Yesterday, I wrote a piece about President Trump’s decision to hold up a Bible at a nearby church after demonstrators had been gassed and sound-grenaded away.
The piece drew a large response on my blog comments, and via Facebook sharing, and one of the messages caught my eye. It was from someone named Sally:
Another example of why there is so much division in this country…sorry. – Sally.
I replied to Sally this way:
“Sally, you should never feel sorry for having an opinion that differs from mine. Division, in my mind, is not about having our own feelings.
The division comes from criticizing people for having theirs.
No one is forcing you to read my blog, but I am not unhappy that you have a different idea than I do, and you’ve got me thinking, which is the point.”
Sally got me thinking about one of the big questions in our country today: what does it mean to divide?
Having different opinions is what we are about here in America. Sally shouldn’t ever have to apologize for hers, and I shouldn’t ever have to apologize for mine.
Being an American to me means, or should mean, that you don’t ever have to apologize for your beliefs.
The idea was always that we respect each other’s opinions, we don’t punish them for them or hate them for them, we don’t treat people who differ as enemies.
It gets divisive when Sally suggests I am damaging the country because I believe something she doesn’t believe.
I asked her if she was suggesting we all must have the same opinions to be united? That is an impossible dream, it never has happened, it never should happen.
I asked her what it was that she was sorry about, her beliefs or mine? That would make a more useful post.
I doubt Sally will respond to me but I do thank her for getting me to think.
I think it’s important to consider how I react to people who disagree with me.
First of all, I am not exactly CNN or Fox News. I don’t think I’m in the dividing the country category.
I do believe that President Trump is dividing the country, it is clear by now that dividing the country is his cornerstone political strategy, it helped get him elected and he hopes it will help get him re-elected.
Trump feeds off the grievances of working-class white men and rural Americans. That was and is his political agenda.
Many Democrats feed off the grievances of African-Americans, women, and Latinos. And many people who call themselves progressives despise people who disagree with them.
We are a country of aggrieved people, many of whom think their suffering is unique, and that no one else suffers much. We all believe we stand on the high ground.
The real issue is that the grievances of these groups – they are different in many ways – are very genuine. Rural Americans are suffering. So are many women. African-American grief and pain and suffering is wrenching and very much on display this week.
The tragedy is not that we disagree, but that these groups have been turned against one another for decades, and that is how one percent of Americans control nearly 40 percent of the wealth. We have learned to see a difference as something hateful.
They make sure we don’t listen to one another. Divided, everyone is weaker, they stay strong and rich.
One day, a leader may figure out how to convince these people that they have much more in common than the things that divide them. Lots of them can’t breathe in many ways and are struggling even more now.
I hope that one day Sally understands that she has nothing to be sorry about because she has a different political idea than I do. Nor does she need to turn me into someone who is harming our country because we don’t always agree.
Trump draws a lot of anger because he is eager to show that he is a divider, is proud of it, and displays it almost daily. He also is especially cruel in the way he communicates to people and about them. Accusing a critic of murder without a shred of evidence is a lot more divisive than Sally’s post.
I fantasize sometimes about the good he could do for people with his 80 million Twitter followers. Every day, we could save a house from a bank, rebuild from fires, support businesses that were burned out in the rioting.
As Americans, we could reach out to help people, it doesn’t matter how they vote. Wouldn’t that help unite the country?
But this is who the President is, and I don’t hate him for it. I don’t need to go there. I don’t have to love him either.
That doesn’t make me a radical social deviant or social criminal. I live around people who love President Trump. We get along fine.
Nor is Sally or anyone else a social criminal for supporting him.
I do need to express my own truth in my own space. I think we divide by hating each other for being honest, and for telling our own truth. We start the reconciliation by learning to listen, not argue, or attack.
I can’t always love the people on the other side of my values, but I don’t need to hate them either.
That is what it means to be divided.
Jon, I have been reading your blog for years, mostly just love the way you write about your world and how you have found your place in it. It has been surprising, interesting, and kind of fun to read your thoughts, your truth…and witness your courage to share it all about the current events of the day.
I would like to share this, I don’t think Mr. Trump has divided the folks in this country, we have always been divided along one set of lines or the other. I do believe, however, in line with the true demagogue that he is, he has exploited, exposed, and manipulated those divisions to a painful, and sometimes terrifying place. Conversations, like the one’s you have inspired with your writing, are the antidote, none of us feel the same way about anything….and that is ok.
As alway, thank you for your writing.
Thanks Chris for that wise message, I also feel that Trump is a symptom, not the cause. Only a broken country could elect him in the first place, this would have happened sooner or later..
True that.
Is “Divide and Conquer” appropriate here? I often wonder what Mr. Trump’s end goal is. He has me so upset all the time with his untruths. I doubt that his supports would approve raising their children to behave that way.
This is going to be along and messy haul…got to stay centered
Powerful message! Thank you again (I feel like you write my thoughts). It was interesting that Governor Cuomo today mentioned the passage from the Bible (Mark 3:25) that says “If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”
Yes, I thought that was no accident..
I think if someone dared to make a chart comparing our current times to when Hitler came to power, we would be scared for our freedoms. The freedom to speak freely without resorting to violence is disappearing. We have had three years under a divisive leader who calls people names and belittles them in tweets. Someone who fires people for speaking the truth. I keep trying to hold on to my faith in our system of government because otherwise I would be looking to move elsewhere. I have an LBGT child and fear for their safety. They can’t change who they were born as any more than I a heterosexual could live as a homosexual if that was the rule of law or society.
Deborah, I’m not there with the Hitler comparisons, I think we are very far from that. But the behavior is disturbing..
Your words are the words of a man who is wise. Every citizen in America is entitled to their own opinion. We are not nor should we be robots. The crime isn’t having a different opinion, the crime is when a person is of the belief that everyone should think the same way. That happens in a non democratic state. Thank you for making that point so well. You pointed out so perfectly that in order for the division that is pulling us apart to be repaired we need a compassionate leader who wants to lead us irregardless of our opinions. You are making us think. Our country was based on the ideals of thinking men. We aren’t perfect but we can be better by listening and thinking. I appreciate your thoughts. Thank you.
Hey Jon,
What if it is not that we disagree, but HOW we choose to share our disagreements with eachother that is the sticking point? What if Sally was apologizing for her disagreement because she has seen you be less than kind to people who have disagreed with you on this blog in the past?. But, also what if you were less than kind because those people were nasty to you in their sharing of their disagreement?!! You accept kind disagreement and respond in kind all the time. My thought is that people disagree in the nastiest of ways these days. It’s not the what but the how??
Thanks Mary, wise post I think.
Thanks Jon. You always have a way of seeing things, of being fair, and allowing people to express themselves with acceptance, too bad we all aren’t more open minded! I appreciate your stance and attempt at non-judgement. We are not here to judge, but to live our lives the best we can, and in such a way to make our life worth living, and you two have my utmost respect, I always appreciate your point of view.
Thanks Jon. I really appreciate your point of view. I don’t always agree but I always lean something new and get fresh ideas to ponder. The plight of your local cafe, the elders and their caregivers at the Mansion, the HS class of 2020.
About Sally’s “sorry”. She’s not sorry. It’s a colloquialism masking criticism. It has nothing to do with Sally apologizing for her beliefs being different than yours.
“Sorry, but you are an idiot for believing that.” “Sorry buddy, you are wrong.” Sorry, not sorry.
Instinctively we feel criticized as a person, not just for our ideas. Once I figured that out it made it easier to respond without being triggered.
Please keep writing as you are offering a much needed rural perspective.