Election 2016: Before We Were Trump/Bernie/Hillary Supporters We Were Someone's Child

 

"Before you were a guerrilla, you were my son."

Before you or I were a Hillary, Bernie, Trump or Cruz supporter we were someone's child.  Then we had a bunch of life experiences that brought us to this point where the RIGHT thing for ourselves and our country was to choose the candidate we are supporting.

No one I know wants to harm this country.  Everyone thinks their candidate will be the best president for them personally and for our country.  We are all the same.  We are right and we want to win.

Jose Miguel Sokoloff is an ad guy who did a series of pro bono campaigns for the Colombian government to encourage guerrilla soldiers to stop fighting, stop terrorizing their beloved country. When someone on Sokoloff's team discovered that the time of highest demobilization is Christmas, they realized they had a way into the guerilla hearts.  They rapped 75' tall jungle trees with Christmas lights with a message to go home for Christmas. (Check out Solokoff's Ted Talk "How Christmas Lights Helped Guerrillas Put Down their Guns")

In one of his final ad campaigns -- which, all told, effectively helped demobilize 1000's of guerrilla forces -- Sokoloff plastered the country with posters featuring childhood photos of the soldiers emblazoned with these words from their mothers "Before you were a guerilla, you were my son [daughter]." Beneath that, a simple call to lay down arms and go home.

 

Sokoloff recounted on NPR's This American Life Episode: The Poetry of Propoganda how he was acutely aware that he too was in a war of sorts.  Before the Christmas light campaign, each "attack" from him would prompt a counter-attack by the guerrillas marketing the opposite message to their soldiers.  Sokoloff saw these counter-attacks as just and right, part of the virtual tennis game that is war, back and forth until someone wins.  

Sokoloff was playing one of those exquisite games of marketing tennis. It was literally beautiful, visually stunning and compelling like truly great tennis match.   Magical lights illuminating the dangerous jungle, Christmas lights and glowing spheres carrying messages or gifts floating down the rivers that were the guerrilla highways.   While the Election 2016 tennis game might not be as exquisite, it's still just a game between people who think they are more right than the others.

I was on a "This American Life" podcast binge this week and everything seemed to be chipping away at my own resolve about being more right, which is what I tend to think of myself as during this presidential election season.  This American Life Episode: I Thought I Knew You episode from December features the story of evangelical Christian radio host Tony Beam who was shocked to find out that many of his listeners were Trump supporters.  He was certain, though, that Trump would lose their vote after he said he would ban all Muslims coming to America.  Beam was shocked that many, including one of his most engaged listeners, Barry, remained a passionate Trump supporter in spite of the religious attack. 

The NPR reporter met with Barry and we got to see the man behind the bluster, like pulling the curtain back to reveal the Wizard of Oz.   She called him out for being a bit of a contrarian everywhere in his life.  He paused and his voice changed a bit, making him sound almost vulnerable as if he had been "seen."  I flashed on him as a little boy and wondered if perhaps something happened in one pivotal moment that made him need to fight against the world. 

Barry is a man who really loves this tennis game of Right v. Wrong, Left v. Right, etc.  As much as I disagree with him, as much as I find some of my candidate's opponents unsavory, as much as I think the guerrillas are absolutely wrong, I have to admit that where I stand is just as much right as Barry or anyone else.  I had pivotal moments as a kid that made me grow up to be my own version of right.

I can be grateful, though, that it's just a bunch of bluster, all of us fighting hard, and sometimes dirty, with words to prove we are right.  Depending on our history, the words either hit us in the heart in the right way or the wrong way, and we react emotionally.  And then we vote.

At least we have what Sokoloff longs for in his own country: people arguing passionately with words instead of bullets. 

The two words I contemplate this election season will be 1) RIGHT, and my insistence on being so ALL THE F'ING TIME and 2) GENEROUS (not a natural instinct when I am inflamed) with my also-right-opponent.  As high ranking Colombian army Captain Juan Manuel Valdez said to Sokoloff when giving support for the Christmas light project: "Being generous makes me stronger, makes my men stronger."

I am hoping to be much, much stronger by election day.  We'll see...

A Superhero Mantra to Get Through this Election: With Malice Toward None

It's not easy to be a superhero this election season, but I'm now armed with slightly more loving heart thanks to my imaginary lover, Abe Lincoln.

The picture above was taken at the Huntington Library & Gardens tonight, just before my friend Leanne and I went in to hear Lincoln scholar and historian, Ronald C. White, Jr. speak about the almighty "other" speech of Lincoln's. 

I have spent a good deal of time with the Second Inaugural Address as every time I'm in D.C., without fail, I visit my dear Abe at his Memorial (where I always, without fail, valiantly fight the urge to climb into his lap).  Now, thanks to Mr. White I understand this brilliant sermon-clothed-in-an-inaugural-address far better.  Lincoln thought it was his greatest work.  Frederick Douglas thought so too.  Now I have seen the light and recognize the fortuitous bit of timely wisdom I need to get through this election season.

Such a delicate assignment to give this address as the war came to a close.  Cheers would have erupted if he had celebrated the North's victory or shamed the South's attempt to tear apart the country.  But he did nothing of the sort.  In 701 words he did everything in his power to bring the country together in peace, mourning the gravity of everyone's losses, and praised the country for moving toward ending of "one of those offenses...that God wills to remove."

Only fifty four days after this speech was uttered, Lincoln was assassinated.  People marked their mourning status with silk badges with what is now my new mantra, these four words plucked from his final speech:

with malice toward none

I'm not saying the rest of this road to election day will be easy or judgment-free but I'm going to cling to this mantra like a vine in the jungle.

Lincoln's lovely tap on the shoulder comes synchronistically only days after having my very first conversation with a Trump supporter.  I had been wondering if anyone in my immediate orbit was a supporter.  I was hoping I could speak to someone sane about what they saw in him.  I wished it wouldn't be a stranger, but frankly didn't want it to be anyone too close either, for fear their reasons might put a wedge between us forever.

On Monday I went to dinner with a fairly new friend, and I thought he was joking when he first mentioned he was a supporter.  He keeps it tucked away delicately, like a pocket square accidentally shoved just out of sight. 

We ended up having a very long, extremely peaceful discussion.  It was hard to hear many of his points, his defense of what I consider incendiary rhetoric.  At one point I felt like crying.  It broke my heart to hear that he thought Obama was a bad president. But I also really got that just like everything in life, our life experiences give us lenses through which we see the world.  The sum total of my life experience makes me adore Obama and Hillary.  The sum total of my friend's life and his daily experiences in his profession give him a very different perspective.

Yet, in the end, as we talked through all that we each wish and hope for the country,

I realized he and I were much closer than we appeared in that teeny tiny mirror called politics.  We just have different ideas of the right way to get there.  Wounds need binding.  Things need fixing.  Peace needs nurturing. 

 

My man Abe could be calmly reading these words from the Capitol stairs today:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

 

 

Ron White said a woman he met recently at an event said she was going to write in Abe Lincoln on the ballot.  I think if we work on living with malice toward none it might clear the way for us to all make the most perfect choice for ourselves and our country.