| Nate Garvis: I think one of the stories of this past election is that both parties did a phenomenal job job of turning out their base, and finally the middle mattered. But what makes up "the middle" is a pretty fleeting idea - what makes one person moderate vs. another differs. And the one thread that I can identify with folks in the middle, who define themselves that way, is that they don't find themselves to be terribly doctrinaire, obviously they don't identify strongly with either party, but they do pick up on ethereal ideas like integrity. I have a lot of liberal friends, for instance, who love John McCain, who either don't know or don't care how conservative he is, because he's a straight shooter and they resonate to that, and I think there's a really interesting story right there, as to what resonates in the middle, and who's providing that right now.
And it's not to say there shouldn't be space on the left or the right for some pretty spirited debate - I have some issues with how that debate is conducted, but I think the debate itself is important. But I think it's relatively easy for folks who have that transparency of saying "I come from the Left" or "I come from the Right" to identify and capture folks who call themselves that. That market's being covered pretty well. What about the people who don't identify themselves that way? The folks who like to shop in a variety of aisles in the marketplace of ideas. The friction between right and left blogging - I see it, I read it, it's intuitive that it would happen. I'm almost more interested in the frictional changes industry-wide as traditional and new media meld themselves.
MNCR: There definitely is that friction. The MSM looks at us sometimes as competitors, sometimes as trailblazers, sometimes as teenagers sitting in their mothers' basements...but there definitely is that tension.
NG: One of my mottos is "sometimes the fool that rushes in gets the job done." Another issue out there is that we have institutions out there that promise perfection that shouldn't be. Actually, I take that back - the political parties don't promise perfection, they promise to stop the other guys. I think there's a lot of intellectual bankruptcy in our parties right now. They define themselves as much by what they're not as by what they stand for. Hillary Clinton is damn important to the Republicans right now, and George Bush is critical to the Democrats as anything.
MNCR: Your current work - you're the VP of Governmental Affairs at Target. Are you more connected to the local, state, or national political scene in your current work?
NG: The answer is "yes," and international too. That's given me a perch to observe a lot of activity worldwide. I'm fascinated by the human condition, and I've chosen a profession that allows me to get ingrained in the civic expression of the human condition worldwide. It's an exciting time out there - it's vexing and challenging, but I refuse to not be optimistic.
MNCR: How long have you been with the Citizens' League?
NG: Maybe four or five years. I've known about the CL for a very long time, I had been approached many years ago to get involved and chose not to - I didn't view it as a place where some of the best thinking was occurring, and I didn't really think it was moving the needle, and Shawn Kershaw came along - he's one of the great imports into Minnesota. A man of indefatigable energy and good nature, just a poster child for everything that can be good and how we debate the most important things in our community, and I wanted to go along for the ride. I believe in the instutiton of the citizens league, I believe it's a unique institution, I don't see many institutions like it around the country or the world, and I believe it has perhaps one of the purest missions of all when it comes to civics, and that is "common ground for the common good."
MNCR: So it looks at issues from a non-partisan standpoint, and seeks, as you say, "common ground"?
NG: A lot of people call it "non-political," I call it apolitical. It's despite politics. People of all stripes are welcome to the table, and the invitation is to think like a Minnesotan, not a partisan. It's safe harbor, if you will, to find a common agenda, to focus on our commonality, rather than the things that drive us apart. And it's not that those other institutions that have a legitimate role of defining themselves by what they're not don't have a role, but I personally believe the entire civic spectrum should not be occupied by that voice - left, right, or whatever. There should be a civic voice that is there for civics, not for politics. Our political systems are working just beautifully for politics right now. But they're not addressing public policy very well. And I think we're finding ourselves over and over again, not just here but in many places, in a situation of "wag the dog." That works for the political system, I don't think it's working for the public all that well. I think the public expresses that pretty clearly in a lot of way, but there aren't a lot of outlets and avenues for it to actually engage in action beyond that thought.
MNCR: That segues into the event on Feb 7 - entitled "Uncivil Discourse and the Rise of the Outrage Industry." There are really two terms to define there, both "Uncivil Discourse" and "the Outrage Industry." can you define those in a short, soundbite-y way?
NG: I'll try. The premise is that there are a number of societal forces out there that have pixellated out communities. They've created an environment of anger and distrust and ignorance, and there's an industry that's grown up around the idea that there's a lot of money to be made in keeping that situation going. Ultimately, that's poisonous, and as the Chinese say, the first step to a cure is to name the disease. So that was my attempt to name the disease - we've become very uncivil toward each other, and there's an industry that arose around that sitution and it's exploiting us, and not for our benefit. It's not enriching us.
MNCR: So with respect to the political process...it doesn't sound like you think it's a partisan problem, it sounds like you think it's from both sides, or all sides of the political spectrum.
NG: I would say it's all sides, and while the parties certainly play a role in my definition of this industry, there are many interests beyond traditional political parties that play this game. There's plenty of players in the media you can think of - their job is to be professionally pissed off. That's their job, to be angry, to get you angry, to make you feel like all hope is lost, and they're there to keep it going or save you from it. But ultimately it's to get you think about blaming someone. And whether it's a leftwing commentator or a rightwing commentator, so many of them are all about "Your life is going to hell in a handbasket, and it's their fault."
MNCR: I'm thinking of a Crossfire episode where John Stewart went on and told Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson to stop - just stop, they were hurting America. And I think their response would be, well, we're getting people to think, we're presenting both sides...how would you respond to that "we report, you decide" mindset?
NG: I have a couple reactions to that. To give them credit, at least they're attempting to put both sides in front of people. So that in and of itself is a worthy goal, but then you have to look at the content of what they're talking about and how they're talking about it, and is it an enriching conversation that really does inform not only on the differences but on the commonalities. We spend so much time focusing on differences these days and hardly any time on commonalities, and it's really on commonalities where our joint path together exists. And none of us are going to make it civicly in this world without each other. Left, right, middle, whatever. So that's one comment on that.
The other is that, outside of environments like Crossfire, a lot of the platforms out there are not both sides. As I'll argue on the 7th, one of the things that's driving this insularity in our civic life right now is that in human history, it's never been easier to avail yourself of information that is confirming and reaffirming of what you already believe. And it's not that we're stupid, but perhaps we're a little intellectually lazy. It's never been easier to find yourself in a situation where you don't have to challenge yourself to hear the other side. You don't tune in to Rush Limbaugh to hear both sides. And there are plenty of conservatives that are getting their red meat through that platform, but how many liberals are challenging themselves by listening to that guy?
That's one of my hopes with efforts like what I'm about to do on behalf of the Citizens League, is to get people to want to challenge themselves intellectually, civicly, to define their civic life by commonality, not difference, to invest in a platform that's truly there to weave everybody together, and to become intellectually curious. It's not like I would ever ask you to not be a liberal. If you are a principled liberal, fantastic. You'll probably be a better liberal if you avail yourself of conservative information. I think we all have to have the intellectual courage to put ourselves in that situation. I don't know why so many of us think "Oh no, if I start listening to Rush I'm going to start thinking like Rush." There's no way in hell I'm going to start thinking like Rush. Or to play both sides of the game, I'm not going to start thinking like Al Franken. I'm going to think like me. I'm in an intelligent guy who cares about my civic health, about my community, whether that's defined locally, statewide, nationally, or internationally, I have deep concern and opinions, and I find that enriching myself on all sides of the spectrum has only deepened my concern, my optimism, and my energy.
I'm a news junkie, I get a bunch of newspapers every day, and I'm on the web, whether it's CNN, BBC, whatever. But for the last five years, religiously, I'm on Al-Jazeera.net. I don't tune in to Al-Jazeera.net because I want to agree with that news; a lot of that news reporting scares the hell out of me. Talk about anger and outrage.....what's important to me is that there are tens of millions of young Arabs on this planet that have that as their only news source, and I need to understand the information that they're working off of, I need to understand their thought processes if I'm ever going to related to them. And that's not only my professional job, it's my personal avocation to relate to a very wide spectrum of civic thought and see where the common thread is, and create a common path.
MNCR: Are you looking at big issues first, or small issues first and working up to bigger issues? At a high level, we have divisive issues today: the war in Iraq, the continuing debate over abortion rights, over Social Security....
NG: My answer to that actually goes to my personal strengths and failings. I tend to look at large-picture issues because that's how my brain works. I'm the kind of person that gets frustrated when we get down to the details. That said, I chair things like the Midtown Community Works Partnership, which is turning the 29th Street railbed into a linear parkway, so I get involved in the details, but I'm most comfortable thinking about the big issues. So let's take an issue like Iraq - hugely divisive, hugely important - I guess my perspective on that, the perspective I want to sell on that, is to understand Iraq in a greater context. Because right now I don't think the reporting on either side is doing a very good job of that. You can look at what's happening in Fallujah today - that's one way of understanding what's going on in Iraq. Another way is to look at a couple millenia of history and understanding the conflict in those terms. And there are people on both sides of the conflict looking at it in historical terms, good and bad. I think it's important to avail yourself of a wide variety of information inputs. We make our best decisions when we have as much illumination as possible.
Illumination allows you perspective. And once you get perspective, you can start setting direction. Too many of us aren't allowing ourselves to be illuminated. We think we are, but liberals aren't being illuminated by listening to Bill Maher, and conservatives aren't being illuminated by listening to Ann Coulter. That's not illumination. That's candy. I understand why it works - it is tasty, but just because it's tasty doesn't make it nutritious. There's not a lot of dietary fiber there, and without that, you're not going to build civic strength. We're exploiting the holes in the civic fabric, we're weakening the threads because it feels good in the moment. But long-term, that's not a way to run a railroad, as they say.
MNCR: Is this outrage industry restricted to those political and media organizations?
NG: Hardly. It's happening to us individually - the anonymity of talk radio and the web allow us to not only be very angry, we've become angrier - I not only find it very easy these days to say "what a dumb idea" but it's easy to say "what an evil person with a dumb idea," because you're not going to run into them. So that happens on an individual basis. Institutionally, I would imagine that every major instutition in our lives, whether it's governmental, or commercial, or faith-based - every institution structure in our society has a spectrum from those that want to advance the common good to those who want to be part of the problem.
Look at the environmental movement as an example. I'm an environmentally sensitive and concerned individual, and I want to invest in those efforts. But along that spectrum, there are a lot of different institutions out there that I can choose to be part of. On one side you might find something like the Nature Conservancy that uses market forces and money investments to purchase and preserve green space. Very successful organization, they do it all over the world, they partner with governments, they partner with businesses, and they partner with other organizations. Then as you move more from the center, you might find something like Greenpeace, which plays a tremendously effective role in creating public protest, they know how to throw a great event, they do move the needle, but in a different way than the Nature Conservancy. And then as we move further out we might find groups like the Earth Liberation Front, which is easy to define as a terrorist organization. The FBI does. My perception of them is that they're there to hurt property and people. So any important issue in our world right now is occupied by a lot of different players that span the spectrum from keeping the fight going to "how do we stop the fight?"
I'm interested in all of our sectors, whether it's media, faith-based, commercial - identifying and weaving together those players that want to define ourselves by our commonalities, not by the fight. We know what the fight looks like. That's easy. But it takes a blueprint, it takes planful intent to work yourself out of a situation. And too often, these voices of outrage don't want that to happen. If I solve your issue, you don't need me anymore, right? That's a problem for us right now in our civic life. We have a lot of institutions around us that are motivated by being solution-adverse. They will snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory at the end of the day to keep themselves alive.
MNCR: It sounds like there's a lot of long-term planning that has to go into an initiative like this. Is there a short-term strategy or tactic that you're engaging in beyond this event? Are there things we can do in the short term to accomplish your goals?
NG: Sure - I think that's why I'm doing it - it's a wonderful commercial for that organization. Identify the problem - people won't look for a fix until they'reilluminated as to a problem that needs to be fixed. The CL creates an environment for as diverse a group of people as we can grab, and we want to get better at that, and then we create safe harbor for sober reflection, fact-based reflection. From there, we come out with a pretty defensible opinion. Some of that turns into legislation, some of that turns into community education, whatnot. The first tactic is to create space, whether it's virtual or physical, for people of that orientation to get together and find out what's important, find out how to talk about it, find out what to do about it. And again, there are a lot of institutions that won't allow themselves to do that.
Let's take gay marriage, for example. An incredibly tough issue, and it works beautifully for politics, because it can't be solved. It's perfect for politics. What you can do is create a civic environment for a better debate around it right now, but given the state of affairs, you aren't hearing a lot of voices asking how we all find ourselves living together around that very tough issue and keep true to our principles. I happen to not be threatened by gay marriage - I think the institution of marriage is healthy for our communities. People are better off in a loving, supportive relationship. It's not only better for them, it's better for the community. That's my personal opinion. But I wasn't raised as a strict Catholic, for instance, where all the inputs in my life would have told me that that's not right, and it's not right by a law that's higher than what comes out of the Minnesota Legislature. I need to be able to disagree with that opinion, but why do I have to be so disagreeable about it? What am I going to get out of that equation? How am I goign to advance my own personal views if my first statement is "that's damned wrong." My first statement should be "tell me why you think that - what are the things that happened in your life that make you feel that way?" And I have to be intellectually courageous enough to say "I could see it that way. Not to say that I agree with you, but I acknowledge your role in this debate."
We have inertia forces that are pushing us into a downward spiral. One of the words I want to throw out in the speech is "intent." We have a board member named Stan Donnelly, who's a dear guy, and he threw a line at me that I just loved: you can't coast uphill. It takes intent, it takes energy. Inertia is pulling us down. It will take common energy to force us into an upward spiral, and I happen to enjoy that travel so much better than the downward direction. I've been talking about this issue for a few years now, and I refuse to let myself be anything but optimistic. |
