Stewardship as True Opposition
Guarding against decay, capture, and spectacle
The Value of Debate is Debatable
I have always disliked the term ‘debate’. The debate stage and the art of debating seem inherently flawed to me. They set people out against each other, each supposedly presenting their ideas and arguments for persuasion. Usually, the target of persuasion is an audience of non-participants. The people involved in the debate are assumed to be immune to the arguments and points of their ‘opponents’. And here is one of the great flaws of ‘debate’ – the participants are not approaching each other in a good-faith discussion for mutual benefit and understanding. They are entering into an arena of rhetoric, wielding tactics and committing fallacies as gladiatorial combatants, all to win the approval of the crowd. They play to win, and collect votes, likes, and donations, all to bolster the armament of the most brutish form of manipulative, persuasive might – popularity.
These tools of mass manipulation are wielded to ‘defeat’ others in the debate, and the message no longer matters. Ideas most kind and most vile can be advanced in equal measure by a skilled debater, and they may have utterly dispassionate care for the context of their words, only caring for their value in ‘winning’. This can lead to skilled rhetorical operators generating popularity for extreme and hollow ideas of the most inhumane nature. They do not see the person they are talking to as someone to persuade for a common purpose, but as a foil against which they can display their prowess and persuade others.
Opposition in Times of Crisis
When political violence erupts, we hold our breath. Shock quickly gives way to speculation, accusations, and counteraccusations. Before the facts are even known, the parties scramble to weaponize the moment for advantage. The cries go out for mass reprisals, blaming the political rhetoric, blaming the cultural mood, restricting some rights, arming more of these people, funding more security, and jailing more of those people. There are the tried and tired phrases. The ‘thoughts and prayers’, the ‘lower the temperature’, the ‘this isn’t who we are’, the ‘violence is never acceptable’. Tragedy becomes another case of political theater, with blood on the stage and the same repeated scripts. A spectacle and debate all its own. Division is sharpened, and the public is left more anxious and less trusting than before.
Stewardship sees a different role for opposition. The conversation and argument is not about inflaming faction against faction or using a flourish of words to humiliate others and appeal to humanities inner brute. It is not about using tragedy as ammunition for stoking the partisan war. Opposition, in the Steward’s sense, means protecting the house we all live in. Our shared inheritance, our institutions, and our ability to live together without fear.
The Bankruptcy of Traditional Opposition
For the political parties, ‘opposition’ means obstruction. If one side proposes, the other must oppose. Conversation is seen as weakness, agreement as betrayal, and compromise as failure. Opposition is reduced to the tactics of the debate stage, but on a grander scale and with the highest stakes. The participants reduce opposition to theater, a way of raising money and scoring points in the news cycle.
The results are plain. At best, this shallow form of opposition produces gridlock while problems fester. At worst, it feeds resentment until politics itself becomes a bloodsport. Neither course protects the nation. Both accelerate its decline.
Stewardship demands something more. A steward opposes to preserve what must not be lost. Opposition is not about taking one side or the other out of political expedience or positioning. It is about taking the side of the house, the country and its people, itself.
Three Stewardship Oppositions
Oppositions to Institutional Decay
In moments of crisis, the cracks in our institutions are laid bare. Facts are uncertain, rumors spread. Leaders and adversaries exploit confusion to score an advantage. The result is erosion of trust in the law, the media, our courts, and ultimately in one another.
Stewardship stands against this corrosion. Institutions may be imperfect, but when they collapse, society itself collapses with them. To oppose decay is to insist on truth, transparency, and accountability. It means telling the truth, even when it does not flatter our ‘side’. It means defending due process even when it faces outrage.
Decay is slow, but the results are sudden. The steward’s opposition is a patient refusal to let the beams rot through.
Opposition to Capture
Every time tragedy strikes, the loudest voices are often those with the most to gain. Political operators, influencers, and media empires see chaos as an opportunity. The hotter the outrage, the higher the ratings. The more division, the more leverage.
Stewardship opposes this capture of politics by those who profit from fracture. The work of politics is not to enrich a handful of opportunists. It is to serve the public. When outrage is commoditized, democracy is degraded into a marketplace of grievance. The steward’s opposition is a clear “no” to this exploitation. A refusal to allow the common good to be sold for clicks, contracts, and careers.
Opposition to Politics as Spectacle
In the aftermath of violence, the parties rush to script their stories. Who is to blame? Whose narrative wins? Whose outrage is more justified? Each side crafts its lines, and the public consumes tragedy as entertainment.
Politics is not theater. Lives are not props. Violence is not a script. To turn the nation’s wounds into partisan spectacle is an act of desecration. Not restricted to the victim of the moment, but a desecration to the very sanctity of human life and the values of the American people.
Stewardship opposes this descent into spectacle. The steward insists that politics is not a gladiatorial arena, but the work of care for the citizens, institutions, and the future. The steward refuses to let tragedy become fodder for the circus.
The Guard at the Gate
What does Stewardship opposition look like? Not the gladiator in the arena, fighting for applause. Not the spectator in the stands, cheering for bloody reprisal. The steward is the guard at the gate.
The guard does not relish conflict, but neither does he abandon his post. He does not strike first, nor provoke battle. He reserves force as a last resort. Only to protect the house from destruction and its people from harm. His presence is a reminder that the house is worth defending, and it must not be surrendered to those who would tear it down.
This is the posture Stewardship must take. To oppose what corrodes, exploits, and desecrates. Not out of a reflexive rivalry. Out of a commitment to duty.
Opposition and Rebuilding
Opposition alone will not save us. A house cannot endure if it is only guarded. It must also be repaired. But, without guardianship, there will be no house left to repair.
That is the Steward’s task: to oppose what destroys, and to prepare ground for what builds. To guard against decay, capture, and spectacle, and then to step forward with the tools of restoration.
In a time when our politics tempt us toward violence, faction, and despair, Stewardship offers another way. Opposition, yes. But conversation together, rather than debate against. And always in service to the house, the people who dwell within it, and the generations yet to come.