On behalf of rational thinking people everywhere, I would like to call for a formal and official end to the media and societal malpractice of false equivalence. This government shutdown is not about two equally aggrieved sides trying to find common ground. If one good thing comes of the shutdown, may it be the death of both sides do it, an unceremonial burying of a pox on both their houses. This is a lazy practice unrepresentative of what is actually happening in Washington, D.C. today.
The prompt for my call to action was the Tea Party-lead “march” in Washington this past weekend. The idea was to protest closed war memorials and have protest leaders — like former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Texas Senator Ted Cruz — “open” them for visiting World War II veterans. The closure of memorials has evidently become a sort of cause for conservative members of the Republican caucus. Two questions are raised as this political minority voices objection:
1. If keeping the memorials to war open and available to the public and to veterans is so important, then why not simply pass the “clean” continuing resolution — or, heaven forfend, an actual budget — and open the government which would include the memorials?
2. Why memorials? Why war memorials over, say, food assistance programs for needy children and families? Understandably, poor children and families have never made for good photo opportunities. But then why war memorials over the processing of Social Security checks? Guarding Social Security and helping the elderly is always politically popular.
Indeed, why the cause of memorials honoring those who served and those who died in wars instead of the cause of living veterans who fought in those wars, who served in the American military? The Veterans Administration has said a prolonged shutdown will affect benefit payments. How are the now-barricaded war memorials, which will be there long after the shutdown ends, more important than the living veterans who have honorably served their country, and rely on its services now?
They close the government, then protest the closure of the government. Even in this they perpetuate the falsehood that memorials were open during the last government shutdown. They were not.
But working to close down the federal government, and then protesting that parts of the federal government are, in fact, closed down, is not in and of itself false equivalency. A false equivalency, of sorts, comes when the facts are finally reported: the Department of Interior agreed to let participants in the Honor Flight program visit the World War II Memorial.
That simple truth is buried seven paragraphs into the linked CNN story, in which it is also reported that Larry Klayman of FreedomWorks told President Obama, in remarks before the crowd, to “put down the Quran.” For many reasons someone might ask why Mr. Klayman has a platform to speak at all. But in particular, one might wonder why this was even a story if the memorials were never actually closed to the visiting veterans.
It is difficult to have a conversation about the passage of a federal budget, the funding of the Affordable Care Act, raising the national debt limit, and governance in general when leaders on one side believe that the President of the United States is not the president of “we the people.”
Last week, Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute’s Sense-Making Project spoke on WUSF about how we have framed this “debate” all wrong:
“Journalism has an obligation to accurately describe what’s happening,” McBride said. “And when you call it a showdown or a stalemate or an impasse or gridlock or deadlock or a stare down… none of those are accurate. They imply mutual responsibility. They imply that two sides simply couldn’t come together on an agreement.”
This is not about two sides who cannot reach agreement. It is not a debate. It is not both sides do it. It is not a pox on both their houses. It is hackneyed political theater so that a politician can win a meaningless straw poll.
It is about the inability of a vocal minority to accept the results of a national election. It is about the inability of an even smaller vocal minority to accept the passage of a law, upheld by the Supreme Court.
It is about an apparent willful ignorance of a small (but growing) population.
It is about racism, and loathing a president because of his race. It is about a war we thought was over one hundred and fifty years ago, but the flag of which still flies against our government today.
How can we reasonably absorb any of this and still suggest, with a straight face, that President Obama and the Democrats need to sit down at some negotiating table? A confederate flag outside the White House? Not the president of “we the people”? I struggle to understand just what sort of deal is supposed to be reached.
