What has happened to our country?

What has happened to our country? What has happened to our ability to discuss? It has given way to partisanship and divisiveness, to debates and winning (or losing). When the Right condemns the Republicans who endorse Barack Obama for president (most notably, though not only, Colin Powell) rather than listening to their arguments; when the Left makes jokes of Sarah Palin for her misstatements; when honest voters have to abandon their positions on one issue or a few issues for what may be the better overall ticket; when people are so bent on being right that they refuse to listen but instead think about what someone else says only in terms of their response to it, we have a problem. We as a nation have an addiction to being right.

With the election so close, this is going to take on a clearly political overtone. I do want to stress, however, that I am implicating myself as well. I will do my best to implicate "my side" equally. I know that both sides are at fault.

Today at dinner, My'eka passed along an email that someone at the St. Mary's Pregnancy Center, her service site, was passing out. More importantly, she passed along a statement of one of the women whom she works with. She said that she has spent her life working on abortion, so she cannot bring herself to vote for a pro-choice candidate. She will not be voting for Barack Obama. The email, however, implied that God wants John McCain to win. I cannot believe that. I'm not saying that God wants Barack Obama to win either. I just don't believe that God is in full support of either candidate. For me, the issue that God has placed on my heart recently is the issue of poverty. Because this is the primary issue that I am working with and surrounded by at this point in my life, I cannot bring myself to support someone who wants to give the rich (who don't need it) more money, widening the income gap, and who supports corporate welfare. I believe that for some people certain issues are more important for them than they are for others. I don't believe either party has a monopoly on being right.

In our dinner/post-dinner discussion, we began to talk about the St. Mary's Pregnancy Center, Planned Parenthood, and abortion. Specifically in our brief research of Planned Parenthood, I was reminded of how despicable they are. Planned Parenthood is a for-profit organization that wants women to have abortions because they make a profit off of the abortions. It is an organization founded on the basis of racism and eugenics and, to a degree, still operates under these principles today, primarily in classism based on the locations of their clinics. While I don't believe that abortion will be a priority issue on either ticket, I'm a little disturbed by it.

This is my condemnation of politics: I believe the Democratic Party has adopted its position on abortion to pander to a certain group of people. I remember when I was probably a freshman or sophomore in high school, although maybe I was still in junior high, there was a bill in the Indiana legislature to require high school health classes to teach the negative aspects of abortion. There was a Democrat who opposed it. I don't understand why. If you're pro-choice (and if that's a feminist position), wouldn't you (or shouldn't you) be pro-educated-choice? Because isn't that the only way to be pro-choice? Our conclusion was that he was probably financially backed by Planned Parenthood or someone of the like. So he was pandering to his financial backers. (We don't know this for sure, but it seemed a logical conclusion.)

But lest you think I'm once sided, Republicans do it as well. Most notably is President Bush's appointees to head national environmental agencies - former lobbyists for coal or gas industries and former executives within those industries, industries that supported his bid for the presidency. Bush's laws haven't helped much either, largely deregulating environmental protections to benefit the industries and hurt the environment (and in turn, our quality of life through air quality, water quality, and other toxic chemicals - such as mercury - that make their ways into our food sources and our bodies).

We as citizens don't do so well either. We have debates rather than discussions. We defend rather than listen. It's about being right or wrong rather than finding the truth. We accept what fits with our positions and deny what doesn't rather than analyze on merit. We don't look into who wrote what article and, more importantly, who funded what study. I've even come across someone who defended his position on one issue through an article that put forth at least three different positions in an attempt to contradict the other side. And he didn't have a problem with that whatsoever.

But the bigger problem I see is the polarization. I felt like I was told to leave the Catholic Church recently in a response I got from a leader in a high school group that I was a member of. He may not have said those words, but he strongly implied it. And all because I posted a link to a document by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, a guide to voting, in response to another one not sanctioned by the bishops that simply told people how to vote by picking the issues the author saw as important. The USCCB document mentions many more issues as important, issues that cross the spectrum of political parties, and says that each voter must make up her or his own mind about which issues are of the greatest importance and which issues are most likely to be effected by each candidate's election. To be honest, I'm guilty of it too. I had gotten to the point where I disregarded abortion as an issue because it's not the most important issue in my perspective. I felt that I had to disregard it, even though I had a fully thought-out reason for doing so, to defend myself. I'm coming to realize that I can vote based on other issues while still see abortion as an important issue to consider. And I can respect people more who see abortion as the overriding issue as long as they've considered the other issues. So I'm learning.

I recognize that it has become very obvious in this post where I stand politically. I don't intend for this to be a political post, and I don't want it to be polarizing. I just wonder if we can ever reach a point of discussion and honest respect for other points of view. Can we ever discuss things and begin to come to agreements?

As much of a proponent of journalism as I am, I have to wonder if the media is, to a large degree, to blame. To blame for not doing their jobs, or not doing them well. I overheard a discussion about how there are people who just blatantly lie to us about certain issues. We just accept those statements as facts because of a M.D. or Ph.D after the name. And sometimes the media gives those pieces of "research" the attention they need for people to believe them but doesn't give proper attention to the true research. They don't say who funded each study or what that organization stands for. Those are very important questions to ask because organizations seek to gain something through funding research. Sometimes that leads to false research. The media would rather report on Bristol Palin's pregnancy than on what global warming studies were funded by oil companies and what weren't. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. recently said at a talk he gave at Xavier that "America has the worlds best-entertained and worst-informed public." It's because the media is so controlled by corporate conglomerations. These corporations seek to make money. A journalist's job should be solely to expose the truth. But it hasn't become that. We don't check facts anymore, even with easy access in the form of websites like snopes.com and truthorfiction.com.

That, I believe, is why our democracy is failing. By the way, democracy is not only about voting on election day, it's also about doing our part in terms of lifestyle, consumer choices, business practices, volunteer activities, etc. Those are just as important, if not more important, than a vote on election day.

One closing comment (which I stole from a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer): We have become such a majority-controlled government that the party that has control by around 1% has 100% control of everything, while the slight minority has to all but sit back and watch. Why don't we work together better? Why should Republicans be completely forgotten just because Democrats have control of Congress? There are still a lot of them too. Why don't our representatives vote issues based on the validity of each issue rather than party lines? (I know this isn't all the time, but it's enough of the time to be a problem.)

Just some thoughts on American politics....