 enjoys buying cartons of orange juice at the Campus Market. He encourages you to reach him at daniel_delaney@brown.edu.
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