An Open Letter to America

The problem of paralyzing, de-moralizing fear in Washington and what we can do about it

People have different opinions about what is wrong with our government today. The spectrum is wide and extreme. But it does seem, at least, that most of us agree that there is something wrong.

I keep reading articles like this one, reporting that, off the record, Republican Senators and Representatives fully believe that the President is corrupt, has broken the public trust and the law, and should be removed for the good of all. But, as we saw spectacularly demonstrated in the acquittal vote last week, with only a single exception they refuse to speak the truth they see, let alone to act on it.

Why?

With a very conservative Vice President ready to take the wheel, it can’t be that they worry over policy issues in the absence of the current President. What else is there? Name calling via tweet? Fox News commentators’ criticism, and the resulting negative publicity? The President working against them in their home state out of malice, for revenge?

Well, yes to all of those, but it’s what those things could result in that is their real fear: not being re-elected.

We Have Nothing To Fear But…

We’ve heard it all our lives: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. These Republican elected officials have been corrupted by their power — holding onto it is more important than truth, more important than doing the right thing, more important than unseating a toxic leadership which may be vectoring not only our nation but our planet toward disaster.

The moral courage required to stand up to a bully and call out the dysfunction has flown in the face of the potential consequences of doing so: losing their jobs.

It’s possible that term limits would help this situation, but I can imagine an arrangement in which the parties in power have golden children and heirs apparent lined up for succession, so that keeping seats in Congress retains every bit of its imperative hold, preventing individuals with shorter tenure from standing against the party line.

A Lesson From History

When I was growing up, my father hung several portraits on the wall along the stairs leading up to our bedrooms. None of them were family members. They were his heroes, people who he admired for a variety of reasons.

One of those was Ignatius Loyola, the sixteenth century charismatic religious leader who founded the Jesuit order in the Catholic Church.

My father was not a religious man in the least, and his explanation wasn’t religious, either. He said he’d read somewhere that Ignatius, at the height of his power, influence and fame in the Church, was asked if he wasn’t afraid of losing it all, what with the Inquisition nosing around and wrecking havoc? His reply was simple: if that were to happen, he would take a day or so to meditate, and then go on to do something else.

My father wanted to live a life as passionate yet detached as that. To work tirelessly for his goals, and be all right with letting them go altogether if necessary; to be at peace with the necessity of turning the page to begin something new.

This is the antidote to the fear which renders our elected leaders unable to act for the greater good. The problem exists on both sides of the aisle, of course, though it is particularly glaring in the GOP in our current circumstances.

But if these men and women could look at the possibility of not being re-elected without fear, take it as given and see it as a time which will demand that they simply move on to something else…the fear of losing power would have no hold over them.

Then we could trust them to vote their conscience, do what is genuinely best and in the public interest, rather than in their own or their party’s.

Pie in the sky?

The old axiom about power corrupting has stuck around all this time because it’s true, it’s a facet of human nature.

But we can be better than that. We can rise above what’s easy, safe, instinctive. And this is what Congress must do. Have courage. Peer over the precipice of losing your seat, and find something you care about in a future outside of government. Make peace with a change in your path.

Free yourself to do the right thing, and step out from under the tyranny of this President and his public opinion machine.

We can ask it of them. We can demand it of them. But we can’t make them do this. Which begs the question: what can we do, to make a difference?

Baby Steps For A Better Nation

The tides of information and misinformation that wash over us are deep and strong, and I think it is impossible to remedy the problem we have with truth and facts any more. If my facts are different from yours — where does that leave us? How can we even talk with each other?

We can’t. Not about these things. We have no common, firsthand reality to drawn from.

But we do share our communities. We shop at the same stores. We drive the same roads. Our children attend the same schools.

Here, where we live, is where we can find the shared reality upon which we can build conversation and connection.

And when we have that firmly in place, we may be able to begin some bridge-building when speaking of more abstract political issues.

What does this mean?

Community building. Kindness. Getting to know the neighbors. Volunteering at schools and libraries. Going to local festivals and town hall meetings and being invested and involved in the people around us and the places, events, and issues we all share. We can’t resolve our differences over the information we get from Fox versus CNN, because neither side is prepared to believe the other’s source. But if we’re face to face, experiencing the same things, sharing them in person, there are facts that we can pin our conversations to, opportunities for generosity, the finding of common ground, and the building of trust.

This is grass-roots action. The smallest of interactions matters. It’s the only place where healing can begin in our raggedly torn-apart nation.

The Take-Away

By all means, keep protesting, marching, emailing, tweeting and demanding change in Washington. Everyone should vote, every time. Hold our elected officials to a higher standard than they hold themselves, and call them out when we see them falling into the abyss of hypocrisy and corruption which their fear of losing power opens up before them, yawning darkly at their feet every day.

But let us also weave a web of community which, one day, may be strong enough that disputed facts from the talking heads on television can’t pierce it. It will take a long time, and effort, and we’ll have to do things which are unfamiliar and probably, at times, uncomfortable. But without a fundamental shared community at the heart of our lives, there is no soul left, no nation to save, and no matter what happens in the upper echelons of power, we will continue on the path of this tortured demise of the American dream.