I’ve been rereading the E. J. Dionne classic Why Americans Hate Politics. It was written twenty years ago, so it is somewhat quaint in its optimism about American centrism. Yet, the political history it analyzes almost exactly corresponds to my youth and coming of age, so I find it fascinating.
The Vital Center was Arthur Schlesinger’s term for the polite, nuanced bipartisan consensus that was normative in America between roughly 1950 and 1965. I would not, and Dionne does not, seek to overidealize that era, for it had its blind spots to which I was largely oblivious at the time, as I was a sheltered and privileged child living in the homogeneous world of Midwestern nice. Yet the norms of civility, rationality, and courtesy seemed at the time fully natural and right, and I miss them deeply. People got along, and respectfully debated issues and policies. There was no Twitter. Growing up, I knew all our neighbors but would have neither known nor cared how they, or my friends’ parents, voted.
Admittedly, this was (in retrospect) an inherently elitist framework, that relied on a level of respect for institutions that is nonexistent today, and built on a gently hegemonic Christian culture that took the Golden Rule for granted. Today, autocorrect doesn’t even know the phrase, and suggested Golden Globe, Golden Gate, and Golden Nebraska, the last seeming quite incongruent. That’s how secularized we’ve become, and the erosion of civility has followed as the night the day. But I’m getting ahead of myself, aware of the brevity of my marginal life expectancy.
A recent online article I read argued that those like me whose social values are gently center-right but whose economics are gently center-left are particularly prone to feel betrayed by both parties, and this certainly was my feeling in November 2016. Neither party speaks for me now, but I could live with that if both weren’t playing to the extremes. I deplore the Manichaean, take-no-prisoners mindset that dominates contemporary politics, which externalizes evil and imagines one’s own tribe to be wholly virtuous – which, it seems, includes the “right” to seek the annihilation of the other tribe.
Whether the Founders could have foreseen and circumvented the problem is hard to say. Joseph Ellis (Founding Brothers) argues that the two nascent parties of early America showed tendencies that still exist today: one faction was libertarian in philosophy, the other communitarian. Could the difference have been split somehow? We’ll never know. In parallel America, all is sweetness and light. But you can’t get there from here.
Though the bipartisan era may have been historically anomalous, it’s the way the world was when I was young, and so feels like the natural order of things to me, and I remain deeply nostalgic for it. The story of how we got from that day to this is a sad one, involving the weaponization of regional differences, the rise of the culture wars, the apocalyptic mindset fueled by the sixties, and more. As a result, we now have structural fault lines in our culture that would be very difficult to bridge. So the answer must lie elsewhere.
What I suggest is a local solution. Start by assuming the best about those with whom you disagree. Not all who support Trump are authoritarians. Not all who oppose him are anarchists. Not all Christians are theocrats. Not all atheists are libertines. Not all rural dwellers are hicks and hayseeds. Not all urbanites are rootless narcissists. The young are not all shallow technology addicts. The old are not all curmudgeonly Luddites, though I try. Transcend your prejudices, people.
Next, recognize that Solzhenitsyn was right to assert that the line between good and evil lies right down the middle of every heart, including yours. You have a log in your eye, and removing it is a whole life’s tasking, leaving you little time to imagine that you have the capacity to judge others rightly. Work on your own character; as Chesterton wrote, we don’t achieve sanity until we approach sanctity, and I wish I could write like that.
Last, while some ideas are beyond the pale and with some values there can be no compromise, other humans are not the enemy. My faith tradition says that they are people who bear the image of God, for whom Christ died. Don’t denigrate or disparage them, even if they’re politicians. If you don’t love your brother whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you have not seen? This is difficult, and I often fail at it. But I’m trying. Slog, bog, scooch.
The clock can’t be turned back. The genie of social media is out of the bottle. But hope lies deep within Pandora’s box, if we will but embrace it. Don’t lose heart. Civility is on life support, but it can recover, one heart at a time, one life to another.
Embree's Ruminations 