America should think of each other like the beach,and how we see the world and each other.
I am in the progress of moving to Austin from Fort
Lauderdale, and I love the beach. So
each morning I have been walking a different part of the beach and chronicling
that with pictures on Facebook. I love
the morning time, it is just me, the rising sun and a fresh start of the day
and probably have spent more time in my mind than focusing on the different
beaches.
It is easy to look at the beach with different lenses or
focus. We have a long east coast in this
country all following the Atlantic Ocean.
If you look at it that simply, what does it matter whether one walks the
ocean along cape cod, Tybee Island, or Key West? Well it obviously matters as climate,
weather, and topography of the land change and the view of the ocean and the
different types of wild life change as well.
If you have followed me over the last few days, as I walk
the beach, over what is maybe 12 miles you may have noticed each day the beach
looks different, depending on location, weather, and even the local building
codes and standards for a particular town.
Fort Lauderdale's beach is narrower, the water and the waves are
influenced by the nearby inlet to the intercostal and the port. Lauderdale by the Sea, a few mile north, the
beach is wider sand seems a little finer and there were more birds and early
risers of the human variety. This morning’s
walk along Pompano, wider beaches, more seaweed, more sea grass and more
private homes as I got closer to the lighthouse.
My point, and yes, I have one, is that Americans to the world
can look like the whole east coast of shore line. They want to lump as all together as
sometimes loud, eating too much, dressing funny and even sometimes too
optimistic. We should know that we are
as different, and change as the shoreline does and we need to appreciate our
differences just as we would not judge that one beach is better than another,
as it comes down to personal taste and environment desired.
When leaders of either political party want to define all
Americans and our priorities as the same, they miss the opportunity to
understand and celebrate our differences.
When leaders of both parties want to assume all our preferences without
understanding who we actually are, the community we live in, or the company we
keep they miss an opportunity to appreciate the true diversity of our
country. More to the point, what appeals
to a New York Republican probably won't to an Alabama Republican. A Progressive Democrat in Boston, probably
doesn't understand the challenges of a liberal Democrat in Utah.
I have been focused on this thought, since the election, and
in my anguish over Hillary Clinton's loss
.
I thought about how well the Republicans organize locally and how you
could see that pay off across the mid-west in particular. In addition, as I listen to progressive
Democrats talk about the election I continue to hear how ignorant and
uneducated the Trump voters are instead of starting to try to understand his
appeal and the challenges in these different communities that they obviously
don't understand.
Yesterday, there was a spot on the Newshour last night on
PBS.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/urban-revival-caused-crisis-success/
where Richard Florida's theory is that the economy and drive of the creative
energy is in bigger urban cities.
Implying that is the only place to be for ambitious creative educated
people.
Similar to the statements made by progressives, who assume
that everyone who voted for Trump not able to reason clearly, and are not
smart. That of course the source of
intelligent thought in this country is only in Boston, New York, and Berkley.
As someone raised in the south, worked for years in the New York area, living
in Fort Lauderdale, and moving to Austin I am here to share an observation
there is intelligent life across our vast country.
It may just be, that people who voted for Trump had
priorities that are different than the urban centers of this country. Maybe their concerns were about elimination
of manufacturing and mining jobs that fed their families for generations. Or, maybe they were concerned about
immigration because they felt it had impacted their immediate family or
neighborhood. Or, they were focused more on specific issues that are near and
dear to them in the middle of this country.
I hate to say it the Republicans and Trump heard them and capitalized on
those issues while the progressives ignored these parts of the country.
For the record, I voted for Hillary Clinton. I donated money to her campaign. I wrote more than one blog about my support
for her. At the same time, she had
plenty of policy and discourse on her web site on her plans for the middle of
the country but that message was not loud enough because many of the
progressives and the progressive media did not willing to listen to other parts
of the country that may not see the world the way they do.
Just because you have a college degree, does not make you
smarter, most of our most innovative people did not finish or start college.
(e.g. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates).
Just because you choose to live in the suburbs of New York,
doesn't
Just because you choose to walk on the beach more mornings,
than join an early conference call, doesn't make you less creative than your
urban living colleagues.
Just because you stand out in the middle of a cornfield
growing grain to feed the country and the world does not make you less
insightful than a chef in Manhattan cooking Polenta.
It just means that you might see the world differently, and
when you look at elections your priorities may not align well with the major
cities and to some degree the major parties as well.
Overcoming prejudice, is easier when people have met and
gotten to know people who are of the race, religion of identity of the person
they are prejudiced against. Much harder
to hate a gay person living next door offering tea and cookies. Much harder to show prejudice toward a man or
woman of color living across the street.
Finally, it is much easier to communicate political policy
and reasoning to people you understand as compared to blanketing a message
across the country that has to be diluted and simplified to apply to everyone
at once.
This understanding will accelerate progress in this country,
and at the same time hopefully make us all more cordial and kind to one
another.
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