It’s hard to be United States as a nation of winners and losers

Trounced. Defeated. Beat back. Captured control. A partisan air war. Winners and losers. That is a quick summary of the election headlines. Abuse, war and winners and losers. Punishment and reward. Divide and conquer. We are divided as a nation of winners and losers.

In the news, every election headline and every story has language selectively engineered to evoke an emotional response. Democrats vs Republicans. Liberals vs Conservatives. There is no middle ground. There is no common ground. There is only us vs them. All of that language sows competition, not cooperation.

Cooperation is the foundation skill of humanity. Everything we do, as humans, requires cooperation for our survival. Yes, there are some who say that humans survived by competition for limited resources. Well, if that’s true, how is it that we have 7 billion people on the planet? Did we kill each other off for a sandwich?

You are reading this. You are hearing a voice in your head, speaking it. You speak and read English to understand these words. Language is a skill invented and adopted by humanity for one reason, and one reason only: more efficient cooperation. There is no better way to convey a thought or an idea than through language. This is true regardless of the medium used to exchange the idea. A common protocol is required to communicate ideas. We use language for cooperation.

So as I look at the results of the election, how they are described, how the campaigns are run, and how people respond to the results, I see winners and losers. Winners and losers cannot unite. As long as one side prevails to dominate the other side, there can be no common ground, no cooperation.

Just look at how our two major parties behave in Congress. Especially the Republicans. Refusing to hold hearings for a Supreme Court justice. Refusing to confirm judges for years. Shutting down the government. Denying funding for essential services. Giving tax cuts to the wealthy while cutting “entitlements” that people paid for already. Winners and losers.

There is a way to end the winners and losers conflict in the United States. It has already been proposed in the House, and it is called HR 3057, The Fair Representation Act. This one bill in Congress is loaded with the tools we need to distribute power more fairly as a nation, and as a union of states.