Sailing an O’day 23 on Saratoga Lake, one would think an experience so filled with serenity could not possibly find turbulence from the state of politics in our nation. It seems, however that no sport is immune from the conversations that exist in the home, the workplace and the watering holes that are a part of our lives.
While a crew member may be tightening the jib or adjusting the main, the conversations including politics engender passions that were rare just a decade ago. Let’s call it the Trump effect, for it’s the acts of Donald Trump as President that find a world where facts are challenged and progress on conflict resolution cannot proceed.
Welcome to the new world, whether on land or water, where conflict can reign supreme. I’ve sailed this lake for 40 years on the same boat. She was built in 1979 and still maintains her polish and reputation for crew possessed of critical thinking. You might gather such from the name on the stern, “Phaedrus”. The author, Robert Pirsig, created this main character in his landmark novel, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. The book admires “quality”, demands it from anyone who travels its cross country journey on a motorcycle.
The irony of a book based on a love of philosophy and knowledge confronting a political model that presents the unforeseen challenge of “alternative facts” is inescapable. Through logic and the applications of its rules, one would think that we could confront such a challenge as presented by a President whose business model mirrors his political model where one creates an alternative reality. Challenging whether black is really black consumes any debate and prevents conflict resolution and progress.
Imagine a discussion where a phone call by the President to a foreign leader demanding an investigation into a political opponent before foreign aid would be released being called “a perfect call”. Perfectly corrupt perhaps, but you can see my point. Just this week the head of our Cyber Security Agency was fired because he did his job so well preventing cyber attacks on our election. So his good work was rewarded with his firing by a President insisting the election was rigged. The President, you see, can never loose at anything and so he finds a false narrative to escape any blame for a defeat.
Issue after issue open to discussion falls to the same diversion from reality. The news media reporting events is called fake if those reports are critical of the President. A lethal virus is denied first as a political hoax, then ignored by dismissing the most basic tools of prevention, the wearing of a mask.
I write this first short essay in the midst of retirement and a pandemic as an introduction of some background and interests. I have been involved in local politics for as long as I have sailed a boat. As a candidate and a writer for numerous campaigns, I valued research gathered from news reports and used it with precision. I had a different understanding of the press and journalism as a profession. That makes dealing with this new reality all the more difficult. The rules and norms have been cast aside by nearly half the country who follow media platforms immersed in an agenda rather than simple purveyors of events.
Thankfully there is Jimmy Buffet riding the winds. His music transcends politics and there is hardly a sailor on board who cannot sing the words by heart. He breaks the tensions of argumentation. But I can’t help but ponder, what would Phaedrus think of all this, how would he confront the falsehoods of supposition elevated to fact? I suspect he would not waiver. I think his commitment to quality in debate and discussion would require a state of excellence. I hope you will as well.
