Curiously, while writing Political Straight Talk: A Prescription for Healing Our Broken System of Government, Kathryn and I discovered more evidence that love is the essence of life. You might ask how could I conclude anything about love after writing three books involving politics. For when we talk about the politics of today, love is hardly what jumps out at you, considering how our politicians have behaved during and since the political debates.

All it takes is one political provocateur to utter an angry word for the whole tenor of the discussion to become uncivil. There hasn’t been one debate on either the Republican or Democratic side where civility ruled the day; this was particularly true with the Republicans, where Donald Trump was the catalyst or the provocateur that the other 16 fellow Republicans responded to in a hostile and less-than-gracious manner. As things progressed, they began to jab and counter jab at one another. Interestingly, the degree of acrimony towards a fellow Republican was generally proportional to how he or she stood in the polls.

After noticing this, I couldn’t help but think about how our Founding Fathers conducted business prior to the advent of political parties. Were they not able to compromise with one another? They were, because they respected one another in a way that’s not happening in the field of politics today. In truth, that political disrespect began early in our country’s history. As the power of political parties increased with each passing year, the devastating effects of our politicians showing their allegiance to their political parties rather than to the people they were elected to represent has broken the intended workings of government. Perhaps the fact that whole populations were exempted from that respect from the start laid more of a foundation for disrespect spreading to the whole than we have chosen to see.

But most of us didn’t see it. Prior to breaking the way our government was designed to operate, and perhaps more important than that, this spreading acrimony has broken the way people should expect to be treated by fellow citizens. When I look at the way our Founding Fathers responded to one another (prior to political parties), I am reminded of how most of my friends and colleagues have related to me throughout my life. I have been lucky, I suppose, to be treated mostly fairly, with respect, as if I mattered, as if my viewpoint, needs, and feelings had value. I understand that not everyone has had this experience. That individuals have grown up with abuse and disrespect and that whole groups have survived against the odds of oppression, discrimination, and even genocide in this country. As an elderly white man, perhaps I am only now properly witnessing these travesties against our better natures. Perhaps I am only witnessing them now because that oppressive part of our nature has gone wide; it’s now affecting our government itself and everyone around me.

But the contrast is significant. The way politicians of opposing political parties relate to one another today—not only in presidential debates but also in ordinary political discussions—the discourse itself rarely remains civil or non-contentious. Sadly, that was particularly true with the Republican debaters, who didn’t show the least bit of caring, empathy, or compassion and respect toward one another or the American people—not to mention immigrants and other nations—that I have been shown for most of the adult portion of my 83 years of life. These politicians refused to display any kind of respect toward each other or concern for anyone else. This incivility carries an underground threat of violence, danger, risk that everything good about us could disappear. It makes me understand an iota of what people of color, poor people, and women must feel—must have felt throughout our history. So it looks to me like every time we expand our legal understanding of liberty to include a greater portion of the whole of our population, the tenor of our interpersonal interactions regresses into our baser tendencies of disrespect and distrust, of indifference if not hate.

In the meantime, we have a culture—what, in my day, we called a society—that emphasizes the future rather than the present: buy this product, and you’ll be prettier, happier … and richer! And politicians engage in it too: vote for me and you’ll be safer, happier … and richer! Neither our materialism nor our politics care to deal with what is happening now—that’s too hard, too expensive, and has too many consequences. But all those pie-in-the-sky promises are so general and so cheap that they are easy to offer. So why do we fall for them? Why do we seem to want, as a society, to promote narcissism and being self-referential, promoting oneself at the expense of others? Why don’t we prefer to encourage empathy and interdependence, so we’re responding to the whole world from a more authentic, true self? It’s a dead end, this grabbing for yourself, or more accurately, the image of yourself. If your focus is on your reflection in the mirror and trying to make it match some fake ideal, then you’re not doing anything but greasing the wheels for the rat race. You’re not noticing the problems we need to face as a country; you’re not noticing how others are faring in this environment. And ultimately, as you destroy the love you withhold from others, you destroy all the love in yourself and all the love others might bring you.

In Political Straight Talk, Kathryn and I have tried to stress the significance love plays in people’s lives, to show how the power of love should be viewed as an end in itself. Using power and love in the same sentence might seem to present a conundrum, but power and love do indeed exist together when the person with power uses it with empathy to energize the person who feels impotent and ineffectual. Emphasizing love in politics increases the capacity for everyone to become a good boss of his or her life. In that sense, power and love work together to fulfill the democratic promise for everyone.

So if the power you desire is a sense of interdependent empowerment, that’s a good thing. But if it’s used to feel competent and in control of your life at others’ expense, by establishing dominance and controlling of others, then it’s a bad thing. Kathryn and I both have learned that the caring for others, shown in the form of love and support for all Americans regardless of their race and ethnicity—maybe even because of them, in appreciation for the gifts those differences bring to us as individuals and a country—can bring great joy to both the politician and citizen alike. Politicians who are able to genuinely respond to their constituency’s needs, with empathy and decisiveness, in a way expected of a representative of We the People, empowers the government to act. But without the love factor being part of politicians’ and citizens’ lives, our system of government and the minds and spirits of ordinary Americans, white Americans included, will remain broken.

If this tragic state of affairs continues, where narcissism and self-centeredness rule our economy and our elections—rather than becoming centered in the true self that connects us all as one, with concern for others as they experience themselves, where our political parties are not made up of people organizing against showing love and concern for the whole country, where compromising and making laws that benefit all Americans begin to occur—our government will remain broken. And ultimately, by the end of this century, if not well before, our democracy and republic will perish from this earth.