A few years ago, I read Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. In the book, he advocates for a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast of America as a juxtaposition to the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast.
I love this idea and a few folks have taken on the task, though the momentum comes and goes.
What I take from this symbolism is my responsibility as a citizen, particularly in today’s combative political climate. While The Art of the Compromise is one attempt towards my responsibility, I have come to realize that daily actions are also my responsibility to improve the political climate.
My sense and urgency of this responsibility has been spurred by my reading of Lawrence Lessig’s recent book America, Compromised.
Lessig discusses the institutional corruption (a term he defines in his book) of America’s media, which has led to a distrust of media outlets as sources of truth. Lessig offers some interesting solutions to how we might regain trust between citizens and the media, and one of his solutions is simple. We as citizens find a source we believe to be trustworthy, which should call it out, and point it out.
I ran across such an article today. I must confess that I was shocked to see it on CNN.com. I read CNN articles often, but I do so with an eye of skepticism as most CNN contributors have a perhaps unrecognized and certainly unacknowledged bias towards left-leaning reporting.
Photo by Ken Lund, CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
To be clear, this judgment of CNN is not my observation alone but is supported by multiple sources.
With that said, I ran across this article from multiple contributors on CNN. The article discusses the military history of VP nominees JD Vance and Tim Walz.
As I launched into reading it, I braced myself for the usual subtle biases that I find often in CNN articles. I was surprised as I traversed further down the page that the article offered a balanced somewhat unbiased look at the two candidates’ military service.
Kudos to CNN.