Need to come together trumps Trump talk

Each week, this newspaper’s email is flooded with “content sharing” from other members of the Kansas Press Association. For the most part, it’s a host of editorials, nearly all of them condemning whatever latest head-scratching, foul-smelling threats to civility, common sense, freedom, and democracy seem to be emanating from Washington or Topeka.

We’d love to chime in on some of these editorials, like the ones expressing wonderment at our wanting to seize Greenland, our labeling of a fatally shot peaceful protester as a terrorist, our censoring of the Stars and Stripes newspaper, and our punishing of Norway for failing to give our president a Nobel Prize.

Personally, I don’t disagree with any of them except those urging greater legalization of gambling, quack medicine, drinking, and mind-altering substances. Rather, I find myself working at what by choice has become a parochial local newspaper, banning opinion pieces about issues that don’t have direct, measurable impact on its community.

Some of that is for self-preservation. Attack MAGA and its maggots bite back. I hate to think how vicious the thread of responses to this editorial will be when its first two paragraphs are posted on anti-social media. I don’t want people to immediately dismiss our paper, as some do, as the product of yet another biased, left-wing news organization. Truth be known, I regard myself as a Republican and a conservative, just not as one of the fundamentalist, bullying sort that currently seem to dominate both the party and the movement.

The real reason we don’t talk Trump 24/7/365 is that there’s plenty to talk about locally, and when we talk about things locally we have a habit of occasionally actually communicating. Living in a small town in which friends and enemies can’t easily hide from one another, we learn to accept others’ views as valid, even if we don’t share them. And, contrary to everything that seems to happen in the state and nation, we occasionally come together to compromise and move forward without bearing our fangs at each other.

Part of the reason our nation is so divided these days is that all of us have opinions and preferences we try to put forward, but the entire process seems meaningless. What we say no longer matters, so all that’s left for us to do is draw lines in the sand, hate those who disagree with us, and spend every waking hour demonizing them.

It’s a no-win scenario. You might think the biggest bully ultimately will win, but we still have enough checks and balances to eventually prevent total victory by either side. What happens instead is that our powerlessness to change things leaves us demoralized. As a result, we refuse to get involved in the precise type of civil discourse that could actually move us ahead instead of leaving us mired in mud to be slung.

There isn’t a MAGA side and a non-MAGA side to potholes, feral cats, and even wind farms. Some of them are contentious issues to be sure. But if we put our minds to them — speak out and also listen — we should be able to resolve them enough that we will gain the confidence needed to begin to tackle some of the bigger issues that divide our state and nation.

Some people are so disgusted with political intransigence that they prefer that all issues — even ones that could be resolved — be avoided, and that only happy talk be offered instead. That, I submit, is one of the reasons we’re in the mess we are nationally. We don’t want to actually face and try to resolve problems. It’s much easier to regard them as caused by evil boogeymen we should mindlessly shout at on anti-social media.

So, this paper will continue to be Trump free nearly all of the time, much to the chagrin of those who really want to say something about him, either positive or negative. What we won’t shy away from are local issues where movement forward still is possible if we can come together and talk as a community, all possessing the same common ground of information the paper attempts to provide each week.

Some on both sides will doubtlessly want to boycott us for not always being positive and neither praising nor condemning various national and state political trends. But the newspaper has made a conscious choice to try to become the informational common ground from which productive, not vindictive, debate and ultimately compromise can flow.

This may make us an anachronism — a dinosaur — in the modern media landscape, but things have become divisive enough that it’s time to try a tried-and-true way to restore civility and democracy. We may not have the respect and universality of a Walter Cronkite, but we’re willing to try. Are you willing to do your part?

— Eric Meyer