Reading accounts of now former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's "Statement on the Current Health Care Debate," I am reminded of an issue that plagues the current political climate in the U.S. (and, personally, really really frustrates me). This post is not about the merits of health care reform, advocating for or against either side of the health care debate, or proving the validity of either side's claims.
Rather, this post is about honesty, integrity, ethics, responsibility. It is both an admonishment and a plea directed to our public figures in the media and in politics. We all, including yourselves, are granted a great freedom to speak our minds and publish our thoughts with little limit. However, that right must be exercised with integrity and responsibility. You must speak and write with a mind toward ethical responsibility and personal accountability. For politicians and legislators, it means carefully choosing words that express your opinions and accurately inform your constituency without misleading. For media persons, it means refusing to promote and encourage such behavior by latching onto firestorm lingo and exaggerated terminology. The public relies on each of you. We rely on you to formulate viable solutions. We rely on you to help educate us about the important debates engrossing our nation. Extreme behavior fulfills neither of these duties. Rather, such self-promoting conduct stands as a stubborn obstacle to any progress for the citizens of the United States.
In sum - Please debate. Please encourage honest and fruitful discussion of issues, great and small. Please listen. Please respond. But in doing all of these, please keep in mind the roles you occupy in our society and the members of that society that rely upon you. After all, you are here for our collective well being, not for your own ambitions.
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David, I believe you are in the minority here (and me along with you). Sadly, the average TV-news-watching citizen is somewhat (largely?) to blame for the actions of the media and politicians. Inflationary and sensational news is what they want to see. In this free-enterprise system the news programs give them what they want because they can generate more advertisement money that way. Similarly, politicians who openly acknowledge the gray areas of a subject are considered too "wishy-washy." They are elected by people's emotions more than their brains. Trending towards the extremes seems to be a wildly successful way to be elected and for every ethical, rational politician there are several thousand who are willing to stoop a bit lower. I'm not disagreeing with you. I just find that I need a healthy dose of cynicism to understand and cope with these issues.
ReplyDeleteKevin,
ReplyDeleteA valid point that I overlooked in trying to tone down my obviously increasing frustration. I suppose I've also, consciously or subconsciously, given on the general public. I'm all for power to the people in theory, but when I start to think about who might be wielding that power, I get more than a little frightened. Some of the ballot measures on the Colorado ballot in the last few elections should be evidence enough of that.
This is a chicken-egg scenario for me. Obviously, if the public didn't buy into the emotional firestorm BS, politicians and media members wouldn't keep it up. On the flip side, if public officials and figures were to encourage the public the think critically instead of emotionally about issues, there'd be no firestorm BS for the public to glom onto.
While writing this comment, the thing I realized is that, no matter which source you target, people like you and I are screwed either way. The odds of the public beginning to think critically or the media and politicians toning down the emotional rhetoric are zero at best, at least for now.
I think the best hope right now is for watchdog organizations favoring both sides (or, ideally, neither) to continue to vet and fact-check the info that is coming to the public and to get that information out to people, however few we may be, who care about having unbiased, accurate reflections of the debates going on in Washington and beyond. Unfortunately, those folks can't sell ad space :-)
As always, thanks for reading and for you thoughts,
David