America has a secret.  Our secret is that a majority of us are sensible.  Very sensible.  The Sensible Majority has taken notice of the failure of party-first politics and is ready to take action.  We know that the time has come for serious people to engage in solving serious problems.

What does the Sensible Majority look like?  It looks like you and it looks like me.   You are reading this article -- and looking for solutions to the incivility and distrust that divides our nation -- so you are clearly a member of it.   The Sensible Majority consists of people who have more important, more meaningful, or more enjoyable things to do with their lives than to participate in the contest of political insults.   The Sensible Majority is made up of citizens who are smart enough and experienced enough to know that difficult problems can only be solved through cooperative effort by thoughtful people of diverse beliefs and backgrounds. 

Politics has always been rough stuff.   Any student of history knows that there was no “golden age” of American democracy when all of our politicians behaved with decorum toward one another all of the time.  Politicians have been lying to voters as long as there have been elections.  So, the Sensible Majority is not expecting politicians to hold hands or suddenly become enamored of the truth.   What we expect and require is that our representatives be effective.  Big societal and political change happens when expectations and results are not aligned.  Our government has not kept pace up with our expectations; so bigger changes are yet to come. 

The presidential primaries and the general election of November 2016 brought a big change in who could win the highest office and how one campaigns to win it.  The campaign and election laid waste to long held beliefs of pundits and party leaders about how political success is achieved.  So, this must be the big change the Sensible Majority wanted to see?  Not likely.  The election was merely what the financial markets refer to as a “dead cat bounce”.   What that means, is that we haven’t reached the bottom yet.   Our view of government is going to get worse.   It is already clear just two months after the election, that there will not be much effort to build ad hoc issue coalitions across party lines.

The Sensible Majority will not be satisfied until our political leaders first agree on a set of American priorities.  Not Republican or Democrat priorities.  Not conservative or progressive priorities. American priorities.  Then we can focus our efforts on reaching and implementing workable solutions to these priorities that the Sensible Majority can support.  It’s been done before.  When the majority is focused, we solve big problems.
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What issues are a big enough and important enough to command the attention of the Sensible Majority and form the basis of a consensus American issue agenda?  Just what you would expect:  high quality jobs, national security, affordable healthcare and education, civil rights, wealth disparity, etc . . .  The problem is not identifying the important issues.  The problem has been who has set the agenda and picked the priorities among those issues.  It has not been the Sensible Majority.   It has been highly focused special interests who have taken advantage of the difficulty of engaging the Sensible Majority and solving the big problems.  That is going to change.  The Sensible Majority has taken notice.
 
Copyright © 2017 by Jeffrey Scott Szorik

When we were kids, food would magically appear when we were hungry.  Up until college or when we first moved out of the house, an endless supply of clean laundry was available each time we wanted a change of clothes or a fresh towel.   The price of such largesse was that we were subject to the authoritarian rule of parents and their choices regarding all manner of decisions about how we used [their] resources and how we behaved. With adulthood, we gained freedom.  With adulthood, we also encountered the responsibility that comes with freedom.  

Democracy works in much the same way.   With the privilege of freedom, the consequences of our actions – or inaction – become our responsibility.  We are personally responsible through our choices and our deeds for how we are governed.  Government is not going to provide us what we want or need out of some paternalistic sense of moral obligation.   Government responds to influence.  The greater our influence, the greater government’s response to us.

At its heart, personal democracy is about increasing our individual influence on the world around us.  It is about identifying our priorities and preferences and communicating them to our neighbors and to our political representatives.  It is about making things happen.   Because people who speak up are heard. Personal democracy sits at the intersection of old fashioned citizenship and the new possibilities of civic technology.  Its potential is only limited by our willingness to accept our responsibility to engage in the process.  Technology allows us to efficiently obtain information about commonplace and complex issues.  Technology allows us to participate with fellow citizens in drafting laws.   Technology allows us to follow government activities in real time.   Most important, technology allows us to easily identify our political priorities and preferences and communicate them to our political representatives.

By now you have probably realized that the promises of the last election cycle are being abandoned, explained away, or otherwise restated in ways that bear little resemblance to how they were first communicated.  The reason this happens is because influence has shifted.   As voters, we have primary influence over the outcome of elections.   However, once the election is over, influence returns to special interests and professionals who know that policy is more important than politicians.  Essentially, the governed lack influence in government.   Until we collectively turn our attention to the issues, and away from the political personalities, we are likely to be disappointed with our government.  As voters, we can be manipulated with easy promises.  As citizens who participate continually in the political process, we are not easily manipulated. Because difficult choices often require putting country or community above political party affiliations.

We aren’t children any more.   We work to put food on our table and dirty laundry is our problem. Whether our democracy works or not is our responsibility, too.   We must demand the attention of our lawmakers on issues that are the highest priority to us.   We must do this all of the time and not just during election cycles.  Challenge yourself to become educated about one political issue per day – all sides of the issue – and then communicate your preference and where the issue stands among your priorities.  As more of us engage in this practice we will see our influence restored.  Democracy is not a spectator sport.   Democracy is most effective when it is personal.

Copyright (c) 2017 by Jeffrey Scott Szorik