Readers and viewers seem transfixed with the more extreme political movements across the world. Far from bringing the world closer together, these new developments threaten to disassociate us in ways we haven't experienced in decades. All eyes are on politics these days.
Yet something else is bubbling beneath the surface that receives little attention, but which is effectively cutting off our collective ability to meet the powerful challenges facing our modern world. For over two decades we have watched as hyper-partisanship has ripped the governing capabilities out of our politics, aligning each party into rigid positions that often make compromise and common ground almost impossible to achieve. That inflexibility has now spilled over into the citizenry, and the results are eerily similar.
It was almost a year ago that Bill Clinton and journalist David Brooks labeled hyper-partisanship as the "governing cancer of our time," and little that has occurred in the past 12 months alters that reality.
Brooks talked about those who "don't recognize other people ... don't accept the legitimacy of other interests and opinions ... don't recognize restraints ... want total victories for themselves and their doctrine." We've all been around long enough to see the results of that kind of politics, but can we spot its emergence among citizens?
Repeated studies over the past decade have highlighted just how the different liberal and conservative temperaments in people have caused them to pull further apart from one another, talking past each other in the process.
More than a few are now worried that this practice has carried over into how we treat one another as citizens.
Intrinsic in all of this has been our penchant to meet only with those of similar feelings to our own, to only befriend or follow those on social media who agree with us. A natural tendency, the results of such social isolation into similar outlooks has come to look more and more like those political parties who sincerely dislike one another and refuse to find that essential common ground that is necessary for progress.
The negative effects of this in the political class prompted playwright Sean O'Casey to note: "Politics -- I don't know why, but they seem to have a tendency to separate us, to keep us from one another, while nature is always and ever making efforts to bring us together." More than a few are now worried that this practice has carried over into how we treat one another as citizens.
While the operating principle in our modern politics has been partisanship, its equivalent in our communities has been polarization. There are good people in our communities who run solid businesses, create loving family environments, volunteer at charities and pitch in to help their neighbours.
The thing is that they might not agree with us on some issues of policy, but do retain many shared values which we hold. While many of these individuals remain silent, they are nevertheless fellow citizens who ride the same buses, have kids who play on the same sports teams as our own, and are just as patriotic as those who hold to different political persuasions.
The reality is, of course, that there are millions of such people around us. But what if our present course continues as citizens retreat from their shared culture of consensus? What happens when we need to come together for the sake of our children over some great universal challenge and discover we can't?
The reaching out must start happening now before it becomes impossible.
Perhaps our greatest task as citizens is to show that we are actually capable of establishing a civic culture that eventually accomplishes what our heavily partisan politics lost. But that will require talking with respect, not trashing. It will need understanding, not umbrage, intelligence and not incitement. There's nothing wrong with protesting; indeed, it's our right and obligation as citizens. But so is the task of finding news ways of coming together. As Mike Sasso would put it in his Being Human: "Originality is the best form of rebellion."
Protest we must because that is part and parcel of any healthy society, but added to our desire for change, or principled opposition, must come the willingness to sit down and deliberate together. The reaching out must start happening now before it becomes impossible. It was our first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, who said that, "A public man should have no resentments."
Neither should private citizens if we are to attain the country we all seek.
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