Football is my favourite sport bar none, it has been my favourite sport since I was 11 years old. Although there is a very large base of football fans in this country I find it increasingly difficult to have conversations about football with anyone. Too many fans of any country or big club allow their allegiances to colour their opinions of a match. No one will objectively assess a game and critically look at what went wrong with their team or what went right with the other. The vast majority of football fans have the attitude that “my team is the best, all other teams are terrible, end of discussion.” A lot of sports analysts come from the same angle. Colour commentary has become a huge part of sports analysis. Credibility is given to the opinion of people with open biases to one team or the other. I dislike this level of biased support so much that I’m at the point where I largely keep my thoughts to myself.
Life today in general encourages us to be biased because biases sell. Pretty much the same can be seen with political divides.
2016 marks the end of Barack Obama’s tenure as President of the United States of America. In his term Obama has accomplished a lot. He has made great strides to providing healthcare to more Americans, steadied the ship of a severely battered American economy in 2008, reduced unemployment to less than 5% and is taking steps to curb gun violence. All this in spite of a Republican Congress who opposed him at every turn in every decision. Obama has done an incredible job given the circumstances he inherited. How Obama will be remembered, however, depends on to whom you speak. The Republican side will characterise him as an abject failure, while the Democrats will tout him as one of the greatest in US history.
Bringing this same partisan mentality home, ask any supporter of the former administration they will tell you that the last government did an incredible job and the country would be better off today had they been re elected. Ask any supporter of the present government and they will tell you that the last government is to blame for everything we are experiencing now. Columnists in the daily newspapers tout exactly those same positions, depending on their political affiliations. The truth of either of those schools of thought lies somewhere in the middle as it does with most discussions. Where does this deep divisiveness leave us as a nation? What does this lack of objective discourse among parties do for a nation desperately trying to battle rapidly falling oil prices and a shrinking economy?
To quote an ancient African proverb: “To go fast go alone, to go far go together”. As a nation, we are quickly going nowhere. A house divided cannot stand on its own, yet the very nature of politics is one of divisiveness, detrimental divisiveness. Politicians thrive on characterising the other sides as the bad guy while they are in fact the heroes. Much like football, it is a game of selling, not an actual product but ideas. Whether politicians are forthcoming in what they preach is another discussion for another day, but selling an idea is basically what it is all about.
Every nation has problems to deal with, problems in policy, problems in execution of policy, problems in legal matters,etc., but addressing these issues is difficult because in order to do that, all sides need to come together for a discussion on the greater good. We cannot and will not move forward until we find ways to bridge the increasing chasm that continues to grow between political sides. Too many times political parties put their own survival ahead of the country and supporters are only too eager to listen and assimilate their thoughts and opinions. Instead of coming together we drift further and further apart, until pretty soon, bipartisanship will be a thing of the past. Over the last few years, the only thing I have seen the major political parties in this country agree on is that parliamentarians should get a raise in pay. That should tell you all you need to know.
If, as a nation, we ever expect to move forward, we have to make steps towards bridging the divide. We need to reject this “we versus them” mentality, not simply pay lip service to it. Until politicians seek the good of the nation as opposed to the good of the party and take it upon themselves to start healing the wounds they created to gain power, we will get nowhere. Until we realise we are all playing for the same team, divisiveness will continue to be our downfall. We can ever expect to properly address the very real problems facing us if we are not willing to listen to ideas other than our own.Can we expect those who profit from divisiveness to be the ones to change it? Probably not. Can we expect those who revel in biased mindsets to their own selfish gain to put a stop to it? To paraphrase John F Kennedy: let us not seek the answer from one side or the other but the right side. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.
Attish Kanhai
Chaguanas