Nobody’s ever accused me of being an optimist.
I don’t consider myself one. It’s hard to be that way as we surf the Kali Yuga, an age of darkness, vice, and misery. It feels as if we’re caught in the embrace of a wicked ouroboros that won’t release us from its coil, an endless cycle of conflict and sin.
But I think that perhaps this is when it’s most important to find shards of hope in our distortive political hall of mirrors.
So here is a sliver of something resembling good news, one that might come as a surprise: Americans aren’t quite as divided as we seem. There’s still a good amount of shared ground, according to a new poll by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted among adults aged 18 and over representing all the states and the District of Columbia.
Comes the response: polls aren’t the best gauge of the body politics’ health. That’s a fair point. But the findings are nevertheless pleasantly surprising and therefore noteworthy. For example, nearly 80 percent of respondents say the right to own a gun is important to protect.
Americans broadly agree that privacy, free speech, and equal protection under the law are key ingredients in the American national identity.
Granted, how we define these things is a matter of endless debate, and there is real, seething division that won’t be extinguished through reasoned argumentation. No illusions there.
There is, however, still a sliver of common ground to stand on. America is not yet on the brink of a dystopian civil war fantasy like the one that just splashed on silver screens.
It doesn’t pay to make sounds that vaguely ring like hope in media. In fact, it makes people angry when you do. After Axios covered the AP-NORC poll, Esquire, formerly a men’s magazine, came down with a case of the vapors.
Axios actually did something remarkable: it acknowledged the media’s role in fanning the flames of division in the way that current events are covered. Charles P. Pierce at Esquire didn’t like that.
Pierce charged the founders of Axios with hypocrisy because, he said, they played a part in creating the toxic media environment that their paper just denounced. That’s probably true. But so what? It’s like getting angry at veteran NPR Editor Uri Berliner for calling out his own outlet for having gone too far left after the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Pierce also mocked Axios for, according to him, “telling us that the sun is out, the birds are singing, the little furry woodland animals are frolicking, and life is sweet and good, and anyone who doesn’t see that is trapped in a bubble presided over by the demons of the Green Room.”
That’s obviously not what was reported by either Axios or the AP-NORC poll. Indeed, most Americans say that the government is dysfunctional and that the country is in a dark place. Pierce, ironically, proved correct the point about the media feeding on acrimony in his catty rebuttal.
I’ve been reevaluating my role in this “space” just about every day for a while now. Many categories don’t make much sense to me anymore or shake apart upon close inspection. If you think of America as a house, at least one key and real distinction is between people who want to build and those who want to burn it down without much of a plan beyond playing in the cinders.
It does seem that the populace still believes in the constitution. Now we need to elect officials that make the constitution a priority in their decision making. I am not holding my breath.
Instead of lucubrating over the nature of the contemporary malaise, why don’t you take a trip to Berkeley Springs in a few days. That way instead of reading polls about how Americans value free speech, you can meet with people who are in the middle of the fight to keep it.
Might do you a world of good.
I’ll even buy you a beer.