Listening To Each Other

 


A "legacy" is something that is long-lasting, it seems to me.  One of my pet peeves is that news media outlets use the word when referring to President Biden's executive orders that are reversing President Trump's "legacy."  (News outlets used the same word when President Trump was reversing so much of what President Obama had done, simply by issuing executive orders.)  I posted on face book, "How can it be a legacy if all it takes to reverse it is the next President's executive orders?"

One friend responded that President Trump's legacy was January 6, 2021. Another responded that the former president's legacy is teaching us how fragile our democracy is. President Trump certainly encouraged and exploited the divisions in our country and, with his lies and vitriol, caused politics to be even more of "a raging fire," to use President Biden phrase, yesterday. But President Trump only accelerated the shouting of grievances that had begun long before his election. And the Democratic party has done very little to begin addressing those grievances, in my humble opinion.

Yesterday, President Biden also said that we cannot move forward unless we begin listening to each other. Certainly that's true. We can't move towards healing unless there we're first open to truth telling. At this point, the only people pleading for healing are those speaking from privilege, because they would be just fine if things would only go back to the way they were.

But we need to be open to the truth telling of those at the bottom of our country's 400-year-old caste system. (See my last post.)

And it is more and more clear that we need to listen to those with genuine grievances who saw no alternative but to vote for President Trump.

I watched the January 6 assault on the Capital building with horror. I've reflected on that. We who are "progressives" need to be open to the truth-telling of those who watched the Black Lives Matter protests with horror. I don't mean that I must be sympathetic to their desires that the caste system be reinforced, to "make America great again." But I do need to take seriously their loss and their grief -- because their jobs have disappeared, because they used to be able to pay their bills and provide for their families and now they cannot, because government has not been helpful (and, in many cases, has screwed them). Why are there so many "deaths of despair," through suicide or opioid overdose? "Progressive" people like me need to listen with humility, to be open to understanding, and -- most importantly, to think of how, as citizens, we can encourage policies and actions that will relieve this suffering.

There's a lot of good stuff being written, to help with this. Below are several books that I suggest. What are others? (And -- most importantly, what role can we play?)

Andy Ballentine








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