Compromise

To begin, I believe it would be injudicious to say that one could pick out a single flaw in the American government system to explain every issue. We all know the largest issues at hand; young adults leaving college swimming in debt, politicians being bought by billionaires, wages not increasing like they need to be, an education system that doesn’t work for every child, political machines that continue to become more polarized, racial inequities, gun violence, a widening income gap, etc. I’m not going to focus on any of these singularly, because I think they’re all equally noxious to our government system.

I’m going to discuss an issue that has been on my mind for the past year or two. We have to stop associating compromise with losing. We want to always win, without giving anything up. Need proof that this is alive in society? Donald Trump is going to be the GOP nominee for the President of the United States. Trump is running his entire campaign on the idea that he will never “lose”. He claims that he’ll beat China and won’t take failure as an option. Of course, avowing to never “lose” to China rallies the troops a lot better than, “WE WILL COMPROMISE WITH CHINA AND FIND MIDDLE GROUND THAT BENEFITS BOTH SIDES!” This issue of compromise is not a political issue, but a social one. Politicians are aiming to please their constituents; if finding middle ground was important to voters of each party, then I (optimistically) believe Congress would work harder to find agreeable settlements to get things done.

Another example is the GOP response to the Iran Nuclear Deal.[1] Detailed criticism to this piece of diplomacy was limited from GOP Presidential candidates, at least to my knowledge. The most common line was, “We need a better deal.” A few people who ran for President declared that they would tear apart the deal their first day in the White House. People don’t like that we had to compromise at all in order to shake hands with Iran; even if the only thing we surrender is the lifting of economic sanctions that can be slapped back on Iran if they fail to stay true to the deal.

The Republican Party is obviously not the only guilty bloc in this mindset. Take Bernie Sanders, for example. There’s very little talk of, “I will work with Congress to come up with the best solution for our nation.” It’s mostly, “ I believe in these things and we’re going to implement them.” It’s admirable to see a politician so committed to the issues that they’re passionate about, as opposed to Hillary who feels as if she’ll say whatever voters want her to say. But, politicians are becoming less and less committed to compromise. It’s because they’re elected to represent the people, and we want to win all the time.

The song The Room Where It Happens from Hamilton speaks on compromise really well. The song discusses the deal (Compromise of 1790) struck between Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison that gave the nation’s capital to the South and in return for Congressional approval of Hamilton’s debt plan. Alexander Hamilton was a New Yorker who loved the city and he gave it away as the nation’s capital in order to get something else in return. It would be unproductive for him to want his debt plan that Jefferson and Madison fundamentally disagreed with and the nation’s capital to be New York City. Here are the lyrics that stand out to me the most:

“The art of the compromise — “

“Hold your nose and close your eyes”

“We want our leaders to save the day — “

“But we don’t get a say what they trade away.”

Our society is very extreme in the words that it uses. Hillary Clinton compared Republicans who wanted to investigate Planned Parenthood last summer to radical Islamists.[2] On the other hand, Ted Cruz loves comparing the Obama administration to Nazi Germany.[3] If someone doesn’t agree with us down the line ideologically, they don’t “love” America or we classify them as having less intelligence. This mentality restricts the space for proper discussion because comments like that cause each side to dig their heels in further.

So, this is not an issue that is pertinent to just one of the two major political parties. This is an issue that is deep-seeded in our mindset as Americans. For example, some Alabama football fans absolutely lose their mind over a 10–2 season. Think about that, their college football team won ten out of twelve times and they consider it a failure of a season because they didn’t win every single game. We expect to get everything we want because we usually do. If you want to watch something on television, chances are, you’re going to find it. If you want to buy something that’s only sold in stores in Japan, you can probably buy it online.

I hope that my comments on government and society are helpful and productive for you today. Peace and blessings.

[1] I regret using consecutive Republican examples; I’ll be more balanced.

[2] We can all agree that Mike Huckabee is the worst, but he isn’t Hezbollah.

[3] Cruz obviously didn’t pay enough attention in history class if he’s comparing a leftist Democrat to a fascist (extreme right).