Roger’s Reality: A crisis of our own making

By Roger Owens

Among those who attend to the political machinations of the day, I know of not one who does not believe our country is in a genuine crisis. We may debate upon the nature or the severity of it, but about its existence there is no doubt. The left sees what they consider literally decades of social progress threatened by people they regard as little less than barbarians at the gates. The traditionally quiescent right is aggrieved by what they consider the destruction of all they hold dear by usurpers, who, failing to advance their agenda at the ballot box, mangle beloved values via the courts.
    Our news media have devolved into mere carnival barkers, hucksters, and charlatans so shamelessly biased that those who adhere only to one side are left utterly ignorant of entire events and issues covered only by the other. They are in fact so partisan that we actually name them, as in “the left-wing media” or “the right-wing media.”

    We forget all the while how Thomas Carlyle wrote, in Heroes and Hero Worship (1841), that when Edmund Burke stated there were three estates in Parliament, there sat, in the reporter’s gallery, “a Fourth Estate, more important than they all.” I have often wished I were a good cartoonist, for if I were I would caricature a decrepit, abandoned mansion, its broken windows agape, its shutters flapping, its once-grand staircases that led to a higher understanding now fallen and unclimbable. In front would stand a fading sign: “Fourth Estate: For Sale. No Offer Refused.”
    We not only accept a biased media; we demand it. We refuse to hear or believe anything presented by the opposition, no matter how measured and reasonable. We swallow whatever “our” side says whole, no matter how outrageous or ridiculous. We defend those on our side despite their obvious faults and even crimes. We attack those in opposition, regardless of their honesty, uprightness, or probity. Those who parrot the claims of “our” media are correct, even when demonstrably in the wrong. Those so utterly lacking in intelligence, education, and good sense as to repeat the claims of “their” media are not simply wrong; they are evil. Despicable. Loathsome. Contemptible.
    We are on a path that, I fear, will lead us inevitably to totalitarianism. Totalitarianism, by either side, which must inexorably establish the winners as oppressors, and render the losers just as unavoidably oppressed. Con artists, pretenders, and mountebanks, on both sides, set their teeth and determine grimly not to be those losers; damn the cost, and the Devil take the hindmost.

    James Madison, in the Federalist Paper No. 10, advocates against parties and factions, due to the tendencies of partisans to avow loyalty to their various parties and candidates rather than to the country. “A zeal for different opinions…an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power...have divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.” Can anyone of rational mind dispute that Madison’s worst fears have been made manifest in the affairs of the present day?

But wait. Do we not, every one, claim to desire that very thing that factionalism and partisanship damage so severely, the common good? Do we not all, in our arrogance and self-righteousness, determine our own opinion to be truly for the good of all? While that of our opponents is so clearly misguided, it can only be a result of their ignorance, their stupidity, their greed? Surely, we flatter ourselves, the error is theirs, and never our own? Even Madison, while prescribing the Constitution as the signal remedy for the effects of factionalism, admits of “no cure” for the causes thereof. “As long as the reason of man continues fallible…different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love…the former will be objects to which the latter will attach….” But assuredly, we tell ourselves, we can depend upon the integrity of those we choose to represent us to settle these differences fairly. But apparently not; “Enlightened statesmen,” Madison laments, “will not always be at the helm.” I challenge anyone to refute that such is not the case today. I can conjure in mind no single time in our history in which the enlightenment of our leaders could possibly have been more in question than now. The danger cannot be overstated: “The instability, injustice and confusion…[of factions] have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished….” In the balance lies nothing less than the dissolution of our government, our country, and our very way of life. Given the gravity of the situation, what, one may quite reasonably ask, are we to do?

In answer, I can only advocate that those among us, being politically active, reign in the wild horses of our baser natures, and seek instead to be conveyed forward by reason, charity, and compassion. Do not impute evil to those who oppose you; do not characterize them as deficient in reason; do not demonize them as sinister enemies, with whom compromise is neither attainable nor desirable. Endeavor to listen to them with open minds, and acquit ourselves honorably in finding those instances where common interest may serve the good of the greatest number. Those of us who admit to confusion as to the proper course, attempt to follow the example set by those of tranquil mind and harmonious behavior, and do not be aroused to anger or incited to violence by agitators and demagogues. No one can be expected to submerge their convictions to the extent their voices are not heard, yet it is a poor doctrine indeed that must win the day with intensity rather than intellect. Try to remember that the conditions that exist today, however tolerable or odious they may seem to you, are temporary and are always subject to change. Each of us can, in our small way, effect the change we wish to see, by the means provided by our form of government: by ballots rather than bullets.

    We must determine to salvage from the wreckage of today the building blocks of a new tomorrow. It is unquestionably in the interests of all that we preserve our form of government, that, in the words of another great American, “government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Copyright © 2018 by Roger Owens