The new Marvel comic-inspired movie “Captain America” is out, to generally loving reviews. It is two and a half-hours long, and it is supposed to reflect the divisiveness and intensity of our political years. I’m going to see it this afternoon, I groaned for several years about the gargantuan, loud and plot-challenged genre of comic book movies, but they have grown on me.
Like the country, I have evolved culturally and I find these movies long, fun and something much more thoughtful than I imagined. So I’ll go to see this one and write about it. Yesterday, a long-time blog reader messaged me to say she was having a conflict with a fellow member of her church over Donald Trump.
“It started, of course,” she wrote, “with a comment on Facebook, and things got out of hand (she does not care for Mr. Trump) and her friend – we’ll call her Judy – called their pastor, rather than her, because she didn’t think the two of them talk about it.
“We had a meeting last night,” she wrote, “with me feeling a bit like a 2nd grader being called into the principal’s office because of a playground squabble.” She couldn’t understand why the woman would not contact her, but “this woman is a rabid Trump supporter and I am open and honest about criticizing him.”
Judy’s feeling were hurt, she said, because she criticized Trump so strongly.
The story made an impression on me, as I have gotten many similar messages, from people who support Donald Trump and people who don’t. Especially after I wrote about learning to live with conflict, something many of us will be familiar with before this year is out. If this is happening in a church community between two people who obviously care for one another, I can only imagine what’s ahead. My column, she said, helped her “to see things more clearly from this woman’s perspective and I am grateful for that.”
It was a lovely and honest message to get.
I will be thinking about this issue for some time I imagine. Donal Trump is, by choice and admission, a divisive figure. So we are divided.
In the interests of openness, I need to say that I can’t vote for Donald Trump, it doesn’t matter what he says from now on, I doubt I’ll be able to forget what he has already said about women and Mexicans and immigrants and mass deportations and families.
Many people, including those born Jewish or into other conflicts and butchery, process talk of mass deportations and expulsions in a particular way, it is never simply a political argument in a debate. For many people, in many different countries, at many different times, it was all too real.
Still, I will also understand that everyone processes ideas differently, and no one should be the prisoner of my experience, or even of their own. We all have to look in the mirror in the morning and like what we see. I have already lost a friend or two simply because I wrote that I planned to vote for Hilary Clinton. In our country right now, we seem to need to hate what we disagree with, an awful fever.
I am not much of a hater, I don’t plan to hate Donald Trump or the people who support him, I imagine that he, like Mrs. Clinton, think they are doing the right thing, and believe they are doing the best they can. And I don’t plan to argue with people about their choices, surely not on Facebook or by e-mail. That is a poison unto itself.
In our culture, stating a political preference, no matter how gently, is considered heinous, I am used to it, and will certainly not be deterred by it. I am not writing as a political advocate, I have no need to tell you what to think or to be told what to think. I don’t care to hear who you hate or don’t hate, it is not really my business.
We are all responsible for what we do and decide, I consider the process to be personal. This is part of learning how to live in our world, the path to enlightenment.
I have this instinct that this year will be healthy in a number of ways, despite the hysteria of the media. Democracy is neither pretty or neat, and it is far better to rage on Facebook than run through the streets with torches. Many people are unhappy and resentful, and many have good reasons, and my plan is to stick with my instincts and convictions while doing the best to understand the passions of others, just like my reader has done.
If I inspired her, she inspired me.
So off to see what Captain America has to say about this, and perhaps it will be fun also. Maybe I will come home with some sushi at the new Japanese restaurant down the road. If it seems worth it, I’ll write a review.