Election Day
“The price of greatness,” Winston Churchill said, “is responsibility.” He was talking to us.
Why would anyone in the world want to be an American, faced with the task every four years of choosing a president, these days the most powerful person in the world?
People on the outside have no idea. They cannot fathom the stress. The emails, the polling, the debates, the texts and robot calls, the signs and bumper stickers, the arguments, the pundits and editorials. The neighbors. It goes on for two years. Finally, as the process compresses into the final weeks and days, we confront decision-making time, aware that there will be only one winner. One side will be disappointed, even angry. We know the feeling, having settled scores between people over the course of our lives in business and life. Separating the children, awarding contracts, agreeing with one person, but not the other. Having held the short end of the stick ourselves along the way.
But it is election day. We wanted this job and we got it. Coping with the stress and misgiving comes with the territory. “The price of greatness,” Winston Churchill said, “is responsibility.” He was talking to us.
Of course, Sigmund Freud said, “most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.” Those people don’t live here, or they don’t vote.
This has been a tiresome eight years of contention. We have not been well served by the political parties, national media and pundits, which profit from having us slightly afraid of each other. National politics is a brutish business that relies on rhetorical high voltage to keep us fenced behind our positions. That goes for everyone in the value chain. If I had my druthers, CNN, MSNBC and FOX News would be clearly labeled as entertainment, with appropriate warnings up front similar to, “Professional driver on a closed course.” In other words, don’t drive like this at home. In other words, some program content intended to make your motor go. These properties are not in the business for the reasons they should be, which is objectively reporting the news—sadly, a shapeless, unsatisfying existence for many national news organizations that is hard to translate into reliable audience ratings. They have determined there is more to be gained by being in the fray rather than above it—for them, that is; not us. For one thing, they can skip a lot of news gathering in favor of one person at a studio desk, smiling for the camera, opining on events, posting on social media. Making motors go.
More affordable. More entertaining. Not news.
The national newspapers are similarly dividing, as revealed each day by their front page stories. Communities (nations) benefited in the days of two newspaper towns when the competitive requirement was coverage: which paper got the story, first. The race for best coverage is over, and the benefit to us, lost. Too expensive. Today, the internet gets the story first, providing reports of, maybe, a couple of hundred words followed by an avalanche of spurious commentary. Meanwhile, the national newspapers assemble themselves to appeal to their base, burying the lead if it is antagonistic below the fold, or on page three or four.
All of this changes if we, the electorate, decide to invest more in knowing what “they” know. If we read two newspapers, not one, alternate our broadcast viewing (if we think there is anything to be gained from soundbites), and stay the hell away from the internet, knowing that it is optimized by algorithms to feed us based on our behavior—which is the thing that amazes me; that anyone would have their hand out as the giver explains, “You know this stuff is addictive, right?”
Ironically, exposing ourselves to a variety of sources, for and against, helps us relax. Armageddon, you may find out, is not in anyone’s plans. Not that Armageddon will not come someday. But it will be because of what we ignored, not what we knew. It is another irony that I find the people most comforting to talk to about presidential politics are the people in the business who are closet to the truth, and also the ones fiddling with it. They know both sides, which is the only way for them to be effective in their jobs.
Surely, that must apply to all of us.
(Published in The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, November 5, 2024)