Column: Moderation is key, especially with politics
This the 28th year of the Fox Cities Marathon and for the third year in a row I will not be there and to be quite honest, I don’t miss it. After 20 consecutive years of lacing up my shoes, I called it quits.
What got me to that point was something my father said to me many years ago. I miss those tidbits of wisdom he doled out on a consistent basis. He’s been gone for almost 12 years but his advice lives on in spirit and is as relevant today as it was when I was a small child.
That life shifting moment for me on marathoning came from Dad’s go-to lesson on health and longevity, which he credited to old Doc Sharp. Dr. Sharp was his childhood physician, and I suspect Dad added the “old” to make the lesson sound a bit wiser. Whenever topics would come up on strategies for healthy living, he would say “Old Doc Sharp told me everything in moderation and you will live a long life.”
Twenty years of pounding my body six days a week, averaging 45–60 plus miles per week took its toll, not only physically but mentally and socially. Seventy races and 240 months of training spread over 20 years was not what old Doc Sharp would define as moderation. My wife and I took the doctor’s advice and went back to less intense daily wellness walks and biking.
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What got me on this line of self-examination was something I came across on the internet last week. I was researching our current political divide in America and read a 2014 article by Mark Strauss; writer/editor at the Pew Research Center.
He stated in part that a 2014 survey from the Pew Research Center revealed that “political polarization in the United States has reached a dangerous extreme. The gap between what Democrats and Republicans believe is enormous, with almost no center ground. We haven't seen such strong polarization since the Civil War."
According to the June 12, 2014 Pew Survey, the overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the previous two decades, from 10 percent to 21 percent. The study found that 92 percent of Republicans were to the right of the median Democrat, and 94 percent of Democrats were to the left of the median Republican.
What does this mean? Republicans and Democrats were on completely opposite sides of ideology, making it harder to find common ground, or for that matter, even carry on a civil conversation. Democrats who were prominently liberal quadrupled over the 20-year period, growing from just 5 percent in 1994 to 23 percent in 2014. Republicans who were consistently conservative shifted from 13 percent in 1994 to 6 percent in 2004 to 20 percent in 2014.
Partisan bitterness also increased, the survey found. Both parties were so intensely partisan; they believed the opposing party's policies "are so misguided that they threaten the nation's well-being."
Only three years later, the survey's findings ring truer than ever. Washington is perpetually stuck in gridlock — an August 2017 Gallup poll reported Americans voicing a 16 percent congressional approval rating.
The partisan divide shows no signs of changing and the political partisan obsession by Americans continues to grow unhealthily as we take sides in a game that will never have winners.
I think the only recourse to reverse our diseased political climate is for Americans and Congress to take old Doc Sharp's advice and acquire a more moderate approach to our ideological thinking. Another bloody civil war is highly unlikely, but the incessant war of words can leave deep scars and ill feelings that may never heal.
Dave Kendall is an Appleton resident. He can be reached at dkendall@new.rr.com.