United on July 4th?

I awoke to the sounds of another 4th of July. Overnight I heard the sounds of young boys and some who thought they were getting a head start on the festivities, setting off their barely legal firecrackers. The boats out on the lake were already busy ferrying large numbers of vacationing fishermen and sun worshipers up and down the broad channel. They lunged in front of our cabin toward the freedom of the broad open water of the larger lake. Celebrations were planned for tonight’s fireworks in every town around the region and around the country for that matter. I awoke to the idea that everything was in place for another extravagant pageant of patriotic recognition of our special status as a nation at the forefront of the world.

Somehow it feels a little different this year. The fading signs from the post 9/11 rally seem to belie a different story. “United We Stand” would seem a bit off the mark as we get set to commemorate this most unique and personal of American holidays. It would seem that we do indeed stand united but that does not of mean we stand together, indivisible against all usurpers of our freedom. We seem to be standing in two distinctly separate camps, each nervously eying the other and ready to defend against “the other Americans who think differently than I.” We are either fascist conservatives who want to take our freedoms from us and hand them over to the corporate giants or nut-case, pro-abortion, liberals who are ready to help the terrorists kill us all with the help of all the homo-friendly courts that “legislate from the bench.” There seems room for no other interpretation of who else might be a citizen of the country.

If no other trend worries folks in this country this trend to define at least half of the country with an inflexible and inaccurate label ought to. As I have traveled this country over these last 50 years I have indeed met walking stereotypes but the usual the memorable thing about them is that they are such an oddity. Perhaps it’s the constraints of the media that is to blame for the current perceptions. The media (TV as an example – though not alone) routinely sees a story as two sided, those “for” and those “against”. A written page takes about two minutes to read. How long is the average text of a news story? It’s likely to be a whole lot less than a page for most unless the story is the headline of the night. Even if the story is longer than two minutes of air time there are likely to be a fair number of pictures which “speak for themselves.” These then cut the explanatory text down to a few helpful sound bites which will give the viewer “both sides.” The trouble with this approach is obvious, there are usually complexities and details which make the number of sides much greater than two. Often there are folks who would be for something if “this or that” was or was not a part of the proposal. There are folks who would be opposed if they knew more about the things already in the pipeline. In the 60 seconds of time they have to tell you the story those nuances get brushed aside. Who, as a news consumer, then has the time to find the nuance? This leaves us with the idea that the world is either for “us” or against “us”, depending on which of the partially presented ideas one found themselves closest to – as presented.

On this particular trip around the heart of America I have had the privilege to talk to both “liberals” and “conservatives”. Imagine my surprise when I heard a “conservative” who had voted for our current president say he was sorry for having done so as the man hasn’t heard the president say anything he agreed with since the election. This man had been seated in the back of a coffee shop listening to a discussion about the sad state of affairs the inarticulate “liberal side.” The worried liberal lamented the contention that by not being able to articulate what it stood for convincingly enough in the last election, voters feared that “liberals were nothing but nay-saying doubters with no real solutions”. As the liberal man left, the man said that he was indeed more afraid of the liberal candidate than he was the current president, so he voted on that basis. His vote for president of the United States was a vote based on the least amount of fear in the available candidates. As the text messaging youth say … OMG! (loosely translated, Oh My Goodness). I would love to think that a vote of that magnitude would be based on the best characteristics of the candidate, not who was less scary than the other!

We must recognize that the issues of the day are more complex than meet the immediate “sound bitten” ear and that the people we share this country are far more complex that a simple label will attest. My conservative friend and his liberal compatriot in the coffee shop share one thing in common. They are both afraid. They are afraid of each others extreme positions which would lead if they were true to disenfranchisement of the other. This puts everyone in the position where they can only say, if that’s what “he wants” I’m going to get mine in place before “he gets his” so that I “get what I need.” It also leaves us in the current irresolvable dilemma.

We are at war; people are dying and being maimed. It is real; it’s not just something sound bitten on the evening news. So in the bumper-sticker vernacular of the day we should either “support our troops” or “bring them home now”. The irony to me is that both of those statements have two things in common, they both want to support our troops and are both equally unlikely to accomplish their intention. The support our troop “side” for its part doesn’t want to see the same thing happen to our current troops that happened to soldiers returning from Viet Nam. They want to make sure that the service person’s courageous sacrifice is recognized and applauded and that they are supported here so that they will not be undercut as they perform their tasks in the field. The bring them home contingent doesn’t want to see the soldier exposed to harm needlessly fighting for a war whose initial premise is now somewhat suspect and whose continued prosecution is promising to be convoluted and perilous thus needlessly endangering our courageous forces for dubious purpose. It is fairly easy to see that in one form or fashion both want to make sure the soldier is placed in the best position imaginable. Of course if each “side” keeps advocating their position the soldiers will indeed be caught in the middle of the contest and will indeed suffer as a result. The “bring them home” contingent ends up giving the enemy ground support as the resisters know that all they have to do is keep up the pressure and the US troops will be forced to withdraw because their mission isn’t supported at home. Scenario, the soldiers loose. The “support our troops” contingent ends up giving the American administration a blank check to continue militarily with no variation which means that the guerrilla war continues to grind good young people into pulp day after grinding day with no solution in the offing. Scenario, the soldiers loose. We obviously need more than a bumper sticker solution to this situation. It will require NEW, COMPLEX, CREATIVE solutions or will indeed neither support our troops nor bring them home for the foreseeable future.

How did we get here? We got here by dividing, by stereotyping, and by creating scapegoats instead of citizens. On this July 4th we need to truly stand united but not behind some bumper sticker or sound bite. We need to get together with our countrymen and recognize “their” common humanity, common needs and common goals are indeed “ours”. If we can’t do that here how can we help the people of Iraq find their common future? If we can’t get above petty differences to find our commonality we stand little chance of showing others how to do so. We must find our democratic consensus and to do that we must forget the sound bite and demand more: more communication, more understanding, and more recognition that our unique history requires us to share our country with ALL our fellow citizens.