My Grandfather's America
My grandfather was a staunch Republican. His closest friend for 30 years was a loyal Democrat. They never once voted for the same presidential candidate.
They read the same newspapers and watched the same evening TV newscast, NBC’s old “Huntley-Brinkley Report.” They belonged to the same civic organizations. Each had worked in agriculture, one the operator of a feed mill, the other a farmer, and both were involved in running the county fair.
They recognized the same local, national and international problems, and I doubt they disagreed too often about the best approaches to solving those problems. Although they preferred the leadership of politicians in opposing parties, they believed that problem-solving in a free society was an all-hands-on-deck business. That’s what patriotism meant to them, every citizen contributing to making the country better.
The notion that one party should get to decide everything would have been strange to them. The idea that you wouldn’t have friendships or meaningful relationships with people whose politics differed from yours would have struck them as ridiculous.
I remember the day Hubert Humphrey recognized my grandfather in a crowd at the Minnesota State Fair and called him by his first name. I remember, too, tagging along with my grandfather and his Democratic friend to breakfast at a downtown hotel with our local congressman, a Republican.
Although I spent a good amount of time with my grandfather and his best friend, I don’t remember them ever arguing about politics. They liked to rib friends, so I assume they must have teased each other about politics once in a while. They were interested in the subject, but not consumed by it. They had other experiences and interests in common and shared values that formed the basis of their affinity.
They were good-humored, hardworking, devoted to their families, kind-hearted and civic-minded. They acquired information from common sources and knowledge from shared experiences. They enjoyed each other’s company. That mattered the most.
I’m not nostalgic for the era. It might seem in my memory a kinder, gentler time, but the inequities of those days were worse than today’s. Although their friendships weren’t confined to one socio-economic class, neither my grandfather nor his friend would have had relationships on an equal footing with African-Americans or Latinos. I can’t remember ever meeting a Jewish friend of my grandfather’s.
People put too much faith in the government in those days, too. We relaxed our scrutiny and standards of accountability and it got us in trouble. Today, we just assume the worst from government. All of it’s corrupt, all the time. That attitude, too, is getting us in trouble.
We’ve come to define ourselves more than ever by our politics. We segregate ourselves socially by politics. We get our news about politics from partisans. We’re entertained by the like-minded. We’re developing our own vocabularies. Americans with opposite political views are not just becoming more antagonistic to each other. We’re becoming strangers to each other.
Worst of all, politics have come to matter so much to some people that they tolerate the company of fellow travelers whose behavior would otherwise embarrass and appall us. From our Twitter feeds to candidate rallies, we find ourselves associating with jackasses of every stripe.
Because I professed dislike for my party’s de facto nominee, I’ve been called a “bitch” and a “cuck,” whatever the hell that is. I was dismissed by another social media wit as one of the idiots who “lost to the negro in 2008.” When I criticized another Republican candidate, I was labeled “a corrupt cartel pig,” not by an overzealous supporter, but by his official spokesman. There was a time in my life when I regarded insults like that as fighting words, and by fighting I don’t mean trolling.
These and the hundreds of Trump supporters who reached out to me on Twitter and found me on Facebook are presumably fellow Republicans. I’m embarrassed by that. I wouldn’t want them for neighbors or friends. And I would rather not have them influence my party and tarnish its reputation. But how much more fragmented can our society become?
I’m really not the nostalgic type. I want to make America greater, not what it used to be. But to that end, I think it would help if the humility common in people like my grandfather and his friend were more prevalent today. They didn’t think they had all the answers. They just knew they had as much God-given dignity as any other human being, and not one bit more.
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