The “I’s” Have It

Immigration. Inflation. Inoculation. Interest. Insurrection. Intolerance. Infrastructure. Isolation. International relations. Iran. Iraq. Individual rights. Inventory. Incarceration. Inclement weather. Iron curtain. Inheritance. Inertia.

It’s interesting how so many of the world’s challenges begin with the letter “I.” And it’s troubling that each of these “killer” I’s could make America’s problems even worse if we don’t work together to find solutions.

For generations, team sports players at all levels – from Little Leaguers to Shaquille O’Neal – have liked to say there is no “I” in the word team.

Those Little Leaguers and The Big Aristotle, as Shaq once called himself, are right. An “I” mentality can destroy the cohesion necessary to build a winning team. Unfortunately, Team America has three “I” problems in particular that are tearing this nation apart: Isolation, Intolerance, and Inflation. Look at the effect they are having on us and all that we love.

Let’s start with Isolation. In 2000, Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone famously explored how Americans have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures. The pandemic made those trends worse. In recent years, we’ve developed an entire ecosystem of tactics and technologies – ZOOMs, remote work, face masks, Uber Eats, video streaming – that encourage separation in place of collaboration.

Even before the pandemic, a YouGov poll found 30% of millennials felt lonely and 22 percent said they had “no friends.” Americans of all ages are also increasingly likely to say they have no friends with different political views.

Isolation is not just an individual phenomenon either; it’s increasingly part of a national psyche fueled by xenophobia and arrogance.

Our increasing isolation feeds the second “I”: Intolerance. I wonder if people realize just how casual we’ve become about dehumanizing and demonizing people for their political affiliation. A 2019 survey found over two in five people in each of our political parties views the opposition as “downright evil.” When asked if they thought “we’d be better off as a country if large numbers of the opposing party in the public today just died,” almost one in five answered yes.

In a recent speech, commentator Bari Weis captured the prevailing mood in too many parts of our country when she said, “Persuasion – the purpose of argument – is replaced with public shaming. Moral complexity is replaced with moral certainty. Facts are replaced with feelings. The rule of law is replaced with mob rule.”

Isolation and intolerance are a combustible mix on their own. But now, they’re both being fueled by the third “I”: Inflation. The cost of goods and services is rising faster than at any time in the last four decades and people are on edge about it. A recent poll from the American Psychological Association found more adults ranking inflation as a top source of stress than any other issue in the 15-year history of their regular “Stress in America Poll.”

Inflation isn’t only a threat to people’s pocketbooks and mental well-being. Historically, when inflation is bad enough for long enough, it destabilizes society, and upends democracies. Over the past three or four decades, inflation seemed under control because it primarily affected luxury goods now that inflation is affecting essential items like food, fuel and medicine, it has become Americans’ foremost concern.

These “killer ‘I’s” may be different from each other, but each is being made worse by our elected leaders’ unwillingness to seek consensus instead of political one-upmanship. Today, most issues that come before Congress are presented as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Once sedate Supreme Court confirmation hearings – which concluded in 1986 with conservative Antonin Scalia getting a 98-0 Senate confirmation vote and in 1993 with liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg clearing the chamber 96-3 – have become partisan brawls. Where Democrats and Republicans in the 1990s came together to pass a Balanced Budget Act, they today take turns passing partisan bills that have contributed to our national debt exceeding $30 trillion, which is larger than our entire GDP. We’re putting an unconscionable burden on our children and grandchildren today even as we ignore the fundamentals that could ensure prosperity tomorrow. Jobs are going unfilled for lack of a cogent immigration policy which, when combined with a sound education policy, gives America the strongest workforce in the world at all skill levels. Our elected officials were elected to improve the quality of our lives, not to stop progress from happening.

I don’t know of any easy fixes for the three I’s. But I do know it will require Americans to elect more leaders who embrace three “C’s.”

The first is conciliation.

In Washington, our elected officials attack, undermine and double cross the other side and justify it by using the same excuses children use on the playgrounds:

“They hit me first.”

A classic example is the yearlong effort to undermine the Senate filibuster, one of the last remaining guardrails that forces Democrats and Republicans to work together. In 2013, Democrats eliminated the use of the filibuster for all presidential nominees except to the Supreme Court. In 2017, Republicans countered by eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. Now of course, some Democrats want to eliminate the filibuster altogether, which would mean each party would then have the ability to jam through far-reaching legislation with just 51 out of 100 votes when it is in power.

Here's a radical idea: Instead of scheming for new ways to work against one another, how about if our leaders took on the challenges of compromise and working with one another?

Which leads us to the second “C:” Cooperation. For all of Washington’s dysfunction, there is still a critical mass of leaders who practice the give-and-take that is required to pass bipartisan legislation. So while Washington’s loudest and angriest voices continue to get booked on cable shows and rack up the most Twitter followers, a much quieter group of bipartisan leaders are the ones who actually are making a difference. During the past two years, bipartisan House and Senate coalitions, working with the White House, have managed to pass the biggest infrastructure bill since President Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway System, the most significant federal gun safety bill since 1994, and a major economic competitiveness bill that invests in cutting edge research and domestic semiconductor manufacturing.

When leaders embrace conciliation and cooperation, they create more of something sorely missing in America right now: Confidence.

Throughout American history, our best leaders have always embodied and instilled the confidence that tomorrow will be better than yesterday, and that the people leading this country and our institutions have an uplifting vision and strategies for where we are going. And the greatest confidence-builder of all is VOTING – reaffirming our belief that we have a stake in our own fate and fortune. Without voting, we become sheep.

Whether it was my great grandfather risking it all over a century ago to bring our family here from Ukraine, or the entrepreneur today staking her life savings to grow her business, or the farmworker seeking opportunity for his or her family, confidence in the future has always propelled America forward.

The three I’s stalking our country – Isolation, Intolerance and Inflation – are deadly serious. But we have it within ourselves to conquer them all if we reject the ideologues and extremists who will make all of our problems worse. In this midterm election this year, and in years to come, I hope we will elevate and rally behind leaders who know that conciliation, cooperation and confidence are the only way through and out of a gargantuan mess that can destroy us.

If we don’t heed that which our eyes tell us, we will have to add one final “I”— IN TROUBLE.