Politics

Benevolence and Local Politics

I have two friends who have won seats on our city council in the last two elections. Watching their campaigns from up close (I helped with social media for both), it’s clear to me that a benevolent public servant is essential, especially in local government.

Very few people pay attention to local political offices, and so election winners are determined more by name recognition than by political platform or priorities. An appalling (to me) number of people don’t pay attention to political offices in general – hence our embarrassingly low voter turnout numbers for all elections – but this myopia is especially pronounced at the local level.

I’m parroting my betters when I say that most people are more affected by decisions made by their city councils or boards of supervisors than they are by decisions made by the US Congress or President, yet the interest in the races for those offices are inversely correlated. The conditions of our city streets, the interactions we have with our city police officers, the demands of the city’s planning department all have more immediate impact on me than decisions about funding the military, managing relations with the European Union and ASEAN, or establishing rules about interstate trucking and immigration.

I’m not saying public healthcare policy isn’t vital or that passport services aren’t necessary or that the National Guard is irrelevant, but I am saying that my daily walk with the dog through my neighborhood park affects me far more frequently than what the federal government decides about broader issues. Both elections are important, but the local election directly affects me to a greater degree, and so it should have a proportional share of my attention and energy. Yet very few people can name any members of their local government (and, sadly, only a few more can name their federal representatives). I have to admit that absent friends of mine serving on the city council I might very well not be one of them.

And so benevolence becomes imperative, especially at the local level. We need public servants who will put their self-interest aside and do the best for their communities, because they won’t be held accountable at the ballot box if they don’t. And the meltdown of professional journalism that might act as a check on corrupt local officials doesn’t help our cause either.

So if you’re voting in local elections, please get informed about the candidates. Not about their policies, although that matters, but about their character. And if you have to choose between character and policies, choose character.

I am reminded often of the rueful slogan some wags in Louisiana wrote in 1991 during the gubernatorial election between the incorrigibly corrupt Edwin Edwards and the stunningly racist David Duke (former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan): “Vote for the crook. It’s important.” Sometimes it’s not about policy, it’s about decency and fairness and earnestness, about people who do the work of listening and thinking and empathizing and stepping outside their own circumstances. And sometimes the crook is the clearly better choice.

Character will be our communal salvation, and its lack will be our undoing.

Divorce, Writ Large

My wife and I are midway through a so-far amicable divorce.

(I add “so far” only to keep from jinxing us – I am a mite superstitious, and I fully expect we’ll finish it as friends, but, well, you know. . . .)

We are much – much – better as friends than spouses. We disappoint each other tremendously as spouses, but when we lower our expectations to those of friends we fit well.

While our personal situation involves just two, I think it’s analogous to our larger community. Our country – well, our world to be honest – has split into two camps, and there’s virtually no common ground between them. Call them Red and Blue, Progressive and Conservative, Flyover and Coastal, Snowflakes and Rednecks, but we have highly divergent views on how we want to live. And we’re both trying to force our choices on the other.

So I think our no-longer United States of America needs a similar remedy to the one my wife and I chose: an amicable divorce.

As sad and disruptive as a divorce is, it’s still better than burning down the house. And that’s where we’re headed if we continue to try to force half of our community to accept policies, behaviors, spending priorities that are antithetical to their beliefs. The majority – or even a significant minority – will not accept being shut out of communal decisions. When the majority – or even a significant minority – is repeatedly denied even partial satisfaction, they will respond. And when all peaceful avenues to change are blocked, violence follows. The majority – or even a significant minority – will take action, and if violence is the only action that remains, then that’s the path it will choose.

We can circumvent all that destruction though. When people have fundamentally different views on how to live they need to let each other go instead of trying to get the other to knuckle under. Respect each other’s choices and let them live the lives the want to live. Be generous, be gracious, be true to yourself, allow others to be true to themselves.

National divorce will be messy.

We’ll need to revamp all kinds of institutions and create policy from scratch. But the world has many roadmaps to separating nations. Sudan and South Sudan. Yugoslavia. Czechoslovakia. We’ll need to discuss alimony – as economies separate some have more promise than others, and it’s fair to compensate the disadvantaged partner. We’ll need to decide geography – what land corresponds to which country. And I suppose we’ll have to decide how to handle the few territories we have too, though maybe we should let the people in Puerto Rico, Samoa, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands decide where they want to go.

But the alternative is messier. Years of acrimony and recriminations that detract from our quality of life. Energy and resources wasted on trying to change minds and, when that fails (as it surely will), forcing the other to submit.

We don’t need to do that. Separation can be traumatic. It can be vicious. Or it can be kind.

I’m a believer in kindness.

Dad

My father is getting old. He’s working towards 87, though you’d probably guess at least a decade younger if you saw him.

He grew up a farm boy, so he delights in physical labor. Professionally, he spent 40+ years as a geologist, hiking around mines and mountains looking at rocks. His hair is no longer red, but it hasn’t gone gray either. It’s kind of a medium brown.

He repeats himself from time to time now. And he doesn’t hear very well, so he’ll sometimes start a new conversation while another is going on. He’s lost one kidney and his prostate to cancers and a gall bladder maybe in sympathy, but he still climbs on the roof to clean off debris and goes up on a ladder to retrieve boxes of Christmas decorations despite his wife’s protestations.

He and my mother travel extensively, often internationally, often to see opera performances, and he remains curious about genetics and stock investing and politics, though the last aggravates him as much as it aggravates everyone.

He revels in family gatherings, which I understand more and more as I age too. His nine grandchildren are individually fascinating to him, and he thinks about them a lot. In the way of grandparents everywhere he expects nothing from them, and he is genuinely grateful for whatever time and attention they give him. He wasn’t quite as generous with his children, though he was always fair and attentive when he wasn’t away working.

My father is not especially articulate. He struggles to express his thoughts sometimes, and it gets harder the more wine he drinks. It frustrates him in the moment, but his frustration rarely lasts long. After all, there’s always a new idea to explore.

At his retirement party 25 years ago, one of the administrative assistants he worked with for a few years gave me a deep insight into the man I’d known by then for 35 years or so. After my father talked about his career, largely thanking people for their contributions to it, she said it was typical of my father to list his regrets as things he wouldn’t have the chance to do. He accepted everything, good and bad, that had already happened, and he never thought of changing any of it. He didn’t look back with regret, but he was sad about missing projects yet to come. That remains true. He desperately wants to ride in a self-driving car.

He hasn’t figured out most of his iPhone yet, but he’s not intimidated by it. In fact, he discovered how to emphasize delivery of texts by playing around with them, and it amused me – and probably him – when he taught me how to do it too. Our texts to each other are always delivered loud or gentle or slammed. He loves tech stocks as much for their possibilities to change our world as for the financial returns to his portfolio. He’s excited about the future. Politicians aside, of course.

He laughs often and smiles more. He and I like to sit together at family dinners, and we amuse ourselves with running commentary and asides to the topics of conversation. His trademark phrase on parting with colleagues has always been, “Have fun!”

Because he does. Not every minute, but many times every day.

He is, in sum, a happy man.

I want to be like my dad.

Our politics is rife with emotional conflict these days.

Republican vs. Democrat. Progressive vs. conservative. Flyover vs. coasts. Our perspectives have hardened, and there is not an inch given to anyone who has a different view.

I studied economics in college, and I believe that free markets use resources more efficiently than any other economic model. I’ve worked in corporations for decades, so I’ve seen company leaders make many decisions, and every one of the decisions I witnessed were made ethically and reasonably and with no intent to deceive or harm people. I think a healthy economy is important because it is the most effective way to improve the financial situations of the most people.

I consider myself politically progressive. I usually vote for candidates who promise to fund schools at all levels, invest in infrastructure improvements, purchase more park lands, extend unemployment benefits, and provide health services to low-income people regardless of status. Even if those actions will sometimes put stress on the economy and require greater tax payments from me and others at my income level (or above it).

As important as I think a healthy, robust market economy is to us, I think it’s more important for us to do what we can to help all members of our community be well and be whole, so they are more likely to achieve their goals and, in so doing, contribute to our society. My financial well-being doesn’t mean very much to me if other people are in misery. This is particularly important to me right now, given where we are in the history of the United States and the rest of the western world, where people’s suffering is justified with “we can’t afford to [fill in the blank].” We can’t afford to welcome Muslim immigrants because one might harm us. We can’t afford to help people without health insurance because that requires more taxes. We can’t afford to protect our water and air and workplaces because it reduces the number of jobs available. If I gave credence to any of these statements – and I don’t, because I think the cost argument is both simplistic and exagerrated – I would still choose to welcome the immigrants, provide health care, and protect our resources and our people. Jobs and money and financial security of the haves aren’t justifications to deny others the things they need to live a secure life so that they can pursue their dreams and contribute to our communities.

We can afford to treat everyone equally under the law, we can afford to treat everyone the same with regard to Constitutional rights, and those of us with means can afford to give up more of that wealth to help our communities run more smoothly while providing the tools and support for people to make constructive lives for themselves.

Apparently we just don’t want to. And that profoundly disappoints me.