Ideas, not opposition

America’s public square seems more like a cage fight these days.

People who are campaigning, legislating, marching, organizing, speaking, and writing are doing so as opponents. We know them by what they oppose.

The Republicans rose to power because they opposed the Democratic agenda. Now the Democrats (and groups like Indivisible and Women’s March) are building up power on their opposition to the Republican agenda.

Friends and neighbors, we are in a vicious cycle of reactive opposition.

If we’re sick and tired of the bipolarity of American politics, some of us need to make the choice to stop opposing.

Instead, let’s start leading with ideas.

I friend of mine got into an argument with me about the constitutionality of President Trump’s executive order of immigration. We argued for an hour about whether the order was legal and would keep us safer. He opposed what he saw as a liberal plot to undermine America’s integrity. I opposed what I saw as a conservative plot to undermine America’s integrity.

Wait, what?

So in our haste to oppose each other as conservative or liberal, we missed an important point: We both want the same thing!

We worked ourselves up over which president’s national security policies are worse (Obama’s or Trump’s). While busying ourselves with opposing, we missed that we both have the same idea.

That’s called friendly fire.

The problem is that we started from a point that could only polarize: The president.

Note: I chose the words “the president” instead of President Trump for a reason. It doesn’t matter who is in the Oval Office, he is always going to have critics who criticize and fans who defend.

Instead of starting from a polarizing point, what if we started from the idea that we share? In this case, the idea that America is for all people. We recognize that our country exists to hold up the torch of “liberty and justice for all” humanity. We love that immigrants built our nation and, before all the world, we are proud of that fact.

In essence, my friend and I want to figure out the same thing: How do we let more people in without compromising economic stability or national security? We both earnestly want to answer this question.

The problem is that questions like these have been coopted by a political-industrial complex that makes its money on opposition, not ideas.

We have been fed–by repeated exposure to political marketing–the belief that questions like this one mean we must take a side. And those sides are predetermined and selected for us by the political-industrial complex.

And once we pick a side, we’re no longer talking about ideas. We’re writing checks and Facebook posts against the opponents we’ve written off.

Let’s accept a new challenge: To stop defining others and ourselves by the political “brands” and “products” we oppose or support. We’ve been sold.

Let’s start talking about ideas in both aspirational and practical terms.

And by “talking” I mean “listening.” That’s a lot easer to do when we’re exploring ideas together rather than opposing for the sake of opposing.

Yes, let’s make America’s public square great again.