Larry D. Lauer

The main lesson of the Brett Kavanaugh battle is that mean-spirited politics, extreme partisanship, and fear-mongering leadership too often lead to seriously divided communities, a lingering climate of anger, and periodic shootings which often grow into widespread violence. This one-sided victory for some has divided our nation even more.

I informed my readers in my last post (Lesson 455) that I was taking several weeks off to refresh my thinking about the mess in Washington. My reason was that more and more people were telling me they were turning off the political chaos just to preserve their mental health.  

I was discouraged by the endless Trump-generated confusion. Republicans were focused only on winning in the legislature. Some were adopting the president’s autocratic style of “attack and divide” leadership. Democrats were behaving as partisans in their own reactionary way. And no one was championing the kind of American values that could unite the nation. So when I began hearing about people turning off to save their sanity… it made me think that they might actually be part of a larger unhappy, silent majority.

I first worked on the political predicament, and concluded that a total “system correction,” was needed.

It seemed to me that the only system correction that could work would require unhappy Republicans, non voters, minorities, legal immigrants, energized women, young people, and discouraged others, to vote for democratic candidates. If enough democrats won, this kind of shock might result in the silent majority becoming visible enough to force both parties to re-think their purposes, redraw their districts, debate their ideologies with mutual respect, and govern collaboratively.

Realizing this might not happen, I began to study the feasibility of drowning out the negativity of Washington with positive voices about American society and institutions.

Imagine the collective communication power of institutional leaders, business executives, NGOs, social services, educators, artists, musicians, journalists, clergy, foreign policy experts, allies, traditional Republicans, pragmatic democrats, independents, immigrants, minorities, and more! Apart from political extremism, America is alive and well.

Maybe my many years communicating and marketing institutions will yield some clues about how to accomplish telling this story. I will explore the possibilities in future blogs, other writings, and meetings with all levels of leaders and learners.      

This could get interesting. I hope you will join in.