Our society has come to resemble our two-party system, complete with all its neuroses. Have you noticed how often we are presented with binary scenarios that don’t reflect reality? Even official political debates are littered with loaded questions punctuated by a request for a yes or no response.
To our corporate, media, and political leaders, everything has become mutually exclusive. Black and white. Good versus evil. On the right side of history or not. Here’s a small sampling of reasonable beliefs that get packaged as bullshit false choices from which we’re forced to pick a side:
America still struggles with racism.
America is possibly the best place in the world for racial minorities.
CNN is a hyper partisan media organization that serves only to divide America.
FoxNews is a hyper partisan media organization that serves only to divide America.
American police kill too many people.
Too many people disrespect the police in America.
America still struggles with sexism.
America is possibly the best place in the world for female professionals.
Too many unqualified people own guns in America.
The second amendment is an important American civil liberty.
America has a problem with illegal immigration.
America’s immigrants should be celebrated as a source of national strength.
America is involved in too many foreign wars.
A strong military is vital to American security.
Foreign countries unfairly subsidize some industries.
America unfairly subsidizes some industries.
America has a drug problem.
Some drugs should be decriminalized.
Unions are a crucial part of a capitalist system.
Unions have occasionally led to the downfall of companies and industries.
Climate change is a real challenge.
The government may not always be the best agent for overcoming the climate challenge.
Of the 22 individual statements above, how many do you disagree with? I’ve paired each statement with what might seem to our political class to be a contradiction, only it’s not. It is a different perspective, but it is not a contradictory perspective. I think if I gave you truth serum, you’d agree with both sides of a majority of them.
Exit the factions before it’s too late
We exist in a political system where one party sees 11 of these statements as the gospel truth and the other 11 as heresy. If you’re one of the ~60% of Americans who is a member of either the Republican or Democratic Party, you’re a member of a party that deliberately seeks out contradiction and confrontation where little or none exists. You’re a member of a faction that is tearing America asunder.
You’re for unions or you’re against them. You’re a believer in science or a science denier.
If you are a member of one of these two political parties, you are part of a problem. Not just any problem, though, you are part of the problem. You are part of the single greatest existential threat to the United States today. You are on a level with North Korea, Russia, China, Earth-bound asteroids, and COVID-19. Only you are worse, because you’re already here, you do it voluntarily, and you don’t even realize the harm you’re doing.
You’re part of a party that demands loyalty over reason and outsources official debates to dinosaur media organizations that profit off of maximum division. These debates play to an audience’s basest instincts through emotionally-charged questions that are best answered in short, TV-ready sound bites. The questions asked are prioritized not by what could have the biggest impacts on American society or the American economy, but by which raise our collective blood pressure, generate the most clicks, and sell the most papers.
You’re part of a party that had a noble beginning. One, an abolitionist party that birthed Abraham Lincoln. The other, the culmination of what began as an alliance between Messrs Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. You’re part of a party that today causes all three of these individuals to turn in their graves, that is unrecognizable from its founding principles, and for which no remaining reverence is warranted.
You’re part of something I call The Mutually Exclusive Society, an anachronistic faction that James Madison aptly warned us about in 1788 in his Federalist № 10:
AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.
It’s long past time we heed the words of Madison and others by dedicating ourselves to a plan which provides a proper cure for our national malady. Today, I believe that plan is #Unity2020. Will you join us and save the Republic? https://www.articlesofunity.com/
