If you hate lies in politics, stop lying about politicians
Our problem is bigger than President Donald Trump. He might be king of the chaos, but he’s not forcing everyone to clap for it and act like it’s ideal. He’s also not responsible for the other side behaving like he’s clubbing baby fur seals when he so much as blinks.
If Trump claimed that he’s responsible for preventing all the Sharknados along the Gulf Coast, some Trump supporter would stand up and say, “Well, we haven’t had any have we?”
Not to be outdone, someone on the left would counter, “Climate change causes Sharknados, and Trump’s destructive environmental policies are moving us to a world where Sharknados will be the norm.”
Between President Barack Obama and President Trump, we’ve quickly devolved into intolerant mobs more concerned about our partisan and ideological bona fides than our country – or reality itself.
Nobody has the market cornered on good ideas. Our civic institutions like government are important. A free and diverse economy also happens to be critical to our national success. Civil rights are essential to our republic, but so is confidence in law enforcement.
Life is complicated. So are its problems. So are the solutions. It’s OK to admit that.
While representative democracy is an important safeguard against tyranny, it’s also a popularity contest. Hopefully we’re electing people who know their own limitations and ask for help when they need it. Our politicians don’t know most things. That’s not a problem; it just means they’re human.
Because they’re human, supporting or opposing any politician’s agenda entirely rarely, if ever, makes sense.
Declaring our unrelenting loyalty or opposition to any politician all of the time suggests that we’re not telling the truth, we just don’t care or we lobotomized ourselves.
I’m a big fan of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. I strongly disagree with his position on civil asset forfeiture. That means, at a minimum, I’m not 100 percent behind his agenda. This doesn’t mean I’m defecting from conservatism or attacking Sessions; I simply disagree on a matter of policy.
On the flipside, I really liked President Obama’s fatherhood initiative. When he spoke about the weight of his own father’s absence, he spoke from the heart: “It’s something that leaves a hole in that child’s life that no government can fill.” I strongly agree with that sentiment, so I clearly couldn’t have opposed everything he did.
Yet our political culture and media narrative too often start with the position that a politician is either infallible or pure evil. If it was wrong for the “liberal” media to clap blindly for President Obama, how is it any better for conservative news outlets or talk radio to do the same for President Trump?
When President Trump isn’t honest, don’t act like he is. When he signs something like Veterans Affairs reform into law, don’t behave like he hasn’t done anything positive.
Call it like you see it. Be honest. Give people a chance even where you disagree on a number of issues. Each of us will probably fall closer to one political party or another based on our beliefs and ideas, but it doesn’t mean the other guy is the enemy.
To fix our political culture, we need to end the charade. None of our leaders is right all the time. Acting otherwise sends the signal that the truth doesn’t really matter. If we want to see truth in the political arena, it must begin with us.
Image by 5SFIO CRACHO
