Stop calling a progressive agenda anti-Alaskan

I am an independent, gun-owning, tree-hugging environmental ethicist. I listen to the Grateful Dead in my pickup truck; I am a capitalist who thinks universal health care is a good idea. I am not a Democrat, I am not a Republican, and I am tired of partisan politics.

With early election results giving a big lead to Alaska’s incumbents, Dan Sullivan and Don Young are poised to head back to Washington, D.C. to represent Alaska in Congress. If their leads hold out, partisan messaging from both politicians will have helped them gain re-election, but as we move on from 2020, our politicians and our political discourse need to talk about how we can all work together, not about how we are moving apart. This begins with our language.

The political divide in our country is contagious, insidious, dangerous, but worst of all, ridiculous. We only widen the rift between political parties when our language conflates policy with politics.

The recent ADN editorial endorsement of the Republican ticket asserted that Republican policies are better for Alaska:

The endorsement for Dan Sullivan stated that, “the Republican agenda has aligned with Alaskan interests,” and that Sullivan has, “championed Alaska’s priorities.”

The Don Young endorsement claimed he has, “a mammoth record of advancing Alaska’s interests.”

Language matters and this language ignores the need to discuss what Alaska’s priorities and interests actually are. Unfortunately, circular arguments for Republican politicians parrots rhetoric from this season’s political races. Sullivan himself called the Democratic agenda, “anti-Alaskan.”

Meanwhile, we can’t consistently plow our roads in the winter, our education system is facing unprecedented cuts and an Alaskan is contracting COVID-19 every three to four minutes. A Republican agenda is not uniquely ‘pro-Alaskan,’ and a progressive agenda is not ‘anti Alaskan’ — each is simply a different vision for Alaska.

When we use the rhetoric of division, we seed division. Political language offers a partisan shortcut, but presents three significant hazards:

1. When a Democrat wins, half the state thinks the candidate is working against them. Who can blame them if the conversation presented a binary choice between pro- and anti-Alaska?

2. We confuse assertion with persuasion — conversation here, for example, has defined our economic past as the future. While oil and other resource extraction is on the decline, Republicans avow this industry as ‘essential,’ so new opportunities become a shift ‘away from Alaska.’

3. We are missing out on conversation about reasonable policy differences. Division hides the details of public policy debate.

Reflecting on Alaska’s typical political discourse: There is no Alaska without oil only if we define Alaska as an oil economy.

Alaskans are not a monolith: Our community needs to engage in policy debate that doesn’t ignore political disagreement. About one-third of us don’t think drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a good idea, most Alaskans don’t think we should reverse the ‘roadless rule’ in Tongass National Forest, and fewer young people see a viable career path in resource development.

Emphasizing our historic economy through assumed “priorities” without also pointing out the failure of elected officials to move through political gridlock toward a sustainable future (or even to maintain basic infrastructure and community services) is irresponsible. We should be debating how to address climate change, not whether we should take it seriously. We should be debating our economic reliance on oil, not taking it for granted. Let’s talk about the people who work on the North Slope for a two-week shift or come up to fish, only to leave and pay taxes in other states. Even while roughly 7% of Alaska residents are new each year, from 2012-2018, 29,000 more people have moved out of state than moved in. The transience of our historic economic drivers discourages investment in a long-term, sustainable economic infrastructure that supports livability and the conservation of what makes our state great. Oil can’t support Alaska’s economy the way it did in the 1970s. That’s okay — remember, fur trading used to pay the bills.

So, what should our priorities be?

Language shapes our perception. If we talk about policy, we can build bipartisan solutions to the challenges we face. If we talk in false dichotomies, we create a zero-sum game. As a friend recently put it, rivalries are great for NASCAR and reality TV, but not for communities. It’s time to build bridges not wedges – this starts with a better conversation.

Alexander Lee is a philosophy professor in Anchorage.

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