I Don’t Get It… and That’s a Start

By Penny Costello

The family I was raised in has deep roots in Western South Dakota. Agriculture, mining and tourism
have been the dominant economic engines of the region through most of my lifetime. Ranch country. Gold Rush Days. The Wild West. Wild Bill Hickock. Calamity Jane. George Armstrong Custer. Before that, it was Indian Country. (Members of the Oglala and Sicangu Lakota, Lower Brule, Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Yankton, Crow Creek, and Sisseton-Wahpeton Tribes will tell you it still is.) 

Growing up amidst the mythos and majesty of all of that has been my good fortune. It’s a beautiful, wild, wide-open place to live. Individual freedoms are as sacred to South Dakotans as the Black Hills are to Lakota and Dakota people. And today in 2020, it’s Trump Country. The right to bear arms, and to not wear a mask – these, too are sacred. And if you happen to disagree about politics, you just don’t talk about it. Live and let live and keep your opinions to yourself. Those are the guiding principles with which I was raised.

But these times are different. People on both sides of the political spectrum feel that the soul of America is at stake. We look at people we love whom we’ve known all our lives and wonder how they can support candidates or policies we find extreme, destructive, sometimes absurd and sometimes downright abhorrent. Too often we denigrate the bias of their chosen media sources without exploring potential bias in our own. 

We’re used to the gridlock and obstructionist tactics we see in Congress, where party trumps policy. There it’s no longer about governing and public service. It’s about winning and dominance. And the 24-hour news channels thrive in the regurgitation of rancor. Too much discord and not enough discourse. And on July 3^rd, 2020, I know members of my family were as proud and honored to have the President speaking at Mt. Rushmore while the Blue Angels flew overhead as I was flabbergasted to see white South Dakotans yelling at Native protesters to ‘go back where they came from.’

In the face of such discord, when looking at each other across that chasm of perspectives, not wanting to cause resentment or hurt feelings in people we love, and because that’s how we were raised, we just don’t talk about it. We look at them and think to ourselves, ‘I don’t get it.’ And we change the subject. But what would happen if we began the conversation with ‘I don’t get it,’ instead of ending it? Instead of a rush to judgement, how about an exchange of ideas? Instead of a social media snark-fest, how about a shared search for common ground? Weren’t those among the founding ideals of the American experiment?

Need we be reminded that we are the “We” in “We the People”? The same “We the People” who sought to find a more perfect union? Not a perfect union, but a more perfect union in recognition that we’ll never be perfect, but we can always strive to do better?

Public discourse was a cornerstone of the founding ideals of this Republic. The idea that citizens would discuss and exchange ideas with each other, and then with elected representatives who would implement policy that, to the greatest extent possible would be in the interest of justice and a greater good.

In “Democracy as Trust in Public Discourse,” William W. Clohesy, Professor of Philosophy, University of Northern Iowa interpreted the intentions of the authors of the Constitution. In the Federalist Papers, a series of essays crafted in support of the Constitution, James Madison stated that factions were the greatest threat to the greater good and to the Republic.

“By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

Clohesy wrote, “Factions are dangerous in a republic because factious citizens are not willing to present their views before the public, argue for them as best they can and allow the group to decide whether or not to accept them. A faction seeks only to prevail; there is no interest in persuasion through discussion, no revision to make the view more acceptable. A triumphant faction will take control, whether as a majority or well-organized minority and force its view on all as a vanquished enemy.”  

In today’s United States, depending upon your political party affiliation, one could argue that Clohesy describes Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi, and any number of our elected representatives. Mistrust of the media, of free and fair elections, of each other, has undermined the purity and promise of spirited public discourse as both a citizen's right and responsibility. And the only ones who can change that are We the People.

We need to cast off the comfort and conditioning of ‘just not talking about it.’ We need to go there while remembering we love and respect each other. If we write off people as being just like (fill in the blank with someone you despise) without trying to understand why they ascribe to a belief, we become part of the problem.

On a recent visit with family members in South Dakota, I dipped my toes in those waters. I tried to begin the conversation with ‘I don’t get it,’ rather than ending it there. I admitted when I didn’t know the facts about a subject but had plenty of opinions. I gazed upon people who mean the world to me, and who have very different ideas about how things should be. It was hard. Sometimes it was scary, sometimes exasperating. And when we parted company, we hugged each other, said we love each other, and maybe opened a tiny door through which factionalism could dissolve and a future exchange of ideas could take root. In many ways, I still don’t get it. But it’s a start.

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