Challenges Are Hard, So Are Solutions

Jim Hendren’s Common Ground Arkansas last month attempted to make the politically moderate middle more relevent in the state’s politics. And by the state’s politics, I mean Republican politics.

I don’t mean to suggest the Democrats are irrelevant. But in all but a few places, they don’t make much of a difference other than giving the disaffected a place to cast their ballots.

The Common Ground effort didn’t appear to make much difference in the organization’s inaugural election cycle effort. But I applaud their work. Arkansas doesn’t need the Schumer-Pelosi style of liberal Democratic policies but it could also benefit from an effort to pull the Republican Party out of the strange gravitational pull of the hard right it’s caught up in.

Some people call it the mushy middle and, if indecision is the outcome, I wouldn’t argue with them. But there’s nothing mushy about sitting down with people who look at things much differently and engaging in conversation about areas of potential agreement.

In Hendren’s case, he argues that when the people of Arkansas put their love of the state and what’s best for it first, residents can find common ground on a lot of issues even if their political identities arise from different political backgrounds.

That’s the kind of approach that will be necessary if this nation hopes to end the violence it’s witnessed lately in a Texas elementary school or a New York shopping center. Yes, these instances of violence involve guns. But every time there’s a school, church or community shooting, the political dance is exactly the same: For one side it’s all about the gun. For the other, it’s not at all about the gun. Everyone, after five minutes of heartfelt sadness, migrates to their respective corners and digs in their heels.

It’s as though we all believe we’re in a tug-o-war with the competing teams on either side of a vast canyon. Any move toward the other team is viewed as precipitating an uncontrollable fall. Most of us have the good sense not to play games at the edge of a cliff though. If we take a step or two toward the other side, we’ll be just fine.

Anyone who suggests Americans just get rid of guns is not a serious contributor to the discussion. Anyone who suggests American gun rights are sacrosanct is not a serious contributor to the discussion. A responsible gun owner who supports the Second Amendment should not feel compelled to become a defender of someone who kills children or targets people because of their race. The Second Amendment, despite what the NRA advances, is not about preserving the right to own any kind of gun modern technology can produce.

Finding middle ground also involves our societal challenges.

I happened upon a column by Chris Churchill of the Albany, N.Y., Times-Union. He decried the “crisis of mental health and isolation happening among young adults, with social media a significant culprit. Kids are spending more time alone, on their phones, and less time hanging out with friends, being social and sleeping. Suicide rates are up sharply. During the pandemic, more than 40 percent of teens reported feeling ‘persistently sad or hopeless.”’

“While it’s easy to paint with too broad a brush at moments like this, it’s undeniable that this country is leaving too many teenagers behind and producing too many young men willing to carry out heinous massacres,” Churchill wrote. “It feels like a spiritual decay.

“In so many cases, for so many young men, the world of connection and humanity, of family, faith and community, has been displaced by consumerist alienation or fatherless homes that can leave young men adrift. (I speak from personal experience on that last one.) So many teenage boys are looking for meaning and finding it in exactly the wrong places.”