Clear, Concise Analysis of What Is, Isn't Enough
Issue 78
As grist today, conscious politics practitioner, an op-ed published in the New York Times last week by established mainstream political writer, Ezra Klein. “The Covid Policy That Really Mattered Wasn’t Really a Policy” got my attention because it’s a perfect example of what I’d say we Americans have in excess these days: clear, concise, well-reasoned analysis of what is and not nearly enough guidance about what to do about what is. In October, 2019, just three or four months prior to the coronavirus outbreak, we were number one amongst 195 nations, for pandemic preparedness. Yay us! Today, however, when it comes to all the measures — e.g., cases, fatalities, vaccination rates — and all the variables and permutations therein, we Americans are not number one, not by a longshot.
The policy that wasn’t really a policy, what undergirds America’s lackluster pandemic results thus far, Klein says, is trust. “Public health is rooted in the soil of trust. That soil has thinned in America.” I wholeheartedly concur. The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Nuclear Threat Initiative — the folks who determined and declared that the United States bested the world in preparedness — also reported at the time that America “had the lowest possible score on confidence in the government.” Yeah, perhaps that lowest score should have been amplified a bit more and certainly would have been if conscious practitioners were in the mix, but I digress.
Fast forward to our “middling” results today compared to other countries and within our own borders — town by town, city by city, county by county, and state by state. Klein cites a paper by The Lancet that set out to understand the “dramatic” differences in rates of infection and fatalities from covid-19 in different parts of America in spite of having been more prepared than literally every other country for a pandemic if and when a pandemic hit. We apparently didn’t have enough trust in our American fabric to fully exploit or otherwise take advantage of our advantages.
Conscious practice would encourage us, of course, to be present to and accept the reality of frayed trust, offer it no resistance, decide it doesn’t serve us, and get super clear about would. If, for example, we want to live in an America that works for everyone, copious amounts of trust are required so a more conscious approach would make paramount the project of cultivating more American trust.
My beef, then, is that an established mainstream opinion writer via a leading mainstream publication can ignite a whole bunch of Americans to think and talk about something they see as a problem while simultaneously, ironically, embedding that problem firmly into the fabric of who we are.
But that’s not where Klein takes us and, truthfully, my complaint is not with him or his publisher or this piece so much as it is with mainstream political commentary writ large — of which this is one example — and why conscious politics is so necessary. Instead of spring-boarding from what’s not wanted (low trust) into what’s wanted (high trust), he instead asks, “So what if you assume political polarization and media disinformation are here to stay, and you need to work around them, rather than ignoring them?” He cites polarization and disinformation as conditions that cause or exacerbate frayed trust and maybe he’s just offering a thought exercise. But the law of attraction is still always on so we still get more and more of what we think and talk about. My beef, then, is that an established mainstream opinion writer via a leading mainstream publication can ignite a whole bunch of Americans to think and talk about something they see as a problem while simultaneously, ironically, embedding that problem firmly into the fabric of who we are. Say what, now, about disinformation?
Of course, this is conscious politics malpractice on its face. Our ilk would instead be focused like a laser on the very idea of restoring trust in America, not ignoring or working around its deficiency. We would infuse the mainstream with the project of cultivating trust by talking in real time and real terms about how to do it.
We would harken to our very founding wherein our radical American experiment of trusting ourselves to govern ourselves obviously would not have had a chance without trust. We would talk about how trust was far easier in the beginning because only White male landowners had to trust one another and how “gentlemen’s agreements” and norms are expressions of that trust. We would talk about how, despite fierce opposition at every turn that continues to this day, we have nonetheless enfranchised more and more Americans across multiple generations, which means more of us have to trust people about about whom we know virtually nothing, which means we must practice more compassion, which means we are on the right track new-consciousness-wise. We would be pointing to times in our history when trust was high and times when it was low and the ramifications of both dynamics.
We would, for sure, be talking about how trust is not something that is rained down upon us. It is not something we can inherit. We would be talking, most importantly, about how trusting our government and trusting one another is not something we have to do but something we would choose to do. We would acknowledge that, yes, for sure, trust requires vulnerability: I don’t have to trust the surgeon who promises to fix my insides, but I choose to trust her because it serves me to do so. I can then invest my precious time and energy in my Self and my overall health and well-being. My choice is steeped in vulnerability, for which I take responsibility, risking that she could mess me up. When it goes as promised, my choice to have trusted engenders more trust, which engenders even more trust as I happily recommend her to others and so on. Everyone wants a magic pill for how to trust and this is it, folks, this is how trust works.
In his mainstream piece in his mainstream publication, Klein asks: “What does good pandemic policy look like for a low-trust, high-dysfunction society?” Conscious politics asks: What must be done to cultivate a high-trust, high-functioning society? (And then it shows a way.)
NOTE: The newly-named Conscious Politics Monthly Online Drop-In returns this week. It’s the live-action version of this newsletter wherein we talk about what you want to talk about and look at it all through our new-consciousness lens.
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I make the choice to direct my energy, my thought, my beliefs in the direction of a country that serves and supports all its citizens. Just that decision puts into motion a change for me, for how I interact, react, talk, and live.
Plain and simple: flip that script, America.