In Which I Begin My Search for a Bridge Across the Troubled Waters

I grew up in the 1960s, a child of the Cold War.  My father spoke often about the Communist Threat and was ever vigilant for signs that foreigners were attempting to interfere with American life. He didn’t allow movies starring Hanoi Jane into the house, he frowned on anti-war music and he even went so far as to forbid me to learn Russian in high school.  He frequently accused hippie protestors of being Soviet pawns and I was wise enough not to tell him about the protests I attended at college.

Perhaps as a reaction to the anti-commie fervor of the time, I had a burning desire to go to the Soviet Union myself.  Not, as my horrified father feared, to join the Revolution.  Instead, I wanted to meet the Russians, get to know them, and ask them why they sat up nights thinking of ways to bury us. I was sure, in my naïve do-gooder way, that if we knew why they didn’t like us we could talk it out and come to some kind of compromise.  Another naivete – I’ve always considered compromise to be a good thing and not a reason to hound a candidate out of a political race.

I’ve grown more jaded over the years, but I still feel compelled to meet with the ‘enemy’ and find out what makes them tick. I understand political differences. I don’t understand political hatred. In the midst of the growing social divide, I decided to do some local field research to see if I could discover why political animosity continues to grow with each election. 

My first stop was at a continuing education class designed for seniors. The marketing blip said that we’d be discussing current political issues and that ‘all voices are welcome.’ Trust me, they were not. The moderator made an early attempt to be non-partisan, but it soon became apparent that he was a Biden supporter. That wouldn’t necessarily make a non-partisan discussion moot, but he chose the topics and the articles that we would read and that made the prospect of a non-partisan discussion moot. It didn’t matter too much, however. As far as I could discern based on comments, there was only one beleaguered Republican in the class and he didn’t appear to be comfortable expressing his opposing views.

Frustrated, but still hopeful, I went to a public meeting about immigration. Again, the organizers declared that they were non-partisan, concerned only with offering a much-needed forum to discuss a current topic. The speakers did attempt to hide their prejudices, with varying success. Unfortunately, their liberal bent was obvious in the way they handled questions/comments from the audience. No one was allowed to speak during the session and those who forgot were sharply reprimanded. All questions had to be written down and handed to a moderator. I give her points for asking all questions, even those that she clearly found distasteful. I deduct points for her tone of voice and for the times she paraphrased a question, her entire manner broadcasting her disagreement with not only the question, but with the audience member who was so uneducated as to ask it.

No legitimate objections to mass migration were recognized during the meeting. When one of the presenters opined that ‘immigration was good for the economy,’ I considered mentioning my low-income clients, who were raised in public housing and educated in segregated schools in the 1950s and 1960s. They had worked for decades in factories, but now that those jobs had gone overseas, they were ill-equipped to compete with a sea of cheap labor.  My concern for them is genuine, but I ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the effort of writing my thoughts down. They’d only be edited by the moderator and summarily dismissed. All in all, the evening did nothing to broaden my view on the topic.

So my search to understand our divided country continues. My goal isn’t to get anyone to take my side of an issue. It’s to have a reasoned discussion about our differences and maybe –just maybe—come to some type of give-and-take consensus, acknowledging that complicated situations are unlikely to be solved by partisan thinkers.  I grow increasingly pessimistic that this will ever happen.