Bridging the Gap
I didn’t so much boycott President Trump’s Joint Address to Congress as dread it. My expectations were sufficiently low: a campaign-style speech, too long and too full of half-truths and un-truths. My expectations were, unfortunately, about right.
But it set me to wondering what it will take to recognize and slow the torrent of false messaging and divisive strategies that drive wedges between the American people, keeping us separated, gnawing at each other’s ankles before we finish our first morning coffee.
In a few weeks, my new book (Uneasy Silence) will be available. Here’s part of a reflection on that question as framed there:
“We need, as a society, to find a way to bridge the news gap between MSNBC and Fox, and between many of the thousands of voices shouting on social media. Unless we can reach across the divide, we’ll never find a way to talk to one another. I’d like to think that truthfulness will be the basis of trustworthiness. But we have a long way to go. You hold your truth; I hold mine. The battle being waged in both traditional and social media is to win our loyalty that the truth is being told whether it is or not. When nearly half of the nation’s voting adults are willing to accept a torrent of lies in place of honest storytelling, we’re evidently in some trouble.
Perhaps it’s because I served President Gerald R. Ford, who was at once truthful and humble, that I bleed over the lies told by some so-called ”leaders.” I long for the moment in which every news outlet will bring us a single message:
“My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule….”
It’s a half-century since President Ford took office, and once more we’re struggling to “bind up the internal wounds.”
To stitch us back together, we need to find a way to share a common truth, resist motives of profit and fear, and reach out to people with whom we disagree, sometimes strenuously. But my behavior shows that I’m staying home, close to friends and family whose life views are close to mine.
Reach out to strangers who stormed the Capitol? Listen to someone who votes against my priority? Try some social stitching that’d pull together our divided population? Oh…I don’t know. I’m not confident it’s worth the price in time and emotional energy. So I stay home, as comfortable as I can be, listening to news stories I trust.
I may be part of the problem. I need to become part of the solution. I’ll definitely need your help on this.”
— Excerpt from my forthcoming book, Uneasy Silence, coming soon wherever online books are sold.