A friend was recently trying to decide if he could stay friends with someone from a different political party.
These men had long enjoyed talking with, and helping, each other. Now they doubted one another’s character and trustworthiness.
This personal tragedy got me thinking about how we are becoming symbols to each other. Symbols stand for something in a straightforward way. Their meaning is simple and clear.
Treating each other as symbols means that we think we know a great deal about someone based on one aspect of their lives. How they vote tells us who they are and what they stand for.
People are not symbols. We are each unique, the sum of our diverse experiences.
Our interests and values overlap, people who support different parties worship together and volunteer at the same charities. Reducing that complexity to a voting record strips us of our humanity.
You cannot love, trust, or respect a symbol. You certainly can hate what you imagine that symbol represents.
The result is where we are now heading. Divided into warring camps, strangers to one another, we find it hard to engage in the conversations through which we can truly know each other.
If we cannot appreciate one another’s humanity, if we cannot see something of ourselves in those around us, then we will never find the common ground on which we can take actions that benefit us all.
Politicians benefit from sowing division. Casting your political opponents as enemies turns elections into wars over the soul of America.
Victory at any cost is the goal.
The truth is, we do not need politicians to tell us who we are, or what we need.
We, in all our complexity, are the nation’s soul. We all have something to teach each other about what worries us, be it health care, the cost of living, income inequality, or immigration.
Learning from each other is the first step in acting together to achieve the common good.
Divided by mistrust and hate, we can never do more than wait for, and be disappointed by, the next politician who promises us the world as they tell us who to hate.
Working together, we can realize our nation’s highest ideals of being a government of, by, and for all its people.
Being each other’s allies means seeing past political symbols to the humanity we share.
Edward Schortman
Gambier, Ohio