NOW! Commentary: The "Last Secret Message" - Creating Unity In A Divided Country

One of the most influential people in my life was my 7th grade homeroom, English, and first drama teacher, Miss Lincoln. I remember vividly an English lesson on communication that she gave, which was a life lesson that has stayed with me my entire life.

Our classroom was set up in two U-shaped formations, one inside the other. Miss Lincoln walked to the first person - Kitty Norris - on the left-hand side of the classroom and whispered something in her ear. Miss Lincoln then instructed Kitty to lean to the boy next to her, and whisper what she had heard in his ear. He then was to whisper to the next person, and so on, all the way around the room.

When the last person in class - Steve Karman - had heard the “last secret message,” Miss Lincoln directed him to remain silent. She first asked Kitty to tell the class what she had been told at the beginning of the lesson. Then, Miss Lincoln asked Steve to tell us what had been whispered in his ear after the message had gone around the room. The entire classroom collapsed with laughter when Steve told us what he had heard, as it was nothing at all whatsoever like what Kitty had been told.

Politics today is no different.

The strength of the fabric of American government also contains the possibility of its unraveling. Our country was founded on the principles of the freedom to disagree through our ability to speak freely, after having lived in a country where speech was oppressed; of the accessibility to government after fleeing governments ruled by monarchies who were unavailable to the common man; of the opportunity to succeed based on effort and intellect, not birth right and lineage, by giving each person the Constitutional right of equality.

And yet, while all people may have been created equal, they still have not had equality. In reality, our country has always been a divided one, and it is na?ve to think this is a new circumstance. The difference today is that with the availability of the Internet, the proliferation of untrue, unfounded, and inflammatory information has taken on a legitimacy by sheer virtue of numbers, and as a result, the power of the supposed “truth” is having a toxic effect on our society as a whole.

Think about it. If enough people like, share, or comment on a tweet, an online article or post, a YouTube video, it becomes the “last secret message,” so to speak, being touted as “truth” in many people’s eyes; people rarely go back to the first person, the source, to find out where it all started. And if the person publicly promoting the "last secret message" is in a position of authority, especially high governmental authority, there is another layer of seeming truth and legitimacy to the message for many people, simply because of that person’s position.

Here’s the conundrum: The travesty of our current circumstance lies in the fundamental freedom of our existence. Anyone, can say anything, at any time, and find an audience of people willing to believe it and strengthen its power, just by repeating it. The infinite and eternal digital platforms of ongoing repetition feed, strengthen, and multiply its viability. In essence, we, as a society, have created the ultimate propaganda machine: Because our freedom of speech is a constitutional right, we are all a part of what makes the propaganda machine work – and that guarantees the continuation of its impact.

Our Constitutional strength is thus a dual-edged sword, a power that has the potential to be harnessed for good, while also being a vehicle of societal decline. The scales today seem to be tipping toward decline, the visible tears destroying the strands of community connectivity, slowly splintering our nation like an axe to a fallen tree.

The flames of passion of our Forefathers that empowered us to fight together for individual rights have ignited, instead, a firestorm of destruction today that is similar to the Civil War. Family is again fighting against family, with sabres of ideological differences now wielded in words and acts of hatred that are rooted in pious righteousness, unyielding to respectful reason and discourse. Our nation’s anger and suspicion of one another, of one representative party or another, now openly released from its Pandora’s Box, fuels the firestorm as well.

What do we do?

You cannot fix a problem unless you recognize it needs to be fixed. It’s time to look at the harsh reality of our present circumstance. Ironically, the most damaging enemy in America today is the same enemy for everyone - divisiveness. Its power is deeply entrenched in inveterate prejudices: Racial, gender, religious, political, financial, cultural, geographical, educational, it doesn’t matter – anything that can give rise to the “Us vs. Them” mentality, of identifying with a particular group with common goals, similarities, is fertilizer for the garden of hate that has been nurtured and sadly, is now being harvested.

Our nation needs leaders at every level whose goal is a rallying cry of tolerance and cooperation, not intolerance and fear; of kindness and respect, not mockery and judgment. We need to proactively seek out the commonalities among us – the mortar that connects us in the societal wall, not the brick of our individual beliefs – and not to fear the differences, or to advocate and/or promote small-mindedness. We need to discard the labels, the stereotypes, and the need to force our individual views on others; instead, we must be willing to offer our views respectfully for consideration, with the knowledge they may or may not ring true to someone else, and if they don’t, not to be threatened by the difference, not seeing it as personal rejection or a call to force change in the other person.

This is all theory, I suppose, and many may believe achieving a respectful, cooperative society is not even possible. The cynicism has its merit, given how things are today. Yet, I choose to believe it is possible; that ultimately, the understanding that the strength of the whole is totally dependent upon the tolerance and respect of its parts will prevail. It is in the smallest steps that the longest journey is accomplished.

I pray for America, for all of its citizens, for its leadership, and that a citizenry opposed to divisiveness will take root in the hearts of all its citizens.