Farewell for now

Dear Reader,

I hope my blogging over the past 8 months has shown you an interesting perspective on the politics around us.  Although I do not always claim to be unique, I can promise that every post came with deep thought, consideration, and questioning of my opinions.  This year in my English and history classes has been a great intellectual journey for me, much of which has been charted in this blog.  As I write my final post of the year, I want to leave you with one final thought:

Everyone has reasons for believing what they believe.  Understanding those reasons is not the same as abandoning your own beliefs.  On the contrary, it can make your own beliefs stronger.

I started off the year in English class discussing the book The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien.  My class learned about the unique power of stories to communicate actions, thoughts, and feelings.  We discovered that we chart our own lives in terms of stories, even though our lives do not always follow a series of coherent events, and that the narratives we use to describe our lives can define us.

In reading The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, we saw the dangers of failing to understanding the stories and perspectives of another, in this case those of the Africans the Price family encounters.  From Azar Nafisi's novel Reading Lolita in Tehran we learned, just as Nafisi's students did, that reading the literature of lives far from us can teach us much about our own.  And in Shakespeare's Hamlet, we saw how failing to see past a ghost and its craving for revenge can drive a man to madness.

But outside of literature is where I have come to see the truth of my above statement.  The political world, especially here in the US, has become in many ways a more polarized place than when I began blogging.  Every issue, from the national debt to the killing of Osama Bin Laden, has come with two stories: the Democratic one and the Republican one.  Americans can watch their favorite news channel, read their favorite newspaper, talk to their favorite people, and never hear the other story.  When those two stories are forced to collide, collide they do.  There has been little cooperation and understanding across the aisle, and it has left every American worse off.

Worst of all, we have lost respect for others' beliefs.  We think only our reasons are valid, and that others are somehow faulty.

This is not acceptable.  The United States is one of the most cosmopolitan nations in the world, with an infinite number of stories making up the patchwork we call America.  Our greatest strength comes in our variety of perspectives.  If we chose to learn from them, we could learn so much.  But instead, we choose to force these stories into a simplistic narrative, preferring a series of 30-second sound bites over a true discussion.

So I challenge you to this: start up a conversation.  A controversial one.  Talk about religion, politics, morals, values.  This will force you to put your beliefs to the test, to find out where you truly stand, not just where it is easiest to stand.  You will learn something about yourself by learning something about another.  Do not plan on changing your beliefs - if you have good reason to believe them -  but do not swear it off either.

On a billboard in my English and social studies classroom, there hangs a bumper sticker.  It asks, "If you can't change your mind, are you sure you still have one?"  As I continue my educational journey, starting with Harvard University in the fall, I hope to further solidify and understand my beliefs, and I hope to change my mind again and again.

Thank you for reading my perspective, and thank you even more for commenting with your own.

Always,

Daniel

Bipartisanship: What the Congo Can Teach America

While reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible this week, I found myself engrossed in a salient political commentary that every American, legislators and voters alike, can learn from (for a summary of the book, click here).

In Kilanga, the village where the Price family carries out their mission, public decisions are made not by majority vote, but by complete agreement.  The chief meets and discusses with villagers until everyone is content with the decision.  After the Congo gains independence from Belgium in June 1960, however, the villagers of Kilanga become enamored with elections and the democratic process.  Soon, they are voting during a church service on whether they should follow Nathan Price and his Christian teachings, or voting in a tense village meeting on whether Leah, one of the Price daughters, will be allowed to participate in the village hunt.  As democracy becomes the new fad in the village, divisions arise, tensions heighten, and what should have been a festive post-hunt gathering became a town fight, with elections springing up left and right over every minute conflict.  Ultimately, the unity that kept the village together for ages dissolves, just as the rest of the Congo falls into discord.

Clearly, the democratic process did not work to the benefit of the villagers.  Although democracy functions (for the most part) in Western nations, the idea of a simple majority rule serves to split apart villages and tribes in the Congo that rely on total unity to face extreme existential threats from nature and, well, their Western colonizers.  Historically speaking, the election of Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister of the Congo in 1960 and the factional divisions that followed threw the fledgling nation into a spiral from which it has yet to escape.

The tendency of democracy and elections to incite division in the Congo draws parallels to today's political environment in the United States.  Today's Congress finds itself so paralyzed by partisanship and obstructionism that barely anything can get passed, and nothing of substance, it seems.  The American population is deeply divided, and between liberals and Tea Party-ers there seems to be little common ground.  Whichever way the midterm elections go, the only certainty is that a large sect of the population will be discontented, and tensions will rise.  Bipartisan compromise has given way to stubborn ideology, reasonable dialogue to hateful attacks.  In fact, Tata Kuvudundu's (Kilanga's medicine man) ad hominem attacks on Anatole, a friend of Leah's, resembles starkly the political attack ads of today.

Yesterday, Jim Kennedy, a former spokesman for democrats such as Bill Clinton and Al Gore, wrote in The Huffington Post an imagined speech by President Obama called "Give Bipartisanship a Chance."  In it, "Obama" calls for a cease-fire on attacks from both the Democrats and Republicans, a "unity of purpose" to "redeem [the American people's] trust in us."  Kennedy acknowledges that partisanship and political games are an integral part of the enfranchisement and decision-making process of Americans, but also that these very games, when taken to today's extreme, are detrimental to the nation.  Some, like Paul Krugman, argue that Obama and the democrats have attempted bipartisanship in the past, but that the Republicans are undyingly obstructionist.  Although there is some truth to that, the fact is that only with compromise and mutual understanding can the United States face the myriad issues of today.

The Poisonwood Bible, in narrating the disintegration of Kilanga, offers a powerful literary example of why simple majorities do not always fit the bill.  Our politicians would be wise to listen and learn. 

In Us vs. Them, Everyone Loses

Before I begin this week's post, I must offer you this disclaimer: I am Jewish.  I believe completely and whole-heartedly in Israel's right to exist and prosper.  I make my following arguments not to hurt Israel; rather, I critique Israel because I love Israel.

With that, let us begin...

Today, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu offered to extend the moratorium on settlement building in the West Bank (a practice the UN has found to be in violation of Palestinian sovereignty) if Palestinian leaders were to officially recognize Israel as a Jewish state.  The Palestinians immediately refused.

Yesterday, the Israeli cabinet approved the addition of a "loyalty oath" to citizenship laws that would require every non-Jew applying for citizenship to swear loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state and democracy.

These are just two in a slew of Israeli policies and positions emerging to further restrict the rights of Arabs, 20% of Israel's population, incite resistance and violence, prevent a peace agreement, and undermine the very values upon which Israel was formed.  By forcing Arabs seeking citizenship to swear allegiance to a nation that has shown it does not want them while simultaneously showing disregard for the sovereignty of Palestinian territory, Israel is inhibiting negotiations of a peace agreement and the eventual, much-needed two-state solution.  Indeed, by insisting on one controlling state that denies Arabs equal rights and the right of self-determination, Israel endangers the survival of the very values the loyalty oath was created to defend: Israel as both a Jewish and democratic state.

If Israel hopes to fulfill its Zionist mission, it must avoid and reverse the "us vs. them" ideology that has come to plague its policies.  While history offers us many examples of the failure of this ideology, I refer you instead to a valuable piece of literature that I'm reading in my English class: The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver.

The Poisonwood Bible follows the Prices, a 1960s Baptist family from Georgia, on a mission to the Belgian Congo (for a more complete summary, click here). The Price family, led by the Reverend Nathan, struggles to adjust to life in the Congo, to understand the Congolese people, to recognize the incompatibility of Christianity with the village's way of life, and to accept the legitimacy of the Congo's autonomy and independence.  Several of the daughters, but Nathan especially, enter the Congo choosing ignorance and isolation from the native culture rather than understanding and accepting it. As the Prices become the last white family in their village and in much of the Congo, their strict us vs. them dichotomy serves to only further endanger them and inhibit them from realizing any of their goals -- personal, religious -- or even to survive.

Israel now faces a choice, as it always has to an extent, between the "us vs. them" view that both history and literature teaches us is destined to fail, or a measured and pragmatic negotiation of its current position in order to salvage its long-term viability.  Again, Israel today cannot be both a Jewish state and a democracy.  If it embraces and favors only Judaism, it strips equal rights from a significant sect of the population, and therefore is not a democracy; if it gives equal rights to all the Arabs in its territories, Jews will soon loose their demographic majority in the region and loose control, thus eliminating the Jewish state.  Israel cannot have both, just as Nathan cannot both force Christianity on the Congolese people and survive in a foreign country with few other whites and little independent means.

In the game of us vs. them, nobody wins.