Competition vs. Conflict

I have an abundance of empathy. I apologize to furniture when I bump into it, and I try to imagine what people, animals, and trees are thinking and feeling. Consequently, since I always feel bad for the losers in any matchup, I’m not always comfortable with competition, even though I know it can be healthy. And an effective teaching tool. When competition bleeds over into conflict—an easy slide—is when it can become unhealthy, granted, but still educational..

I naively thought that competition in politics was supposed to go like this: Your side does all it can to put forth your candidate(s), perhaps even including hyperbole and an obscene amount of money, while my side makes every effort to promote my candidate. Fair, for the most part, and healthy. But, when competition becomes conflict is when your group seeks to achieve its goals with efforts to prevent my group from achieving ours. Take voting for a particular candidate, for example. If your group suppresses or interferes with the voters who might be likely to vote for my group, conflict has been introduced. If your candidate wins because you kept the competition from having a say, or at least made it unusually difficult, what have you won? Tie one hand behind the back of a person and he is no longer a worthy opponent. Beat him—that one-armed man—and what do we call that? Cheating, right? You cheat, and you’re no longer worthy to win the trust of your constituents. Is that what I see happening? Of course it is. Cheaters are winning by cheating.

I want a fight fair. That’s what America deserves. In the meantime, since we can’t get that–yet–is there a way we can learn from the current conflict?

We can try to open our minds to the concept that our adversaries have beliefs that are as sacred to them as ours are to us. They believe that their way of life is being threatened and that God is on their side. We can try to understand and empathize with how the experiences they had led them to these ideals they hold dear. When the discourse is civil, we can listen. When we are questioned, we can answer honestly, with tact.

We can see ‘them’ as human beings with a different view from ours and a different interpretation of the guiding principles of our founders rather than seeing them as wrong, ignorant, and uninformed. We can treat those adversaries as we want to be treated and seek to find common ground with them, noting that at least we both love our children, fresh vegetables from the garden, and sunsets.

But what if they are unwilling to do the same?

We can continue to adhere to our deeply held principles of fairness and accept that we are in a war for what we believe is the right, just, fair, and moral path. We can insist on free and fair elections. We can volunteer at the polls. We can advocate for a national holiday on election day. We can fight against the unlevel playing field as hard as we can as often as we can for as long as we can, proving that obstacles in our path only serve to make us more determined.

We can acknowledge that the others will fight dirty, that they will do anything–no matter how underhanded–to accomplish what they fervently believe is right for the America they believe in. They will see some Americans as unworthy to vote. They will not be shamed because they believe that the ends justify the means.

We can let conflict teach us rather than defeat us.

We can hope the kids do a better job.