Note on the text: This is an old post that I never finished. The deficit of my attention-economy makes it likely that I never will. I’m publishing it for what little it’s worth. – AJS
Someone was talking generally about politics Sunday and complaining that many people are willing to criticize without offering solutions. I certainly don’t want to fall into that camp with regard to immigration. Thus far I’ve only pointed to both sides and delcared what we shouldn’t be doing. You can read those posts here and here. I’d like to start discussing solutions with you, my fair readers. But first, a few words about tone and context:
The immigration debates have fallen victim to one of the chief ills of our political system today: polarization. Any issue seems to be reduced to two sides that have positions of sound-byte depth. Each side will establish their position, then proceed to fill the air with the shouting of the aforementioned sound-bytes, never stopping to listen to dissenting voices. Those who do stop to listen hear nothing but their opponents shouting with vigor equal to their own, albeit with different talking points. Our challenge as those who seek to be informed citizens and change agents is to take a position that falls into neither of the poles, but with a depth of analysis and a solution set that will appeal to both of them.
The factor that separates this debate is the drawing of the lines between those two poles. The immigration debate is producing unlikely bed-fellows, like Big Business and the ACLU. The uncertainty over where the lines are drawn allows us a great opportunity to be the signal in the noise that breaks the polarization cycle.