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Tiny bridges – Daily Montanan [1]

['More From Author', 'December', 'Russell Rowland']

Date: 2023-12-05  

A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine who has political views that are diametrically opposed to my own suggested that we arrange to meet for coffee every couple of weeks to discuss our opinions on important issues. Because I have known this man for many years, and because we have a relationship based on mutual trust and respect, I agreed to this idea, and was actually excited about what might come out of it.

So last week, we had our first coffee date, and broke the ice with some general discussion about how we came to develop our political views. We talked about some of the major issues going on today, including the presidential race, and the events in Israel/Gaza. The discussion was never tense or uncomfortable. We listened to each other. We responded.

And to me, the oddest thing about this meeting is that it feels like a rare occurrence these days. And it really shouldn’t be.

But the more I have reflected on it, the more I am inclined to believe that, as insignificant as a conversation between two friends seems in the bigger picture, it also feels important. It feels as if the more this happens, the more of these tiny bridges we build, the better chance we have of creating a larger structure to forge some understanding and connection. Because the longer this divisive attitude continues, the more I fear the long-term effects on our country’s ability to function.

It just so happened that a few days after that meeting, I came across an episode of Adam Conover’s podcast, “Factually,” where he interviews Cory Robin, an author who has written several books about the political climate in America, including “The Enigma of Clarence Thomas,” and “The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump.” I had never heard of either Adam Conover or Cory Robin, but the title of this episode caught my attention. It was “What Liberals Get Wrong About the Right.” And I became completely absorbed in Robin’s assessment of how often liberals tend to dismiss the opinions of conservatives as uninformed or irrelevant. His argument that many of the people on the right are extremely intelligent people who have a very specific set of principles that guide their decisions and opinions was convincing.

Conover opens the episode by saying that we make a mistake if we look at political conservatives as caricatures, even if that’s sometimes easy to do in cases like Lauren Boebert’s bizarre behavior, or George Santos’ incessant lies. Conover suggests that we need to look at these people as actual people, who deserve respect. And finally, he makes a convincing argument that you have to take the roots of their political philosophy seriously if you want to fight back.

Robin begins his explanation for how the right has developed its template for behavior way back in the 1790s in reaction to the French Revolution. He goes on to say that the right has always been a countermovement or a reactionary movement against movements for freedom or equality. He suggests that the extreme right believes that there are people who are better than everyone else, and that those people ought to rule.

So most of their efforts and their behavior are structured to achieve that end. Robin makes another fascinating observation, which is that the most influential thinkers and leaders of the right are often outsiders, starting with Edmund Burke, who led the opposition to the French Revolution on behalf of England, but he wasn’t even English. He was Irish.

It’s hard to think of two better examples of this philosophy in today’s political arena that Thomas and Donald Trump. Although Thomas was a Black Panther when he was a young man, he obviously took a sharp right turn along the way, and instead of fighting for the rights of his race, has made the decision that he should fight for his own interests, and it’s hard to deny that it has worked well for him. He is the most powerful African-American in our country, so as Robin says, to dismiss him as some kind of clown not only overlooks the obvious fact that he’s managed to work his way into this position of power, but that he’s going to be there for life, barring some unforeseen misstep.

I think as my own frustration and anger toward the current situation mounts, the hardest thing for me to understand is why the Democrats fail time and again to frame their own beliefs in a way that has the same appeal that the Republicans have. And I think a lot of it has to do with this perception that we don’t respect people who don’t agree with us.

I can think of one great example of this, when Obama was president, and he and Michelle were fond of repeating the phrase, “If they go low, we go high.”

At the time, I thought this was brilliant, refusing to lower themselves to the name-calling and nasty comments that were coming from some of the more extreme right-wingers. But it didn’t occur to me until recently how this simple statement implies a sort of superiority, which is exactly what so many of the right point to as the problem with the left. We think we’re on the right side of history, which may be true. But the fact that we’re always throwing that in their faces immediately shuts down any chance of conversation.

I was pleased that the one thing my friend and I agreed on in our coffee conversation is that Donald Trump is always going to create more of a division. My friend voted for Trump, and I suspect he would again if Trump is the nominee, but he also says that he thinks Trump is wrong for the country right now, which surprised me. So maybe, just maybe, there are tiny bridges being built along the way where some of us who are hoping to save the system we have are able to agree when it matters most.

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