The Way We Win
I write this as the country — maybe the world — waits on the results of the contentious 2020 U.S. election. Like a lot of my friends I’m trying to make sense of a close vote we cannot understand, because in our minds this was a referendum on good versus evil, and to us it looks like half the country is voting for evil.
To both sides I imagine it looks that way.
And because I’m an editor and I’m accustomed to analyzing a story to try to identify its soul — what it means, what it’s really about — I find myself doing that with this situation too.
I was raised in suburban Georgia, as conservative a Bible Belt as is anywhere, amid a family almost universally Republican. I don’t share many of their beliefs, but for most of my life that wasn’t a problem. One of my oldest and dearest friends — still — is a devout Christian who I believe has never voted anything but GOP. That never mattered — I know her heart, and it isn’t defined by her politics.
A lot of the people I know are disheartened because they feel the closeness of this election means that nearly half the country — the voting populace, at least — is racist, greedy, evil.
And I find myself having a hard time believing that.
Off the top of my head I can name dozens of friends and family I can probably safely assume voted for Donald Trump, and they aren’t monsters.
That doesn’t mean I’m not hurt and angry and bewildered by their support of a man who has, at every turn, shown contempt for our laws, our democratic norms, basic human decency, and anyone who isn’t him (or Ivanka — though I suspect if it came right down to it he’d throw her under the bus in a second to save his own skin).
But I have to try to understand it, for my own state of mind — and heart. I can’t live in a world where I believe that half of people are irredeemable assholes or white supremacists or filled with hate.
I don’t have children, so take all this for what it’s worth, but to me this feels like the equivalent of raising a kid who’s difficult — rebellious, destructive, troubled — and yelling at him all the time about how worthless he is and how he should be ashamed of himself…and expecting that to change his behavior.
We explain and even mock Trump by saying his father never loved him, and the man we see today is the result. And yet we meet the other side with contempt and devalue everything about them. I don’t see any path forward for our divided nation — world — as long as we do that. Something about the GOP platform is speaking to what half of the voting public values (or fears) most in life, and I honestly don’t think it’s hatred and exclusion for most of them. I don’t think half the nation are evil.
I think the polls keep getting it wrong because a lot of people do see Donald Trump for what he has shown himself to be, and they don’t want to “out” themselves as voting for a man they know to behave in ways that violate their values.
But in the privacy of the voting booth, they do it anyway.
There’s a reason for that, and I can’t believe it’s because all of them embrace him or his worldview. Some do, of course, but not the people I’m thinking of, friends and loved ones whom I know to be loving and warm and kind in many ways — inclusive and decent.
If we can understand why, we have a chance of getting on track to bridge the widening divide between us. And we don’t do that by labeling all of them as white supremacist hate-filled monsters, any more than we help our troubled child — or any human being we care about — by telling them how awful or stupid they are and trying to shame or bully them into being better. Any human being on earth will reject that message and ferociously entrench in their position with that approach — you and I would do the same thing. We are doing it as the far right labels us “libtards” and the “radical left” and elite snowflakes.
And so the two camps dig in even deeper and we grow more and more divided, each side certain that we’re “right” and the other side isn’t just wrong, but evil.
That’s not to say I don’t think there is widespread systemic racism — I do. Or that there isn’t injustice, inequality, intolerance. There is. I just don’t know if fighting it with equal and opposite fury and revulsion is likely to create change — in minds, hearts, or policies.
I miss the country I thought I lived in, when I assumed every person I met was a “friendly,” a fellow human doing the best they can, just like me, even if their version of that didn’t look like mine. I actually loved those differences; it made the world more interesting to hear about other people’s lives and points of view. It’s why I had pen pals as a kid in other countries, why I have always loved to travel, why I enjoy sitting down with a new acquaintance and hearing about their lives.
For my own peace of mind, I have to try to see this as a version of that.
And even as I write this I hear the outcry in my mind that I’m accepting hatred and racism and trying to explain away ugliness, that you can’t accept it, not even one morsel, that you have to fight, fight, fight.
I get that. I feel it. And I will fight — I do — for the values I uphold, to safeguard rights and equal treatment and opportunity for every single person. To act with decency and compassion and kindness and work to promote those values in the world in whatever way I can.
But I can’t keep hating and fighting any individual who votes for Donald Trump or the Republican Party. I can’t live another four years like that. It corrodes my soul. It makes me part of the problem.
Right after the 2016 election I was walking my dogs through the neighborhood, filled with pain and rage and disgust, and I came across a yard sign: “Hate Has No Home Here.”
And honest to god, my immediate reaction was a furious, righteous, “That’s right, motherfuckers.”
I reacted to the idea of not hating…with hate.
If we expect compassion, we have to show it ourselves.
It galls me to think of listening to the other side. Of having a conversation with someone who voted for Donald Trump about why they voted for Donald Trump, let alone trying to understand it. Even as I write this the idea amps up my heartbeat and makes my jaw clench — Why would I dignify that repulsive point of view with an audience? I think.
And then I breathe, and remind myself of the idea of that troubled child, digging further and further into his anger and pain the more his parents won’t listen, the more they discount him, the more they attack him and make him feel shame.
Listening doesn’t mean I agree. But it’s the only way I know to try to understand. And if I can understand, if I can help create a feeling of friendliness rather than rancor and opposition, maybe I and whoever I’m talking with can find our common ground, our common goals. And maybe we can find ways to work together to achieve a version of them that benefits everyone, even if it means we both compromise a little…just the way our government was set up to work. It’s not a dirty word, compromise — it’s the way that every relationship in our lives works, actually: with family, coworkers, friends.
I’m not kidding myself that my attempts to do this are going to effect sociopolitical change. But maybe if we all try to do a little more of it, it can. The alternative isn’t working — it’s making things so much worse.
I’m still so very hopeful that the election results will put Joe Biden in office. But even if they do, I want to remember what I’m feeling right now, because that won’t mean this division has gone away. If Republicans hold the Senate, it may even get worse. If Donald Trump is elected it most certainly will, as he feeds on that divisiveness and hatred.
So I breathe again. Just breathe. And then I’ll try to keep creating the world I want to live in, one connection at a time.
Tiffany Yates Martin is a book editor, an author, and a human being.
