While I was scrolling through X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly and yet still more
commonly referred to as Twitter, I ran across someone posting a meme from years ago. It
holds some wisdom that is vitally important in today’s world of politics as partisan winner take
all games. It said:

Everyone will not just.

If your solution to every problem relies on “If everyone would just…” then you do not have a
solution. Everyone is not going to just. At no time in the history of the universe has everyone
just, and they’re not going to start now.”

This gave me a bit of pause, as it is a humorous take on a longstanding problem with our level
of civic engagement. Social media, despite having the potential to bring people of differing
opinions and backgrounds together, too often allows us to self-segregate into groups who
already believe the same things.

Before the days of Facebook and Twitter there were breakfast clubs. I’ve been invited to and
attended many, usually with a small group of older men who sat around the table and solved all
of the world’s problems with endless conversations over bottomless cups of coffee.

Invariably, one member would go on a long rant, ending by pounding the table with the
punctuation of “It’s just that simple.”

The solution to complex problems are rarely that simple. More often than not, the unspoken
condition to these simple solutions would involve “everyone to just…”.

We’ve divided ourselves into red and blue teams. Red will refuse to do whatever blue wants.
Blue finds the red deplorable and whatever red wants to be subversive. There are too many on
each of these teams willing to do anything the other wants that common ground seems
impossible to find. Thus, everyone is refusing to just. As it has always been.

A day or two later I noticed a post from former Congressman Doug Collins. Collins’ days in the
House had him as a rising star and potential leader, with his name floated more than once for a
potential shot at Speaker. Those of us that worked with him knew to look past his slow
southern drawl and “aw shucks” country lawyer persona and pay attention to his progress on
issues, and ability to navigate them through an increasingly divided Washington.

Those wearing the other teams’ jerseys painted him as a MAGA extremist – though I’m not sure
that term had been coined back then. Regardless, that likely helped him more than hurt within
GOP circles. In fact, he was quite willing to adopt that persona as a full ally of President Trump
and his agenda.

I say that to say this: Congressman Collins was nobody’s RINO squish. He was happy to
represent the MAGA agenda and has continued to advocate for it in his public media
appearances after he left elected office.

With that out of the way, let’s look at the caution posted by Collins, also on X. He stated:
It takes 218 votes in the U.S. House to get anything done. If you hear any political candidate
throw out a policy proposal to change America, as an informed citizen, you should ask them,
“How are you going to get 218 votes?” If they can’t answer that, then they have divorced
politics from reality.

I retweeted with the added admonition that you would also need 60 Senators. But the simple
point is this: No matter how loudly you pound the table, solutions aren’t that simple.
Real change requires coalitions. Coalitions require trust, mutual respect, and delineated
common ground.

We have too many who look at candidates for election as potential conquering forces, not
future leaders of disparate people united as one nation. We seem to think that electing one
person will bring about the change that requires electing many more people, and then changing
the hearts and minds of many others.

Every election cycle we have candidates that promise us we’ll have everything we want – and
nothing that we don’t want – if we just elect them. Too many believe them, then get mad
when little changes after the election.

For American civics to work, we need to get back to remembering how and why they work.
That requires us to spend less time shouting our opinions as we pound the table bragging of our
own simplicity, and more time listening to others to determine where and how we can get
them to work toward the parts of our goals on which we can find consensus.