Dear Editor,
America today is a two-party system where common goals have been cast aside in favor of endless conflict. Political discussions these days too often devolve into name calling and insults. There’s lots of heat, and almost no light.
Each side can produce a list of things they claim the other side does or believes that are horrible, and each side can produce a list of things they contend THEIR side represents, which are without doubt great and wonderful. Such laundry lists skim the surface of issues important to our lives, and so they add nothing to understanding, and thus nothing towards arriving at solutions to our problems.
The American people benefit from citizens getting along, and working together…often with compromise…to tackle problems. We’ve been doing it constantly as a nation, with slow progress and success (and setbacks to be sure), for well over 200 years. Today’s political parties and candidates, however, seem to thrive on dividing people, stoking suspicions, demonizing various groups, and in extreme instances, working to bring this nation down entirely. Many political actors are determined to obscure truth, and simply deny facts and actions we have witnessed with our own eyes.
Of course, both sides think this division and manipulation of truth is how the OTHER side operates. Also of course, both sides have their radical extremes, fringe folks promoting the most bizarre of conspiracy theories.
Maybe this is how it’s supposed to be; two sides duking it out, in no-rules combat, attempting to gain power by convincing a majority of voters that their side represents the better way.
The major light of encouragement these days comes from the judicial branch of our government. Lies and gaslighting don’t work in a courtroom. Verdicts by juries (along with guilty pleas and “settlements”) involving political figures are flowing like a firehose these days, and they tell us the story of WHO is violating the letter of the law. With a judiciary, this nation doesn’t have to guess who is right and who is wrong, or who is corrupt. Our fellow citizens sit in judgment, and hear ALL the evidence, unlike we average citizens who these days only hear what we CHOOSE to hear.
Sure, you can deny the courts, after all, it’s just another institution to be demonized in some quarters, right? But in the court of public opinion, denying court verdicts will not gain you support or votes. Americans in vast majority do not tolerate law breakers. And as the verdicts pile up, it’s no longer possible to claim “both sides do it.” People can count; when there are several hundred LOST verdicts against one side, and maybe a handful of rulings against the other … it becomes clear which party is honorable, and which is not. A laundry list of accomplishments or promises doesn’t fly if delivered by criminals.
Jeff Harrison
Buffalo, Texas
