Today we're able to pay attention to everything.

Technology keeps us plugged in to the latest news and grievance, and it feels like there is an abundance of news and plenty of grievance to go around.

We can get instant information from myriad sources, all with an undercurrent of urgency that demands our attention at the same time, those involved in politics no, that anger is the best way to motivate us into action.

If a political candidate wants to make sure that we go to the polls on Election Day, they get us really mad.

Better yet, if they can get us furious, we might donate money to a cause or a campaign.

And these days, elections are expensive endeavors put together.

The American public is paying attention, and we are outraged.

Our outrage is not limited to one side or one cause or one grievance.

It is widespread, a shotgun blast of fury whose damage ranges across the entire ideological spectrum, and this is chaos.

The media feed us the chaos because they benefit from it when we're mad, we pay more attention, and our attention equals their financial support.

And because regular old politics can be boring and complicated today, were served more engrossing, fair in the form of entertainment, on cable, news, on talk radio, online on social media, all in the form of polarized side taking and partisan fighting.

We're constantly told, Pick a side, pick a team, be mad.

And if you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention.

Politics feels like a lot these days because we get information not only from the regular places, but it blends in tow are non political lives.

We hear about politics in cultural battles over athletic gear and coffee makers and fast food chicken restaurants.

Politics bleeds from the front pages to the lifestyle sections of newspapers, toe entertainment programs, celebrity photo ops award shows, all with an undercurrent of anger.

And when politics becomes a thing of rage, it turns what should be deliberation and debate and discussion into hostility and tribalism.

Being continuously informed about a political system in a constant state of upheaval is grueling, and many Americans, regardless of partisan affiliation, are feeling crushed.

This is a terrible thing for a democracy which is based on the idea of citizen participation.

It is also for all of us exhausting.

Aren't you exhausted?

I'm exhausted.

My family is exhausted.

Even our dog is exhausted and she is a puppy who is half Airedale, half Rottweiler, half pony.

And she should be really hard to tire out.

And so today I want to offer an alternative to all this exhaustion.

I am here to advocate for politics.

Four compromise for discussion and I have some ideas about how we can calm the chaos of American politics as we quiet the volume of the media that deliver it to us.

So the first thing I'm gonna do is explain why it is the media give us all of this anger and in short, three things happened at the exact same time.

First technology developed, allowing us to walk around with small personal computers in our pockets at all times, and the's keep us connected.

But they also serve up the opportunity for us to react in real time to events and cultural things that we never expected.

And we do this without thinking, without breathing, without analyzing, and that is difficult.

All of this technology then led to the second thing, which is that there's now a boatload of money to be made in political media, which means that the number of outlets just exploded.

And with so many options, many Americans are picking the media that confirms what they already believe.

They're selecting media that makes them feel good or makes them feel bad.

And we're becoming addicted to this kind of emotion.

And all this emotion comes in handy for the third thing, which is that we're now polarized in a way that feels new and it feels frightening.

Americans have always been divided, sometimes more than others, but now we have a means by which we are divided further and we can choose the news that splits us and we can sort ourselves on social media.

And this may be beneficial for the outlets who make money from our attention, but it is toxic for the public.

So put together thes three things have made for a very crowded, loud, chaotic and really divisive political media environment.

This environment is not without cost.

And so the next thing I'm gonna do is explain some of the real difficult consequences that come from having a political media system that looks like this now, we've become increasingly mean to one another, and that, to me, is the worst consequence of having too many options.

When we are able to, um, we're able to not only bring good to one another, but also ramp up our insults when these insults can come in the form of very personalized attacks.

And when these attacks start to feel boring, people ramp up the rhetoric even more, and they yell even louder to be heard over the din.

And as a result, in a very worn out American public, either starts to yell louder themselves, or they start to cover their own ears and tune out.

And that leads to another problem.

And that problem is that folks are beginning to lose trust in the political system.

We have heard for 50 years the steady drumbeat of anti government sentiment, and we hear that politicians are liars and that Washington is broken and that the system is rigged.

And when most Americans who aren't political junkies to begin with when they hear the shade being thrown over and over again, they're likely to believe it.

And when Americans lose trust in our system.

They don't participate, they don't vote, they don't get involved and they stop caring.

And when that happens, then the people of the top really do have all of the power.

Yet well, all of these problems are serious, and they are.

We're not powerless.

And so I have some ideas about things that we can do right now that will help calm the chaos and the first thing.

And the overarching thing is turning down the volume of all the media that brings us this chaos.

So thing number one is that we can deny the media the attention they are after when they try to get us angry when they feed us the turmoil.

It's in our own best interest to try and shut it out.

And that means being proactive.

We can unplug.

We can turn off loud, angry pundit shows on cable news, and we can unsubscribe from tip sheets that get emailed to us.

We can delete the push notifications on our phones, and we can not click on incendiary content that just makes us mad.

We can choose instead to seek out journalism that is well sourced and informative.

we can choose to unplug from seemingly innocent platforms that take us down very angry pathways.

I have friends who take Twitter vacations and Facebook holidays, and they come back looking refreshed, as if they've been in a media spa.

I recently read an article about a woman who deleted all of the social media app on her phone and replaced them instead with the real estate app from Zillow.

This meant that when she had free time, all she could do with scroll through houses for sale.

And this feels like a far more cheerful way to spend an afternoon.

Instead of getting angry about Congress, you could ponder the very important question of how you would spend an imaginary $5 million on a suburban colonial outside of Philadelphia or a row house in San Francisco.

And if you feel that you do have to stay plugged in because it would empower you, then do so.

But pick one thing and be passionate about it.

We have to remember that it is not our job to fix the entire political system.

We have to stay in our own lanes, and this means doing the jobs that we actually have been hired to D'Oh and it means letting go of the obligations that are out of our control.

Along those lines weaken support those who are in control.

And this might take a little bit of work because I propose that we become pro politics again and pro politician again.

And we can reject the idea that Washington is totally lost and reject the people who claim that they want to be elected to office because they hate politics.

It doesn't make much sense.

Instead, we should vote for people who say they want to help the country as a whole and seek out candidates who understand that working in government is public service.

We should vote for the people who want to serve the public and not the other way around.

Voting for people who say that they hate Washington is like asking your electrician's in to perform your appendectomy because you don't like doctors.

You may have that first feeling of satisfaction, but in the end the damage will be massive and in addition to that, we have Thio understand that where we are going demands we talk to one another because we may not agree on everything.

But we also won't disagree on everything either.

And this means seeking out discussion with people with whom we might not agree.

You know, what this all means is that if there is an issue about which you feel passionate and someone disagrees with you, we have to learn toe, listen a little bit more and speak to each other a bit more civilly because in truth, our American political system was built a new compromise.

The entire political institutions are all there to share powers and prevent different forms of tyranny by encouraging citizen participation.

But we can't participate if we're busy being angry at one another.

And so we have to talk and we have to find common ground.

And we may have to listen a little harder and retrain our political reflexes a little bit better.

When all of this is behind us, all we will have left are the memories of how we treated one another and the bad memories will endure.

But so too will the good ones.

If we create good ones, we can calm the chaos of American politics by turning down the volume of the political media, and we can continue the debates that we've had for 248 years without the kind of rancor that makes our fellow citizens feel excluded.

And we can disagree without being as disagreeable as we have been.

And if we just take a few steps forward and come together as a whole, I promise we can calm the chaos of the politics that we have, and we will be much healthier and happier for it.

Thank you.