Like most Americans, I was heartbroken over the mass shooting in Texas that killed innocent children at school. I was heartbroken to learn that the shooter was just 18 years old, the same age as the shooter who killed 10 black people at a grocery store in Buffalo just ten days earlier. But what breaks my heart even more is the ensuing debate about how to prevent such tragedies, in which we talk past each other instead of seeking common ground on which to effect change.
In the days since the shooting, conservatives have called for better mental health screening, with Democrats coming down hard on gun restrictions. A problem so deeply entrenched in our national narrative requires not one or the other, but both. The House of Representatives is considering such legislation, but most Republican senators oppose any restrictions on gun ownership, making any significant policy change unlikely.
In addressing this and other issues that threaten American lives (climate change, the COVID pandemic, abortion rights, opioid addiction, police reform), our country is so divided that we cannot come together to enact effective legislation. Democracy relies on compromise—representatives of this country’s diverse population coming together to create laws we can all live by. Instead we’ve retreated into bunkers, hoping we can elect enough of our candidates to push through legislation we want, knowing that if we lose the next round, it could all be undone. Our system—our country—is broken.
We are broken by our fear of those who are different, which leads us to demonize anyone who does not share our beliefs and identities. That fear is largely centered in white Christian nationalists who form the Republican “base,” and in the person of Donald Trump (see previous post). The “woke left” is likewise held captive by those demanding immediate change with little regard for the difficulty of changing entrenched social norms. (One of my liberal friends lamented that by raising her kids to be tolerant of difference, she feared they had become intolerant of intolerance.)
We are broken by both social and news media masquerading as free speech or free press, while relying on distortion and outright lies to fire up their side and drive them to the polls. “Truth” has become relative, and propaganda spreads like wildfire on social media. Algorithms feed us more of whatever we “like,” and the more outrageous the better, creating echo chambers that reinforce our beliefs.
We are broken by the injection of mass amounts of money into the political system through lobbying and campaign contributions. Elected officials are obligated more to lobbyists for gun rights, fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals, and media and technology giants than to the people who elect them. Fear that they will lose that financial support and their base voters drives policy making.
The majority of Americans support tighter gun laws (60%), legalized abortion (61%), climate action (75%), and vaccine mandates (60%).1 But we no longer have a system where majority rules. Our country’s founders devised a government that guarantees minority rights are protected, through the Electoral College and a divided legislature. Leaders in both parties have manipulated that system to their advantage, creating a polarized, and paralyzed, country. Moderates, who are key to good government, have become a dying breed, forced to the margins or out of politics altogether by those on the far flank of their party.
Both parties have gerrymandered voting districts to their benefit, resulting in what NPR called “redder reds and bluer blues.” Once in office, politicians push through judicial appointments, knowing that many battles will end up in court. Rather than an independent judiciary, we have judges who too over rule in favor of the party whose slim majority in the Senate approved them—majorities that do not represent the majority of voters, since all states have equal representation in the Senate, regardless of population.
In the twenty-first century, the Electoral College has allowed Republicans to hold the White House for 12 years, despite winning the popular just once, when George W. Bush won re-election in 2004. He lost the popular vote in the 2000 election, but carried the Electoral College after a close and contested race in Florida. Any one of several factors could account for the few hundred votes by which Bush won that state:
- The ballot design that may have led Gore voters to erroneously select the box for Pat Buchanan.
- Ballots where the paper wasn’t completely pierced, leading to examination of “dimpled” and “hanging chads.”
- Florida’s custom of listing the presidential candidate who shares the governor’s party in first place on the ballot, in this case George W. Bush’s brother Jeb Bush.
- The Supreme Court decision to block further legal appeals by the Gore campaign.
What would our country look like if Al Gore had won the Electoral College as well as the popular vote that year? A moderate southerner, he early and consistently sounded the alarm about climate change, which more than any other issue threatens all life on earth. Instead, the neo-conservatives who filled the Bush cabinet advanced a pro-business, pro-American agenda that allow for much of the environmental damage and the economic and political corruptions we see now.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, recently, Gore said of mass shootings: “Some of the same reasons why the United States has been incapable of responding to these tragedies are the same reasons—lobbying, campaign contributions, the capture of policymaking, the control of politicians with money, lobbyists—that it has been impossible to pass climate legislation. Our democracy has been paralyzed, bought, captured. It has to stop.”
Would Gore have been able to steer this country, and the world, in a different direction that valued global partners and our common reliance on the planet? Would he have been able to hold corporate giants accountable for harming human and natural communities? Would he have been able to assemble bipartisan coalitions and avoid the political gridlock we currently experience? Or would he have been ineffective in the face of corporations and individuals who have been allowed to amass obscene fortunes and use them to steer government to their advantage?
We will never know how what effect a Gore presidency would have had on the country and the world. But with Gore, we can declare that this has to stop. It is time to repair our broken systems, craft a national narrative that includes all voices while respecting the past and how dearly some people hang on to it, and relearn the art of finding common ground on which to govern. No one will get their way all the time, but government should not be about winning and losing, but about focusing on the values we hold in common—if, that is, enough have survived our brokenness.
- See these recent surveys on gun control, on legalized abortion, on climate action, and on vaccine mandates.