The Continuing Problem of Talking about It
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| Charley Freiberg photo |
I have a
patient I’m very fond of – ok, I have many patients I’m very fond of, so that’s
not unusual – but this one I know well enough to know some important things
about her and how she lives her life. One of those things is that she is always
giving to people who are in need, and is religious enough to believe that God
sends her unfortunate people so she can help give them a second chance. In the
process of helping these folks – and there have been many – she has welcomed
the otherwise homeless into her home, kept them warm and fed, refused or
forgiven rent so long as it was put towards continuing their education or
getting out of past financial entanglements, and she has even paid court fees
and supported those lost souls through very, very bad times.
My patient – I’m going to call her Honor - is
very well educated and has a good job, but not one that provides her with
endless supplies of excess money; and over the years, her good works have come
close to impoverishing her, and have cost her too much of her own resources of energy
and rest, and with property damage expenses she may never recoup. Even so, she
doesn’t regret all she has done and is pleased that she was able to help folks
who otherwise might have fallen into a pit they couldn’t rise out of.
Yes, Honor
has been used, sometimes, by people who have shown no gratitude nor even taken
good care of the things she’s shared with them. They’ve broken her personal things,
damaged her home and yard, exhausted her as she tried to care for their daily
needs, put Honor and her beloved pets sometimes at risk, done silly or
dangerous things over and over – and yet, Honor has persevered, believing that
everyone, even the most foolish, deserve support and a second chance.
You and I
might call her crazy – which one of us would put ourselves so completely at
personal risk to come to the aid of a stranger? – especially when we can’t be
certain how long that aid might be needed, and knowing we might lose our own
cherished privacy and property, we might need to empty our own savings accounts
to help the ungracious and ungrateful, and that we will need financial and
personal resources to clean up the messes those strangers made once they’ve
finally pulled themselves together and moved on?
Honor simply
says, when I ask her why she would put herself at such risk and exhaust herself
so thoroughly, “But they would have been homeless if I didn’t take them in.
They needed help. They finally were able to go about their own lives in a
better way. And I believe they were sent to me, so I could help.”
Honor may be
a living saint walking amongst us. But – here’s the rub – she’s a Trump
supporter.
The other people
where Honor works – doing work, I’ll mention, that most of us couldn’t begin to
do – found out she voted for Trump. These people, all of them adamantly not Trump supporters, who do the same kind
of difficult work Honor does (which takes skill and intelligence and higher education)
have worked with Honor for many, many years. They know her as well as any
people who have worked together for many years on difficult projects come to
know each other.
These intelligent
people have been tormenting Honor daily since the election, calling her a
racist and other offensive names, making unkind jokes, never letting it go –
not in meetings, not in person, never – to the point where Honor has wondered
if she should leave the job she loves and does well, and move somewhere else to
start over again. Her boss, she says, tries to support her, but not well enough
to make a difference. Honor says that her boss is also not a Trump supporter, and so has a split mind – he tries to make
it easier for her, but can’t seem to bring himself to do what needs to be done
to finally and completely stop the harassment. And so now, at work, Honor
isolates herself: she eats alone, she doesn’t start conversations that aren’t
absolutely necessary, she avoids her fellow-workers in the halls and elevators and
parking lot. Honor is sad, and lonely, and afraid.
Let’s state
clearly that such behavior is completely inappropriate in a work situation and
should be dealt with summarily, and also completely inappropriate in personal
relationships. Let’s also note that this bad behavior, which is nothing but
mindless bullying, is especially morally reprehensible because her co-workers
have known Honor long enough and well enough to know that she isn’t a racist,
or any of the other foul things they’ve called her. And they endlessly
continue, knowing what they’re doing is causing her pain.
“Why,” Honor
asked me, “are they doing this? They
know me well enough to know I’m not those things they’re calling me. I thought
we were friends.”
And here we
go – the continuing problem of talking about it. It seems we can’t talk about it.
“Why did you vote for Trump?” I asked her. “I
know you aren’t a racist, I know you’re a kind and sensitive and compassionate
and intelligent person. Why would someone like you vote for Trump, who is a
manifestation of evil? I’m truly curious, because I can’t understand it.”
Honor’s
voice got very quiet, as I expect it does whenever the topic comes up,
especially at work. Very, very quietly, she almost whispered, “Socialism…”
“But we’re
already a partly socialist country,” I exclaimed, in spite of my vow to shut up
and listen. “Social Security, Medicare – and it works, it helps people!”
“I know,” she
said quietly, “but…”
Ashamed of
myself, I changed the subject. I want
to have this conversation, but I don’t trust myself to not argue, to not try to
verbally bowl her over. So instead, I tried to explain to her why her
co-workers are being so evil, because I think she doesn’t really understand it
– she would never be so mean to anyone, no matter what, no matter how awful she
was feeling. And I make sure I tell her it’s wrong, wrong, wrong.
And it is wrong, wrong, wrong. C’mon, guys –
it’s fair play and fairly entertaining to say vile things to the politicians
who themselves are saying and promoting vile things – and to any of the vile,
trash-talking trolls that I hope none of us actually runs into in person - but not to our relatives, not to our
co-workers, not to our neighbors – not under normal circumstances, and we’re
rarely in anything that isn’t normal circumstances in our day-to-day lives.
When we take out our anger about the daily, sometimes hourly, mind-blowingly
unbelievable frustrating, stressful and scary horrors that our country’s
leaders are ceaselessly perpetrating and seem to have no lack of imagination to
think up, not only are we becoming part of the problem, we’re avoiding our duty
to direct our anger where it belongs. If we’re exhausting our energy shouting
angrily at the people near us, we aren’t writing our legislators, we aren’t
calling them, we aren’t expressing our anger appropriately and we may be making
it much more likely that Honor, and people like her, will vote the same way
again. We’re making it more likely that
those people who are demonstrably good people but voted for the evil person will
never understand why we’re so upset, and convince themselves that we’re the problem.
Do we have a
moral obligation to be public and private witnesses to the horrors? Yes,
absolutely. We must speak up, we must be heard by our relatives and friends and
neighbors, but we must be clear about what’s happening that isn’t acceptable,
that’s dangerous, that’s immoral, that’s un-American. We must say, “This
trashing of the ACA is immoral,” and say why. We must say, “This persecution of
Muslims and Jews (and every other group being persecuted or treated unfairly)
is immoral and this is why.” We must say, “Threatening our allies and cozying
up to our enemies is foolish and likely illegal,” and say why. We must say,
“Obstructing justice is illegal and un-American,” and say why. We must say,
“Giving giant tax breaks to billionaires, trashing the environment, gutting the
many safeguards that protect the country, the world, and the powerless or
unprotected is not acceptable,” and say why. We must insist that truth be
actually spoken, and that lies are lies; we maybe need to remind Trump voters
what he’s really said and done, and who he’s surrounded himself with as
advisors and supporters and what they’ve said and done, and what’s actually
happening in DC, because somehow the nice
folks who voted for Trump don’t seem to hear it – or remember it – or believe
it – or something.
But we don’t bring it up in the office, and we don’t harass people, and we don’t make accusations that aren’t true.
WE DON’T. Because if we do, we have
become the thing that horrifies us, and we lose our righteousness.
We’re angry.
We’re exhausted. We feel like our brains are going to explode if any new horror
happens – and a new one does, endlessly, inevitably, continuously. We’re
assaulted by the opinions of people who keep saying we “should just get over
it.” Who seem to be clueless, or malignantly blind and deaf to anything
unpleasant coming out of DC, or even noisily pleased by it. We need to let off steam, and we can’t shout
at each other, because that doesn’t help. But if we shout at people like Honor,
we have lost honor – literally and personally.
I don’t
understand, still, what possessed and still possesses people like Honor to vote
for and continue to support Trump and the evil Republicans who are gleefully
using the chaos to cause as much destruction as possible under cover of the
administration’s smoke and mirrors. I don’t understand it, but I – and we – need to understand it, because if we
don’t, we’re going to be stuck in a corner with no good way out.
I emailed
Honor later, asking her if she would mind talking about her reasoning when she
voted for Trump and as she continues to support him. I listed some of the
horrible things he and his minions have done or said, and asked her – I hope
without sounding challenging – how she thought about such things, and how it
factored into her decision to support him. I told her, and this is true, that
she’s such a nice, compassionate, intelligent and admirable person, and that I
really and truly want to understand but have no one else remotely like her to ask.
I told her I wasn’t trying to be snarky or set her up – and that I wouldn’t
argue, and I hope she’d find the time and energy and trust to talk to me - by
email so I wouldn’t be able to lose myself and blurt out something
contradictory and argumentative to interrupt whatever she had to say. And that
I’d understand, in her circumstances, if she’s just had enough of it and
doesn’t want to do it.
I haven’t
heard back from her yet, which could mean she’s not going to go there for fear
of what might be said or because she can’t bear to talk about it. It might mean
she’s thinking about it. It might even mean she hasn’t read my request yet – I
know she’s avoiding email as much as possible because of all the unpleasantness
she’s experienced and how tired she is. And I know also, because I read back to
myself what I’d written, trying to imagine how it would sound to her, that it’s
almost impossible to write, or speak, such a request and not sound like it’s a
poke, an aggression, an attempt to start a fight. I realized that she’ll need
to rely on our mutual past and take a leap of faith that I really mean what I
said about wanting to understand, and translate it in her own mind into an honest
request, and not a sneak attack.
I know that
if she does agree to start this conversation that it’s going to be very hard
for both of us. I’m going to have to bite my tongue a lot; and I’m going to
have to think carefully, and remember carefully – did I ever actually hear
Trump say something racist, for example, or did I simply equate his welcoming
of support from known racists to mean that he, too, is racist? Is there a
difference? What is the difference?
Can I say it in a way that doesn’t sound like an attack?
I hope she
takes the chance. It may simply leave me gob-smacked, but maybe it’ll shine a
light into what seems, from where I stand, to be very murky waters. I hope to
learn something. I already have – I’ve learned it’s really hard for me to keep
my mouth shut about something I care and worry so much about, and not jump
ahead, instead of listening, and letting the explanation wend its way to a spot
where I think I can ask questions without shouting. I’ve learned that it’s
possible that someone else can consider something that I consider highly
beneficial to be infinitely worse than the things that I find completely
horrifying.
I’ve learned
that I have a lot to learn, and part of it is that if I want to be an effective
witness, I need to carefully examine all my assumptions, and make concise
distinctions, even if those distinctions don’t make a difference in my own
moral judgment. But if I want to have an honest conversation, with someone who
doesn’t think the same way I do, I need to be concise, not casual. And I need
to be in control of my own fury.
I am One
Witness.
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