We are hearing some of the most long-faced, long-winded, wet-blanket commentary about American politics, the prospects for far-reaching and much-needed reform, and the charisma and talent of Barack Obama. We are hearing so much of it, in fact, it seems to be the latest fashion trend, with conservatives, liberals, moderates and extremists, all apparently gleeful about having a trend to latch onto, if about nothing else. People are reportedly “weary” and “worried”; polls are showing, or claim to show, that “Americans” —we should remember to ask if polls really are able to define the zeitgeist for us all, or if they only pretend to— think Pres. Obama has “tried to do too much”.

What makes me weary about politics in America today, precisely one year after the most hopeful day of joyous, community feeling tens of millions of people —even Pat Buchanan— say they can remember in any context of politics or civics, is that the fashion is now cynicism and naysaying, and not aspiration and thoughtful problem-solving. This is not the fault of Barack Obama, but of all those people, supporters of his or not, who lack his energy to keep working at the hard problems, to keep imagining brave solutions to systemic, generational crises.

Obama tapped into something; as he often said, “Something [was] happening in America”; people were waking up, and wanted to do their part. But somehow, people have lost their will to participate: liberals quickly began to demand, as if it were up to the chief executive alone to rule by diktat, that he immediately correct all of society’s ills, or there would be trouble; conservatives adopted the fundamentally disingenuous attitude that unless he did everything they wanted and abandoned his own goals, he was not “truly bipartisan”. This loss of will amounts to a collective turning away from productive civic engagement.

I am fatigued not by Pres. Obama’s lofty goals or thoughtful language, but by the apparent mass exodus from the project of improving our nation. I have rarely seen such a willingness to engage in self-fulfilling prophecy, to express exhaustion about topics people have hardly begun to explore, let alone work for; it’s as if we have entered a perverse, parallel universe, where we elected a man with a bold vision to enact comprehensive reform, and then we decided to base 99% of our political discourse on flagrantly ephemeral opinions unrelated to fact and entirely counterproductive in their aims.

One year into the presidency of Barack Obama, the Republicans have steadfastly refused to participate in any initiative whatsoever, except the ramping up of US military activity in Afghanistan, and the Democratic leadership seems genuinely confused about whether they should be pushing for the vision of Obama or that of his Republican opponents. When I speak to liberals, they are beside themselves and despairing over what they see as weak-willed, ineffective leadership in Congress; and when I speak to conservatives, they are beside themselves and despairing over entirely fictional threats that have nothing to do with Obama’s agenda.

What is lacking is any cohesive strategy to bring stakeholders to the table, as was done at the outset of the healthcare reform debate last spring. Pres. Obama has been incredibly adroit at bringing factions with opposing views to the table to at least open dialogue, but momentum for such actions has waned as Republican obstructionism has pushed most Democrats and liberals to demand their representatives freeze the Republicans out until they’re desperate to come in from the cold, and will make concessions.

The result of Republican obstructionism, incredibly, is that the Republican party is less popular than even one year ago, when it lost a second consecutive wave election and the presidency by a landslide, yet Republicans are winning races! This is illogical in the extreme, and seems to reveal a fundamental paradox in the American political psyche: change and reform, the correction of abuses and the prevention of their recurring, are all desired, but no one wants to do the work or wait while it’s done. This great democratic nation has suddenly fallen in love with a woodland-sprite political philosophy: just wave a wand, and make it happen, or we’ll turn on you.

There has to be something more, a deeper reserve of commitment to the hard work of making this nation better than its lowest common moral and economic denominators. Or doesn’t there? While people who believe that casting one vote on one day during their adult life should be enough to fix all the injustices of the world sit home and indulge in false complaints about subjects about which they know far too little to make any informed judgments, reforms our nation desperately needs —regardless of ideology: on healthcare, financial regulation and energy— languish, and people working for those reforms are punished by an unscrupulous media environment less interested in fact than in fanning the flames of false controversy.

Major political leaders in the party of opposition are condoning and even praising radical extremists who talk of revolt and carry loaded weapons to political rallies, spread propaganda and make threats against innocent people. And this goes without any substantive negative repercussion for those unscrupulous enough to do so: the media rewards any figure who helps to produce a story that can be used to create false controversy where without it, talented investigative reporters would be required.

This is all very exhausting and could drive any serious person to despair, but the real harm comes not from the fact of it all, but from the side-effects: the turning off of the American political mind, the mythologizing of propaganda and the irrational rejection of the very things that will make a better future for one’s children. There is less quality information filtering through than there should be, and this is owing to the generalized easy acceptance of faux news coverage and quote-only TV journalism.

Journalists need to do more work, and they need to care about doing more work. The philosopher Richard Rorty wrote in the preface to his book Philosophy and Social Hope: “My candidate for the most distinctive and praiseworthy human capacity is our ability to trust and to cooperate with other people, and in particular to work together so as to improve the future.” That sentiment is part of what makes him an American pragmatist, and it’s something everybody in politics needs to remember in 2010.

We are watching the national media backslide into the irresponsible primordial ooze of the “culture wars”, where the false caricatures of “family values conservatives” and ”promiscuous progressives” (read ‘progressive’ into sexuality, social policy and spending) are pitted against each other in a nostalgic bid to recapture the oversimplified false stereotypes of the 1960s hotbed moment.

Much of this obsession with false exaggerations, which paints all Americans as one or another monolithic stereotype, persists because it is convenient for the less imaginative elements of the conservative movement, which wants to paint all opposition to its ideas as inherently irresponsible. But we have to start to be honest about what it means to be conservative, and rightly recognize when that term is used as a euphemism for narrow-mindedness.

I am a behaviorally conservative, deeply principled liberal. I don’t sleep around, not because I couldn’t, but because I like to feel close to people I’m intimate with, and that takes time. I don’t do drugs, not because I think it’s an anti-Christian sin, but because I feel it’s just a little too reckless and maybe selfish as well, and I don’t want to be that. It’s my choice.

But I am avowedly liberal: I want government to protect the defenseless and keep big business at bay; I think war is a last resort. And a bad option at that. I think we have to be as serious about finding ways to make peace even when we recognize that the use of force is necessary to put a stop to a radically unjust situation.

I don’t believe in “socialism”, in that I don’t think every problem is best solved by uniform national government intervention or transfer-of-wealth spending. I like to think I can take care of myself. But I am too well-informed and too serious about social justice to think that such solutions have no place in making a democratic society more democratic.

If you want to know what it sounds like to hear a level-headed person who thinks in 21st-century terms of social justice and responsibility, you can call me, or any number of my friends. I happen to know and trust a wonderful circle of people who are committed to knowing what happens in the world, to thinking seriously about how to fix intractable problems, and make sure their nation is “on the right side of history”, the side that fosters wellbeing and serves humanity.

What seems to be desperately lacking in the pseudo-debate about “culture wars” is any serious discussion of what effect any specific policy positions —what sometimes amount to naked and even baseless opinions— will have on the lived experience of human beings already suffering and in need. The media need to move away from such distracted reporting and focus on those issues that actually determine whether human needs and the expectations of basic freedoms are met.

The conservative movement has long sought to paint the “liberal” as “anti-American”, disparaging of our system of government and of our influence abroad, but I vehemently contest this critique as baseless. Liberals want more democracy, not less; we want American ideals to be not only respected but realized; we want American influence abroad to help improve the human condition globally.

The history of American advancement of social justice, equal rights, democratic process and the rule of law, is a history of principled liberal progress, putting aside the tired arguments of “traditional” inadequacy in terms of human interest and social justice, and forging a path toward a better future in which human beings generally live better lives and enjoy more freedom.

So what is driving the “conservative” movement’s obsession with painting all rivals as anti-American, socialist, sexually promiscuous and friends to dangerous criminals? I think it’s partly genuine ignorance about the real nature of the liberal American’s social conscience, and partly a desperate attempt to cover up what are really entrenched and outdated “preferences” that run against the grain of social progress and democratic fairness.

Conservatism is not an ideology; it does not have specific policy goals; it is not pro-American or anti-American. Conservatism is just an attitude: one is conservative when one prefers to work within the system, to build coalitions and to achieve consensus, to not take great leaps without significant support from the governed, or when one prefers to lead a life that is not defined by naked ambition or by a lust for the spotlight.

That doesn’t mean liberals want something reckless  or outlandish or imposed from the top down. Not at all. It just means that liberals and traditionalists can be conservative in character, without agreeing on specific policy goals. It also means that hippies can be “conservative” people and Republicans can be liberal Republicans.

And the current leadership of the Republican party seems to not understand this in the least. They have freed themselves of the binding virtues of a conservative demeanor —not nakedly ambitious, preferring incremental change with widespread support, working within the system— and adopting a posture of astonishingly persistent hubris: defaming the elected leadership of government, openly lying about Democratic policies, seeking massive radical changes to the structure of government, with or without the consent of the governed.

The result is we spend more time arguing about who said what or whether it’s fair or unfair than we do assessing the genuine facts of policy proposals or what the evidence —real, existing, scientifically acquired evidence— suggests the effects of such policies would be for the lived condition of real human beings across our society or beyond.

I am a behaviorally conservative, deeply principled liberal, who wants significant change in order to foster social justice in our society, and the lies conservatives tell about me and people like me are unconscionable and unfair. Those lies, and the “culture war” agenda, are distorting our media environment and robbing us of the right to have a genuine democratic process of debate, reform and humane, rational problem solving.

At yesterday’s funeral service for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, his son Teddy —Edward, Jr.— gave a stirring eulogy, one of many, in which he lauded his father’s spirit of perseverance and his ability to infuse others, himself included, with that optimistic spirit. He tells of his father’s lessons to him as a boy of besting more talented opponents by superior preparation and by working harder and longer to out-perform and outlast them when the time came.

The speech was one of the more moving and poignant of the day. The senator’s son and namesake told of how his father had helped him understand, after he lost a leg to bone cancer, at the age of 12, that he could still climb and icy hillside and sled down, enjoying the experience like any other, how they labored together to climb that hill with the father telling the son they would do it, “even if it takes all day”.

Sen. Kennedy was eulogized by family members and by the president of the United States, at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, in Boston, where he prayed daily for his daughter Kara, when she was fighting lung cancer. Kara was in attendance. The senator’s body was laid to rest at nightfall in Arlington National Cemetery, on a hillside overlooking the nation’s capital, near the tombs of his slain brothers, John and Robert.

One of my closest friends in the world is a committed Republican, as is my father, whose father was a Republican elected to various offices in our state. The friend —whom we’ll call “Dutch”— often chides me for our differences of opinion, and we often have energetic philosophical debates in which we try to detail the workings of the universe according to our own personal abstractions or tastes.

These exchanges are rarely wasted time, though neither of us is likely to change our views. I am a registered independent who holds progressive views and believes we need a re-democratization of our society, on many planes, and a greening of our economic policy. My assessment of our political spectrum is that the Democratic party is a very centrist center-left party, and the Republican party a confirmed right, not very centrist party, given their current published platforms and legislative agenda.

We rarely discuss the casting of actual votes, though I think it’s fair to say Dutch votes Republican and I vote Democratic, both of us voting more for ideas than for ideology or partisanship. I recently discovered that he owns Barack Obama’s book Dreams from My Father, and is presently leafing through it to get a look at the man of the moment, and I have read Francis Fukuyama and Robert Kagan, to get a philosphical perspective I might not find by my own tendencies.

I would love for Dutch to read something from Richard Rorty or Cornel West, and I think he would enjoy it, and our debates would be still more energetic, or interminable, depending. But there is only so much time and everyone devotes more time to his or her own tastes, naturally. So part of what is key to our translating our close friendship into a viable political conversation is that we each look to inform the other and learn from the other, trusting that we will accept the right of the other to interpret the evidence according to sound judgment.

Whether that is true or not, in any given case, is usually the driver of whatever friction we find, and the fact that we have shared so many other experiences growing up and confiding in each other, over the years, helps us to següe into related subjects, on which we find our common ground.

As for family, politics is a difficult subject. My father and I differ in high contrast not just on our political ideas, but on the underlying constellation of assumptions that builds into the structure of our endeavor to know or to project knowledge about the political sphere. I won’t go into specifics, but suffice it to say, we have found common ground on some of the disappointments of the last 8 years, and have clashed intensely over others.

I think we both believe we live in a just society, where human freedom is privileged and protected, but where there are real threats to both justice and freedom, and a need to implement the right policies to protect and serve the rights of the people. We just find ourselves often looking at one another’s preferred strategy for doing so as ill-conceived or undesirable. We get over that, and the family bond is far more positive and resilient than the moments of conflict we get into on these points.

My grandfather was a mayor and an assemblyman in the state of New Jersey, and I know little of the details of his political life, though we were close in my childhood. I know that he was charismatic and cared deeply about people, on a human level, and I accompanied him many times when he would go out into the community and help people deal with personal difficulties, whether as mayor or after having retired from politics.

My feeling is that as a conservative Republican politician, he was proud of his principles and believed firmly in the greatness of the United States as a force for good in the world (this, of course, is not a description exclusive to Republicans). I think he did a lot to ensure that these traits were instilled in his children and in turn in his grandchildren, but that he knew each person must shape those principles around a core of character and information, that personal choice is vital in this.

I feel fortunate in many ways that he showed me that intellect was the root of an effective defense of principle, and he was more concerned with people’s ability to be reasonable and to deal with others than with imposing a single ideology at any cost. In this, I think he was a “good Republican”, meaning: he understood that the revolutionary principles of the party of Lincoln were not so much an ideology as a quest for a reasonable and just world, a belief in the imminent possibility of such an experiment.

To be candid, he also harbored views I could not consider part of my vision of generalized fairness. Morally, he was fair, but in political details, I think we would have clashed regularly. I suspect that in many ways, as is natural in any human group, a later generation takes the ideas of those that came before and builds on them, applying the best principles in new ways to a new reality, invested with new information. I have tried to build on what I understood as the need to learn about the truth of things, defend the interests of fairness and liberty, and effect change where it is needed.

As time has passed, I have been happy to learn that in private settings, my grandfather found new room for a more inclusive view, and affirmed my belief that he put people before dogma and was able to locate the basic humanity in those he sought to understand, or who inspired his affection in a way that went beyond anything political. I think I inherited from this legacy a vision of hope about the meaning of the human element in our society and the possibility of a cooperative democracy, in which citizens share in the work of leadership and get beyond the temptation to attack those they do not know.

• Originally published 16 October 2008, at ThoughtPossible, in the OpenSalon network