My Shifting Politics

My Shifting Politics

By Dan McDonald

 

            My political views have been uncertain in recent years. Maybe it is part of growing older. For many of us, as we grow older and get tired easier, we just don’t have the energy to argue over everything under the sun. We select our battles. We don’t even argue about the things important to us unless we believe we have the words and the spirit that will help make the difference with someone listening. We don’t want to waste words speaking into a megaphone to a crowd whose attention is elsewhere. Maybe that is part of the reason culture wars and issues crusades don’t enamor me like they once did. I am one of those people who became a Republican in the late 1970’s and while I always thought the concept of the silent majority was a farce, I did believe in limited government and Christian values as the Reagan revolution moved Republicanism from the minority status to a position nearing dominance in the latter portion of the twentieth century.

            I expressed to someone on a social media that the movement that once attracted me no longer shines so brightly for me now. I am trying to express in words where I am now, without necessarily trying to influence anyone else to join me. I am simply trying to be honest with the world where I am, inasmuch as I even understand where I am these days. I must if I am honest say that I am no longer a tenaciously committed Republican. In fact, it would be honest to say that what increasingly passes for Republican frightens me. I don’t know that I am ready to plunge into being a Democrat. I suppose I have become something of an independent but I am not sure what that means. I am trying to find words to explain to others where I am so that when they read me they will know where I am. It is so easy to hide trying to please others. I want to be done with that. There are certain experiences and thoughts that have led me to where I am today. Let’s begin with those.

            First let me express as I have in some other blogs how getting together for ale with a friend who worked in the same industry as I work in, helped changed my life views on politics. Ale is medicine when taken moderately and mixed with good conversation. I was this card carrying Republican who leaned to the libertarian side of Republican politics. He was a Democrat, who would not express it in public but appreciated the Social-Democrat model of Western Europe. But the more we talked, the more we realized that solid conversations with others who believed differently than we did led us to realize that we had more thinking to do on these issues. Perhaps one of the antidotes to angry radicalism is the ability to listen and ponder what an opponent is saying. Sometimes though, when we listen to others it is frightening. I began to find that there were people with whom I was basically in agreement that frightened me. I could tell they had never listened to anything someone who didn’t believe like they did had ever said. I could feel their sense of superiority as they viewed the opposition as dumb or stupid. I had sat down at a pub and thrown back an ale and enjoyed sweet potato fries and beef brisket or salmon and had listened to a soft spoken man tell what he believed, what sort of things he saw that led him to believe that way. He didn’t frighten me, but someone who agreed with me frightened me with my own beliefs.

            I still believe there are good reasons for limited government. But I believe we need a lot more quiet conversations. I also believe that we need genuine integrity and some originality if limited government is going to work. I remember reading of someone who became a city council member or maybe even a mayor who wanted limited government to work. He took the viewpoint that for limited government to work that people with real needs needed to know where they could obtain the resources to help with their needs. For him limited government didn’t make his office easier but more difficult. It would have been easy enough to throw public money at people’s needs. It was more difficult to commit to limited government and then try to facilitate people having the opportunity to find resources to help them in real needs. I am not so afraid these days of people wishing to use public monies to provide resources and opportunities to people.

            I was a student of history. I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in history sometime in the last millennium. The reality of human life is we are organized in communities, nations, tribes, families, go to churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and gather for music events and learning in schools. The idea that all of life is based on the individual has never ever, not even once actually happened. But the individual, you and me, each of us is important. A baby is born into a family and both mother and father want to see that baby nourished and able to reach his or her full potential. The reality is that in seeking the good of a nation, we need to begin to discuss how a nation best gathers together as a nation while providing for the opportunities and abilities and freedoms of individuals. Why can’t we discuss these issues in a quiet voice? Why must we have name-calling and treat someone with a different perspective than our own as if that differing perspective makes the person an idiot? But sadly on the side of the political aisle where I have stood for most all my life, I have found increasingly that the person with a different perspective is regarded as an idiot. I have found Christians, including myself at times, among the worst in treating others with differing perspectives as idiots. It is as if we had never read the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus describes the person who calls another person a fool, the same as a murderer. We always imagine ourselves to be on the side of the good, the true, and the just. But it never occurs to us that some of the people with opposing views have actually thought out their beliefs with a desire to discover the good, the true, and the just. It is to our own detriment that we do not listen, ponder, and then carefully respond.

            These days I tend to listen a lot to those with whom I don’t agree. I listen because if I don’t understand their viewpoint maybe I need to listen especially to their viewpoint. It even goes for the people who believe something I feel I must oppose. I have leaned towards radical viewpoints at times in my life. A radical is basically someone who feels himself or herself to be marginalized outside of society. They want to change the system because the system is as far as they are concerned fubar – politely said fouled up beyond all recognition. The radical may be the most important person to listen to. Do they merely have a bad attitude? Or are they actually living where the system is unjust? It is important to listen to the radical whether on the right or the left, not necessarily to agree completely, but to understand the why of their radicalness.

            Let me express a case in point for listening to radicals. A study of counties where Donald Trump was supported most heavily, were predominately white counties. But counties where Trump received his highest percentage of support were also counties with higher unemployment rates. They were the counties where jobs had been outsourced to other regions or countries. The counties where he did the absolute best were counties where lifespan of the people in those counties were actually declining. Generally speaking American lifespans are growing longer, but in a number of counties where Trump did exceptionally well lifespans have been trending shorter. Radicalism is a cry of someone for whom the system is not working. That doesn’t mean I see Donald Trump as anything but a dangerous narcissist who exemplifies the worst in American politics. But it is essential that I begin to differentiate Trump from those supporting him. There are people who have lost hope and they are seething with helplessness which is frustrating and often leads to anger. They feel a sense of someone understanding who connects with their sense of frustration and anger. They may not be supporting a candidate I can stomach, but if we are unable to see their frustrations we will have learned nothing about their part of America.

            The same may be said for a movement such as “Black Lives Matter.” The proper response is not “all lives matter” but is to go beyond the angry signs in our faces and see if there are reasons for the pent up anger. Do we really believe that racism has so disappeared from American life that store clerks do not think any differently when a white kid with an attitude walks through the door or a black kid with a swagger walks through the door? Do we really think the same of an out of control Justin Bieber as we do an outspoken Kanye West? Or do we treat one as if deserving of extra contempt because they are too unlike us for us to understand them? Sometimes these are hard questions to answer.

            I have begun to look for the people who are trying to create a healthy America on both sides of the aisle. I am learning to listen rather than speak. But of course, I am one of those people who can hardly quit speaking. I know there are people who have seen everything I see about the Republican Party and have become Democrats. I am alright with that. I even find hope in that. I love that Elizabeth Bruenig is writing for a half dozen magazines at a time, is attacking conservative hypocrisy and simultaneously expressing her genuine desire to see a society where her Catholic social values are practiced in protecting and nourishing the poor, in helping to turn our culture from one of death to one of life, in promoting both life of the unborn and caring for the born. I want to make sure that someone like Kristen Day who heads up Democrats for Life knows I support her desire to see the Democratic Party see that its liberal values are not consistent until the values are more supportive of the lives of those in the womb as well as of those born into our society.

            This is where I am today. I haven’t figured out where I need to be politically. But I am grateful that for the first time in my life I feel like I can sit down with a person from varied points on the American political spectrum and have a decent conversation if that is what the other person wants. I believe I can sit down and talk to another person about what Jesus means to me without worrying about whether they have the right politics or not. I am pretty sure I haven’t always been there. For some I suspect you might think I have lost it. That is alright. Sometimes I am pretty sure I have lost something. But then at other times I think I have also gained something. As usual I have written beyond the recommended length of a blog. But I have tried to be honest about where I am.

            Where am I? I am in an unfamiliar place without my comfortable markers to call home. But the space before me is open, and full of possibility. I like the place. It isn’t home, but it is a nice place to be on the way to my finding home.