“A proud man is always looking down on things and people, and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”  —  C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

 

The dictionary defines pride as a high or inordinate opinion of one’s own dignity, importance, and merit. But, unfortunately, my little village, which I have so often romanticized as an oasis of community and respect, has left me anything but proud.

I’ve written about politics from time to time, perhaps with a smug and patronizing feeling that my village of Cambridge, N.Y.,  was beyond (or above) the raging conflicts that seem to be splitting our country apart.

We talk to one another here; we solve problems here. We know one another here.  Or we did.

Over the last few months, I was bumped off that perch by a bitter, divisive, often vicious conflict over the school’s sports name  and symbol – the Cambridge Indians.

For the better part of a year, my town has been torn to pieces by request to retire its sports logo, an Indian warrior with two long feathers protruding from his head.

The struggle illustrates how social media is devastating our civic life, locally as well as nationally, spreading hysteria, lies, hatred, and rage, not dialogue and debate.

This is the kind of struggle breaking out all over America.

Just about every other lawn in the town has sprouted a We Are The Indians! Protect The Pride lawn sign; many lawns had three or four signs.

To me, it was over the top. Does anyone really need four signs to make their point?

It’s worth noting that there are perhaps three times as many signs protecting “The Pride” as urged the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.

I have trouble thinking this issue is three times as important. I would not have chosen it as the most important issue facing our community.

Is all of our pride really invested in this issue right now? Is pride now protected?

The battle to decide the fate of the logo was so bitter and divisive that the school board had to give up and kick the issue to a professional mediator.

The taxpayers (including me)  ended up paying for professional counselors to try and teach the people in my village how to talk to one another, something they seem to have known how to do for hundreds of years.

I wonder how many computers might have been bought for kids who need them with the money the mediator is getting?

The proposal to change the logo was defeated a couple of weeks ago, and now, the mediator has to try and clean up the debris.

I do not envy him or her. This is the classic American conflict of modern times: everyone gets hurt (especially the children who could use some real support for their education), and nobody really wins.

Battles like this in contemporary America are judged by insult, decibels, and a profound sense of self-pity and grievance on both sides. In America, everybody is the victim, win or lose. It’s all about having a video to share,

Lost in the drama is the fact that there are two sides to this issue, as there are to all issues.

The signs drove home to me that what is happening all over America is happening right under my nose, and if not for all those lawn signs, I might have missed it altogether.

This is a jolt of reality. I’m not living in any paradise of community and neighborliness.

We are not all like the Amish. We are just like America.

As the battle intensified and got nastier, I couldn’t help but flashback to 2020.

The pickups with the giant flags were back again, so were the trolling online and threats, the screaming banshees at board meetings, and the ugly and very personal debate that tore the high school apart.

Remind me again, how does this help our children?

There we were, our small village in upstate New York, fighting about cancel culture, elitists, Native American history, racism, and the enormous chasm that has emerged between city people (a/k/a newcomers and outsiders).

There are red and blue people, conservative and progressive people, city people and country people, Republicans and Democrats, and all of the other labels we can’t wait to stick on ourselves and everyone we disagree with.

“Nothing has risen to this level of animosity and anxiety in the community,” School Board President Neil Gifford told a local newspaper, “not even close.”

If Gifford is right, and he seems to be, then something a lot deeper than protecting sports logos is happening. This is the other pandemic that is threatening America.

School board officials said discussion of the logo drew the biggest crowds in school board memory.

I have no interest in writing about this battle.

Still, I have written about the national political cancer that has made it impossible for so many Americans to resolve almost any issue peacefully and rationally.

I asked my neighbor Harold about it; he is a stone’s throw down the road, loves to talk to me, and has four Protect The Pride signs on his lawn.

He said he’s never been to a school board meeting in his life until the logo issue came up, and he doesn’t expect to go to another one. “I told my wife I wasn’t going to let them take our logo away. So  I went to that high school.”

Why four signs, I wondered? “It’s the equivalent of screaming,” he said.

We both knew who “them” was; it was people like me. The issue was equally clear regarding the progressive wing in town: the logo was insensitive and even racist.

Once a conflict like this lifts off and reaches Facebook, there is no stopping it.

It simply runs away with itself. There is no solving it either.

The Internet is now the rocket fuel, the public meetings are just footnotes and video opportunities. Citizens used to talk. Now they record people shouting on their cellphones so they can put it all online.

I want to be honest, don’t feel this issue is central to the life of my town right now. I mean no disrespect to the Native-American community, but it is not central to my life right now either.

I believe Native Americans ought to be the ones to decide what is dehumanizing and offensive or not to them, not urban liberals or country sports lovers and team shooters.  Nobody asked me, and for a good reason. It’s not really my business.

One activist wanted the logo gone; another wanted it to stay.

I can see and feel the tension that sometimes crops up between the “locals” and the most city people that have moved here in recent years.

There isn’t much mixing between those two cultures, but the Trump campaign was a wake-up call in 2016.

I saw how angry many rural people have gotten about how they are seen and treated. To them, this was a classic assault on their values by more elitists from New York and Washington.

If you could draw a chip on a shoulder, this one would disappear up into the clouds.

I don’t tell other people what to do, and frankly, as an outsider and refugee, I can’t see telling my neighbors what kind of logo they should choose for their sports team.

Until now, I would have assumed they will work it out, as they always have. But we never had Twitter and Facebook before or the private chat rooms that pop up to keep everyone outraged.

The pride signs made me appreciate the Amish, who have found a radical and almost miraculous way of avoiding that kind of conflict. In 500 years, that culture has never experienced a single one.

The issue of using Native American images and symbols is not a local issue but a national one.

And it is important.

After years of  conflict, the Washington Redskins have stopped calling themselves “redskins.” In 2019, Maine because the first state to ban Native American names and imagery for sports mascots in all of its public schools.

I did some research, and it’s important to note that many schools across the country adopted Indian logs in the 1940s and 1950’s when many Native Americans fought gallantly in World War II.

The athletes and coaches who embraced these images thought of Native American soldiers/warriors as heroic and fierce Society were also beginning to reassess the narrative about Native Americans.

Today, the sensitivities and perceptions are different, and Indian activists have been lobbying since the late 1960s to drop them. They are viewed as unhealthy stereotyping, the wrong image for the Indian nation.

Defenders of the logos don’t believe they are dehumanizing.

The issue has become a Red-Blue state issue, as most issues are becoming.

It was sad for me to see and hear and read about the ugliness of the arguments in this village, the inability to listen, the refusal so far to compromise,  the death threats and vicious e-mails, and the inability of one side to grasp the intense feeling of the other.

Harold confirmed what I suspected; the social divisions between the new people and the people who have lived here for many years were smoldering below the surface, and the logo issue just lit the match.

I would also argue that Trumpism has legitimized this kind of civic victimization and debate, modeling it more on professional wrestling than Jeffersonian democracy.

The two worlds collided here. The supporters of the logo chose pride as their motto. The critics talked about diversity and suggested racism.

The mostly ex- city people wanted to “cancel” the logo. Of course, that infuriated many local people. But, if you watch Fox News, you know that the world has been primed for that explosion.

There is a lot more talk on right-wing radio about Dr. Seuss than health care.

On the other hand, idealistic “progressives” never seem to learn that they cannot ram their values down the throat of proud and independent people without doing much homework and legwork.

Nobody guessed at a depth of feeling.

The move to cancel the logo was overwhelmingly defeated, as were the two school board candidates supported that move.

Don’t kid yourself into thinking that’s the end of it. The major accomplishment of the struggle seems to be anger and hurt.

The wounds are deep and painful since nobody changes their minds anymore or ever acknowledges being wrong. The function of debate is not to change minds but to shout louder than anyone else and get on Facebook.

I saw the ghosts of  Trump and Trumpism and partisanship everywhere. Rage, grievance, and giant flags. I can’t see a winner in this new civic model, only losers.

As a parent, I wonder: Is the school better?

Are Native Americans pleased with the outcome, as the opponents of the ban claim? Were they really at risk of being “canceled” by my little village if the logo was changed?

It will take a while to assess the damage. However, we see one another often here, and there will be chances to talk face-to-face.

I have come to love living in my village. We are a community; we do care for one another.

But I will never jump into or participate in a bitter conflict that way; it is almost treasonous to me. Moreover, it is the very opposite of civic duty or rational discourse.

On Memorial Day, I spent hours remembering the hundreds of thousands of men and women who gave their lives so we could live freely and resolve our differences in a civil and trusting way.

Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. That is the sacred trust, the point of our Constitution.

I will never forget the small army of big men in trucks that rushed to pull me out of my overturning car last winter as I dangled over an icy ravine, unable to open the door.

Nobody asked me where I came from or who I voted for; or worried about being sued, they just came running and pulled me out of my car and hung around until they were sure I was all right.

We don’t live in the Amish way, but I believe that caring is the country way. I told the State Trooper who showed up that I’d probably have starved to death in the car by now if this had happened in New Jersey.

We are not like the Amish, and we are not a patriarchal culture, and we don’t teach our children absolute obedience from the time they can talk and walk.

Democracy is, in large measure, about fighting, negotiating, compromise,  good faith, and accepting occasional loss.

The last four elements seem to be in trouble in much of the country, and they didn’t do too well in my remote enclave of the community either.

Protecting the Pride was angry and in their faces more than it was proud. I’m not sure just yet what I’m supposed to be proud of.

If we can no longer talk to each other, it can’t work. I wonder if the consequences of this are obvious to the people doing all the shouting. They are not doing their kids any favors.

Do we now need mediators to pass a school budget? Or paint the dividing lines white?

I suppose the most we can hope for is that it awakens us here to the awful danger of becoming what we see on the news every day – enraged, bitter, self-righteous people who have forgotten how to see one another as human beings or listen to one another with dignity and respect.

Community, say the shrinks, is what most people yearn for. Unfortunately, this is not the way to preserve it.

The fight over the logo may have just ended two hundred years of civil and workable democracy here in this little village.

Was this really the issue that was worth that? Is any single issue worth that?

We are learning outside our boundaries that God can’t be on the side of everyone. Democracy requires losers and winners to work.

We will have to work things out safely and with respect or go the way of many other arrogant and morally corrupt societies.

When I came to this town, I came here for good, and I will die here.

This is my home, and it is everything I imagined it could be. I love the mountains, the farms, and most of all, the people. They are good people.

I’m not a fan of big men in big trucks with big flags. They don’t signal listening or compassion to me—too much testosterone.

For me, pride is not just a poster on a lawn.

Pride is the way I treat other people and the way they treat me. Pride is empathy for others beyond me. Pride is listening, not shouting. Pride is treating others with respect.

Pride is understanding – the Amish are inspiring in this way –  good people can see the world differently than me, and I can learn from them.

To me, this is what America has often, if not always, been about.

That’s the dream.

If we fail in this, we will come to live in a world with no winners or losers, punch drunk fighters swollen with rage and grievance, taking turns beating each other into the ground while our values crumble.

There’s no pride in that.