I’m reading A Promised Land, by Barak Obama, which brings current my process, begun in 2009, of reading at least one book by or about every United States President, beginning with David McCullough’s biography, Truman.
I was
getting into Facebook about that same time, and quickly was drawn into the
partisan belligerence that so characterizes that medium. I’m ashamed to say
that I participated fully in the put-downs and the name-calling.
But
something in me (my “God-in-Christ Link”, maybe?) kept bothering me about the
animosity manifested in my Facebook posts, something wanting to strike out “in
kind” against the negative, degrading posts filled with hostility and
disrespect.
The books
by and about Presidents called me in a different direction. Within the first few
books I became aware that each President had something positive about his term
and I initiated a conscious effort to find at least one significantly positive
contribution by each President. As one might expect, that effort proved more difficult
in some cases than in others; nevertheless, I have been able to find some good
in each of the dozen Presidents from 33 through 45.
That effort
was partly penance for the animosity of my early participation in the mindless political rants on social media—my indulgence in what, for the most part, remains
a pooling of ignorance.
I wasn't denying the deep problems within in the American ethos—the serious insider threats. But Facebook
is not the problem. It’s a dipstick that measures the problem. Furthermore, I’m aware
that my own experience there is biased: fewer than 20% of my 400+ online “friends”
share my liberal perspective. I rarely see a balanced conversation; nevertheless,
the elephant in the room remains: a deeply divided nation, catalyzed by extremist
groups and riding the crest of a rigid, tribal, binary mentality created and
nurtured by intentional use of distortions and misrepresentations of truth.
I found a
different mentality in the easy camaraderie between the five (now four) living
former presidents, including both Bushes, Carter, Clinton and Obama. A recent story
relates a request made from President-elect Obama to President Bush during the
transition between their respective tenures. Obama requested a get-together
with the other four still living Presidents.
Mr. Bush
cordially granted the request, and set up a luncheon at the White House. For
two hours the three former Presidents and the outgoing one shared their wisdom
and experience with the new kid on the block. I marked the reported cordiality
and candor with which those five men related to one another. The disagreements
that typified their political affiliations did not lead them into the mutual condemnation
so common in political exchanges today.
Then, late
in the afternoon of January 20, three of the remaining four from that White
House luncheon (President Carter was ill) gathered to offer their support and
availability to the new POTUS. In their interview, President Obama shared that
they indeed had had their disagreements—even bitter disagreements, but they never forgot their common commitment to building “a more
perfect union.”
That theme
appears in the early pages of Obama’s book, A Promised Land. As Mr.
Obama describes his first days as a United States Senator, he notes of a kind
of collegiality that transcended the ideological differences. He writes:
“The
old bulls of the Senate—Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch, John Warner and Robert
Byrd, Dan Inouye and Ted Stevens—all maintained friendships across the aisle,
operating with an easy intimacy that I found typical of the Greatest
Generation. The younger senators socialized less and brought with them the
sharper ideological edge that had come to characterize the House of
Representatives after the Gingrich era. But even with the most conservative
members, I often found common ground: Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn, for example, a
devout Christian and an unyielding skeptic of government spending, would become
a sincere and thoughtful friend, our staffs working together on measures to
increase transparency and reduce waste in government contracting.”[1]
While I am
conversant with Generational Theory, I hadn’t made any application specific to political styles and character. After reading that paragraph, I remembered
the bitterness with which Robert Taft and Harry Truman fought during “working
hours,” only to leave the bitterness on the table when the working day was
over.
That same
generation spawned people like Bill Buckley Jr., whose verbosity and wit could
rip a guest to shreds during his television talk show, then he’d take his
victim to dinner (Gore Vidal notwithstanding)..
But then
came the “Me Generation,” AKA the “Entitled Generation”, and Generation X, and
somewhere in that transition we the people lost our ability to remain civil in
our disagreements.
Disagreement,
when approached with the right spirit and information and communication skills,
can produce positive and effective resolutions. But a significant portion of the
current generation doesn’t want resolution, it wants confirmation and absolute
conformity.
A thin
line separates commitment and obstinacy, conviction and arrogance, assurance
and blind dogmatism. That line is all that separates civility and barbarism. Some
of today’s ideologues are oblivious to that line and unwilling to accept any
possibility that they may be wrong about anything. When presented with facts,
they simply declare alternative facts and continue their merry way. Truth and
reality have no meaning for them. They simply fabricate their own truth and
reality.
And so we
have a raid on our nation’s capitol on January 6—a mob in full tantrum mode
because they didn’t get their way.
In
conflict resolution I always begin by asking both parties, “Do you really want
to resolve the issue between you, or do you just want to win the fight?”
The
January 6 riot was the residue of three generations of letting somebody else
take care of the nation—three generations of apathy that produced a
frighteningly large population of entitled people who just want to win the
fight. They may be unreachable.
OF
COURSE they don’t
represent an entire generation. OF COURSE they don’t represent mainstream
conservatism or liberalism. They represent the apathy and complacency of a reasonable
majority which is capable, when we set their minds to it, of resolving almost
any disagreement. The conservative English statesman and philosopher, Edmund
Burke, wrote, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men
to do nothing.” We the people have done nothing far too long.
We have
been reminded a number of times since January 6 that Democracy is fragile, and
that it is, and always will be, a work in progress: a work toward “a more
perfect union”. If our “more perfect union” ever is realized, it will be
completely bi-partisan, acknowledging that there is some good in virtually
every person and group and ideology.
That’s how
it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.
Together in the Walk,
Jim
