This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

This is the first in a two-part blog series that focuses on two questions –

(a) how bad are things today, and

(b) is there a way to look on the bright side

I participated in a group discussion recently where the leader uttered this phrase:  “Things are worse today than ever before.”

The leader, a friend, made this point by referring to all kinds of violence and unrest roiling our country and the world.

But, was he right?

I don’t think so, for at least two reasons:

• First, if we look back on history, there have been tough times in our country and the world, perhaps worse than what is happening today.  For the U.S., think only of “the depression,” which my age group did not live through.  Or, the Vietnam War years.  I did life through that.  Or, the Holocaust in World War II.

• Second, the influence of the media – especially social media – is so pervasive today that we know much more than our forebears did in their lifetimes.

Here is more information on both reasons, which I provide only for context, not necessarily to make any larger point.

WHAT DOES HISTORY TELL US?:  Here, I had to look no further than a column by Karl Rove that appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

His name is not one I would logically associate with a look-back at history because he has made a name for himself, not in that field, but in political consulting, sometimes in controversial ways.

Still, his column resonated.  So here are excerpts.

“America is deeply divided. Our politics is broken, marked by anger, contempt, and distrust.  We must acknowledge that reality but not lose historical perspective.  It’s bad now, but it’s been worse before — and not only during the Civil War.

“Let’s look backward and start with the mid-1960s to early ’70s.  The nation was bitterly divided over civil rights, the “sexual revolution” and an increasingly unpopular war in Southeast Asia.

“The just and peaceful civil-rights protests of the 1950s and early ’60s were often met with state-sanctioned violence.  Then Harlem exploded in 1964, followed by a riot in Philadelphia.  Watts went up in flames in 1965; Chicago, Cleveland, and San Francisco the next year.”

Rove went on to name other tough times in our history, such as the depression I mentioned earlier, plus the Civil War (if any war can be called “civil”).

THE RISE OF SOCIAL MEDIA:  Look only so far as Facebook to understand the influence of social media.

For the record, I quit using Facebook about a year ago, but it was then the largest social media platform in the world, with 2.4 billion users in 2019.

Minus one:  Me.

From Google:

• Other social media platforms, including YouTube and WhatsApp, also had over one billion users each.
• These numbers are huge – in 2019, there were 7.7 billion people worldwide, with at least 3.5 billion on-line.  This means social media platforms were used by one in three people worldwide and more than two-thirds of all Internet users.
• Social media has changed the world.  The rapid and vast adoption of these technologies is changing how we find partners, access information from the news, and organize to demand political change.

And, statistics such as these indicate that, whether we like it or not, we have the ability to know more today than ever before.  Of course, some of what we know is fake or contrived, but, still, we live in an information age.

So, back to the basic question.  Are things worse today than ever before? 

I say the answer is “no,” even though all of us, as Americans, need to be vigilant so we contribute positively to society, not negatively.

And, without being a Poly-Anna, we need to take time to look on the bright side in our world (which I summarize in my next blog).  If we do, we often would like what we see – neighbor helping neighbor, charitable organizations doing good work in communities, solid citizens working on such issues as homelessness, and other examples.

So, recognize that there are problems in the world, but also positive developments.  Be part of that positivity.