I can rarely say I am surprised when politicians get down to the business of tearing each other apart, but I would be lying if I weren’t dismayed to see the current trend of "truthiness" prevailing throughout the lead-up to the election in November. The latest snafu over incorrect word usage involves, of course, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who is accused of looking down on voters in Pennsylvania because he dared to be real…again.
In a speech he gave at a fundraising event in San Francisco last week, Obama talked about the fact that so many Americans feel disenfranchised by the same government that promises them things will be different this time. I never thought I would ask this, but am I the only optimistic cynic left in America?
When as a country did we get to the point when we no longer valued truth over comfort? These days are disturbingly reminiscent of a time when we pretended not to notice a lot of things: racism, sexism, classism, domestic violence, child abuse and the list goes on and on. Are we really back to the place where we are uncomfortable with confronting reality, prefering to have everything sugar-coated so it goes down more easily?
What concerns me most about this is we have developed a tendency to partialize everything we hear into convenient little sound bites. As a result of this, we come to a point where the bigger meaning in the messages we hear is obscured and all chance for reflection is lost in the din of critics calling for political correctness.
We seem to have forgotten that our willingness to reflect on experiences with each other is directly tied to our ability to overcome the prejudices we all carry within us. Attempting to understand why people become disillusioned and hardened against their fellow men or women should be applauded as a commitment to doing the hard work of embracing the ugliness of life, a necessary step if we are to become the unified nation promised as the solution to all our problems.
The only problem with that lofty goal is it is unrealistic in the grand scheme of things. There will always be people who fundamentally disagree with each other about the business of running a nation, but that is one of the things about this country that makes us lucky to be citizens. The fact that we (theoretically) include people who oppose us in our dialogue, problem-solving and decision-making processes means everyone has a seat at the table. That is the way the founding fathers intended it, and in the context of the strife they experienced likely they understood the value of making an acceptable peace.
Our measure as a unified country is not marked by whether or not we all agree with each other, but by our genuine desire to work together in building a nation where we feel comfortable with our differences, not comfortable with ignoring them. Unification does not have to equal perfection, but simply require us to rise above our discomfort at the unpleasantness that divides us, and help us embrace the idea of agreeing to disagree without dissolving into partisan bickering.
When people criticize Obama for discussing valid factors behind much of the unsavory behavior we are guilty of as human beings, they do more than just tear down truth-telling. They make it unsafe and unappealing to examine ourselves and our society on any significant level, thereby fostering a climate that encourages denial and, ultimately, a continuation of the oppression we’ve seen perpetuated in our country. When we acknowledge things that trouble us for what they really are, we progress toward creating a safe space where people can work with each other to overcome the biases that keep us from being a truly unified nation. Now that’s politically correct.
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Gillian, a Social Work graduate student, can be reached via [email protected].
