Puzzling Our Politics
I have always paid attention to politics. My parents- Democrat and Republican- drilled into us that participating in the political life of city and country was an obligation as well as a privilege. Over decades I have voted rigorously. I have supported candidates of both parties as well as non-partisan candidates.
As I watch and listen to this year's frequently impolitic political discourse, I am troubled by what I hear. I am worried for my children and grandchildren about the direction we Americans are headed. I am not a bellicose person. By nature I want to listen, converse and understand. Not necessarily agree.
The statement I hear that most disturbs me as autumn and the election approach is the one in which people say "The election will be fair and honest if we win it. If we lose the election was rigged." The implications of such a statement are breathtaking. Is this just 'political speech' meant to fire up listeners? Does a politician saying this really mean that their political opponents are intrinsically dishonest? That no scenario exists in which the opposition can legitimately win? If so we have no "one nation under God" anymore. The tension between political ideas and arguments over them has existed since before the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. That tension has largely kept the 'ship of state' moving forward and has carried the majority of our fellow shipmates along with it. If all the dissenters are thrown overboard the ship is no longer the one I was born on.
Can it really be the case that a significant minority of our people have taken to heart a view of 'the others' that is akin to Rwandan Hutus accepting the message on their radios that their Tutsi neighbors were 'roaches' deserving of death by machete or worse? If so, I pray for us all.
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I taught a writing class for students from disadvantaged students, many of them children of refugees from countries under dictatorial regimes. One of them was from Burundi. When the Hutus started killing in his country, his father (Tutsi) and mother (Hutu) fled to the neighboring country where it seemed safe and stable. That country was Rwanda.
When the conflict came to Rwanda, the father ran and was never seen again—presumed dead, either hacked to death or victim of a “rubber necklace,” a tire filled with gasoline, placed around the neck, and lit on fire. The mother managed to pass the whole family off as Hutu until she got a church-sponsored refugee status for her family to come to the US.
I think we know who the Hutus and Tutsi’s are in this country. And I’m afraid that bending over backwards to be fair will result in a broken back. We can’t allow false equivalency to blind us to the fact that many of our fellow citizens are more concerned with “price at the pump” than with the horrors of the power- and wealth-hungry who divide and conquer our people as easily as the dictators who destroyed the lives and families of my refugee students from Rwanda and Myanmar (the latter with stories as shocking or more.)
We aren’t immune.