Martin Luther King would have been 88 today. We celebrate this even as Donald J Trump ascends the steps of the White House in a smog of controversy and divisiveness. Some choose to ignore this; others choose to protest it; others are quite happy about it; many don't know what to think or what to do.
The threats we face today are remarkable in their subtlety. Has Trump armed a White House cabinet with men (and a select few women) who are intelligent, successful, balanced and fair? Or has he created a hitsquad that will tear down every last pillar of progress from the last century? What if it were a little of both? In the absence of real facts, how do we weigh one shade of gray against another?
I made the mistake of attending a Democratic party town hall meeting today which was billed as a consolidation of the "Progressive response to Trump." It was surreal—the place was packed, and the crowd was buzzing. People whooped and yelled at every clever quip the politicians could feed us. It was a deep shade of blue. What I took away from it, though, was not that these leaders had some sensical and balanced way to address the issues we face; it was that some people in this country think we're at war. They insist on escalation over conversation, they insist on rhetoric over less politically exciting but more substantial solutions. They relish the opportunity to skewer their opponents across the aisle, rather than admitting that those people must be part of the solution.
I get it: we can't continue to allow institutionalized hate. But if we don't start with the fact that some people disagree on the existence of institutionalized hate (and I'm not one of them, in case that needed clarification), then all we're doing is swinging a hammer. And if that's all we're doing, then someday the other guy's just gonna find a bigger hammer to hit us with, and we'll all die bloody.
It seems to me that when we look for solutions, we always run straight to the white house, and if we keep doing that, we'll always be 20 years behind the problem. Either we recognize that conversation is the answer, or we choose to be content living with the problem. And effective conversations don't start with "you're wrong, you're evil, you're stupid, here's why."
Unfortunately—and this is the crux of the issue—conversation can't happen when you never come into contact with the people you need to be talking to. Thus, for those of us in deep blue counties (like me), my hunch is that we will never contribute constructively to solutions to our nation's deep political divide, and "taking action" in the way that our leaders encourage us to do can only dig the line deeper in the sand—something that will only push our country further apart.
So what do we do now? I've signed up for action emails, I've signed petitions, I've called my senator to complain about the electoral college and Trump's cabinet picks, I've gone to political rallies—I've done all the things the self-righteous partisans have told me to do.
One thing I haven't done, though, is leave the city. I have yet to set foot in rural America to try to understand what life is like in the 3,500,000 square miles of our country that aren't cities, where people live in what might as well be a different country, buying different groceries from different grocery stores in different cars wearing different clothes than me. I have yet to see what children learn in a public middleschool in a dying town in the Rust Belt. I have yet to see what men and women do after work in a town with dirt roads and a double hitching post. I have yet to spend a night with a family who has never met a Muslim, shaken hands with a Jew, or worked with a black. There is much that I do not know.
And I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a one-way ticket out to Paris, IL, that I don't have a plan. But let's at least agree on something: Until we're ready to step outside the city (or into it, if you're reading from the other side of the divide)—until we're ready to look at our own arguments and admit that, ok, maybe we're not 100% right about everything, and maybe all our answer don't work for all the people—we're not going to fix anything. In other words, the solution IS NOT, NOR WILL EVER BE, declaring war on our fellow citizens, trying to block their votes in Washington and our state capitals, going above them to try to impose our will from the top down. The solution IS NOT, NOR WILL EVER BE, proclaiming that 50% of our electorate is too stupid to know what's good for them, that they were duped and that they'll pay. The solution IS NOT, NOR WILL EVER BE, pushing away with the rhetoric of resistance and revolution the very brothers and sisters we need to embrace and better understand.
Please have the courage to see past the fiery partisan speeches and bandwagoning; please renounce self-righteousness; please don't ever say your political opponents are idiots, are too stupid to understand, are too ignorant to "get it"; please look each person in the eye before you decide he is your enemy.
#MLK2017