Toward a better politics
Happy New Year. I hope. It’s hard to believe it’s only been a year since Donald Trump took office as president. The ensuing barrage of lies, bad legislation, international provocation and personal attacks has felt like enough to fill decades. Who says the president doesn’t get anything done (those golf balls don’t hit themselves)?
Still, there are glimmers of hope. Midterm elections are coming, and if we learned anything from the recent Senate race in Alabama, it’s that a motivated electorate fed up with the destructive status quo can get something done.
I hope we can create a similar wave of change in Wisconsin. The campaigns for governor is about to heat up. Scott Walker has had eight years to prove himself a capable administrator and caretaker of the Wisconsin Idea — and done mostly the opposite.
Even before he took office, Walker scuttled a high-speed rail deal that would have provided much-needed mass transit and a boon to employment. Walker’s “bold” move cost the state $50 million for a product it never used, as well as the loss of jobs that were to result from the new train factory and construction of new and updated rail lines.
His signature Act 10 busted unions and resulted in significantly decreased wages and benefits for teachers, the people we charge with shaping and guiding our children into productive and meaningful citizenship.
Walker has always been more concerned with beefing up his partisan bona fides and fomenting division than in good governance. He has pit suburb and rural against city at a time when we should be working to share the good things about each with one another.
Paul Ryan has been doing the same destructive work in Washington, D.C. He, too, is up for reelection in 2018, and may finally face the reckoning he deserves.
We could be working together to build a better state, from the deep North Woods to the western coulees region to Milwaukee and everything in between. Instead, we’ve become deeply divided, fooled into thinking that we have to get one over on the other guy in order to get ahead.
And all of this is in the service of greed and hubris.
My faith in the good side of humanity — the side that drives us to band together in times of need to make sure no one is left behind, to open our doors to those who are suffering, to stand up against bullies and tyrants — is stronger than my fear of darkness. I refuse to believe that we must become islands, cut off from our fellow citizens. Even when we disagree on the finer points, I want us to at least try to leave this place in better shape than we found it. I want us at least to agree on what reality is, instead of demonizing science, statistics and good reporting.
A New Year’s resolution: To seek out people and organizations who are doing the hard and good work, person by person, town by town, and to share those stories with you as motivation. Let’s work for a more just and equitable planet. And if you’re not already part of it, I hope you’ll join the chorus.