Williamson’s article “Beyond Red and Blue” outlined the lessons that we as a country need to learn in order to grow and prosper. Williamson started by pointing out that a feeling sense of dissatisfaction/frustration within our democracy is inevitable and normal. Our democracy is built on a system allows a constant battle to gain power. Therefore, there is always a significant portion of the population without power, fighting to regain it. This means that no one can hold power forever. However, the growing sense of frustration within our gridlock democracy is not normal. Especially with the introduction of technology that interferes with our democracy through forms like election fraud, our democracy has become even more flawed.
Among Williams seven civic virtues that he deems as most important—awareness, sympathy, critical consciousness, anger, hope/imagination, humility, and courage—he stresses the importance of fairness. Through the interference of technology, the idea of fair seems like a far away past. I really liked how he uses the analogy of the baseball field to explain the importance of fairness. Baseball serves as an extremely simplified version of democracy because a system of checks and balances is in place with three strikes. When one team strikes out, the “power” swaps to the other team. In today’s democracy, the power struggle between Republicans and Democrats is highlighting the absence of fair.
I thought Williams civic virtue of fairness was interesting. I think it is important for people to agree to disagree, i.e. Republicans and Democrats. They hold different views and will never fix anything by arguing because they will never agree.
It was really interesting to read your point on how technology has caused fairness to suffer. I agree that it seems like technology can be a barrier to a just and civil democracy in today’s day and age.
I really agree with your point that we as a country must learn before we can grow – this applies to people all over the political spectrum who all have much to learn from one another. For example old people can greatly benefit from learning youthful and progressive perspectives from the American youth which did not exist when these people were young. Similarly, young people can learn about wars from older people who lived through them. It is crucial that people of different backgrounds, generations and viewpoints learn from each other.
I think that the baseball analogy was really interesting, and we need to implement more of those concepts into our political environment. In addition, we need to understand If we make mistakes it is only fair to give the other team our spot for a while so they get their equal chance.
I found the baseball analogy interesting. I liked how it explained checks and balances and fairness. I agree it should be implemented more in our government.