OK, folks, here’s the deal: now that our 2016 election is over, we need unity — but we’re not going to get it.
Sadly, unity, once an essential ingredient of homecooked democracy, might have become a delicacy we must do without. This election season has both divided Americans much deeper than a sports or business rivalry and revealed the kind of deeper divisions that usually occur between nations.
In fact, some Americans seem to identify more closely with other countries than with their fellow nationals who are members of a very distant opposing party.
Rather than issue the same old trite, meaningless call for us all the come together and back our winners, it seems it’s time to embrace our differences and accept we’ve simply grown into two or more completely separate pockets of people.
We’re simply going to have to figure out how to get along and move forward and find solutions, even as we have learned how deep our differences have become. We’re running out of time. Our divisions might not rip the entire nation apart any time soon, but that’s a chance we can’t afford to take. We have to sit down and figure out basic compromises on everything from environmental practices to criminal justice reform.
If our gaps were as simple as liberal and conservative, or divides of a religious or nationalistic nature, we’d be able to resolve such simple conflicts. We’ve done that for 250 years. It’s the idea and worldview differences that are harder to bridge.
It’s tempting to say we must close the wedge between urban and rural ways of living and prioritizing. Indeed, five days per week of driving from the Jordan Creek Town Center area to Newton and more rural parts of Iowa reveal a stark contrast on many levels, but there are liberals in the country and conservative folks in the city, so it can’t be simplified that way.
One issue is that so many government ideas, especially on a national scale, seem to not work. Either the solution doesn’t really materialize, or unintended consequences arise, and half the country calls it a terrible idea.
Maybe our leaders should frequently announce their ideas will only work for about half of their constituencies. At the very least, we could go easier on unfunded mandates and harder into A or B options, especially on choices such as health care or Social Security, and let Americans use social media to brag that their decision worked out well.
We also need less intentional division. It’s not clear how much of “us vs. them” can be blamed on one party or on national-level politics, but it has to stop. If you’re publicly name-calling or labeling or blasting a group for being the problem with America, you’re missing the point — what are we going to do about so many groups with so many priorities?
We need answers rather than labels and categories. Lastly, we need to celebrate more of our differences. We come from such diverse backgrounds and cultures, we spend more time thinking about how insensitive others our to our needs than it meeting those needs ourselves.
Rural Iowans do a great job of staying in touch with customs and traditions. This needs to happen in larger towns and cities as well. We need to stay connected to the roots that made us who we are today.
Maybe the divide is too great, and we’ll eventually grow apart, either in an arduous split or simply a dissolve into pockets of groups living together across the country. But it seems we have at least a few more years to find solutions — without the luxury of unity.
Contact Jason W. Brook
s at jbrooks@newtondailynews.com