Why politics make us mean and stupid | John Noonan | TEDxMidAtlantic

I was at a Republican policy summit and

I was speaking there a couple months ago

and it was a really cool event we had

policy experts and pollsters that

strategists and just a really neat

opportunity to learn and understand our

political process and I was struck by a

question that we got it’s a nice old

Southern guy in the back of the room who

stood up kind of jammed his finger out

and said do you all know and by the way

if you’re familiar with the South if

somebody points their finger at you and

says do you all know they’re not about

just how angry we are and it wasn’t the

question that I found so memorable it

was the reaction it brought the house

down people are angry and I was struck

by the fact that here we are in a deep

red state at the local county and state

level it’s all run by Republicans and

this was a donor event so the American

Dream had to have been good enough to

these people to so that they could

donate money to a think tank

they were prosperous and I think that’s

a totally worth totally worthwhile use

of funds I’m not criticizing that at all

one thing that I found is I’ve been

exploring this is that it’s not just a

Republican dynamic this is a chart pew

does this and they’ve tracked it for

decades it’s a great set of data it

tracks the level of trust that we as

Americans have in our government and I

want you to pay attention to the time

from 2000 until 2010 now you’ll see that

drop and you might say well George Bush

was kind of a controversial president

and that’s probably the reason for it

maybe but I would submit to you that it

went to its lowest level ever under

President Obama which tells you what

it’s bipartisan any time in politics

where you have only twenty percent of

people agreeing on something or 80

percent of people agreeing on something

it’s it’s a bipartisan

concerns bipartisan issue I would submit

something different something’s changed

radio revolutionized the way we interact

with politics television did the same

the Internet has done the same thing

only to an exponential level more than

radio more than TV

we no longer ingest news to be informed

anymore we ingest news to be validated

and during this time period you see

you’ve seen the rise of Fox News the

rise of MSNBC the rise of opinion blogs

where it’s no longer Walter Cronkite

getting up at 6 o’clock and saying who

what where when why this is what

happened this is why it happened this is

how it happened so it’s it’s

fundamentally changed and it’s having a

negative impact on the country at a

micro and a macro level it’s having a

negative impact on us this is another

chart from pew and you can see how the

center has effectively disappeared over

the past 10 years some of you may

remember the grand bargain of 2011

President Obama was facing a Republican

House for the first time him and Speaker

Boehner had got together and they said

there’s a few key things that we want to

work on there’s a few key things that we

want to work out and they got together

and it would have if they called the

grand bargain for a reason it would have

been one of the most consequential deals

in the last 20 or 30 years it would have

reformed the way entitlements work and

our tax code and modernized the way the

government regulates so it’s easier for

businesses to grow and thrive and

entrepreneurs to do their job and it

blew up both sides point the finger at

each other of course we are in

Washington DC but I think there was one

thing that both sides agreed on and that

was neither of them could sell the deal

to their base that’s reflected in that

graph it’s not a Republican issue it’s

not a democratic issue

we’re just siloed and weren’t entrenched

in our own political beliefs beliefs and

it goes back to that media dynamic where

we can search and shop for the news that

we want to hear we’re not a people

separated by two different

opinions were people separated by

different realities that’s all we’re

hurting ourselves on the macro level

let’s talk about how it’s hurting us on

the micro level we have a family friend

and it’s kind of a sitcom dynamic where

it’s a very conservative Midwest set of

parents with a closet full of guns and

then you’ve got the young free-spirited

daughter the daughter and her husband

just had a newborn baby and the daughter

did something very dumb not having the

baby that was fine but this is today she

got a text message she got her text out

and she sent a group message to her

family and she said I want you all to

know that we are not comfortable

sleeping or staying in a house where

there’s guns or driving in a car where

there’s done it’s owned by gun owners

and put aside gun control or Second

Amendment rights however you want to

frame that debate that’s tertiary to

this

it was stupid because it had a minimal

impact on the national debate on the gun

control debate but it had a maximum

impact on her personal relationship and

if you follow Ted over the past five six

years you’ll know one of the predominant

themes is these are the relationships

that give us joy that are good for our

health and make us live longer that make

us happier and it’s not just her anyone

who’s been on Facebook in the past three

months we’ll have some variation of this

story to tell we’re ripping each other

apart and for what there’s no benefit to

it this is one my favorite quotes from

the 2016 cycle and you might say oh this

is kind of this is Gandhi asked or this

is Nelson Mandela this is a former

secretary of the UN this was George W

Bush and he’s exactly right the way that

we interact with each other in the

political sense has fundamentally

altered and not really good and I don’t

think we’re at the worst point in

history civil war 1960s we’ve been here

before but we need to do a few smart

things to pull ourselves out of it to

pull ourselves out of the the spin

there’s three things that you can do to

deflect what political guys like me use

to encourage this type of

and encourage its also that we can win

of course but division is I think a

byproduct of it it’s fundamentally as

political guys we want you to be

emotional we look for vice to exploit if

we’re conservatives we want you angry

and we’ll figure out ways to make you

angry maybe it’s Colin Kaepernick’s

kneeling for the national anthem and

disrespecting that that symbol if you’re

a Democrat you might be upset about

injustice or the haves versus the

have-nots and they will use that to get

into your heart and once they are in

your heart you will believe and you will

do damn near anything bless me Father

for I have sinned I am guilty of this as

a political guy three things that you

can do so I’m gonna start with what I

call the golden rule it’s not very

original but I’d to put some kind of

name on it that’s why I came up with

passion and knowledge in politics tend

to be an inverse relationship the more

you know about a subject and I don’t

mean the more of a subject where you

think you’re right or this is I know

everything on why the Iraq war was wrong

or why we should reform the tax code I

mean you know both sides of the issue

and you can articulate both sides of the

issue that is true knowledge your

passion goes down your heart hardens

against the the political maneuverings

and the political lions that try to get

passion and knowledge have an inverse

relationship the second thing is have