Gangs of New York

Way back in the 1980’s the President of Young Life was invited to appear on the Phil Donahue show. If you are my age, you remember Donahue invented much of the modern daytime talk show genre, combining elements that people like Oprah, Montel Williams, Jerry Springer and Maury Povich have later perfected. The YL President accepted the invitation with some reluctance. He was one of about nine panelists on the show, and before long it turned into a sort of free-for-all argument. The President of Young Life refused to engage in a shouting match, and sat quietly while others around him got louder and louder. At the end of the show the President of Young Life felt like it had been a waste of his time, that no real points had been made, that no one really listened to anyone else and no consensus of opinion had been reached. Phil Donahue, on the other hand, was smiling as he walked up to the panelists and said, “Thank you. That was a hell of a show.” At that point, the President of Young Life had an “aha” moment when he realized the purpose all along had been to stir up anger instead of education or enlightenment.

Here is another story: a couple of years ago when I was doing my European sojourn, I traveled with my friend Ken Knipp for a few days. We started in London, went to Barcelona and wound up in Stuttgart. We were working, but we did manage to enjoy a few nice things in each of those places. We found a room on-line for a ridiculously low price at the Trafalgar Square Hilton and took the tube (Minding the Gap the whole way) down to Trafalgar. To our surprise there were thousands of people in Trafalgar Square protesting. They were there because Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and others were in London for a G8 meeting. The people in Trafalgar Square were protesting worldwide economic policies. One of them held a sign that said, “Eliminate money.” I thought the sign was silly. A few days later, when we were in Stuttgart, I mentioned that sign to my friend Dieter, who gently corrected my condescension by explaining some of the basic principles of economic anarchists. What struck me wasn’t the power of the anarchists’ arguments, what struck me was that Dieter had taken the time to understand them. Our world would be so much better if we took the time to understand different points of view instead of dismiss them.

All of which brings me to the relationship between the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Tea Party. Am I the only one who realizes how much they have in common? And yet they view each other as the enemy.

The Tea Party was created by backlash over government bailouts. Who did the government bailout? Big business, banks and Wall Street. Who are the Occupy Wall Street people upset at? Big business, banks and Wall Street. The difference is the Tea Party is upset at the government for doing the bailouts. The Occupy Wall Streeters are upset at the businesses and banks and brokerages for getting the bailouts.

Remember the first story I told and step away from the media (and political) tendency to inflame rather than enlighten. Pay no attention to Rush Limbaugh singing the praises of the Tea Party while calling the Occupy Wall Streeters “perpetually lazy and spoiled rotten.” Just ignore him and all the others of his ilk, including those on the left who support Occupy Wall Street and condemn the Tea Party. They are entertainers, not journalists, and entertainers understand you have to create conflict to have a story. Remember, if Rush Limbaugh solved problems he’d be out of a job.

Don’t take the conflict bait. Instead, follow the example of Dieter in Germany and take the time to learn and listen to other points of view.

Both groups are populist movements driven by anger. They are angry for good reason. Anger is an ally – it reveals injustice. When you are angry it’s because you sense something isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that kids graduate with student loan debt equivalent to a modest mortgage. It isn’t fair that health insurance costs are the biggest line item in the household budget for self-employed and unemployed people. It isn’t fair that so many competent and capable people have been out of work for over a year. It isn’t fair that the government bailed out billionaires while average people live on edge. It isn’t fair that the government keeps wasting so much of our money. It isn’t fair that bitter factions in the government keep stopping anything productive from happening. It isn’t fair that we’ve spent $1.2 trillion on two wars without any plan on how to pay for them. And it isn’t fair that tax breaks for the richest Americans are being protected in the current environment. No wonder people are angry.

I called this post Gangs of New York in homage to the Martin Scorsese film of the same name which I finally saw last week. It is a flawed film, but like everything Scorsese touches it is worth looking at and contemplating. Set around the time of the Civil War, it portrays New York City as a bloody cauldron of vice, where the line between politician and gangster is very, very thin. And as the movie develops a showdown between two rival gangs becomes inevitable. The two gangs have most everything in common but despise each other. They were bent on cutting each other up instead of focusing together on the forces that conspired to keep them in the hell hole where they lived. Sound familiar?

There is a way out. It’s called listening.