Look around next time you’re running errands, or when you next read the headlines, pay extra close attention and you’ll probably be surprised to find an overabundance of labels. Oh I don’t mean sticky labels, or post it notes although it might be better if I did, as those could be removed. I’m talking about the kind that are written with the virtual sharpie, and create invisible divisions. Women’s issues…healthcare issues…education issues…human rights issues…gender equality issues…LGBTQ issues…pay gap issues…human trafficking issues…abuse issues. Each of these has the ability to conjure up a picture of someone in distress in our minds, producing a familiar clench in our collective bellies.
Throughout the election cycle and now into the governing cycle we’ve been inundated with stories that cross the partisan divide, educating our nation on how these great groups of electors will solve each of these problems. They’ll fight the war on hunger, on healthcare and health insurance, on education, on trade, on pay, on this, that and the other. It’s the same story told over and over and over again, and nothing really ever changes. The only thing that’s any different now than 50 or even 100 years ago, is that by virtue of the internet and social media, the megaphone has gotten larger and louder. But are the stories really any different? Or are we just more aware of them because they are now able to be placed in front of us constantly? Isn’t it time to ask ourselves, why nothing ever changes? Why is it that when the politicians get to Washington, they spend all their time playing political tug of war? Did we elect them to do that, or is there something else happening?
In theory we’ve elected these individuals that are, in theorysupposedly bright, yet they faithfully embody Enstein’s Theory of Insanity over and over again, year after year, election cycle after election cycle. (Well, not so much a theory, really. He said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.) As a child, I learn very quickly if I put my hand on a hot stove, I get burned and I don’t do it again. So why do our politicians insist on fighting the identical fights year after year? Two possibilities exist. One, they aren’t bright enough to figure it out (in which case they should never have been re-elected) and two, they’re all crazy like a fox and know that if they actually solved the issues, they’d have no jobs to come back to. If we go with that first possibility, and we ARE re-electing them repeatedly, well then the problems really are our own damn faults, aren’t they, and we’re the ones living up to Einstein’s definition of insanity. Which leaves the second option, they’re all crazy like a fox.
There is a central theme in a solution however, for all of the issues that the politicians – whether they are local or national – are tasked to solve. Remove the labels – all of them. Not just from the issues themselves, but from the individuals trying to solve the problems too. No more making this about a man issue or a woman issue, or a Democrat or Republican. It’s not about you-me-us-them. It needs to start being about doing the right thing for people. Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Those last 4 words really are key. It needs to stop being about imposing our beliefs on others, but stopping and thinking about what that really means. How will you feel when someone else forces you to have THEIR beliefs imposed on you against your will? Just because they could? When you begin to think about things with that mindset, suddenly some of the decisions take on new meaning. What might reactions be if someone’s children can’t attend a charter school because a)they already filled their quota for children of minorities or the poor or b) haven’t filled their quota for children of minorities or the poor so can’t take any more affluent children now even if you CAN donate $1 million to us, so now the Betsy DeVos’s of the world have to send their children to public school whether they like it or not. Or what if our lowest income families that can’t afford healthcare, no longer can get free contraception because of the defunding of planned parenthood, and suddenly we see an increase in birthrates in that demographic? If you’re one of those congressmen or women that have insisted on repeal and replace the ACA, before you continue down this path just stop for a moment and imagine you’re not a congressman/woman but an average hourly wage worker, your spouse can’t work, you live in an apartment and drive a beat up car. Close your eyes and picture it, life is tough, you can’t afford much for new clothes, let alone dining out, and the ACA is the only insurance you can get. Are you still so eager to push thru the plan you propose under those same conditions? What about if you’re a new single mom? Will there be an increase in funding for WIC? For Medicaid? For the stresses imposed on those families? (And to Matt Garza, here’s a newsflash: married couples shouldn’t be forced to practice abstinence just to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.) Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying that the ACA doesn’t need fixing, it does. But honestly, ask anyone who has ever worked in a large organization with something like this, is it easier to start over, or incrementally fix, and they’ll probably tell you to incrementally fix it so you don’t make a bigger mess of it.
The issues facing us are people issues. It’s that simple. And until politicians can learn to leave their titles at the door, get off their asses and away from Capitol Hill, really learn how real people live and the real pressures they face, and finally learn to leave the partisan bickering outside the room when they meet, they’ll never figure it out. Or, to paraphrase Donald Ogden Steward and Philip Barry who wrote The Philadelphia Story, “You’ll never be a first class politician until you’ve learned to have some regard for human frailty.”
Beth Younker 