Next Up: Return To Unity

Hoo-wee! Well, we done got through that election at last, didn't we? And we survived! Ain't life grand?

All right, enough of that. Now it's time for some unity. . . something sadly lacking in the United States. What are the chances of reaching it? Maybe not so great.

Cover of Daniel Amos

Lots of pundits are throwing around their takes on why this election came out as it did and what this means for The Future. As in:  Future of the Republic, Future of the Democratic Party, Future of the Republican Party, and so on. But reading the future works best when the future becomes the past (this is illustrated in the title of the Daniel Amos song, "It's the Eighties, Where's Our Rocket Packs?" Yes,it's dated; but it makes a point).

There's no question that America is changing. The nation is aging; minorities are growing; "traditional religion" is slip-sliding away. It's easy to point out the failure of old models on both Left and Right; neither has lived up to its promise. Two things are missing:  A frank confession by both liberals and conservatives of where they have failed, and an honest and open debate of what we want to be as a nation.

We've been told for years that most Americans are, in fact, somewhere in the moderate scale (moderately conservative to moderately liberal). This accounts in part for the large number of independent voters who think that neither party truly represents them and who therefore choose no party affiliation. Politics has become the art of drawing folks in the middle to one extreme or the other, against their better judgment. This is not what democracy is meant to be. Democracy is built on finding consensus rather than persuading people to extremes. When parties try to push people to edges that they are not comfortable with, it's no wonder that party power swings from election to election:  Democratic gains in 2008, GOP gains in 2010, close margins in 2012 that (slightly) favor Democrats.


 The change you expect often isn't the change you get. Changing demographics don't necessarily mean wholesale changes in society. There is, I suspect, far more consensus even in the face of change than either Left or Right suspects. At heart, voters want to be safe; they want tomorrow to be like today; they want their children's futures to be better yet. Maybe it's time to build on this.