How can we tone down the angry political talk in this country and get to a point where we regularly speak civilly to, and about, people on “the other side”?
Not that we’ve ever had a “golden age” in this country, a time when all of us weighed our words, swallowed the more venomous ones we thought, and substituted expressions more palatable to listeners’ ears.
Even in the halls of Congress, where legislators are supposed to observe decorum in their deliberations and their interactions with others, we sometimes hear vicious, nasty utterances.
In 1856, for example, abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner (R, Massachusetts) was severely beaten with a walking stick by Rep. Preston Brooks (D, South Carolina) after Sumner delivered a vituperative, two-day denunciation of slavery and slave-holders (www.senate. gov/artandhistory/senate-stories/ charles-sumner-after-the-caning.htm).
The caning, delivered while Sumner sat at his desk in the U.S. Senate chamber, left the Senator unconscious and badly hurt. He almost lost his life.
No question Brooks was in the wrong there. Whatever ugly, vulgar statements come our way, the adult reaction is to reply with less offensive words or, if that’s not possible, to simply walk away.
Doing so doesn’t make one look weak; it reveals one to be the grown-up in a confrontation.
Yes, Brooks was wrong. But Sumner didn’t come off looking great either. Slavery was an emotional issue, on both sides of the argument. Only a few years after the Brooks-Sumner confrontation, a bloody civil war erupted in this country.
No, I don’t mean Sumner should have spoken in favor of slavery. Of course not.
But what he might have done was to recognize that those who thought differently than he on the issue were human beings, with real feelings and probably different life experiences than he.
Sumner might have calmly tried to help Brooks and others see enslaved Blacks as fellow humans and offered to work with Southern Whites to seek an amicable way to end slavery, without the devastating war that occurred.
Abraham Lincoln showed us the right way to think about those on the “other side” when, in his Second Inaugural address, he advocated treating the losers in the Civil War “with malice toward none, with charity for all.”
I’m preaching to myself here, as much as to others. I sometimes make unkind statements about those whose politics I disagree with.
My church teaches me I should respect every human being, simply because he/she is human. I haven’t always practiced that principle.
Donald Trump is one person I find it hard to respect.
I do have great respect for the office he currently holds, however. I just wish every occupant of the Presidency were worthy of the high esteem that position merits.
But we’re dealing with human beings, so perfection is neither expected or even possible. At least some of our Presidents have probably done the best they knew how to do at the time.
In Trump’s case, one reason I find it hard to respect him is that he often shows little respect for other people. For anyone he believes has “wronged” him (i.e., stood up for the rule of law to oppose some action by him), his instinct is to seek revenge. Forgiveness and understanding apparently don’t come easily to him.
The only way I can find charity in my heart for Trump is to imagine him as he must have been as a small child: unsure, trying to figure out where he “fits” in life, striving desperately to please his distant, cold father.
Sadly, he seems to have emulated that father. But failure on his part doesn’t release me from the need to respect his humanity (well hidden as it often seems to be).
I don’t let him “off the hook” for the way he flouts laws and treats his perceived enemies with cruelty.
But I will try harder to feel less malice toward him. Hatred harms the hater as much as, or more than, the hated.