Irish Examiner view: Focus on real issues, not distractions

We must grasp lessons from a divided America.

The election that will carry Joe Biden to the White House and the Senate elections that will greatly limit his options were the most expensive in history. Photo: AP

Many of those committed to defending whichever version of liberty they enjoy warn that the cost of that privilege is eternal vigilance. 

That is a plausible equation, even though it is nebulous; one man’s vigilance is another man’s bias made active. The monetary cost of democracy is easier to measure even if it seems to all but nullify a core principle of democracy — one man, one vote. 

The election that will carry Joe Biden to the White House and the Senate elections that will greatly limit his options were the most expensive in history. The Center for Responsive Politics suggests that almost €12bn was spent. 

The presidential race cost €5.57bn, more than was spent on the White House race and every congressional campaign combined in 2016. The 2020 congressional races cost around €6bn. 

Even if those elections had the highest ever voter turnout — 65% of eligible voters, almost 200m people — the dollar-to-vote ratio underlines how very difficult it is to move the goalposts. Unless grand ambition is matched by an even grander war chest the status quo is almost unassailable.

That those elections will end in a kind of one-step-forward-two-steps-backward sterility hardly celebrates the spirit of democracy. Failure is made almost inevitable and division will deepen no matter how avuncular Joe Biden is or how co-operative a Republican Senate might be. 

This self-destructive impasse is recognised by those who argue that the real division in America is much tighter. Professor Robert Reich, who worked with the Ford, Carter, Clinton, and Obama administrations, has suggested that divide is more like 10% to 90% rather than the 48% to 52% the election recorded. 

He argues that the concentration of wealth in 10% of the population is the crippling divide and unless it is resolved then dystopia looms. It is difficult, and reckless, to dismiss that analysis.

It is difficult, and reckless too, to imagine that dynamic is not in play here. Wealth is being concentrated and the unthinking, tribal intransigence is all too apparent. 

Last week, during the Dáil debate on the motion of no-confidence in Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, his colleagues recited their lines — the standard accusations levelled at Sinn Féin — with the conviction of a well-schooled 14-year-old in a Feis Cheoil recitation competition. 

Sinn Féin responded in kind, haranguing as if their very lives depended on the fire to their performance. Tragically, for the disinterested voter, both parties were right. 

Fine Gael is far too much at ease with those happy to exploit; Sinn Féin are still blind to their original sins.

This can hardly continue if we are to avoid the polarisation contaminating America. In recent days opportunity, as it always does, presented itself. 

The announcement that the John and Pat Hume Foundation for Peaceful Change and Reconciliation has been established is the very, trans-generational reminder needed to show the pointlessness of toxic intransigence. If our politicians followed Hume’s example of how to build bridges by being generous and trusting then we would avoid the daggers-drawn, militias-on-the-streets lunacies exacerbating America’s great but resolvable difficulties.

That, surely, is a very valuable, practical kind of eternal vigilance?