Politics and solutions: it’s not that simple

While I was scrolling through X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly and yet still more commonly referred to as Twitter, I ran across someone posting a meme from years ago.  It holds some wisdom that is vitally important in today’s world of politics as partisan winner-take-all games. It said, “Everyone will not just.”

If your solution to every problem relies on “If everyone would just…” then you do not have a solution. Everyone is not going to just. At no time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they’re not going to start now.”

This gave me a bit of pause, as it is a humorous take on a longstanding problem with our level of civic engagement.  Social media, despite having the potential to bring people of differing opinions and backgrounds together, too often allows us to self-segregate into groups who already believe the same things.

Before Facebook and Twitter, there were breakfast clubs. I’ve been invited to and attended many, usually with a small group of older men who sat around the table and solved all of the world’s problems with endless conversations over bottomless cups of coffee.  

Invariably, one member would go on a long rant, ending by pounding the table with the punctuation of “It’s just that simple.”

The solutions to complex problems are rarely that simple. More often than not, the unspoken condition of these simple solutions involves “everyone to just…”  

We’ve divided ourselves into red and blue teams.  Red will refuse to do whatever blue wants.  Blue finds the red deplorable and whatever red wants to be subversive.  There are too many on each of these teams willing to do anything the other wants that common ground seems impossible to find.  Thus, everyone is refusing to just.  As it has always been.

A day or two later I noticed a post from former Congressman Doug Collins.  Collins’ days in the House had him as a rising star and potential leader, with his name floated more than once for a potential shot at Speaker.  Those of us who worked with him knew to look past his slow southern drawl and “aw shucks” country lawyer persona and pay attention to his progress on issues and ability to navigate them through an increasingly divided Washington.

Those wearing the other teams’ jerseys painted him as a MAGA extremist – though I’m not sure that term had been coined back then.  Regardless, that likely helped him more than hurt within GOP circles.  In fact, he was quite willing to adopt that persona as a full ally of President Trump and his agenda.

I say that to say this: Congressman Collins was nobody’s RINO squish.  He was happy to represent the MAGA agenda and has continued to advocate for it in his public media appearances after he left elected office.

With that out of the way, let’s look at the caution posted by Collins, also on X.  He stated:

It takes 218 votes in the U.S. House to get anything done. If you hear any political candidate throw out a policy proposal to change America, as an informed citizen, you should ask them, “How are you going to get 218 votes?” If they can’t answer that, then they have divorced politics from reality.

I retweeted with the added admonition that you would also need 60 Senators.  But the simple point is this:  No matter how loudly you pound the table, solutions aren’t that simple.

Real change requires coalitions.  Coalitions require trust, mutual respect, and delineated common ground.

Too many people look at candidates for election as potential conquering forces, not future leaders of disparate people united as one nation. We seem to think that electing one person will bring about the change that requires electing many more people and then changing the hearts and minds of many others.

Every election cycle, candidates promise us we’ll have everything we want—and nothing that we don’t want—if we just elect them. Too many believe them and then get mad when little changes after the election.

For American civics to work, we need to get back to remembering how and why they work.  That requires us to spend less time shouting our opinions as we pound the table bragging of our own simplicity, and more time listening to others to determine where and how we can get them to work toward the parts of our goals on which we can find consensus.