Let's Find Common Ground - The Third Founding

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

With our political system mired in problems, there’s plenty of talk about ‘fixing politics.’ But our guest Mark Sappenfield, Editor of the Christian Science Monitor, says that idea is too simplistic. What needs to change, he says “is upstream from politics. It’s how we relate to each other as human beings in our society. And until that changes, politics isn’t going to change.” In a deeply thoughtful conversation, Mark shares his personal take on where the U.S. is and where it needs to go. Americans’ expectations have changed a lot in recent years with mass internet access and the instant gratification brought about by digital life. We want something? We expect to get it within hours. But Mark argues this culture of convenience and focus on the self has seeped into the rest of our lives, altering our expectations for what politicians can do for us and absolving us of personal responsibility.  From his current home in Germany Mark discusses the upside of a less convenient daily life, the difference between compromise and curiosity, and how a societal re-set he calls 'a third founding’ may be needed to get America back on track.

Before we begin, we have a sad announcement for this first show of 2024. Bruce Bond, co-founder and CEO of Common Ground Committee, died last week. Bruce co-founded Common Ground Committee with Eric Olson in 2009. He was passionate about the value and importance of Common Ground and always listened carefully to other perspectives. His love for others made him open to new ideas and his strong principles guided his thinking. He was a great champion of this show and also a generous colleague. He often thanked us for our work on the podcast. Yeah, Bruce was instrumental in putting this episode together. He was intrigued by what our guest Mark Sappenfield had to say about American society needing

a reset to get back on track. Bruce spoke with Mark about his ideas before we did. This episode is in memory of Bruce Bond. Here's our show. With our political system mired in problems, there's plenty of talk about fixing politics. But our guest says that idea is too simplistic. If you just point to politics and say can we fix politics, my answer is no, because it's not politics. It's upstream from politics. It's how we relate to each other as human beings in our society.

And until that changes, politics isn't gonna change. This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley Meltaite. And I'm Richard Davies. We're going to speak with Mark Sappenfield, editor of the Christian Science Monitor. This isn't his first time on the podcast we spoke before about election coverage. Today, he shares his personal take on where the US is and where it needs to go, something he calls the third founding. Mark says American society needs a reset, something that allows all to be on the same page again instead of fractured into ever smaller groups, all with different interests. He's been living abroad for the past several months in Germany, where Mark says there's

a lot less focus on individual wants and needs and more on societies as a whole. That's helped fuel his belief that America's culture of instant gratification isn't always good for us, or our politics. Richard kicks us off. We start with where we are right now at the beginning of a presidential election season. 2024 could be a very troubled, disorderly and disturbing year. How do you see the time we are currently in? How do you see the time we are currently in? Well, all we have to do is look back four years to see a situation that was roughly similar.

2020 everyone was talking about how important it was and how it could change everything. And they were right. And on top of that, we had the pandemic and many other things besides. So if you just look at a short historical look, we can look back and say, okay, we've been through this before. But historically, my sense is, you know, looking into the polarization that we see is that

there really aren't very many good analogs in recent history. So I mean, we are navigating through a general time that is unique. Going into it, I think the tendency always in political reporting and thinking about politics is the horse race is to try and predict. And I just think in this case that's particularly unhelpful. And I mean not just prediction of who might win, but also what they might do. I mean, we see so much in the media today about what a second Trump term might mean. And those things could be right, but they also very well could be wrong.

At least as a journalist, I go back to journalism 101 and it's they say, right what you know. Don't guess, don't prognosticate, right what you know. And what can you say? And I think kind of us all taking a step back and breathing and staying with that for now is the best thing we can do at the moment rather than trying to guess because that oftentimes leads to worst-case scenario-ing and so forth. How do you think this time of division and gloom affects politics itself? Well, I think you can make an argument that it's mutual.

You know, it's a chicken and egg sort of thing. Is it the politics that's affecting us or is it us that's affecting the politics? And my sense is, is that if you're in a functioning democracy, and I would say that we are, although, you know, there are certain strains and stresses and concerns absolutely, we still are in a democracy, that's how it should be, is that if the government does not reflect the people, then the government is somehow warping the system to do something else, and then you're getting into non-democratic things. Democracy's job is not to fix things.

It's the people's job to fix things. Democracy's job is to maintain rule of law while people figure things out. And at a moment when people are so polarized, it is just and right that politics also be polarized. Because if it's not, then what is it reflecting? Now, you do get into the questions of, okay, is politics really reflecting the nation as it is, or is it reflecting the extremes? Those who are most engaged in politics, that's a legitimate question to ask. And so when I think about fixing politics, you're talking about fixing those fundamental connections that we have among each other in society, because politics is just the

reflection of that in my mind. That answer hints at personal responsibility as being important. Yes, one might say so. Yeah, it isn't just them who need to fix things, but us, who need to fix things, but us individually who need to be part of the solution. That's the either implied or explicit point that the founders were making in establishing democracy is that there are rights, but there are also responsibilities. As you don't get the rights without the responsibilities, that doesn't work, and that's not, you know, some school marmished sort of thing where someone's going to hit you over the knuckles with a ruler and say, you don't get these rights unless you have responsibilities, Mr. you know, it's just it's the way it goes. It's a mathematical equation. And I think we come into danger when that doesn't happen is when we demand more rights

and take more responsibilities on ourselves but don't fulfill those in the way that we should. And I suppose that's a little bit vague, but kind of to get to the point that you were saying is when a democracy becomes all about me and serving what I want, I think that's when you start to get into trouble. Do we have too many rights? I don't think so.

I don't think you can have too many rights. I think history is the story of us learning how to live with them is that rights, as you say, as we talked about rights confer responsibilities, sometimes we're ready for them, sometimes we're not ready for them. I think it's pretty clear one of the things that I did in previous parts of my career for the monitor as I worked out of Afghanistan when I was the India correspondent for the monitor. And it was very clear that President George W. Bush,

when he began the war after 9-11, everyone kept talking about us, he was trying to set up a Jeffersonian democracy in the Hindu Kush sort of thing. And I think it was just, it ended up being clear and frankly was clear at that time that that Afghanistan was not ready for that yet on its trajectory that it has taken. That doesn't mean that it shouldn't have rights, but it has to be within the context of what's organic to that situation. And so as you are able to kind of work

and as you understand that system, more know how to do it, then that can expand. And I would say that America is not the ultimate of democracy at this particular point. It's not like because America founded this democracy in 1776, that means we know how to do it better than everyone else. It's everyone is going to be struggling

to figure out how their democracy should express itself. And I'm sure we have lessons to learn. And the rights that we give ourselves then put responsibilities on us. And how well are we managing those responsibilities? That's, to me, what the history of today is telling us. It's a report card on how we're doing. Our society, you could, you could hook you, has changed quite a bit in recent years, in that it has become this incredibly convenient society for those of us at least in the Western world who are, that have all our devices, right? You've said this, we live in a holy sort of undemand world and in that world, it's in everyone's

interest to cater to me personally. You know, it's all about the individual rather than the community as a whole. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, that's really interesting and especially kind of for me thinking about it now because I've grown up my entire life in the United States, but right now I'm living in Berlin. And I have spent time, as I mentioned,

reporting from India and went to the Olympics. So there's a very small shot, but went to the Olympics in China and other places. And so you begin to get these pictures of how different societies think about that question as how much do you cater to the individual, versus how much do you create societies that deal with the collective? And I would say that America is much farther on the kind of individual side of things.

And you think about it in the context of more direct democracies where people can vote directly for things like referendums like we see in the United States. And you see that with our politics where everyone is going for your vote. And you see that with economics where all the advertising is about trying to get every product just for you and done in that way. And you know, you think about like you say, cable where you can get anything you want at any time. As you keep going this way, one of the things that I've noticed that's interesting about Germany, and this is said completely from a standpoint of just fascination, is in many ways what I have noticed about German society as an American, is that it is set up for obedience to those in authority.

That is one of the primary things that German society does. Is it makes you listen to and obey the people who have more power than you? Which is an American, it's just crazy. You know, it's like, didn't we have a revolution about this? But it works. You know, so there's no one right way. There are benefits and there are drawbacks to it.

But there are benefits and drawbacks anyway that you draw this system. But it's very interesting to see how that affects a society. And when you have a society in which obedience to authority is ingrained, it's much easier to come together in different ways because it's not all about you. You're not used to getting what you want all the time. So you are conditioned to accept that you will lose some time,

that you want to do something your way and it's not going to work. And that's fine because that's just what society tells me. And so you don't freak out about it. But in America, we have been so conditioned through all these different things, through society, through politics, through economics, through culture, that I should be able to get what I want whenever I want it, that when it doesn't happen, we think something is wrong, we think something is broken, we

think rights are being abridged. And in some cases, they are, but in some cases, it's just us wanting what we want and kind of throwing a temper tantrum if we don't get it. And I think, to me, that's one of the things that we will have to wrestle with in America right now is where you'd asked earlier, do we have too many rights? Well, how can you have too many rights? But at the same time, it's, do we expect the whole system to cater to us to a degree that is not practical and not healthy for the larger society? We might be thriving as individuals, maybe, maybe not. We can talk about that later.

But as a society, it breaks down our society's ability to function together. When I think about some of the things that I do think make American society quite selfish, it's things that I would assume they also have in Germany, like Uber and ordering your food and getting it, you know, half an hour later and expecting a package to be delivered the next day, when even 10 years ago we wouldn't have expected that.

Aren't there all these little conveniences that come with the digital world? They also exist in Germany, right? Not really. Germany hasn't quite figured out the internet yet. Like for example, I was signing up for a German language course, and I couldn't do it over the internet. I basically needed to go into the office, and the office is only open on certain days at certain times.

So I had to set my whole schedule around making sure I was at this office to sign this document at this certain time or else I couldn't get it done. And it didn't matter that that was inconvenient. That was just the way it was. And so again, that is telling me, I am less important than you. You are going to set the conditions by which I will join this class. And if I can't meet those conditions conditions then I have to suck it up. And that's what you're talking about with Amazon and there's no way that would work in

America. America people would say, I want to put my thumb on my mobile phone and be done. You know, I want this to take 3.5 seconds or else it's an abridgment of my rights, you know, my freedom of expression or something like that. And they would get it. And we do have that. And it's great doing this in Germany was really frustrating. But at the same time, what conditions does that set in your thinking?

In that process, I had the condition that said, they will set the rules and I will abide by them and I need to suck it up. And it's like, sometimes in politics, that's the way it needs to go. Sometimes in politics, it's like, you're not going to get your way. This is how it's going to be and you don't get to throw a temper tantrum about it. But that doesn't happen as much anymore. So yes, those things do exist. I don't mean to suggest Germanism, the Stone Age, but even on something as simple as what you're talking about there, they have not set up their society in the way to cater to the individual, to the consumer, nearly to the degree that the United States has. They do have social media in Germany and in the rest of the world.

What role does social media play in making us all feel like our opinions matter or society is catering for us as opposed to the rest of us having to live with people who are different from us. I mean, it is important in having these conversations to recognize there are two sides these things too, and that social media in in some context has done amazing good. If you think about obviously the end result was maybe not what the world had hoped for, but with the Arab Spring, you know, the ability to connect communities over borders and ways that had never happened before and create this momentum for change that I think many people in the world thought was healthy. But as you say, it also has this

other way of acting, this other dynamic where it pulls us apart and it puts us into smaller and smaller atomized camps, because what it does, it, I mean, and this, you know, it's again another chicken and egg thing, is there's so much focus, and this is in Germany too, but again, not to the degree I've seen in the United States, so much focus on identity and who I am and what defines who I am.

And making sure that everyone is aware that these are the constituent parts of me and these different constituent parts need to be respected and need to be all of those things. Well social media is an accelerant to that because social media is all about my view on the world matters and you should be interested in my view on the world. We talked about those different things that do cater to the individual, whether it's cultural, whether it's social, think you begin to realize that it's not any one thing. It's a whole trend in society that we need to be addressing and thinking about. And it goes beyond politics. And I think unless you start to unravel this

and begin to look at its effect on us as a society, if you just point to politics and say, can we fix politics, my answer is no, because it's not politics. It's upstream from politics. It's how we relate to each other as human beings in our society. And until that changes politics doesn't get a change. But politics can be part of the solving the problem. It just, this point hasn't been. It's been a kind of a kick to the flywheel. You're listening to Mark Sappenfield, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, on Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley.

I'm Richard. As we start the new year, a quick reminder that Common Ground Committee produces more than just this podcast, there's the Common Ground Scorecard, which lets voters know which elected officials and candidates seek common ground on important issues. You can also watch past live events on everything from the media and fake news, to guns, to finding common ground on election reform. All this is accessible via our website, commongroundcommitty.org.

And we also make it easy to donate and support our work, just text 53555 and type the letters CGC into the text message. That's 53555 followed5-5-5 followed by CGC and thanks. Now back to our conversation with Mark Sappenfield. Back to the personal for a moment, given what we've talked about that a lot of people in the US at least do have the power to make our lives pretty much the way we want with modern digital conveniences. Does that bring us happiness and fulfillment? That's a really profound question. And I think we all have to probably acknowledge

that that's a really difficult question and not one we can probably answer quickly. But I mean, I would say there is evidence that it does not. There is evidence that some degree of difficulty, some degree of challenge, some degree of sacrifice actually is consistent with more happiness. That I think this ultimately comes down to where you think happiness comes from. And is happiness something that comes from our ability to get everything we want?

I think in a more profound way, I think your question goes to figuring out what happiness is. We certainly don't want to enforce happiness by misery. You don't want to enforce happiness by misery. You don't want to enforce happiness by taking away people's rights. We want you to be happy. So we're going to take all these rights away from you.

That doesn't work. But at the same time, if super serving the individual doesn't bring happiness, and demonstrably, we see that mental health levels are at crisis levels in in the West So clearly it's not whatever we're doing right now is not working So I think to me that speaks a little bit to kind of this quest of figuring out what happiness is in some interesting way I do think all all these things knit together There was an interview that President Obama did with an author Marilyn Robinson and she said one of my favorite things that I've ever heard. The basis

of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people. I think that's enormously profound, and I think it's actually 100% correct. Democracies work when you assume well of the other person. That's when they work best. And in that way, to meet democracies are... And I would argue that that's really where your foundation of happiness comes from. Is that ability to find goodness wherever you look, in whatever you see, in your own life, and the people around you? And is democracy in some way forcing us to wrestle

with that in a way that we've never really had to as human beings before? I think yes, that means we're actually a fairly important point in history, and we'll see where it goes. How do we encourage people, including ourselves, to change, perhaps to welcome what one author has said a bit of friction in our lives. I mean, that's the question, isn't it? And I would say throughout history, change has been enforced upon us. After World War II, there was enormous change, but think of the cost of that change. You could by some measures say that the post-World

War II era was the most remarkable period in human history for the expansion of human rights. But why did that happen? That happened because we saw what happened in the other direction. And my sense is that change must happen, is that the human condition must improve. And how are we compelled to do that? And that becomes a question of, are we compelled to do that through suffering? Or are we compelled to do that through our own growth? I think that's the question we face. If you look through history, there are all these cycles of crisis and growth, crisis and growth. We haven't broken the system. We're still in that system. And so right now we're being asked, is it going

to be crisis or growth? And so how do you compel it? Well, I think the only way I know how to do that is to do it myself. I think the danger is if you start trying to change someone else, then you fall into the pit, saying, we're not going to get anywhere we need to go so long as that person is doing that thing. And what struck me as fascinating is there was an article that quoted Diane Nash, who was a civil rights activist. And she said, non-violence was the single most important invention of the 20th century, which is an incredible statement to make. Think about what was created, what was invented in the 20th century. You know, planes, cars, computers, I mean, the internet. She said the most

important invention of the 20th century was non-violence. And to me, the rightness of that statement is that it gets the understanding of the nature of power correct. And that's what Mahandas Gandhi realized, that's what Martin Luther King realized is that change happens from radically changing yourself. Gandhi said, I take all the ills onto me rather than putting them on someone else. And I think on some level, we as societies are struggling with that. And my sense is that we need to have a greater understanding of our ability to change ourselves, and as we change ourselves, we will change our societies. We reference the third founding at the top of the show.

What is that? What do you mean by that? The first founding was the founding of the United States in the 1770s. It was revolutionary in the world, in that it was the creation of a nation on ideals. Nations had always been founded based on an ethnicity or a linguistic set that co-heared. It was really the first time people created a nation where the co-hearing thing was an ideal, which to me was revolutionary,

and of enormous value to the world. The second founding of the United States came with the Civil Rights Movement, which was the demand that those ideals apply equally to everyone. The founders knew, and they debated endlessly, and had very difficult time over the fact that they knew that those ideals did not apply to everyone. Those ideals were very, very selectively applied at the beginning. And gradually, they expanded to include more and more people.

And the civil rights movement said, it's enough. These ideals are universal. And if America has a leg to stand on, they have to apply to everyone, including, in that case, it was African-Americans. But Dr. King was making his point for everyone. He's saying that American only be saved if it lives by its principles honestly, and I think he was right. And the force of that statement, the need for that statement, was a second founding.

It was taking those original principles and reestablishing them on an even deeper basis. And I would just say that it seems to me that based on the way society is evolving, we will need a third founding, in which we reestablish these principles in a way that is practical in an era when so much of society seems to be about self-serving. How do we reestablish those principles of society and a communal sense of good at a time

when everyone seems to be atomizing into different tribes, different groups? There's going to need to be something that breaks that trend, and I don't see anything in society or economics or culture that's going to do it. There's going to need to be something to me like what Dr. King did to reawaken the United States to the need of establishing this sense of communal good. But as you've mentioned, most constructive change comes in response to crisis. So it sounds like we're going to have to go through movement was wrenching.

It was terribly tragic to those involved, but it was significantly less tragic in a way than the civil war. The civil war in terms of pure cataclysm. So can we look at that and say, okay, can the next revolution be even less destructive? And I think that's in our hands. You know, what is the next revolution going to look like, and how much destruction is it going to involve? That's the question that we as a society need to find out.

And I'm not by any means wholly pessimistic on that. I think society seems to be, but I think that's generally society's way at the moment is to be fairly pessimistic about things. I think there's a lot to suggest that we have more resources to build on than we think we do. Such as You know

for good reason there is a lot of Hand-ringing around the 24-hour news cycle. And you think about some of these 24-hour news programming where it's like, do we really need this? I mean, that's one thing, again, you don't see in Germany. You don't see the talking heads just arguing about everything all the time. It gets reductive and to a point, it's really not helpful.

I tell most people I say, if you wanna feel better about yourself, turn off opinion journalism. Just don't read it. That said, those 24-hour news cycles mean that if anything happens, we know about it. And I'm not sure that we as societies have a, you know, despite watching Game of Thrones and Squid Game and things like that. I'm not sure we as societies really have the stomach for violence anymore. You think about the

what happened after the George Floyd murder and there were there were some you know protests and then there were some riots. You know we as a society didn't have much taste for things that got out of hand and that those riots compared to riots that happened in the 60s were nothing compared to that. I just think we as societies just have less of an acceptance of violence. And I think if violence really broke out, I think we would unite quicker than we think we would. Because I think when it gets to that level, we'd go, no, this is not acceptable.

And I think, you know, common ground committee often talks about the exhaustion majority. I think the exhaustion majority would jump into action if we actually saw violence. And I think that's a bulwark against things turning to violent. You've mentioned the need to be more generous, maybe kinder in our views of others. Is compromise part of this? Or are you looking more towards greater curiosity? I would say the latter is compromise, obviously in so many circles, is a poor letter word these days. You can look at this in two ways. One is that a democracy doesn't work without compromise.

If you create a government, the way that the American founders created it, you will get nothing done if there is no compromise. If you wanna see what happens when there's no compromise, just look, I mean, that's what's happening now. So if we don't wanna compromise, if this is how we want our democracy to function, then great, it can just keep going on like this. But that's because there's two sides that are convinced that they are right and

convinced the other side is wrong. And so, you know, won't compromise with one another. But I mean, I don't think compromise in and of itself is, you know, you don't want someone to compromise on their values necessarily. If you try and tell someone, you know, this this view that you have abortion or this view that you have of religious rights or this view that you have of LGBTQ plus issues, you know, if you want to say I want you to compromise on that, you're just not going to get very far and I'm not sure that's the point. The idea is not to change people's minds. It's that curiosity thing. So what role does curiosity play here?

I think curiosity is more important because it opens up ways for society to grow. If you think about how we were even 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, there's a really important work called bowling alone. And what it speaks to is the way that we are fracturing as societies, is that we are becoming less social. We are becoming more atomized. And then all these things that we have talked about today are accelerants to that. If you even go back to Detokeville when he came to look in America in the 1700s, what he said was the strength of America was in its groups, was in its ability for people

to come together as towns, as its local administration, which kind of didn't exist anywhere else in the world, and grab its own destiny by the hands and this ability to network and find common ground and all of these things find common purpose. That's what has always made, I mean, if you talk about what has made America exceptional, it's this ability to find relationships that cut across strata. You know, we see in Europe what Tocqueville

was comparing it to, you had very, very clear strata. You know, we see in Europe what Tocqueville was comparing it, says you had very, very clear strata of society and they did not intermix. And that was not true in America at all. You had the baker and the blacksmith and the politician all coming together in a room and having a conversation. And that kind of interlinking was what created the energy

that made America so exceptional. And as America has atomized, that superpower has dissipated. And so again, the goal is not to necessarily get you to compromise on what you think. The goal is to recognize and to see the other person as a human who will not throw you under the bus. You know, to recognize, I can trust this thing called the United States, and it's not going to hurt me. This larger idea of the United States. We don't trust that anymore. We feel like unless the United States does what I want it to do, it's going to fall apart. When, in fact, it's the exact opposite. Is the United States will fall apart so long as we don't trust one another to not take

care of one another. So we go back to that Marilyn Robinson quote. And so that's why compromise will be the result of the curiosity. If you start with the compromise, it's not going to work because then you're just telling people, leave your values and your principles. and no one wants people to do that. But if you start with the curiosity, then you can learn how to talk to other people and work with them while maintaining your principles. And I think that that's where we need to go. Mark, thanks so much for coming back on Let's Find Common Ground. Thank you. That was very fun. I appreciated the conversation.

That's our show. As ever, we're interested in what you think, whether or not you agree with our guests or us for that matter. Email us at this address, podcast at commongroundcommittee.org. And it's easy to donate to help us keep making this show. Just text 5.3, 5.5, 5.5 and type CGC into the message. Thank you. I'm Ashley Melntite. I'm Richard Davies. Thanks for listening. This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.