Newsplaining

Transparency: the sly enemy of progress
     Trust, it’s what the world runs on. We, as Americans, trust that the dollar will retain its value, as it is only backed on the promise that it is worth something. We trust that our military, the CIA and the FBI will keep us safe from external harm. We trust that we will make it to work safely and return home in the same matter that we left. We trust that our employers will be honest with us and won’t fire us for no reason.
     So much of our lives is based on this “thing” that can’t be physically touched, only experienced, and cannot be compared to what anyone else experiences. It is the actual currency of our daily lives and we take it for granted.
     The hot political trend over this decade has been the priority of transparency. We, as a nation, need to trust that our elected officials are sanitized, untarnished from when we first elected them. We want to trust our country’s CEOs to be honest. We want those representing us to be trustworthy. In turn, because trust is an experience, our only physical monitoring system is transparency.
     But this deep desire to trust someone with power has distorted the system that was built on the faith that a Democratic Republic could work, almost 400 years ago. As a nation, we have become obsessed with transparency to the point that we don’t trust anyone, or anything, and that has thrown a monkey wrench into the American political system — which was created on a piece of paper, backed the on faith that it was the best system available.
     This decade introduces what we think will quench our thirst for total trust: leaks and hacks.
     For years, our country has dropped everything when newspapers reported companies and elected officials doing things that they weren’t supposed to do. Think back to the Pentagon Papers, which illustrated that the US was fighting a losing battle in Vietnam. Think back to Watergate, when President Richard Nixon was trying to crash the Democratic Party.
     As the information age has become faster and more prevalent, reports like these have painted the picture that CEOs and governments can’t be trusted. We’ve demanded meeting be public, that deliberations be open to the public, that companies report every transaction they make, all so that we may feel secure that something is going right, so that we may feel secure. I liken it to a parent, who catches their child in a lie, several times. As a parent, you want to trust your child won’t get into mischief that puts themselves or others in danger with their law or their lives. But when a child keeps slandering their peers, or is caught stealing or telling you they didn’t break your family heirloom when they did, you lose trust. You ground them not to punish them, but because you physically cannot trust them outside of your gaze. In this metaphor, the nation is the parent, and governments and companies are the child.
     In these last four weeks leading up to the election, our desire for transparency has painted a picture that we find untrustworthy. Thanks to Democratic Candidate Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails from Wikileaks, many voters find her untrustworthy because of her favorable dealings with banks, her hesitation with supporting popular liberal movements and political conversations and her savvy ways of avoiding the transparency that we so covet.
     Republican Senator Marco Rubio recently stated that he isn’t taking the information from the leaks seriously because it is a threat from external voices, trying to force a result in an election. He urged his electorate not to cheer or support the leaks because one day, it could happen to the Republican base.
     While Rubio’s comments are valid, they don’t express what these leaks have done to the American political process.
     Our need for transparency has established this hypertension of identity politics. When we demand that private meetings be open and demand that anything talked about over phone belongs to us, it pauses the political process, and slows it to the crawl that we are experiencing now.
     Hypothetically, let’s pose the simplified scenario that drainage district repairs are too costly, so farmers in the district choose to not repair them, which causes flooding in town. In an open deliberation room, you have members of the farming community who fight that they don’t want to pay the cost to repair the drains, while the townsfolk fight that they must pay for the damages. With the hyper transparency we are experiencing, representatives of both sides will be closely watched, and both sides will hope that their side doesn’t budge on their conviction. What can happen? There can be no negotiating.
     To trace this back to the parent-child metaphor, a child is almost forced into indecision when both parents want something different from the child. How can the child decide when both humans he is responsible to, can’t let him or her make a decision.
     The truth of the matter is that there is a winner and loser in every decision. A good compromise is when no one leaves the table happy. But the only thing worse than a decision is a scenario in which no decision is made. By demanding emails and meetings, and hacks and leaks, we force this identity that no one we support can waver. We trust them not to waver. We need them to not waver. That’s what makes us feel safe. But the truth of the matter is just the opposite.
     We trust that we will make it to work and back safely, when the odds we don’t are much greater. We trust that the dollar is worth something, when all it takes is a broken promise. We trust a lot of things that aren’t safe. But the only thing we harshly scrutinize is a political system less than 400 years old, which has made more progress for equality and prosperity than any other civilization that came before, and the world has moved just as fast.
     Think of all that was accomplished since 1900. Women received the right to vote, the 15 and 16 amendments were passed, insurances companies can’t reject you if you have a disease, you have a minimum wage and you have safer factories. All of this was done in the days that everyone depicts as smoky, dim-lit, backroom deals. Things got done because we weren’t demanding to see meeting minutes of what was said in negotiations, so that we can yell and scream about how our interests weren’t being looked after.
     Even as a journalist for this paper, I used to hate closed sessions. I thought it threatened our freedom. But in my work, I’ve realized that some things are better left alone until a decision is made.
     Transparency should be thrown out the window, but our expectation and right to transparency is an enemy to politics. Evidence should be released. Regular meetings should be public. But sometimes it takes privacy to openly negotiate to get anything done. A bad decision can be learned from and corrected. No decision does nothing.
     Can you imagine if President Abraham Lincoln held public forums on whether or not to abolish slavery?