This piece is appearing as an op/ed in newspapers in the very red congressional district (VA-06) in which I ran as the Democratic nominee in 2012.
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Feeling connected with the wider world
Ever since 1956, I’ve devoted a good amount of attention to the wider world—wider than my own personal life. (Two world crises that year – Hungary and Suez – drew me in at the age of 10.)
There was one period, during the Vietnam war, when I found it so painful to attend to what was happening that I tried to tune out the Big Picture and focus my life solely on my own separate, private realm.
I couldn’t do it.
Already, in my twenties, it was a habit. The wider world – the political health of America, the progress of the whole of civilization in meeting our challenges – seemed an inextricable part of my reality. I couldn’t cut my world down, as Voltaire put it, to my own “separate garden.”
Once again now, in the wake of the 2024 Election, when I see what’s already happening in our world and what seems likely to happen going forward, I suffer more than I want to bear.
Once again, I wish I could break my habit, turn my back on all that, and focus only the happier picture of my personal life, with its blessings of a happy marriage, a good roof over our heads, good food to eat, and the opportunity to do my creative work.
So far, I have failed again. I can’t stop caring that bad things are happening.
Can’t stop caring that – conceivably, depending on how the Trump-presidency scenario plays out — the election of Donald Trump to the presidency could prove to be the most destructive occurrence in our nation’s history. (Even — conceivably — the world’s.)
Trump’s being given this power clearly makes worst-case scenarios more likely with respect to the dramas that matter most deeply. Like:
- Whether American democracy -- and the institutions of good order developed by generations of Americans – will survive;
- Whether we will achieve a peaceful international order, where would-be aggressors know they’ll pay a high price for breaking the peace;
- Whether “the free world” will be able to prevail over the globally rising power of Fascism;
- Whether the world will succeed in meeting the challenge of the climate crisis.
Hardly bearable to contemplate, but I can’t look away.
Nor do I seem able to break my lifelong habit of searching for truths worth articulating because they’re important and if they were widely enough recognized, might help the world move in better, rather than worse, directions.
Which connects with a second habit I am finding hard to break.
Focusing on Messages Addressing the people on the previously “Conservative” (now Trumpian) side
Readers on the Republican side would likely be surprised to know how much – for years -- they’ve been at the center of my thoughts, and how much my caring about them has underlain my columns published here weekly for well over a decade.
The affection and respect I’ve felt for the conservatives of the Shenandoah Valley derive from prior years of radio conversations I had with them. And subsequently my attention got further directed toward them by my concern about where they were headed, and where they seemed to be taking the nation.
But I always believed in the possibility of their returning to the better angels of their nature, and felt driven by the hope that– with some truth-telling -- I could help in that return.
In the wake of the 2024 Election, I can believe that no longer.
And, for that reason, I have been trying, so far without success, to break my mental habit of continually addressing myself to the people who have helped choose a path for America that seems sure to lead to catastrophe.
There’s no evidence that any effort of mine has impeded the people of this region from voting for a man who has shown every corrupt and immoral tendency.
(Donald Trump – with his blatant focus on gratifying his own desires rather than focusing on the good of the nation; his vindictiveness; his continual lying and lack of regard for the truth; his publicly demonstrated criminality; his record of sexually assaulting women; his acting like a mob boss in rewarding his accomplices for obstructing justice; his attacking the constitutional order to retain power; his siding with our fascist adversaries and dissing our traditional friends; etc.)
No previous generation of Americans, it seems safe to say, would ever have elected a manwho has openly displayed a whole variety of what used to be regarded asautomatic disqualifiers.
But here we are.
Whatever people thought they were voting for, none of these realities -- the threats to the order of our nation, and our world, as well as the nature of the man—has been the least bit hidden, right in front of the eyes of anyone attending to honest sources of information.
Which compels me to reckon with the evident futility of the hundreds of truth-telling messages I’ve sent to the people I’ve kept always on my mind. While I feel very good about the truth-content of those messages, I must recognize that something more powerful than truth-telling nullifies the hoped-for impact.
For those reasons, I would like to let go of my habit of continually searching for ways of having some beneficial impact on how these – my fellow Americans – regard our political choices.