I live in a small municipality about twenty miles from downtown Houston that was once considered a suburban community. Today, that identifier of “suburb” no longer applies given the development of cities 30-40 miles from Houston. My little hamlet is land-locked and no longer the quaint community it once was. The city is still very livable and a desirable location for raising a family. However, the ills that affect a major city are beginning to affect us.

I expect politics to be a contentious issue in a major city. But in a city of less than 20,000, I don’t expect the kinds of mudslinging that has become commonplace in our politics. We held elections last year and the politics were pretty nasty. In fact the incumbent mayor proudly announced during a public meeting that “politics is a contact sport.” That caught me completely off guard. But once my blood pressure returned to normal (whatever that may be) I realized that in today’s political environment, it is a contact sport.

I don’t believe the Founding Fathers intended public service to be a contact sport. Their letters and speeches indicate that they thought public service was an obligation of those who had the ability and heart to be leaders in their community; to represent the interests of those who couldn’t attend the daily grind of making communities livable and desirable. We know George Washington was weary of “factions” and believed if unchecked they may one day unravel the fledgling democracy.

Maybe politics has always been a contact sport. Charles Sumner tried to beat the living daylights out of Preston Brooks in 1856 because of a speech criticizing slave owners. In 2009, Joe Wilson interrupted President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress and yelled “you lie.” Both incidents were committed by elected representatives from South Carolina. Both received a fairly light reprimand and continued serving their constituents. Incidentally, South Carolina was the first state to secede after Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860, on the basis of their right to own slaves:

“The ends for which this Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

“These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

“We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of Slavery; they have permitted the open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

?For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the Common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the Common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that Slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

“This sectional combination for the subversion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons, who, by the Supreme Law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its peace and safety.”

South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession
South Carolina Legislature
December 20, 1860

So, the American Civil War was about slavery after all. But I digress.

Next year is a presidential election year. This Republic has endured scandals and war and our cherished democracy is still intact. But something just seems different about the current political environment this time. It seems everybody is afraid of the Big Bad Bully in the room. I don’t fully understand why, maybe it’s not for me to understand. But Big Bad Bully’s use of social media is the twenty-first century equivalent of the cane Preston Brooks used against Charles Sumner.

Still, I find some solace in the children’s story of the “Emperor’s New Clothes.” In the story, someone misled the Boss into believing his outfit was spectacular but only visible to those who are worthy/special, even though there was no outfit at all. Fearing the Boss’ reprisals, all of the townspeople tell him what he wants to hear and feed into the charade that they see the outfit and it is spectacular. Finally, a child blurts out what the adults in the room were afraid to say: there is no outfit at all.

In the end, the truth prevails. As I believe our democracy will prevail. We just have to endure some uncomfortable moments as those who should have the courage to tell the truth fear the reprisals of those who want to continue the charade. Courage and conviction for the truth may be old-fashioned ideas, but they are the bedrock of this Republic, the institution of slavery notwithstanding.

So I guess politics has always been a contact sport. I guess I’ll get my popcorn ready, as I fear the next year will be particularly brutal; like mixed martial arts on steroids. Only these combatants will be in tailored suits with million dollar smiles. But it will still be just as brutal.

Later.