Divided We Stand

You are good when you are one with yourself.

Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.

For a divided house is not a den of thieves;

It is only a divided house.

And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles 

yet not sink to the bottom.

-Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

One of the most troubling aspects of our American life over the past three years has been the failure of our common identity.  Our Constitution aims towards a "more perfect union," we hold the motto: e pluribus unum,  "out of many, One."  These are noble goals, and thankfully, while they may seem to wander like that rudderless ship, they, we, have not yet sunk to the bottom.

Over the weekend, as Donald Trump went on another one of his divisive tweet fests, this time with the entire city of Baltimore and its representative Elijah Cummings, I was struck by the response of Larry Hogan, the Governor of this State of Maryland that I have called home for over six years now.  Hogan is a Republican, but he is the sort of Republican that seems to be vanishing from the national scene at the moment.  As a "Red" official in one of the "Bluest" states, Hogan has had to learn to come together with people to seek the greater good of the community.  Hogan has been critical of Trump, but not in the bombastic and overheated ways that many, including libertarians and conservatives of the pre-Trump/never Trump style, seem to favor.

Hogan, in my estimation, recognizes that Trump is a symptom of a greater problem, not the cause.  I'm not sure precisely when it happened, but somewhere in my lifetime we have lost the ability to disagree without declaring the other side evil.  Now, when one argues over issues that one considers to be matters of moral decency, like say the treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers, or the protection of unborn children (to cherry pick one cause from each side), it is tempting to label those who disagree as cruel racists or baby-killers.  However, down this path lies madness in a nation that is trying to succeed in the grand experiment of democracy.

The difference between a Larry Hogan and a Donald Trump, is not so much their policies, but their character.  In a Chief Executive at any level, I would say that character matters much more than policy (which is why I did not love Bill Clinton, even though my centrist politics jived pretty well with his).  Hogan's response to Trump's attack on Baltimore (the largest city in Hogan's state) was not to call out Trump's racist dog-whistling or even to staunchly defend Baltimore (plenty of people are doing that), but to lament the divisive spirit of our times.  I have heard him do this before, and it is usually not warmly greeted by either right or left, but it remains the right response to this age.

Let me bring it down a level, and speak of what I know better than state or federal politics, let me talk about church politics, because as the pastor of a church I know what it is like to lead a group of people who do not always agree.  I am also familiar with the dynamic that emerges when moral ideas come up for debate.  The reason why church arguments become infamously toxic is because they happen within a community that is supposed to be a united body.  To say that the United States was founded on Christian principles may not be entirely correct, but they did lift perhaps the most crucial principle of unity from the writings of the New Testament, particularly the pleas and entreaties of the Apostle Paul to the church to be of one mind, the mind that was in Christ Jesus. Even as Paul practically begged people to love each other as brothers and sisters, he also had to continually correct them and teach them that being different was not the problem, not loving each other was the problem.

So, even now, in the church, which has been learning these hard lessons for two thousand years instead of just over two hundred, we can still get wrapped up in partisan debates and start labeling those with whom we are supposed to be One Body, as enemies, heretics and apostates.

You could make a solid argument that, in fact, the church is in decline due to this failing.  Indeed, it may be on the way to dying.  But as Chesterton said, in The Everlasting Man, the church has died several times over the course of her history, but we serve a God who has managed to find his way out of the grave.  The dangerous thing for a nation/empire, is that God finds them exceedingly disposable.  The Church stands rooted in history and, despite my fears, I have faith that she will continue to stand, even if her form changes radically.  Our baby nation however, I am not so sanguine.

Over the past decades we have lost our rudder. We may be worse off than simply a house divided, we very well may have become a den of thieves.  Donald Trump is definitely a thief, he is a con man and a swindler at that, perhaps a worse sort of thief than even a common thug, because he brings into doubt the judgment of those whom he defrauds.  He has deliberately presented a "platform," if you can even call it that, which is entirely founded upon fear and division.  He clearly delineates the world into "good" people who support him and "love Trump," and evil people, who are "very unfair," any time they criticize him or even call him on what George Will colorfully named a "vesuvius of mendacity."

In my world, I have experienced the travails of trying to seek a middle way, to find a compromise on issues where there is stark disagreement.  You usually don't make anyone happy, and then you end up getting shot at from both flanks. I believe that we need leaders like Barack Obama and Larry Hogan (they can come from both sides), who recognize our commonweal is more important than winning whatever skirmish is happening at the moment.

The alternative is to move farther apart.  In a church argument, often times the pastor becomes a casualty of one wing or another, and usually that wing bullies their way to a position of power, then they pick the next pastor, who is more "like-minded."  In the process, the "losing" wing feels disenfranchised and often leaves or fades away.  This is not good for the whole body, because part of it is now missing, even if you win, you lose.

That is where we are as a nation, Trump has sold himself (fraudulently in my opinion) as a winner.  He perpetually panders to his base and has pretty much rejected any strategy of reaching out to his detractors.  His approval ratings hover in the low 40's which is where they were during the 2016 election and where they have steadfastly remained.  His sales pitch is still working on many of the people he duped, I mean convinced, in 2016. His success has precipitated a crop of Democrats who use his same tactics: get hit, hit back harder; they yell, you yell louder; they tweet, you tweet more.  While I am having a hard time getting on the Biden bandwagon, I now see the danger in my darling Bernie.  What I am hoping for in 2020 from the blue side is a return to normalcy.  I would like someone of character that is willing to stand on the middle ground, because I believe (maybe it's a vain hope) that the middle ground still exists.

So far, I do not see an Obama among the Dems, and I doubt Hogan is going to run a Quixotic primary campaign against the Donald, but we are still a long way from election day 2020.  In some ways I want it to get here faster, in others I am hoping that the arc of history has time to bend back towards e pluribus unum, before then.  This rudderless ship has been lucky so far, but I don't trust our luck that much longer.