Rebuilding our Political Humanity

So many elections.  So much hype.  Politics everywhere, all the time – inescapable.  In all of this our political representatives and citizens have grown apart – kind of like a partnership that somehow grew distant and fell into suspicion.

With the dust of this recent federal election now settled, we must sit down together and discern how we have arrived at the state where our politics is alienating us and our citizenship reflects that reality as opposed to transcending it.

For many, perhaps most, politicians aren’t really people anymore but advertisers of a certain political spectrum that seems more important than the delivery of effective democracy itself.  We don’t really know them and instead become more familiar with their image on television, or in social and traditional media, and as indivisible from their political parties.  We have come to accept them as members of tribes as opposed to sincere individuals, which most politicians are, who entered the public domain to actually make it better.

It is likely that the vast majority of voters will never meet politicians in real life, unless they attend rallies or have certain needs that only the politician can ameliorate.  Other than that, they don’t exist except during manic election seasons or as appendages of the party.  This irks us, since even when we find a political aspirant that we really like, we can’t just vote for her, or him, but must opt for the party they represent as well.  Parties aren’t a bad thing, per se,  but they remain organizations that exists for their own sake and purposes, making it difficult for a politician to separate themselves from that association.  As a result, it’s a hard thing for us to be familiar with politicians anymore, since it’s almost impossible to imagine them as decent people outside of their political environment.

That’s the politician; what about the voter?  That’s just it: the voter is only seen for their political potential as well.  When it’s all said and done, this person matters to the system simply because once in a while they enter a little cardboard booth, pick up a pencil, make a mark, and then head back to their daily lives.  They come to matter because they have the power to select, but not the potential to partner.

Inevitably it seems, voters become this kind of faceless group that appears occasionally in things like polls or the rare demonstration.  They are something to be processed when required, but other than that kept docile by the offering of certain perks.

It has all become a sad state of affairs, for it means that the true essence of decision-making – debate, ideas, interaction, emotion, compromise – is rarely achieved by these two groups that actually require one another for legitimacy.  Politicians are reticent to depart from the party line, whereas citizens are increasingly inclined to do the opposite.  Democracy requires both, thus our political environment is in decline.

Put plainly: citizens and their representatives, while normally human beings desiring to be truly human, accountable, taking responsibility for their actions and opinions, are becoming steadily depersonalized and distant from one another – a chasm only further deepened and widened by the false promises of “social” media.  It all seems to become assembly line civilization – interchangeable parts, marketing, bottom line, deadening.

For a world becoming alienating and infuriatingly difficult to alter, it seems that the only real hope is the ripping away of the façade and the reconnection with other human beings, so that we might deliberate together.  We need an update and retooled version of the Renaissance – that time when creativity thrived, people awoke to their personal and collective potential, and the exploring of the possible.  It would mean that community, and how we carry it, becomes something we create, not fight over.  

History reminds us that our humanity is often rescued when we are in danger of losing it.  Politician and citizen alike must rediscover one another in dark and foreboding environment and create a “new birth of freedom,” as Lincoln would put it.  The best time to do that isn’t during an election, but following it.  This is the opportunity our political leaders now face, since a diverse electoral outcome provides us with only two choices: collaborate or splinter again.  It is also the time when citizens can attempt to get past the incomplete choices of selecting one party over others and, instead, building communities for all.