State of the... Union? Part I- Black and White

Obama addressed this in his most humble moment in the speech saying that, “It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency – that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There’s no doubt a President with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.” It's important to note that he rightfully doesn't call out the Republicans. He calls out himself, and the nation as a whole. This is important, because it shows the truth of the situation. 

Last night we saw President Obama make his eighth and last State of the Union address. As promised, it was different than most, particularly being notably shorter and focusing more on the big picture than individual policy mandates. This was a strong choice in many ways, especially given that this kind of speech is what got America on board with Obama back in 2004. Now there's been a lot of commentary on the speech, and I have little desire to add my voice to that great ocean. What I'd rather discuss is the issue lightly brought up, but profoundly impacting the night: our political parties.

Before the speech even began, news commentators spent a lot of time talking about the nature of the room: it's potential hostility given the decrease in Democrats over the last several years, and Paul Ryan's role in the night. In his first year as Speaker, he received a lot of critique on his responsibilities. He joked beforehand that he'd worked on his poker face. As the speech began, the room did almost exactly what you expected. The Democrats looked engaged, the Republicans bored. Like most of his fellows, Ryan clapped a total of 4 times that I noticed, all on issues that had nothing to do with actual policy. When the speech wrapped up, the commentators said that these days you pretty much only get applause from the President's party, and that despite the nature of the speech, not much changed in that regard. They also said that questioning and polling showed that if you were an Obama supporter, this was lauded as an incredible speech, and if not it was a complete failure. No real middle ground was found.


The last few years have been some of the least productive congressionally. The reason is simple: our party-line voting has gone off the charts. Whatever divisiveness we worked hard to build up against each other during Bush has become finely honed over the last decade. Compromise is a thing mostly only mentioned as an afterthought when something fails. "Well, they wouldn't compromise...," etc. Reading Facebook political posts show that voters are no different. Lay down almost any issue, and the reactions are always split by party affiliation.

What's most terrifying to me is that even the truth can be changed via party lines. Hilary has great examples of this. She either broke the laws with emails, and lied about Benghazi, or both were hyped up farces. Which you believe will almost exclusively be based upon party lines. The problem is that only one is true. Now I can't claim to be in the field enough to know what actually happened in those scenarios. What I do know is that only one can possibly be true. When political arguments try to change the nature of facts, everyone loses.

Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton were some of the most politically divided individuals in our nations history. And yet, during their time, they were still able to build a nation. The reason wasn't because they could agree on everything- or much of anything for that matter- but because they were able to ultimately find common ground, and compromise. As Obama stated, "...democracy does require basic bonds of trust between its citizens. It doesn’t work if we think the people who disagree with us are all motivated by malice, or that our political opponents are unpatriotic. Democracy grinds to a halt without a willingness to compromise, or when even basic facts are contested, and we listen only to those who agree with us."

Hamilton and Jefferson didn't have Fox News and MSNBC to closet themselves in. They didn't have thousands of sites for them to re-read their own opinions back to them over and over. They had to look at their own sides, and then LOOK AT THEIR OPPONENT'S and see if and when the common ground could be met. Where there could be give and take. It allowed for there to be voices, but for the country to still be... united. They helped build a union that doesn't look much like one today. We have created two separate realities for ourselves. We're all black and white. It's all one way or all the other.

We can't do the hard work of fixing this nation unless we first are able to look at each other's worlds, and realize that they're actually one in the same. There isn't just black and white. There's AT LEAST shades of gray. In all reality there's a whole lot of colors. As they say, the first step is simply recognizing that we've got a problem. Then, maybe we can get about to fixing it.