Consensus

I've been reading through a couple of books that discuss the politics of religion and the environment to try to gain some perspective on the topic I'm writing about. (I decided to go with the Christianity and sustainability topic, mostly because I had done the most work on it so far and I didn't want all that time to go to waste, but so far I'm finding it pretty interesting).

God and Country looks at the religious history of America, pointing out the constant struggle between our Puritan and Enlightenment histories that characterizes our national debates. Its tone is objective and conservative, and by conservative I mean that it is reserved about casting blame and cautious about suggestions for change--acknowledging that both "sides" of America must reach consensus. I found myself drawn in to the ideas presented, and thought its perspective on America's religious history insightful and illuminating.

The Last Refuge takes a more aggressive approach against all right-wing politics. The introduction launches into a series of accusations about the Bush administration. Further investigation reveals some of the accusations to be based on sources such as "Two Years Before 9/11, Candidate Bush Was Already Talking Privately About Attacking Iraq, According to His Former Ghost Writer." I don't recall hearing about this, but I don't pretend to remember everything that happened when I was 13. However, I do recognise that a lone former ghost writer is not really a credible source. People make up accusations about famous people frequently, as I understand it. However, I do recall in the fall of 2004 feeling that there was nothing I wouldn't believe about Bush. I was so angry that he had somehow won another election, I may have bought into the radical accusations of the type The Last Refuge is flinging. Now, though, I have some perspective, and a president who is oodles better than Bush, no matter what his faults (ahem, gay marriage?), so I'm more willing to be reasonable. And I find this book to be too extreme to be believed. Even though I'm sure the book echos many of my own beliefs, I don't feel the solidarity with its positions as I did with God and Country.

The introduction of The Last Refuge claims that Americans have a fault of following a leader blindly. It claims not enough Americans understand that "automatic obedience to power is merely subservience" (page 11). In the conclusion of God and Country the author assumes that "most Americans--Puritans and Modernists alike--are willing to abide by laws they disapprove of, if they are confident that those laws were passed by fairly elected legislators who listened to all sides of the argument and voted on the basis of their best judgment" (page 231). I don't really think that's the case. Now that Obama is in office, the people who were supposedly blindly obeying the authority du jour are raging against everything that is happening under Obama's administration. Likewise, I think that a lot of Americans want laws that reflect their own personal beliefs, even when those laws obviously exclude the rights of a group of people with opposing beliefs, and that Americans are more than happy to break laws they find inconvenient--especially laws that aren't regularly enforced like speeding. I think that Americans simply choose a side or an authority figure that they can mostly trust and then relax and let that specific authority figure (be it a president, a media agency, or merely a civilian exemplar) do the moralizing for them.

The media, as is pointed out in both books, has become partisan. An American can choose a radio station that agrees with her point of view and make it one of the presets on the car radio and never hear any views or opinions that oppose her own. But I don't think that is entirely the fault of the media itself selling out. Americans want to be able to position themselves on the political spectrum early in life and then choose the channels they want to watch for the rest of their lives and let other people do the thinking for them. It's much more pleasant not to be on the defensive all the time. I know, because I mostly just listen to NPR, and when I do venture over to foxnews.com, I feel a headache coming on. And it is this artificial partisanship that is really causing schisms in our communities and delaying action at the federal level on important issues.

Consensus building is necessary to create action. But how can we build consensus when we don't even know how "the other side" defines its terms and its goals? I think that most Americans probably agree that it is important for us to live within our means economically and environmentally. Obviously, most people do not want to fell every last tree on earth to build bigger houses, extract every last iron deposit in the ground to create better technology. If sustainability means living within the means of the next generation, then I think the majority agrees that sustainability is a good thing. Most people understand the need to budget. If buying CFLs saves money and electricity, then who could argue that CFLs are a good thing? The problem is, people do argue just that. And I think the reason they argue that is because they are so steeped in the rhetoric of their own chosen place on the political spectrum that they can't understand that we all want essentially the same things.