“Everyone out of step but Johnny?”
Originally published on the author’s Substack
I fear the civil war is here, my friends. Pray, let me be wrong.
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I wrote this post just before Thanksgiving. I’ve sat on it since then, chewing over whether to send it out. I’ve been afraid of how it will be received—afraid of pushback from my traditional political allies for not towing the party line. But the party is broken; the line is at best askew. And this is a message of love and understanding. Ultimately, I’ve decided I can’t give into the fear that has gotten us into this mess.
I’m posting today, in anticipation of the Christmas holiday. I hope this essay will be salve for some still festering post-election wounds. I pray it will speak to those forecasting negative family interactions, or even more to those eschewing them whole cloth.
Why publish this on a site about parenting while walking a spiritual path? Because our children model everything we do. And if we choose fear and ignorance and pride, what hope does our future — our children — hold?
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It didn’t surprise me when MSNBC hosts told Democratic voters to forego Thanksgiving with their red voting relatives. It gut-punched me when people I’ve know for years, people who work in the healing profession, people I’ve entrusted with my own healing—even members of my own family—echoed the sentiment. The other day a friend told her social media followers:
You don’t have to have a relationship with people who voted red.
And you don’t owe them an explanation, either.
I typed a public reply:
I love you and I totally disagree. This is not the way forward.
Civility. Civil discourse. Early victims of the civil — civilizational? — war already upon us. What happened to trying to understand others’ perspectives in the interest of maturing your own?
When election results became clear in 2016, I remember my aching distress—I couldn’t believe people could vote for a man whose values didn’t reflect what I believed America to be. I remember declaring publically that my head hurt trying to make sense of it. A wise friend gave me important advice: Use your heart to understand, not your head.
I did just that. And I felt, behind their voting record, their love for their family, their fear for the future, their raging powerlessness. It turned out we weren’t that different—we simply had become attached to different ideas about how to resolve those most basic challenges. When you operate from the principle that most people are good inside, you are much more likely to find avenues for understanding, even togetherness amidst your disagreements. Pollyanna?—No. It’s the only way forward.
When, in 2021, my husband and I chose a rolling stretch of West Virginia farmland to put down family roots, responses from our DC friends tended toward one: “You’re moving to West Virginia? You know that’s MAGA country, right?”
I did know it was MAGA country. I also knew I no longer quite fit in whatever the opposite of MAGA country was. A part of me desperately sought something real and tangible. When it came down to a choice between a fixer upper house atop 50 rolling acres, or a new build on a postage stamp plot in a Maryland development, my good husband said: “Do you really want to exchange our kids future for shiny countertops?”
I’ve spent four years in MAGA country. I’d wager everyone I stood in line with at the polling place on November 5th voted red. They are my son’s classmates’ parents, and my husband’s contracting clients, and my gardening buddies on the local Facebook plant exchange. They are the same folks who, when my cervical spine collapsed in 2022, rallied around my family despite being strangers to us, donating meals and gift cards and even envelopes of cash. We were a Bunker Hill family in need. The school librarian sent out an SOS, someone in the congregation prayed for us, and the whole community stepped up.
Friends—When you look at the electoral map, what do you see—a county of racists and bigots? A few weeks ago, by many media reports, Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally brimmed with nazis—male and female, white and black and Latino and Jewish nazis, by accounts from those actually in attendance. Do you truly feel, in your heart, that the almost 77 million people who voted red are nazis? That your countrymen and women would, given the opportunity, commit genocide against a scapegoated minority sometime in the next four years? We must think about the language we use and how it informs our ability to think rationally about the way forward.
The blue team—my life-long home—is still making the same mistake it was making before the election. Instead of trying to understand, with an open heart, why someone would choose another path, nearly every media figure I’ve seen is condemning and exiling those with differing points of view. This is not the way forward.
By the electoral and popular vote counts, the election appears to be a mandate for change. My blue voting friends can choose to see it as evidence of the worst moment in American history, as so many pundits claim, or an opportunity to self-reflect.
What if democrats chose to ask: What did I miss? What about my own media ecosystem generated such a profoundly different understanding of the right path forward? How can I focus the similarities between me and my red counterparts, and not the differences?
I’m reminded of a story my mother told me when I was little. A marching band is drumming and trumpeting and twirling and stepping across a field, save for one little boy who hasn’t got the rhythm. His mother turns to her neighbor in the stands and says, “Oh look, everyone is out of step but Johnny.”
Seventy-seven million people voted red—are they all wrong?
Each of us has a choice, no matter how we voted. This election can be a point of rigorous self-reflection, or a hardening to each other. What can we, each of us, make of this political moment from a spiritual perspective?
These questions are important—we must approach this moment from the process that is true science—with curiosity, unattached to whether we ourselves are right or wrong. Curiosity is the true foundation upon which understanding is built. This is the way forward.
It’s hard having your axioms poked—by that I mean the central gears around which our core beliefs are tightly, often painfully bound. It hurts when they are challenged—when someone presents a different perspective, and we are asked to unbind our axioms and examine them. Our axioms want to stay tightly held together for fear their unraveling will totally undo us. Who am I if I do not believe this thing? This is where the hardening comes from—fear. The true spiritual act is to stay open and receptive to change.
I am here to testify: Poke your axioms. Challenge your assumptions. It is hard, but it is good, and you will grow into someone healthier and stronger and more amenable to life’s uncertainty. More capable of charting a forward course, for you will be capable of sailing your own ship no matter the seas.
Yes, my blue team friends, hold the feet to the fire of everyone who was elected—but also be willing to be wrong about your assumptions about them, particularly if your perspective has been informed by the same pundits who are telling you to cut off ties with your family. There’s another name for a collective of people who tell you to cut off ties with your family: A cult.
The reality is this: None of us knows what will happen—ever. You have to leave open the possibility of at least being pleasantly surprised. It is the true patriotic act. Whenever we are on the losing side of an election it is an act of true patriotism to hope the other side succeeds in governing the country—that they right a lilting ship—not sink it. Think about that. There is no other ship. Pray for the one you’re on.
Give it time. Let it breathe. Do not harden. Stay open and loving and receptive. Seek understanding instead of the opportunity to reinforce your own perspective. We do not know what will happen in the next few years on the political stage—but we can forecast what will happen if we wage such petty war on family and friends, choosing to slaughter relationships instead of let them be battlegrounds for understanding.
Your friend who voted red is the same, loving friend with whom you’ve trusted secrets and hopes, who you’ve gone to for counsel and clarity. Your aunt who voted red is the same woman who loves your children, and wants a better future for them and the rest of this growing country.
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