A new documentary attempts to divulge the context of O. J. Simpson’s trial, the so-called “trial of the century.” It not only explores O. J.’s life before the trial, but also the circumstances of both his life and the trial, to include the state of race relations in Los Angeles generally and between the African-American community and the Los Angeles Police Department more specifically. The assumption behind this production is that we can never really understood O. J., the crime, or the verdict without an understanding of the context. You see, everything is connected: race, culture, locale, background, and even history.

Some day in the future, another documentary will be researched and presented to the American people in order to make sense of our current political upheaval. It is probably presumptuous of me to write about the context of the storm that is brewing. But it seems to me that the stakes are too high if we ignore it entirely. To the extent that we can grapple with our contemporary context, we may be able to divert a very unwelcome trajectory into our future.

What the current electoral season seems to reveal is that Americans are not happy with their government or, at least, with the candidates running for office or those already in office. And yet, Americans continue to vote for incumbents: allegedly, 80% of House seats are considered non-competitive. Meanwhile, our major parties continue to nominate established politicians—with the notable exception of a one recent Presidential nominee. On the one hand, we seem to trust local politicians or familiar candidates; but, at the same time, the new and different outsider captures our hopes for change. Clearly, we want change, but are divided on how to accomplish it. The question I am asking today is whether we are mistaken in placing our hopes in any candidate for office without understanding the context. More to my point, no champion, political savant or crash-and-burn strongman can alone change a social environment with deep historical roots, the entrenchment of a failed system of governing, or the implacable façade of an inflexible ideology.

Taking an historical perspective, one must admit our society has been both pluralistic and divisive from its very outset. Even before our slice of the continent became America, migrants began populating this land. First, they came from various countries in Europe. Those early settlers pushed the native Indians from their hereditary lands and imported slaves from Africa. To this day, most Native Americans live in impoverished Reservations while many African Americans live in poor segregated communities where access to public services, education, and job opportunities lag far behind the general population. Subsequent migrations from Europe, Asia, and the American sub continents have all been met with resistance before their eventual assimilation, usually over one or two generations. That resistance has always been colored by prejudice. Remember the injustice of the Japanese internment camps or the exploitation of Mexicans in the Bracero program. Although our society has at times assimilated large numbers of migrants, such as refugees from foreign wars, we still seem reluctant to fully integrate people who have been here as long as or longer than any segment of our population, such as Indians, African Americans, and Mexicans. The concept of a “more perfect union” still runs afoul of divisiveness born of racial and ethnic prejudice.

Overlapping with these racial and ethnic divides are social economic factors that further define both the diversity and contention within America. The mobility inherent in our system has allowed people to concentrate within communities of similar ethnic and social economic identities. It is this concentration phenomenon that has given our political parties the inspiration to develop gerrymandering into an art form. The rural/urban divide, as a result, seems to largely define Party alignments. Population centers like our major cities have no more voice in the House of Representatives than much less populated rural, districts. Should we be surprised that our diversity supports contention in Washington along the lines of race, ethnic origin, and urban/rural communities of like-minded perspectives? Both divisiveness and cultural diversity are very much a part of our context.

Another aspect of our society is what is now commonly called “low information voters.” When news outlets offer this label, they seem to imply a native ignorance within a portion of our population. But there is no lack of common sense amongst Americans. It is not “low information voters” that are deficient, but low information providers. Once again, I must turn my focus on cable news where it appears many people obtain the news of the day. The core issue here is corporately sponsored news programs produced for profit. How often do you hear a speech from a public servant without commercial interruption? Sponsorship and ratings are the driving force instead of viewer education. The few exceptions are programs that combine both characteristics or that function as “fillers” in prohibitive time slots. For the most part, the broadcast media is obsessed with the loudest voice, the most outlandish behavior, scandal, offensive dialogue, and a complete lack of in-depth reporting where context is almost never included. When politicians oppose each other’s positions, “objective” reporting most often lends air time to both positions without reporting on the objective truth of their remarks. Fair or equal access to media may seem to be a neutral position for a corporation not wanting to offend its consumers, but how neutral is a failure to report facts or state the consequences of serious issues? Neutrality in this instance is just journalistic cowardice and a disservice to the American public. Of course, the lack of substantive civics education is a factor in voter participation; and so is the truncated information or misinformation that inundates social media. Nevertheless, the broadcast media, unlike other, less available news outlets is largely responsible for the “low-information” voter syndrome. American voters are left to their own devices to search in private for credible data on the issues and candidates that interest them. The result is a public information context overflowing with data, but mostly lacking in substance.

Besides the societal context, what can be said about the current functioning of our government? It still bears the main features the founding fathers intended. Our democracy is structured around a check-and-balance system of three equal branches of government, a bicameral legislature, and the early development of a two party electoral system. The Constitution defines and regulates our separate but equal branches of government. Party constituents establish and define their respective Parties. And the House and the Senate make their own rules for conducting their legislative agendas. Their success in serving their constituents is defined by their ability to compromise in the interest of the general welfare of all Americans. Although the wheels of government were designed to move slowly, our system allows for the representation of a diverse electorate and the resolution of differences through compromise. But, currently, it is not our government’s cumbersome process that hinders American progress; it is the lack of compromise between the Administration and Congress and between the political Parties in Congress. It is too easy to cripple our form of government when our two political Parties refuse to work together toward common goals. During the Obama presidency, the lack of compromise between the Parties has become entrenched. (For more on this topic, you might refer to “Is America Broken?,” “A Tale of Two Fallacies,” or, with a touch of satire, “Politicians are One Eyed Cats,” and “Compromise: An Unfulfilled Promise.”)

Perhaps we should not be surprised that failures to assimilate in our general population reappear in our representatives’ inability to work across the aisle. Nevertheless, a stubborn resistance to finding common ground or to build a basis for compromise is not just fouling the wheels of government but betraying its very purpose. In other words, this behavior is un-American. Before Party loyalists point the finger at their opposition, let me illustrate a few areas where both Parties illustrate my point:
➣ Party-line voting suggests that Party loyalty rather than individual conscience dominates Congress. Certainly, Party positions require teamwork, but the extent of this practice defies profiles in courage in lieu of political tribalism. Americans are best served by bipartisan legislation that addresses the diversity of the electorate.
➣ The legislative agenda is set by the majority Party, as it should be in a democracy. But when the minority Party’s agenda is totally vanquished from the floor—prohibiting both debate and an up or down vote—then the legislature no longer speaks for all Americans. The voice of many Americans is silenced; and requisite compromise is averted. (As an aside, I might add that too often special interests are allowed to define the legislative agenda, further limiting representation of the general public’s interests.)
➣ Political fund raising consumes much of the time and effort legislators could be devoting to working “across the aisle,” as many of them admit. Although there is evidence of some collegiality in the upper chamber, there appears to be none in the House. Obviously, political campaign reform is a major issue (reference “American Revolution 2016”), but it still cannot justify the lack of bipartisanship in our legislature. If our elected officials cannot find time to talk to each other, then there is even less opportunity for compromise.
➣ Political strategy too often takes precedence over the obligations of public office, including the critical responsibility of compromise. Perhaps a particularly heinous example is the Republican strategy for defeating Obama: (1) delegitimize him as president (e.g., the birther controversy, secret Muslim inference, etc.); (2) block everything and make victories look ugly; and (3) make it appear to the country that anything is better than the partisan caricature drawn of the present situation. It was this strategy that killed what would have been the most significant bipartisan compromise of recent years, the so-called “grand bargain.” That compromise potentially would have curtailed growth in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to the tune of hundreds of billions, would have increased revenues by 800 billion, and would have reduced both defense and non-defense discretionary spending by more than one trillion dollars over a ten year period. Though this example stands out, both sides of the aisle have become entrenched in strategies that befuddle compromise.

The complexity of our diverse society and the uncompromising gridlock in Washington are both emblematic of an underlying phenomenon. While we struggle to live up to our founding principles, such as equal justice for all, promotion of the general welfare, and the spirit of compromise, we have developed the ruse of inflexible ideologies to justify this drift from core values. At the most generic level, it is no longer capitalism and democracy, but capitalism or democracy. It is not conservatism and liberalism, but conservatism or liberalism. But these “ideologies” are not inflexible, but complementary. At the outset, America was a mercantile enterprise. And capitalism was never the sole bastion of conservatism. In fact, free trade always was (and still is in Europe) considered as a liberal position. The regulation of business, which is anathema to Republican conservatives, was first proposed by a Republican President whose face appears on Mount Rushmore. The Republican Party was born out of the “far left” abolitionist movement. The Democratic Republican Party morphed into the Democratic Party and was founded on the Jeffersonian principle of a limited central government, ironically the central concept behind the current Republican Party’s preference for State’s rights. If you took the measure of history to our present day, you would find the concepts of capitalism versus democracy or conservatism versus liberalism overlap in many areas. In their actual application, they form a continuum, ever ebbing and flowing with the tides of time. The antagonism invented by protagonists is really for the purpose of maintaining divisions in our society, for stimulating those divisions to gain constituents, and for justifying positions on matters of governance (reference “The Weirdness of American Politics”). These concepts and their political representations are just the flip sides of the American experience. Regardless of Party affiliation, all Americans find themselves projected on one side or another of a seesaw. The task before Americans is to find that balance in the middle and not to contend with one another until one side is thrown to the ground.

Often our Constitutional “professor and chief” has denounced unfairness, meanness, or uncompromising behavior with the words, “that’s not who we are.” Unfortunately, his words are a lie that panders to our mistaken self-image as a nation. What he should be saying is “that’s not who we want to be.” America, the so-called “melting pot,” is a cauldron of burning elements that cannot be reduced to a single entity. The fired-up passions of an election season might promise total victory for one Party, but governing in our system must assure “justice and liberty for all” members of our pluralistic society. Of course, we want our businesses to succeed, but not at the expense of a diminishing middle class. Naturally, we want our Constitutional principles to address contemporary issues, but not at the expense of those principles. The liberal/conservative push/pull is a natural concomitant of the American system, as is the for-profit/public service tension. The diversity of our history, our society and our beliefs demand that we accept our past and present differences and work toward the greatest good.

The American Constitution is a hallmark of the Age of Enlightenment. The system of government it constituted is both an experiment and a challenge for succeeding American generations. Our task is to learn from our failures and make that document a living trust in order to realize its promise. Recent history has shown us the pitfalls of other systems. America has fought in world wars with countries that adopted nationalism where the state subordinated the individual and populism where tribal beliefs victimized individuals who were different. Those ideologies are antithetical to our Constitution, and anybody who proposes them should be considered a radical and un-American. Equally, we should be wary of corruption from within, to include the influence of money and the usurpation of power for its own sake. When self-interest trumps public service, both our institutions and Americans suffer. And, finally, we should not give too much credence to the recently touted analogy with right wing challenges to the European Union. Washington DC is not Brussels, but a part of our country, the United States of America.

A prescription for change, then, is for Americans to cast off the indifference displayed in low voter turnout. It is long past the time for us to address our problems with class/ethnic/racial inequality in our society and with the uncompromising/nonsensical ideological contest for power in our politics. We already have what we need to continue America’s evolution in the Articles of our Constitution and in the core values expressed in that document. The change Americans seem to be seeking will not be found in antithetical political philosophies or radical demagogues that deviate from those values, but rather in a creative application of our founding principles to our contemporary problems. That change is solely in the hands of individual Americans. We simply need to reengage with the promise of our heritage and with the responsibility it entails. Let’s make our voices heard in the halls of Congress and in local voting booths across our great country. Awake, America!