Lose-Lose

In just over two weeks we will cast our ballots for the next President of the United States (if you haven’t done so already). At least one national nightmare (Campaign 2016) will end, but at least 40% of the country will contend that a new one has begun. If that is, or will be your stance, I humbly beg you to please reconsider.
Back in the day….

I had an activity that I picked up doing my MAT at Webster (when it was still “just” a college) called Win as Much as You Can. Some of my formers may remember me running it in some class or another (or even staff at an in-service, because it didn’t matter how old you were, the point/lesson was still appropriate). The upshot was that no one “wins” if your victory must come at someone else’s expense, makes a “loser” out of someone else. In other words, if someone must lose in order for you to win, then the win is at least diminished, if not negated. Win as Much as You Can advocates Win-Win outcomes.

While this obviously doesn’t apply in the sports arena very well (although I might argue that respectful competition improves everyone’s game and that disrespecting and/or destroying the opposition makes you a loser, not a winner), it works as a model for most other aspects of life. You could even make a case for it in business. If you destroy all your competition you will not only run afoul of the government but consumers will resent you. Sooner or later someone will find a way to beat you at your own game; and destroying competition also damages innovation.

But this is about politics and the toxic competition that has become the norm in our country. Sadly, it is no longer enough to try to defeat the opposition with ideas, you must also make sure that even should they win, their status and reputation are so damaged or destroyed with a significant percentage of the population that they can get nothing done. The concept of loyal opposition seemingly, sadly, no longer exists. Instead we have the new normal: “If I can’t win, I’ll make sure you don’t either.” That attitude is not appropriate for the USA (United States of America), but the DSA (Disunited States of America, or perhaps Dismantled States of America), and assumes that our country isn’t one team. If that is our attitude, our once great nation may actually realize Donald Trump’s self-fulfilling prophecy and we truly will no longer be great. That results in ALL of us losing, because here is the problem with poisoning the well.

In political contests when even the winners lose, we ALL end up having to drink that water until the next election — after which the water is still poisoned. Thus, we all lose. Both sides justify this scorched earth policy by pointing fingers at the opposition; and both sides are equally correct, and equally guilty, IMO. “They started it” sounds more like elementary and middle school than adult behavior. It does not matter, in this respect, whether the next president is Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump; each will ascend (descend?) into office carrying the poison of this campaign, some of it self-inflicted, some of it injected by the opposition, but all of it with a radioactive half-life that ensures years of damage beyond his/her term(s) – to all of us.

What can we do about this? In some ways, as individuals, very little. But this I pledge (again!), as a citizen of the United States of America: My next president (or senator, or governor, or….)  gets the benefit of the doubt, my trust that (s)he is acting in what (s)he truly believes is the best interests of the country, even if I don’t necessarily agree with those actions, because (s)he won the election.* He (or she) gets to start with a clean slate. You cannot claim to love your country while simultaneously working to destroy it or undermine the successful candidate because the election didn’t go your way.

Rush Limbaugh’s attitude from Day 1 of the Obama presidency (“I want him to fail”) was un-American, unpatriotic, selfish and self-centered, bordering, in my opinion, on treason. Although that attitude is easy to rationalize, it is only that, rationalization; I rejected that approach then and ask you to do the same now, whether it’s for President Trump or President Clinton. That’s a little thing each of us can all do if we choose to. Because the next president won’t be yours or mine, the next president of our country will, in fact, be ours.

* I would suggest this a true pledge of allegiance and is far more significant than whether I stand for the national anthem or wear a flag lapel pin or manifest any other symbolic gesture.