My Changing Relationship to Politics
Written Daniel McDonald
In 1980, I turned 25, a few days
before the November election. It would be an election that would begin to set
the tone for the next thirty plus years. Ronald Reagan had a message that
appealed especially to young white and Evangelical voters. Those were not so
much three separate categories but three former categories which tended to come
together in 1980. We had been born sometime in the 1950’s. It was a time when
America was the largest manufacturer in the world, the most powerful nation on
earth, and arguably the freest people in the world. That was true for white
people in the United States but not nearly as true for the colored people
growing restless for the rights they had on paper but were often deprived of in
reality. I am pretty sure we felt secure in the 1950’s and early 1960’s not
only because we were under our parents’ protective care, but also because our
parents were convinced that life in America was secure.
Then there was the turmoil of the
1960’s and 1970’s. The nation seemed to come apart as cities boiled with calls
for racial equality, youth protested a war that turned from being a crusade
against Communism to being a question mark concerning America’s own identity.
In 1968 Richard Nixon had answered the turmoil with a call to law and order.
While Nixon was a flaming liberal in comparison with Republicans today, his
call to law and order became a component of the Republican Party of 1980. Nixon’s
Republicanism had little to say or do when the Supreme Court overturned most
state laws against abortion in the Roe v. Wade decision. The actor, Ronald
Reagan who had supported Barry Goldwater in 1964 became an activist for
protecting the lives of the unborn. White Christians tended to see treating
the unborn as non-living was a horrible way for a government to treat the
unborn. White Christians in America tended to believe good laws were already in
place for the treatment of all Americans, and tended to be at a loss of why
minority groups had any reason to complain after the successes of the Civil
Rights acts of the 1960’s. In 1980 Ronald Reagan ran a campaign promising a
strong national defense, law and order, the rule of law over edicts of the
Supreme Court, a balanced budget amendment, and protection for the lives of the
unborn. I now understand that he was selling the security we knew before
the turbulent sixties and seventies.
I was a believer in what Reagan was
selling. I had been in a home where morality was treated as something good and
religion was treated as useful in upholding morality, but my parents
did not attend church. In college I had become an Evangelical Christian, and
had gradually adopted the politics of the emerging Christian right movement. I
was a true believer in both the Evangelical sense and in the emerging Christian
right political movement. Over the years, my Christianity has continued with
hopefully greater depth and more caution and charity towards others. But I have
discovered that my relationship to the Conservative Christian right political
movement has gradually cooled. I passed through stages of true believer in the
movement, to disappointed that our initial successes did not sweep the nation
to support the goals we thought self-evident, to discouraged when the movement
seemed to peak, to disenchanted when I wondered if all our movement was doing
was creating unsolvable culture wars and becoming embroiled in international
affairs that left us indebted with bleeding noses even as we bombed new nations
and targets continually. I had fresh hope when George W. Bush spoke of our need
to have a more humble international policy then wondered after 9-11 if war was
the right reply when we could have stepped back and encouraged Middle Eastern
nations to work with us to curb terrorism and seek peaceful answers within a
region of the world in economic and political crisis. Instead we chose to
ignite a clash of civilizations that admittedly was always a possibility under
the surface.
I was gradually losing my enthusiasm
for right wing politics without being won over to the left, which I had learned
to understand as the opposition since my initiation into politics in the Reagan
revolution. But the day came when as a Christian who drinks moderately, I could
meet a young guy who leaned leftward and had a solid knowledge of political
perspectives, albeit from a leftist perspective. We met over some ales and
sweet potato fries and discovered that what we wanted in the political system
was not so much different as our left and right identities might have
suggested. In those days I was becoming a Libertarian, or at least going
through my Libertarian phase. Eventually I would become a plain vanilla
flavored moderate.
In 2015, I wondered if we could have
the sort of political discussions nationally that my Democratic friend and I
often had. I wondered if political discussions could be amicable, and result in
some degree of consensus and common ground. I suppose that was as much naiveté as
my once youthful imagining of a nation being won over to the Christian right
perspective I once thought would become the basic politics of our nation.
In 2015 I took a walk on the High
Line on the West side of Manhattan. The beautiful walkway park became a symbol
for me of what might be accomplished if people dropped their clashing
identities, talked with one another, listened to one another and sought common
ground in building a public space between our many perspectives. I found the
High Line a marvelous sight. In the 1930’s when the West side of Manhattan was
full of meat packing plants downtown and the garment industry in midtown, and
congested streets everywhere, city planners looked high and low for solutions
to the growing traffic nightmare. Beneath the ground, subways would move people
quickly while traffic on street level crawled. City planners decided to build a
freight line serving the meat packing and garment industries above the streets
of New York. An elevated freight line was built that helped the city’s traffic
to move without intersecting another train. Times changed and by 1980 the
garment and meat packing industries were no longer as centralized on the West
side of New York City. The freight that remained tended to be picked
up in trucks rather than by trains. The freight train riding the rails of the
West side High Line ceased to be profitable. Plans were made for demolition of
the old High Line.
Some of the High Line was
demolished. But when plans were made for demolition of what remained in the
early 1980’s one man filed suit. He basically argued that even if the freight
line was not going to use the High Line, that the High Line itself was a
publically granted right of way owned by the public. Therefore demolition of the
publically owned right of way without public hearings regarding the possible alternative
usage of the High Line should not be approved. A movement began within the area
and an organization was founded named “Friends of the High Line”. Eventually
the “Friends of the High Line” won the public’s support for creating a park on
the High Line, which would be a combination walking area and green zone with
places for relaxation and seeing the city from the High Line’s elevated level.
Today the High Line attracts
millions of visitors each year. It was reshaped for a new generation by
community effort resisting the easy solution government officials had first
imagined of simply demolishing the infrastructure and selling the scrap.
Instead of demolition the community created beauty and a shared space that
helped restore pride to such a neighborhood as Chelsea through which much of
the High Line passed. The High Line, and sipping on IPA’s with a liberal friend,
trained me to imagine the possibilities of a new kind of American politics.
Today the High Line is a place to relax in a
green wonderland
Or a nice area to get some walking exercise in
a green zone
Or an opportunity to look at a busy street from
a different perspective
Donald
Trump was never what I was looking for in 2016. If he is the future of
Republicanism then I am gone. I don’t know where I am going with party
affiliation if any. But perhaps my next phase will be to find a project in my
local community that I can give myself to for a few hours a month. I will find
something that adds beauty to my community, helps the marginalized, or inspires
a community. I will hopefully meet a diverse group of people in the endeavor.
They will discover I am Christian and Pro-life but tired of politics at least
as I have known it. Hopefully the community where I am will be a little better
place as a result of my participation. That is a more gratifying vision than
simply pulling a lever for my tribe on election day.
