How Do We Talk to Each Other Anymore?

By ART CULLEN

What comes after Nov. 5? Most Americans and the betting markets believe that Kamala Harris will win the election. She’s even close in Iowa.

No matter what happens, we need to find center again. Quick like.

American democracy withstood one assault from Donald Trump and likely can hold up under another four years. What the Republic cannot endure, and which gives enemies of freedom oxygen, is the contempt that has taken hold American-to-American.

We talk past each other and grow apart.

How do we talk to the other side?

That was David Beckman’s question last week at the Okoboji Writer’s Retreat. The seminar I led was supposed to be about writing simply. Inevitably, discussion turned to civic affairs. The retired attorney from Burlington (and husband of Storm Lake native Susan McCoy) asked the $69,000 question.

This is the sort of place it gets answered, in a small town where you have to get along even when you want to spit at each other.

We know what we want in Iowa: clean air and water, safe schools that teach you how to be a citizen, good food and good basketball, smooth roads and friendly neighborhoods, easy access to comprehensive and affordable health care. The ability to prosper. That’s pretty much it.

We’re not getting what we deserve, except for the basketball.

Trump and Harris voters can agree on that. So we should start there.

Farmers who vote Republican are not gung-ho for pipelines going wherever the power brokers would like, and neither are environmentalists. Each likes supporting more on-farm conservation. White males and Black women are suspicious of unchecked corporate power. A lot of union members will vote Republican for a whole host of reasons, but find common cause with Democrats on basic human equity.

We all want to strengthen rural healthcare. We like independent producers and businesses. We realize that Iowa’s unique strength is in its 99 counties.

Our increasing cancer rates scare nearly everyone.

It’s not as if there is not common ground. The deck is stacked. That speaks to Trump’s appeal with people in rural Iowa who feel left behind and unheard. Seldom do they ever consider the fears of a Black woman traveling the state as an Extension educator. Sometimes she felt like she was in a sundown town. She was in that writing seminar, too, and intends to tell her story eventually.

Gov. Kim Reynolds’s popularity keeps sinking because she starts where we differ instead of where we might agree. State Auditor Rob Sand, the only statewide-elected Democrat, wishes there weren’t parties but he is in one. Sand has always positioned himself as bipartisan while the Republican legislature emasculated his authority. He had no organized support behind him.

The places left behind, the two-thirds of Iowa counties declining in population and prospects, are where the conversation starts. The strategy of the political parties has been abandonment.

Right-to-repair is not left or right. Neither is enforcement of anti-trust laws. Nobody in the county seat town wants to lose the maternity ward or the hospital. We all recognize that it is tough filling jobs in food and agriculture because it’s tough work. Nobody expects to get rich, but they expect respect and a wage that lets them get ahead.

Iowa is of a scale where problems can be solved without political war. The best program to come along in my career was Vision Iowa, created by Democratic Sen. Mike Gronstal and Republican Sen. Jeff Lamberti and Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack. It transformed Storm Lake and Dubuque because the people wanted it. King’s Pointe Resort in Storm Lake is the result, and the American Rivers Museum in Dubuque.

The people did not ask for an abortion ban, really. They asked for low taxes but got a book ban and private school vouchers. The judicial nomination process was not broken, so Gov. Reynolds fixed it. Nobody in Newell wanted to reform Medicaid payments so the Good Samaritan Center would close.

This is why people are anxious and don’t think that things are working their way. They’re not. Things work for people with a firm grip on power. We can organize ourselves around how to make our place better, instead of how we can lock up our adversaries. It starts with city hall, the courthouse and the school house. It starts by us talking about issues and confronting power that prevents progress. It starts by listening to the Black educator and the White farmer.

Art Cullen is publisher and editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in northwest Iowa (stormlake.com). He won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2017 and is author of the book “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from America’s Heartland.” Email times@stormlake.com.

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2024

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