© 2015
by Duane N. Burghard
I am very proud of the fact that there are now thousands of people who read my blog. Most of them don't know me personally. At best they've read my little bio on my blog page or maybe they've gotten really motivated and actually Googled me (this act would allow them to read about me on Wikipedia or see one of several campaign videos that are still floating around from my last Congressional campaign in 2006). So for most of my readers, the question "Why Don't I Write About Politics?" isn't one they normally ask. But among my friends who know me and read my blog, it's a very common question. Fortunately for them (and you), I don't have anything else to write about this week, so I'll tackle it for you.
For the record, I do have very specific and (I hope) well thought out political positions on a wide variety of social and political issues. For those who know that I have twice run for the U.S.House of Representatives (twice nominated, zero times elected), that's pretty easy to understand and believe. But when I decided to become a writer last year (OK, let's back that up a bit, when my wife got tired of me not writing all the stuff I had in my head and essentially badgered me into taking myself seriously as a writer and to begin writing as a profession) I specifically decided to avoid writing about politics, and for one key reason; our society is now so incredibly divided along ideological lines that it has become basically impossible to write about any political or social issue without alienating or irritating 50% of the people reading it. That's a real shame, because it didn't used to be like that and it doesn't have to be now.
There are many examples in American political history of people with widely divergent political views still managing to maintain close personal relationships. And it is still possible to do so. I am quite proud of the fact that I have many friends who are both more conservative and more liberal than I am ... but it's absolutely NOT the norm anymore. I have some ideas about why that is (the polarization of American society is based on the desire to separate and divide us, which then makes us easier to divide and conquer), but many people have become so completely attached to their "side" that the moment they read or hear something that sounds like it's critical of their "side" the shields go up and that person and whatever they're saying are immediately dismissed as nothing more than the rhetorical nonsense of "the other guys." And that's a lot more than "too bad." A Republican Democracy (like the United States) requires compromise in order to function correctly. The "best" solutions in our government are the ones that no one is entirely happy with. Nobody gets the solution they want, but everyone gets something they can live with. When we see ourselves as one nation, that becomes a lot easier to accept, but when we're constantly bombarded with "we" and "they" ... when ALL the inputs we're exposed to seek to accentuate the things we don't have in common instead of the things we do (and worse, when we're conditioned to believe that these differences are dramatic, Earth shattering, cataclysmic differences that require us to scream red faced into the face of whoever disagrees), then it becomes impossible to see compromise as a victory.
I have often described myself as a "radical moderate." I genuinely enjoy the fact that my conservative friends think I'm a bit too liberal and my liberal friends think I'm a bit too conservative. I tend to be a social liberal (pro-choice, in favor of marriage equality etc.) and an economic conservative (I do support getting rid of the Bush tax cuts (which all true fiscal conservatives should BTW), but I also think the Fed's policy of QE was necessary in 2009 and 2010, but it's now gone on way too long and that it's causing more problems than it's solving).
Now stop.
How many decisions about me did you just make? Sadly, the closet sociologist in me knows that a bunch of people just tuned out of my writing forever (or at best they will see it forever more through a preconceived lens), and that's too bad. As a writer, I do have something to say about politics and society and I would like to calmly and rationally discuss those issues with both the people I agree with and the people I disagree with. And I'm going to start doing it. I am persuaded by my friends who have argued that my not speaking up about things that I think are very important to us as a society isn't right either. I hope that the people who disagree with me will stick around, and for this reason; I want to be correct when I espouse a political or social position (and I've usually thought my place out pretty well), but I'm far more married to my search for truth than I am to any political or social position, and if I'm wrong, I want you to make your case and tell me why. If your answer is "well, because ... God," ... well, then we might have to agree to disagree (because we might disagree about God's position on the subject), but if you can logically show me an empirical truth that I'm overlooking that would change how I view something, I really do want to hear it.
Another reason I want everyone to stick around is that I also have other things to say. Politics is, and should be, just one small part of our lives together. I am deeply fascinated by astrophysics, and the nature of time and space in particular (my essay "Umbrellas, Spaghetti and Spacetime" is, by far, the most popular and most read essay I've ever written ... I have recently expanded it and may post the whole thing again here soon). I have also had some pretty wild life experiences in my life that I have enjoyed writing about. And I just had my very first novel published (and I'll be publishing an excerpt from that here on my blog in the next few weeks to), a science fiction story called Gopto. To date, everyone has been able to enjoy all of that without associating a particular ideology to me as an author, and I resisted writing about the issues of the day because I enjoyed being able to talk to as broad an audience as possible without having people make assumptions about me as a person.
But the truth is that politics does exist, and while it does play too big a part of our lives, having it play NO role in our lives (or in my writing) isn't right either. If we're going to survive as a nation, we're going to need to learn to disagree again without it being the end of the world and without it so separating and dividing us that we can't agree on or accomplish anything. That's a pretty tall order, but it has to start somewhere. I'll start. You join in when you're ready.
See you next time ... I hope.
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