We hide the truth behind violence and blind justifications. And yet our fears make the danger all the greater for those seeking the truth.
Reading this morning that two more pipe bombs were prevented from being delivered to prominent Democrats, media, and civilians chills me to the bone. It leaves me fearful and confused; frustrated and emboldened. And as a Christian, I feel so divided.
But the first thing, before all other things, is to pray.
So I pray for the victims.
No, none have gone off, but they are still victims of a kind of violence. Victims of a menace and an unraveling of personal safety. So I pray for them.
And I pray for those protecting them. Those investigating the crimes. And even those perpetrating the crime—that they see the sin in their hearts for what it is and repent.
But I don’t stop there.
I pray for all those distantly connected through political affiliations. Those who are, like me, reading this on laptops and phones, following all the twists and turns, devising theories and explanations. I pray for all of us who can’t help ourselves.
And I pray for those who can’t handle division. Who see our disagreements as the poison in American politics rather than our lifeblood. Those who can’t tell the difference between good and healthy debate and attempts to distort and manipulate.
I pray for our free speech warriors who protect Nazis and those trying to stop the heinous evil of white nationalist ideology.
I pray for those so afraid of division that they’d throw away their world for the appearance of safety.
These prayers come from me so regularly that I can’t tell whether I’m speaking about other people or just me.
Then I get perspective.
I don’t just mean we wait until all the facts come out. I also mean I get a better hold of our context. The context from which these facts originate.
This is an abnormal sequence of events coming during an abnormal presidency. This should be a starting place free of so much spin and justification. No need to defend what isn’t pejorative. This is an unusual moment.
A moment exacerbated by the unusual rejection of our common space, our common sources of information, our common agreements for behaviors. This isn’t only about the breaking of norms, but the breaking of norms is central to this moment.
And this leaves us in a space in which division seems unresolvable. Not because we are so different or because of our tribalism per se. But because we cannot trust that we will meet one another at the commonplace. We cannot come to an agreement if we cannot agree on how to agree.
So our division looks more intense, and our fear of a dwindling political center more troubling because the centerpiece of negotiation is the will to negotiate.
And the will disappears with the norms and common spaces.
Spaces we’re rejecting. Unequally.
The third thing to do is to learn.
Learning requires listening. So that disqualifies too many of us.
And while we put a lot of emphasis on a diversity of reading, bringing in information from a variety of sources, we generally think of this dualistically. Or, more precisely, asking is the left reading conservative sources? This too much reinforces the framework of division, rather than a framework of cooperation.
So rather than listen to both liberal and conservative sources, read widely from reputable sources. Don’t dismiss historical publications for their political leanings, but read The Nation and The Economist alongside the Times and the Post. Bias isn’t the same problem that confusing fact from opinion is.
The fourth thing — teach.
I don’t mean we should “school” our political opponents. But share what we’re learning. Because we don’t just have a deficit in learning, we have a deficit of sharing what’s real.
Opinions aren’t facts.
Neither are opinions the same as reasoned, supported arguments.
Opinions are just our random thoughts and deeply-held beliefs.
Yet today, we let all things be equal.
But they aren’t.
And we’re letting the potentially true sit next to the demonstrably true as equals.
To protect only our egos. Not our children.
The fifth thing — reject violence and fascism.
We all know that sending bombs in the mail is wrong.
But rather than wrestle with the nature of violent acts like these, we put them into three boxes for safekeeping.
One box is the “disturbed individual” who has been riled up by his circumstances box. Here, some sick person isn’t getting the help he needs or mistakes a rhetorical call to arms as a real call to arms. But otherwise, there is nothing which can be done. Crazy’s gonna crazy.
A second is the bad apple box. In here we place the singular actor (and only one in all the world) as a truly bad guy, so fundamentally warped that there is literally nothing we could have done because evil’s gonna evil.
The third box isn’t for the bomb maker but the pundit class. We toss in anyone trying to make sense of this as biased, politically-motivated, or opportunistic. Crisis actors, “false flags”, and other conspiratorial garbage is offered next to told-you-sos about the president’s rhetoric.
But these never get at the root. Nor do they truly get at how abnormal this is. How far it is from acceptable.
We’re talking real violence. Something we all must reject and condemn without moderation.
We must be clear. And yet our rejection isn’t located at the principle, but the principals. Not the violence, but the perpetrator. Or at the hatred, but the haters.
The political machine takes over, we put it through the left/right sorting machine, shout about what to do, muddy the water, and then go back to business, retreating to a new normal. Hating, divided, refusing to listen or learn. Confused and isolated from the big picture.
Returning and forgetting to do the base level: to agree to reject violence. Not the violence of both as if it must all be equal, but the violence which terrorizes differently, always individually… the very least we could do.
Half a world away…
While authorities look for a crazy bomber, tossing him into one of the bins before he’s even identified, a midterm election is around the corner. And yet another election south of the border should be on our radar.
The Brazilian election is producing a lot of anxiety for democracy watchers in the world. A real-life fascist is leading in the polls. (Read some of the truly horrifying things he’s supporting.)
But what strikes me most is why he’s ahead. How could the people of Brazil even flirt with the idea?
The center-right economics of the disgraced majority party failed to provide for the people or protect them. Corruption has turned off everyone to the existing parties. Historic partisanship hasn’t led to a sudden majority, rallying around the diverse and confusing idea of protecting democracy. The political world is in chaos. Too much like Europe. And too much like here.
Jair Bolsonaro won’t offer them anything better than they have (and in many ways, objectively worse). But that isn’t the deciding factor. The right failed. And now the country is going further right.
It isn’t sane, rational, or equal.
We aren’t staring at the mirror reflections of two identical truths.
It’s the fog of confusion and justification, not the clarity of reason.
Unequal
In “F-Bombs and Real Bombs,” Michelle Goldberg lays it plain in ways we refuse. Our sensitivity to decency and proclivity for civility makes the naked truth hard to speak.
Real violence and rhetoric aren’t the same things.
And in our country, that’s a lopsided affair.
No justifications. It shouldn’t be “political” to say as much.
It also isn’t opinion when it is demonstrably provable.
We can’t agree to disagree about objective truth.
So why is that so difficult to say? Why do we work so hard to make it be anything else?
With a suspect in custody, one so obviously predictable it exposes the “false flag” rumblings to be the red herrings we always knew they were. The water-muddying, confusion-inspiring distraction to send us off the case. Make sure we know it could be something else.
A possibility held up as equal to the probability.
Or a possibility held up against the demonstrable truth.
Unequal, but pretending to be the same.
The lie offered as tantamount to the truth. Obscured and incomprehensible.
A conviction held and easily justified.
A false flag to explain away actual pipe bombs. And a truth too easily faked by the disingenuous delusion that all of this is normal by half. And its the other half that’s pure fiction.
But then its also all true and all fake.
And we are left with Proud Boys, pipe bombs, and the strange sudden creep of fascism. Cast as normal by half. Equal. Just someone’s opinion. As good as truth.
And this? The pathetic ramblings of a partisan. Citing truth and traditional sources. As useless as opinion.
It must all be equal. Otherwise, we’d have to admit that it isn’t. And that some of us really want it that way.