The Future of Our Country Does Not Rest in Washington. Sharon “Says-So” McMahon on What We Can Do—Starting Today
Sharon McMahon is a former high school government and law teacher widely known on social media as @sharonsaysso. McMahon works to equip people about the workings of democracy, and she fights to combat political misinformation by spreading non-partisan facts about our government and nation. She sat with Maria this past week to discuss what’s at stake and how we can all make a difference in Washington—and beyond—starting now.
Full Transcript:
Maria
I’m so thrilled we’re able to connect like this. You just had a big speech in Utah. Tell everybody what you spoke about.
Sharon
I was speaking at Utah Valley University. We talked about the dangers of excessive partisanship and what a danger to the country that it is. George Washington cautioned against it and we are now reaping the fruits of what we have sown when we put allegiance to party over the principles of democracy.
Maria
You talk about the dangers of excessive partisanship because, as you just said, we're seeing the ramifications of that in real time. What was the reaction to that and what can we do about that?
Sharon
People loved it. This seems like something that people are ready to talk about. They're ready to hear about it. They're exhausted with the way things are going right now. The current situation is untenable and we're seeing exactly that happening in the house right now. The current situation is untenable and it's bad for Americans as a whole. It's not good for any of us that either party is in an unhealthy state. We need multiple healthy political parties because that is good for democracy. The competition for ideas is good for democracy. And an unhealthy political party that is not able to govern, not able to give us a speaker of the house, is not a good situation for any American.
Maria
Several people here were [at your speech] and it was fantastic. Sharon was wonderful. I want to shout that out to you. A lot of people say, ‘It’s just the way it is. It's the way we've become. We're just partisan. We're hopelessly divided.’ Why is it so bad and why does it make us so fragile? How do we get out of this mess?
Sharon
We're seeing exactly what happens when you have extreme division. We're seeing that in Israel right now. Extreme division has real world consequences that are much much more severe in some cases than just, ‘Well I don't like that person. I don't want to vote for that person. They're stupid.’ We are now seeing the ramifications in the Middle East of extreme partisanship and extreme division. And I'm not saying the United States is similar to the situation in Israel and Gaza. That's obviously a far different and more ancient situation than we're dealing with now. But one of the things that is especially concerning about extreme partisanship is that the leaders then spend all their time fighting amongst each other and no time actually working for the American people. That's their literal whole job is to work for the American people and instead of doing their literal whole job, they are usurping their responsibilities and they are spending time giving press conferences calling each other names. That is not improving a single American’s life.
Maria
People were shocked when they watched Kevin McCarthy and eight extremists who, as you said, had not worked on behalf of the people, who were just pontificating in their own way. People are thinking, How is this happening to us? How did this happen? They're not going to take a vote today to have a new speaker and they didn't want to risk going through multiple votes. do they've put it off. What are they delaying by putting it off, because there's so much at stake? And how do We the People tell those in Washington, ‘Hey, we don't want this anymore.’
Sharon
One of the first things that they're putting off is, of course, anything related to programs that are happening in America. But urgently, what they're putting off is aid to Israel, which they will undoubtedly pass as soon as they come back into session. Israel, of course, regarding somebody's feelings on the current situation, is our closest ally in the region. The United States is committed to assisting in aiding Israel. It’s not a situation where we can just kick the can down the road. It's extremely urgent. So that's one very, very prominent problem. But listen, here's something that I want to impress on people, which is that when I go into congressional offices and I talk to the staff members and congressional offices, and I say, ‘Tell me about how many phone calls it would take? How many emails would it take? What would it take for you to say to your boss, or representative or Senator, we have an emergency on our hands here?’ And invariably, the answers are between 50 and 300 messages is what it would take for that office to feel like they had an emergency on their hands. I have never heard a number higher than 300. And I've even said if you're telling me that if you've got 300 calls or emails in one day on a certain topic, you would consider it an emergency? And I've never heard any answer that's more than 300. That is a number of people that we can get together in the next two hours, Maria! That is not that many people to put a lot of pressure on Congress where they are really feeling the heat. So few people actually reach out and contact them that they are not feeling the heat of the American people.
Maria
So people listen to that, because there are thousands and thousands of you on [this Instagram live] right now. Fifty to 300 for your congressperson, your Senator, to feel your heat. You’re always explaining in a very simple way, the way the government works. Many people try to make it so complicated. And you're simplifying it, to how it works for us and what we can do to turn it around on our behalf. We can send an email, we can call, you can get 30 friends, 50 friends. If everyone sent an email that would signify emergency.
Sharon
I have a post in my feed that says how to help prevent a government shutdown. If you swipe, it gives you the specific tools you need to contact your representatives and senators and Congress. One of the things that's very important is that you be polite and to the point. Don't send a 20-page email, nobody is looking for your PhD dissertation. That’s not going to get read. It needs to be polite. You can make a point. But if you are mean and rude, it will be discarded.
Maria
Give us an example of polite.
Sharon
Polite is saying. ‘I'm writing because I have serious concerns about the excess partisanship being exhibited in the United States House of Representatives.’ And then give an example of why you think it's a bad idea. ‘When the house is spending time fighting amongst themselves, it means that they are not attending to important issues, facing Americans, and facing the rest of the world. And I would really like to encourage you as your constituent.’ It's important that you write to your own representatives and not somebody else's. ‘I would really like to encourage you as your constituents, to make sure that you are focusing on the issues that matter to our community, to our country, and not on fighting amongst yourself.’
Here's one thing that I always say at the end: ‘This is a very important matter and I will be watching to see if you continue to earn my vote.’
So that is to the point. But I'm not name calling. I'm not telling people they're idiots. That's not going to produce any effects. Nobody wants to work with somebody who treats them that way. But yet I am trying to clearly communicate what I what I view the issues as.
Maria
Do you see as we go into this presidential election into more discussion around: Is the government going to shutdown at Thanksgiving? Are they going to be able to elect a new speaker? When you go out to speak, do you get the sense that people are hopelessly divided? Or do you feel that when you get out amongst the people they are different from the story that's being told about them?
Sharon
I am a founding partner of an organization Starts with Us. And we have found that 87 percent of Americans do not feel this excessive partisanship that we are seeing reflected in Washington. We actually want the same things: We all want safe and prosperous communities with opportunities for ourselves, and opportunities for our neighbors. We want our children to go to quality schools. We want a clean environment for our pets to run around in and for ourselves to enjoy. We actually want America to be safe, we want the rest of the world to be safe.
The vast majority of the issues facing America are not things that we cannot find consensus on. And people are very eager to find consensus. That does not mean that we will agree on every single issue. But there are aspects of every single issue that we can find common ground on, and we can move the needle on those common ground areas and feel like we're actually making progress towards that more perfect union, towards a prosperous, safe community with equal opportunities. Instead of making any progress at all, Congress is out here making zero progress.
We all want to feel like we're making some headway. You want to make some movement towards a goal. You don't want to just sit and be stuck at the mercy of somebody else. So finding consensus is a way to help us feel and to actually help move the needle towards a more perfect union.
Maria
Finding consensus is good for all of us. Sharon, as the nation's government teacher, you want people to love what you’re teaching. People feel angry at the government and disillusioned. How do we rebuild trust in our government?
Sharon
It starts with learning how government works, because you can’t change when you do not understand. You have to be able to understand it in order to change it for the better. So educating ourselves is the first step. An educated populace is very hard to repress. When people feel like I'm not doing enough, I can't run for office right now, I just had a baby. Whatever their reasons are, they have a lot of reasons for why they personally can't run for office—and that's legitimate. But educating ourselves is a very, very important first step. Because when we are educated we can then begin to hold people accountable for their actions. And it is the job of Congress to work on behalf of the American people. And it is the job of the American people to hold Congress accountable for their actions. That means making members of Congress continue to work to earn your vote. A vote is earned, it is not guaranteed. And if they are not working on behalf of the citizens of your community, then they have failed to earn your vote. So that is the first thing I would say is we have to become educated on how this works so that we can pay attention and we can hold Congress accountable.
The next thing I would say is that we have to recognize that within Congress, the vast majority of the people in Congress actually do want to work on behalf of the American people. It is small factions of people who are gumming up the works, making it so that it is very difficult to actually move that ball down the field. So what are we actually up against here? Not 535 people. We're actually up against a very small number of individuals. And those are people that we can work on. That is a person that we can hold accountable the next time an election happens so that Congress can be governable again, and actually do work on behalf of the American people.
This is the other lesson: We cannot allow ourselves to be paralyzed by fatigue. It's fine to rest, rest if you need it. But you cannot just give up. The antidote to despair is action. You are never going to get out of a despairing feeling by sitting around and just feeling more despair. We have to actually do something. And there's a variety of ways that people can get involved in making government more efficient, making it better, and making it more responsive. All of those things are needed and necessary. It's our job to hold Congress accountable. We have a very important job in this democracy. We think of democracy as Congress and the President. No—this democracy belongs to us. The Constitution doesn't belong to the government, it belongs to We The People of the United States. So we have an important job to do here as well.
Maria
I love understanding and informing yourself. So that means not sitting on the sidelines and just complaining or pointing fingers. It's educating ourselves and our families about the government. That is our government. That's the point of a democracy. It's about sending an email, making a phone call, getting involved, letting your voice be heard. Not giving up. Your life is what is at stake with these votes. Your life—from the local level to the state level to the federal level—that's what's at stake.
Do you find that people know about civics? I remember when I was in school, eons ago, civics was really important, public service was important. Is there an interest in civics?
Sharon
There is certainly a community very interested in this topic. I have a son who's in college, and he's a political science major. He had a congressional internship over the summer and so he has now seen all of the inner workings of government and wants to go into some kind of public service. I would say that among his friends, they are actually quite well informed because the information is at their fingertips. This is one of the challenges though, there is a difference between problem identification and problem solving. This generation is excellent at identifying problems. They can pick out an inequity a mile away, it is not fair that there is not a wheelchair ramp at this entrance to this college, and that person has to drive a mile around the other side of the college. That is not equitable. They can pick out an inequity or identify a problem a mile away in ways that perhaps previous generations were very myopic about. This generation sees the problem, they know what it is. And now we need to give them the tools and galvanize them to actually do something about it.
I'm actually tremendously optimistic. I love Gen Z. I think with a little bit of trial by fire, a little refining, that we're going to see Gen Z step up to the plate in really big ways in the next 15 years.
Maria
How do you make sense of this particular moment in our country? How do you describe this moment in comparison to previous moments? Are we in a defining moment? Are we in a divisive moment? Are we in a hopeful moment?
Sharon
These last few years have been defining moments. And we are absolutely in a defining moment for American democracy. When I talk to people like Heather Cox Richardson, I know you recently spoke to her too—we've had this conversation before: What will historians write about this period? What will historians say? And her answer to me on that question is: depends on what happens.
If Americans push forward with courage, and instead of being held and paralyzed by inaction and despair, if Americans rise to the occasion, this will be the defining moment of modern American democracy—and, and by extension, for democracy around the world. This will be America's moment to be a symbol that the rest of the world can look at and say ‘It was close but they turned that around.’ I am hopeful that will happen. I am hopeful that Gen Z sees how difficult and how fraught this situation is. Gen Z has a good understanding of what the principles of democracy are. And that is a topic that I think some of my followers are sick of hearing me talk about, but I do not care. We all need to hide in our hearts the principles of democracy. Because when we step into a battle, or when we are out in the community, we are then able to share our choices and our actions, to what things uphold the principles and which ones harm. Until we can all get our arms around that, that is where this fragile moment comes into play. This is what makes this moment fragile is when too few people understand the principles of democracy and why they are important though.
Maria
I love that you said “this is a defining but also a fragile moment.”
Sharon
That is why this is not a moment to sit back and be like, it will all work out. That is how democracies die. Democracies die when the citizens fail to see the peril on the road ahead and fail to divert from the path that they are on. They fail to elect leaders who have strong commitment to democracy. They accept and tolerate authoritarian ideas, they become accustomed to them. And then they begin to accept and tolerate more and more and more. We think of authoritarianism as like a dude with a tiny mustache and a German accent. That's what we think authoritarianism is. But in reality, authoritarianism is a state legislature seizing an unprecedented amount of power for themselves. Authoritarianism in America today looks like a legislature openly defining a Supreme Court ruling on voting districts. Those are authoritarian moves, and the more we become accustomed and accept them, the more dangerous it becomes. Do not think a wolf is going to knock on the door and that's the moment that we will have to decide. No. The moment is now.
Maria
We must wake up, get involved. wake up to get involved. What you're saying, what you’re cautioning us on is that if we turn away, if we do not get involved, if we do not make our voice heard, we will lose what was once the greatest country on the planet.
Sharon
I don't think that's too strong a way to say it. I don't think it is. And anybody who has followed me for a long time knows that I am not an alarmist. I don’t constantly talk about the sky falling and everything being ruined. I don't operate from a position of anger and hatred and trying to make everybody upset all the time. When I say something that is strongly worded, I mean it. When I say something that sounds like whoa, it is because it is true. This is a defining moment. We must sacrifice in some way to be able to save a democracy that has lasted longer than any other democracy in the world. Most Americans love America. I do too. I'm extremely proud to be an American. I can't listen to the Star Spangled Banner without tearing up. I care deeply about this country. But anybody who tells you ‘I alone can save it’ is trying to become an authoritarian. We will save it. We will do it together. And every single one of us has an important part to play in that.
Maria
What you’re saying is hopeful. It's defining and hopeful. We are, as human beings, fragile and strong. It's the same for our country—incredibly strong, a beacon of light, and also very fragile. And there is the opportunity for sharing. We must have our voices heard and get involved. And even if it's just sending an email or galvanizing 30 of your friends, you can create an emergency.
Sharon
Let’s get some emergencies in Congress. It actually wouldn't take that much work to create an emergency in every single one of Congress's offices that they cannot ignore.
To learn more about Sharon, visit sharonmcmahon.com. Her book comes out on Constitution Day, September 17, 2024.
