Democracy with no Center is a Zero

On a day of tragedy and shared grief, when so many young adults remembered the parent they lost ten years ago and moved us to tears when they said so at Ground Zero, there was one bright, startling ray of hope that emerged from our communal sadness: faced with an evil shared enemy that would do us all down, we Americans failed to hate each other this day.

When I emigrated to America, I began a love affair still ongoing with this vast melting pot of ever-bubbling democracy in action, a gigantic stew of ideas and ideologies free to be spoken and heard, a cauldron of views, counter-views and counter-counter-views expressed widely, openly and with passion. It didn't seem to matter much who you were, where you were from or what you had to say… America gave you your 15 minutes and a microphone to throw ingredients into the ideas pot.

But every two years, through an election process that seemed less corrupt than most anywhere else, leaders were elected by a majority of those who bothered to vote. And the leaders would sit in Assemblies and Houses and Senates and they would discuss, conciliate, find the center and thus exert sensible leadership.

Then something horrible happened. The system broke. Like a gearbox with no oil, there was an awful gnashing noise and the whole noble democracy thing ground to a halt. And everyone got mad at each other and called each other idiots and swore they'd rather die than compromise with such a bunch of ignorant pedants as the other ones, who by the way said the same things about them.

Time for some home truths, time to take the cover off the gearbox and understand how this democracy thing actually works. Time to pour some lubrication around the cogs and start it back up pronto, before we lose the whole vehicle.

Firstly, can we please agree that no democracy can please all the people, all the time? Whether the election yields a 51 - 49 result, or a 60 - 40 outcome, there are almost as many people who didn't get their guy elected, as did. And how democracies have to work, the stage craft if you will, is that the elected leaders have to govern while remembering that damn near half the people disagree with them, don't want them and that those people also have to be factored into their decisions.

Our democracy is in peril not so much from external forces like a rising China and India, nasty terrorists and our declining position in the globally circular economy. No, I suggest the biggest threat to us is actually us: our inability to create a government that builds consensus and rules from the middle. So much yelling and name calling, so much polarized yammering, so many fighting words and pretty soon we are on a slippery slope down to dysfunctional government and paralyzed leadership. I think this is going on right now. And if you look in the mirror with me, you will see the cause: us, and those who encourage our worst instincts so that they can make an extra buck.

There is an equal and opposite extremism going on: don't inflict your own prejudices, fears and loathing… stand back and acknowledge that both extreme ends are nuts, selfish and destructive of a functional democracy: Far Right, meet Far Left, your partners in unhelpful polarizing paralysis. What is going on here? Are we really two countries, so that running the show through a single democratic system is as likely to succeed as herding cats? No, because look here, it has worked really, really well for a couple of centuries. Somehow, improbably and yet most often, the center was found and things progressed forwards in America. But not now. The oil of civilized discussion, the art of sane compromise has burned away in the heat of destructive rhetoric and sound bites.

Who did this terrible thing? Firstly, I blame extremist media on both sides for turning news into polemic, for selling extra advertising by blurring news into an entertainment not unlike the unreality of Reality Television shows, one that panders to the lowest common denominator of human interest, a desire to see people eviscerated and belittled. I blame those cable news shows that on both sides put forth some violently extreme talking head, and as counter-balancing opinion, another nut job who mostly agrees with them. Rah! Rah! let's call anyone who does not toe the same extreme line bad names and laugh at them. Let's call them bad Americans, traitors and worse. Let's make it almost impossible to find the middle. Let's bury the center in a pile of hot language, and the un-clever and superficial analysis of complex and important issues. Let's contribute to national consensus on crucial issues by blowing it up with glib sound bites and slick graphics. Let's demonize the other 49% and treat them as fools.

And I blame most but not all of our political leaders, who, faced with this polarizing media and the polarized voters it has created, fail to lead us back to the center and instead compete for votes based on being even more extreme than their opponent: "I'm a purer version of this lunatic and impractical extreme view than you are" they might as well be saying in the debates going on.

Human thought is not binary. Not all decisions on life and policy have to be reached from the same Republican or Democratic rule book. Why do I have to feel the same way on trade as a party, because I feel as they do on a social issue? Why do views on hugely personal social issues have to be lumped into the same arbitrary bucket as economic views? Why do views on social justice mean I have to view government as the most efficient way to get there? Why does everything have to be lumped into the same bucket, whether it fits or not? Beats me. We teach our children to think for themselves on a case by case basis, but we give enormous power to two parties to tell us how to think on the full range of unrelated issues. Why do we still have a la carte menus in restaurants? Why not, "Republicans, eat this hors d'oeuvre before this entree" and "Democrats, these desserts may only be eaten after these entrees"? What happened to each of us studying the issues, discussing them with peers, and reading divergent views before making up our minds? What happened to personal choice?

The worst enemies we've had to face in wars are the ones who don't give a damn, they just wanted to win and winning meant killing us and taking our treasure. And the worst of the worst are the ones who were or are willing to die to kill us, because they have been persuaded that some other life trumps this one anyway, that this is just a brief loss-leader in the cosmic reality. They are wrong, but they are tough enemies to beat, because they would rather die than lose. They would rather blow up the whole circus rather than negotiate a solution. And that is precisely what we are now seeing in Washington, in our State Capitals and on those cursed cable TV blood sport news programs.

Democracy is a rare and precious flower and it has allowed more progress for more people than any other system ever invented. But it is fragile. You can't yell too much. You can't demonize those who disagree with you. Like all human organisms, from a family to every company in the land, you have to practice the art of compromise. You have to find the best middle, with respect, appreciation and good will.

So this is a plea for equal time for the center: the poor, vilified middle that is actually the best solution to most human challenges when a huge diversity of views has to be served by a single policy outcome. And you journalists of the Fifth Estate, you unelected pontificators whose lapel microphones reach so many ears…. with your bully pulpit comes a responsibility to stand back, respect history and serve democracy. Rabble rousing may sell more ads, but it will never make your children proud, unless you have already brainwashed them too into knee-jerk extremists.

America is for all Americans. If 49% don't agree with you, listen to them and find the middle path please. Compromise is not an illness, it is a noble insight into how to lead our country out of its challenges. Let's try that now. We are the grownups in the room.

TAKE ME TO YOUR LADDER

I was the first person ever in my whole family to go to college. My Dad left school at 14 because the family needed his pay check of $5 a week to buy more food. All of my life I've counted on my education to not only help me professionally, but introduce me to peers from university who are now spread around the planet in high positions of responsibility and in every walk of life. We help each other.

More than that, my Masters taught me to think, to process information, to develop a reasoned point of view, to not just adopt the first loud opinion I hear from some talking head on television. I treasure these skills. They made me who I am.

When I emigrated to the United States at the age of 23 I had $50 in my pocket and no return ticket. I made myself a career by meeting key people, finding out what they needed and telling them what I had to offer. I was then, and I remain now, passionate about the very big advantages of the United States compared to where I grew up, England. In the UK when I was 23, there was a widespread sense that young people should be seen and not hired… at least in any responsible position. A thousand year culture of indentured apprenticeship had created a communal raised eyebrow when any young person dared suggest they could do more than make coffee. They call it "Tall Poppy Syndrome" over there: if you stick your head up too high, it will be cut off. I was told in one job interview it would be unfair to older applicants if I were to be hired, even though I was also told I was the most qualified applicant and the only one who spoke the French needed where the job was located. Drove me crazy! Civil Rights for Youth anyone?

Over in the UK back then, it was very, very difficult to get a better job than your parent. Social rigidity and the class structure raised very few doctors whose fathers were plumbers.

But then I experienced America. Where they didn't just say The Land of Opportunity, they actually delivered it. Where the sons of plumbers and janitors ran gigantic companies and changed the world. A lot. And their method turned out to consist of a lot of really robust ladders, all called Education: If you were smart, if you worked hard, if you went to college, if you got a degree… you too could be a millionaire, make public policy, lead an army, steer an airliner, be a lawyer, cure cancer…. The sky was the limit, and it was your sky to fly. Because you were educated. Because you were American. Because you could be whatever you wanted to be. So there.

I bought the whole deal, raised my right hand… and I've continued to tear up every 4th. of July. I continue to say the Pledge of Allegiance and actually mean it. But now I look around and I see we are demolishing all the little education ladders, one rung at a time. Without the ladders, I fear we will have many plumbers but few who cure cancer. And that is a very bad and short-sighted thing to ponder, for each individual would-be ladder-climber, and for the fundamental future of our whole nation. It is where we are getting the basic value proposition of citizenship wrong: we are cancelling the leaders, architects and engineers of our future generations' success.

How can we fix this? Well, by not eviscerating the institutions we've already built, schools, colleges and universities that already proved their value millions of times with alumni making great contributions throughout society. It's the same as not eliminating fire-engines when you are short of money (your buildings will burn each other down) or eliminating police protection (your stuff will be stolen), or telling people we won't send the ambulance because there is no driver today (it could be your heart attack). The meat axe being taken to our schools and universities is somewhere beyond short-sighted and non-sighted: it is to despise, dismiss and leave our future as a nation in ruins. To apply Tea Party rhetoric to the currency of education, we are bankrupting the future to spend on other things in the present. And just like the National Debt, the national education deficit grows, feeds on itself and in the end becomes the unstoppable generational driver of mediocrity and a collapsed economy.

So hello out there all you who, like me, are deeply worried by the gadzillion dollar National Debt and the transparent political short-termism that seems to drive many of those men and women we sent to Washington to sort it out. Could we please acknowledge a few things in parallel? Can our minds even hold several thoughts at once? Debt bad. Balanced budget good. But also, life is choices: High quality rising generation good. Removing their education ladders very bad.

But look on the bright side as government takes the meat axe to education; while the rest of the world leaves us behind, we'll probably have great plumbing.