Be Careful When Choosing Your Yardstick.

This past week should serve as a watershed moment for many of the mainstream media stalwarts; it probably will not.  CNN’s colossal and shameless reporting error on the September 14 (4?) email to Don Jr. from the mysterious Michael J.  Erickson was a terrible indictment on the journalistic standards that the mainstream media have been applying recently.  I can do no better job of addressing this specific incident, and the broader question of media misbehavior, than Glenn Greenwald.  And for those not familiar with Mr. Greenwald, let us simply say that he is certainly no bastion of conservative advocacy.  His words are wise @ https://theintercept.com/2017/12/09/the-u-s-media-yesterday-suffered-its-most-humiliating-debacle-in-ages-now-refuses-all-transparency-over-what-happened/ . 

The political schisms that have occurred in our society and culture are cancerous.  I do not use that term lightly and I do so with the full intent of placing the most onerous perception possible on this insipid disease that is enveloping our people from the Thanksgiving dinner table all the up to the halls of Congress.  If we might use this embarrassing screw-up event by CNN, etc. for a teaching moment, perhaps we should pose the question: Do we really want ourselves to be defined by our politics?  The universe of politics is at its best (the ideal) a soaring and edifying place of high ideals and human efforts directed towards improving the predicament of American citizenry and peoples of the world.  At its worst (the art), this same universe is a sleazy, immoral, and unethical bog of endless greed and corruption; whose only interest is the perpetuation of itself.  If we look at the world of politics, the substance of policy and administration and not the science of winning and losing, there are very few universal truths.  Most policy questions have varying and often diametrically-opposed positions that have both merit and demerit.  How you approach a particular political question typically hinges on how it affects you and yours, not how it affects everyone else.  In other words, the main driver for most of us in political motivation is greed.  Now is that the yardstick we wish to be measured by?   Speaking for myself, I recognize all too well my own foibles and infallibilities; but please…judge me by my few good deeds and ideals and not by my baser instincts.

Most every elected official has a mix of the ideal and the art mixed up inside of them.  At various times, like during a campaign, the art takes over and is the prime motivator.  At other times, like during substantive debates on the Hill, the ideal will take over and the better angels of the politician will shine through.  And aren’t we all like that?  After all, politics is more than just Democrat or Republican.  It is more than just liberal or conservative.  It is the essence of the game called “us against them”; it is the central theme of the coalescing of one ideal above another.  It is the consolidation of like thinking to achieve a situation in the future that is better than the present.  It is how we win arguments with our partners, how we compete with our co-workers, and how we make a point to our children and grandchildren.  As long as we can keep the mix healthy and maintain the ideal portion at a level well above the art, things should get along fairly well.  But when that art quotient becomes dominant and the ideals become subservient, then we are headed into a dangerous territory.  The ideal should always be worthy of the art.

This political cloud of poison that has settled over our nation and divides family, friends, and acquaintances is destroying us.  Our government cries out for a leader who can somehow rise above the pettiness of politics and begin to steer our electorate back towards some semblance of civility and integrity.   Each and every one of us needs to get back to the point where we evaluate each other and our elected leaders by the “content of their character”, their good judgment, their record of performance, and the ideals they promote rather than whether or not they can win the race, stay faithful to the cause, and help to maintain the upper position of leverage for our team.  At best, the political metric should be several notches down the list of redeeming characteristics when evaluating an individual. 

If we, each of us, are totally honest with ourselves, we will admit that a person’s political leanings are one of the first things we strive to decipher when we meet someone.   Well, maybe not the very first thing, but certainly one of the topics we will get around to rather quickly.  The impulse itself is nothing to be ashamed of; after all, our environment grinds that instinct into us with every waking hour.  How we deal with that instinct will be the important factor in where we as a people end up in this great and bold experiment called America.