Yes, I hear you but…

I just read a New York Times article about the trauma over passing the spending bill and the “Demise of Compromise.” One of the more telling pieces of the article was the following paragraph:

“With both parties increasingly playing to their base constituencies and their sometimes absolutist positions, many lawmakers are apt to oppose legislation that does not meet their demands in an all-or-nothing approach, making bipartisan measures like the $1.1 trillion spending bill extraordinarily difficult to achieve.”

I see so much of what is happening, be it in politics or the streets, to be a reflection of so many peoples’ inability to really understand and process information. We have reached a point where we have enough people only processing the “one liners” that they are driving what is happening to us socially and politically as a nation. If you cannot or are unwilling to process that incredibly important word “but” we are in big trouble. Very few issues are simple or just black and white; and chances are if you can put it on a bumper sticker or on a placard that it is a gross oversimplification of what is. We cannot build and direct our society or our nation based on gross oversimplification of important and complex issues.

Do our people in office represent us? Sadly, they possibly do; but they don’t represent me very often. They are trying to keep their jobs and represent all the folks that believe the “one liners” that have been created by the advertising folks who come up with them for the political parties in the first place. Unless those running our country are free to process and communicate a “but” and really represent the complexity of issues, there will be very little compromise, progress, or representation of what is.

Perhaps we should pass a new law outlawing “one liners” and create bumper stickers and placards with: “No More One Liners.”

Oh, but what about, “Don’t cross the street without looking both ways”? “Brush your teeth after every meal.” “No taxation without representation.” There are some good ones. Ain’t nothing simple.

We simply need to be smarter.