Eric Herr: It's not our differences that are keeping us apart

To The Daily Sun,

Civic differences are on full display in perspectives of the former and the current presidents: abortion, the right to bear arms, the causes of inflation, climate futures, and more. But variety in our civic views is nothing new and essential to our democracy. It's via the exchange and leavening of ideas, facts, beliefs, theories, and moral intuitions that we arrive at better positions.

Today’s toxic civic chasms seem to me to be born not of our different views but, in part, hubris in the correctness of our individual views and in part, a winning-at-all-costs approach to political life. So, we traffic in facts that aren’t facts, untested theories, spinning rhetoric, lying, gerrymandering, stolen elections, and demonizing those with other ideas. In the process, we’ve lost the ability and even desire to compromise. We’ve lost a core premise of democracy... that our decisions are likely to improve via the free and open exchange of ideas.

It is tempting to blame this on mainstream media, digital media, political parties, and government institutions, in short anyone else. But We the People have always been the key ingredient in American democracy’s success. We need to reject winning at all cost politics. We need to reject epistemic hubris. We need to listen to each other respectfully to understand rather than merely respond.

Eric Herr

Hill