They’ve Declared War on Us

            “The enemy within,” “domestic terrorists,” “radical left lunatics.” This is not the kind of language one uses to describe the loyal opposition. This is the kind of language you use when you are intent on crushing your opposition. This is the kind of language the administration is using about us. Trump makes no bones about it. Maybe the Bible says you should love your enemies, but he’ll have none of it. Trump hates his enemies, and his enemies are us.

            Trump is a mean and vindictive person, and his meanness infects the body politic. He dreams of flying over protesters wearing a crown and dumping shit all over us. Seriously. If Stephen Miller had his way, it wouldn’t be just an AI animation. They do not see us as part of their America, and it’s that kind of thinking that gives Michelle Fischbach license to call us “garbage” and pretend that we are not her constituents.

            Polarization in American politics is not new – we fought a civil war, after all. But thinking about the Civil War got me also thinking about the contrast between Trump and Lincoln, so pardon me if I go a bit Heather Cox Richardson on you. While Trump fans the flames of political polarization, Lincoln never forgot that his principal task was preventing the country from breaking apart. There’s a famous phrase from his Second Inaugural Address that speaks to the contrast, but I think it’s important to share the whole sentence: “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.” He begins “With malice toward none” and concludes with a call for “a just and lasting peace.”

            Lincoln stated clearly that slavery was the cause of the war, and he was willing to keep fighting if it meant that “every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.” A just and lasting peace necessarily entailed a full and conclusive end to the system of slavery, though Lincoln did not live long enough to articulate exactly what that meant.

            Our own Rep. Heather Keeler might call Lincoln’s approach “leading with love.” That doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to injustice in hopes of getting along. It does mean that we don’t “fight fire with fire” by demonizing Republican voters. We must show “firmness in the right” in speaking out against evil, but in word and deed, in our policies as well as our rhetoric, we must show compassion. Lincoln’s vision was inclusive; ours must be as well.

            A growing number of Americans seem accepting of political violence, if only because they fear the other side and think it may be necessary to take up arms against them. That must not be our way. Trump is a king wannabe, but the king has no clothes. With celebration and humor, the No Kings rallies showed that we have the power to disarm. A just and lasting peace is possible.

Paul Harris