The Road Before Us

The path toward reconciliation.

The nation is polarized into entrenched camps of warfare that, for the moment, is political and ideological, but, as tensions escalate may not stay as such. More and more of us are avoiding the media for the simple fact that they themselves are entrenched into the same camps.

Somebody else is always living in a fantasy world. Somebody else is delusional. Somebody else has it wrong, but we have it right. We know the truth. They Don’t! But we do!

We divide ourselves into these ideological tribes. We label people as left or right, liberal or conservative. We close the door on people who think differently. And regardless of which camp we find ourselves in just like that, the radicalization process has begun. Just how radical we go depends on how uncomfortable we are at any given moment.

It often begins with a feeling of incredulity or frustration toward the realities of the political process, and a fear of being powerless to do anything about it. Fear is to life like oxidation is to metal. And it prevents us from seeing ourselves in others and realizing that this dystopia of constant bickering and political polarization can only be overcome together.

Instead of a collective mantra of unity and brotherhood as a nation, what we have are the epithets of a bar room brawl, or a couple headed for a divorce. If you don’t believe what I believe that’s only because you’re a blind, stupid, fascist, racist, bigot, fanatic, terrorist, or a fucking moron!

Is any of this actually helpful? Is what we believe more important than who we are? Because from where I sit, on the periphery, it seems that it’s time for all of us to step back and take a moment to sift through our beliefs. All beliefs are either conceptual or empirical, and it’s only the latter that we should be asking others to accept as fact.

The rest are simply our personal truths that we’ve chosen to accept due to the million-in-one biases that we all have. And that’s fine, that too is part of who we are. It’s just not something that we should expect others to accept with the same fervency of faith as we do.

Recently I had an unlikely encounter with someone at work. Eric was a six-foot-six, 330 pound Black man with a laugh like smooth bourbon and a temper like a molotov cocktail. Our relationship as coworkers didn’t begin smoothly or amicably.

I immediately pegged him as a bully, someone who would always use his size to get his way, and that was not a trait that I respected. But eventually, after a tense confrontation due to a mutual misunderstanding, we started having conversations.

We talked about any number of issues, from world events, to politics, to socio-economic issues like poverty and racism. He was both a listener and a debater. And I looked forward to our conversations because he was both intelligent and observant.

However, what I began to see and feel as wrong with the direction of our conversations was how they always turned to Trump and his supporters. Our conversations would start with a sarcastic comment about the latest of Trump’s tweets.

From there it would delve into our contrary opinions on how things should be done, and then end with a barrage of insults against his supporters for being ignorant, blind, or bat-shit crazy for following someone who was obviously the epitome of moral degradation in the flesh.

It was clear that we both had our reasons for being angry and frustrated, we had each lived through perceived injustices. He as a Black man and myself as a Mexican. Racial injustice was a safe pedestal for us to each stand on as we related to one another. But, to what end? And how was what we were doing any different from what members of Q-anon or Antifa were doing?

The experience made me realize that we all have our grievances with the way things are.

Regardless of our races, ethnicities, or the socio-economic stratospheres that we descend from, we all have been treated unfairly. And the more I began to think on this the more I began to see that what I needed wasn’t so different from what everyone else probably needed.

An apology.

I wanted an apology for every time I was refused service in an upscale restaurant, despite my professional attire of a suit and tie, for the simple fact that I was speaking Spanish. For every time a four or five star hotel had a computer glitch that conveniently erased my reservation.

And for every time a customs agent decided that a well-dressed business man arriving from Mexico must be carrying something illegal and thereby decides to subject him to harassment and search.

I wanted someone to say, I’m sorry.

I have never asked for this, and, for that matter, I’ve never asked for any country to be perfect. We have all endured injustices, and what we have each endured is not representative of what this nation stands for as a whole.

We are imperfect. But so long as we don’t allow the pain of our experiences to blind us from seeing that who we are as a nation is so much bigger and better than who we are separated into camps, then all is not lost.

We are now at a point where our experiences in this country are so varied that we no longer understand one another, not because we can’t, but because we won’t. And from that has come the separatist mentality of us and them.

What ever happened to we and us? There should be no surprise when an elected member of congress tweets, “I won’t back down. I won’t apologize.”

This mentality has entrenched us into the respective battle bunkers where we find ourselves. Majorie Taylor Greene is just the latest manifestation of that to take form on the political stage.

Statements like hers are declarations of an unwillingness to consider new facts or information. And isn’t that where fanaticism is born?

It is past time for all of us to recognize that none of us have all the facts. Blindspots are everywhere, and yet we all have to find a way to live our lives in harmony with what equates to limited information.

What we must protect ourselves from, however, is an unwillingness to consider any new information that may threaten the integrity of our conceptual beliefs.

When it comes to our empirical beliefs, such as the Earth is round, gravity is real, and carbohydrates are amazing!, we tend to not feel too threatened when someone comes along saying that the world is flat, gravity is a myth, and carbs taste awful.

We probably wouldn’t even bother to argue with them, because what would be the point? After all, our empirical beliefs have been verified by actual experience and evidence. But the same can’t be said about our conceptual beliefs.

Conceptual beliefs by their very nature are abstract and theoretical and not always easy to defend.

They often step into the realm of faith, a place where often times logic and reason bear no weight and hold no ground. None of us are exempt from having these beliefs, they are fundamentally part of who we are. And some of us will defend our beliefs to the death, despite all the tangible evidence to the contrary.

Which is why, when we interact with people who don’t share our experiences and don’t see the world as we do, at the very least we need to be empathetic in how we address them.

The more entrenched and invested they are in their beliefs, the more empathetic we need to be. It’s about reminding ourselves that, at some point in our lives, we’ve all found ourselves entrenched behind beliefs that couldn’t be defended by facts or evidence.

Sometimes what we were defending was not so much a belief but a way of life that was comfortable. And when facts aren’t available, there is always the lie.

We have all done it. The spouse who defends their counterpart as faithful, despite the clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, is not so different from the person who defends his political candidate as moral or righteous when confronted with evidence to the contrary.

Both are trying to protect more than just their egos. It’s about shielding themselves from the uncertainties of change and protecting a way of life that is comfortable to them.

And without some sort of empathetic exchange of understanding between us, we’ll end up in a perpetual state of conflict that leads us to a war that can’t be won.

What I am suggesting is that we’re simply willing to try on someone else’s shoes for a moment, and actually walk around before we voice an opinion. We must learn to see the world through the eyes of another if we are ever going to step into what it means to be part of a community.

Let us be reminded that nations, just like communities, are judged for the ideals and solidarity that hold them together. The greatest of nations weren’t guided by their petty squabbles or differences, they were guided by the collective compromises they made with one another.

There are plenty of examples for us to look at, going back as far as 2050 B.C., Ur-Nammu’s Code (Sumerians), followed by Hammurabi’s Code, 1700 B.C. (The Babylonians), the Twelve Tables of Rome, 450 B.C., the Magna Carta, 1215 A.D., all the way to the constitutions of this and other free and democratic republics like it.

Who we are is clearly stated, We The People...in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity...

Let us not define ourselves by the difficulties that surround us. Rather, let these difficulties serve as an opportunity for each of us to remember who we are as we stand together as one nation and one people in pursuit of our highest ideals.

Let us declare to the world that who we are as a people and a nation is more important than whatever our individual differences may be. Let us be reminded that righteousness isn’t something that belongs only to a religion. It’s fundamentally part of who we are.

It’s the ubiquitous potential for change that permeates every aspect of what we are as humanity. At any moment change is possible.

Today, something that is seen as awful, tomorrow can be seen as the necessary stepping stone to take us to where we needed to be. Which is precisely why a refusal to see the world through the eyes of another is likewise a refusal to accept the very best parts of who and what we are.

Accepting change is not easy. Admitting that we could be wrong, terrifying. Even more terrifying, however, is where we will find ourselves if we don’t stand on our common ground as one.

On January 6th I watched, just as most probably did, as the Capitol was stormed by an angry mob of Americans.

What I was most taken by wasn’t the property damage, the violence, or the extreme rhetoric like, Hang Pence! What most struck me were the words of a fifty-something man, responding to a journalist’s question as to why he was there. He said, “Because they work for us, and they don’t get to take this from us!” His sincerity was palpable as the tears welled up in his eyes.

I related to his frustrations. I could feel his pain. I wanted to stand there with him, by his side, and I don’t for a second believe that I was alone in feeling that way. It was one of the most transformative experiences of my life: internalizing someone else’s truth as my own.

I realized in that moment that it’s okay to admit that we don’t have all the answers, so long as we acknowledge that the only way to find them is together.

Just the other day I was listening to a host on MSNBC, talking about “deradicalizing Trump supporters.” I realized that commentators like that only serve one purpose, and that’s to keep us in our entrenched camps of mutual distrust. If someone followed, voted for, or supported Trump that was and is their right.

Ridiculizing them for having exercised that right only serves to push them further into the shadows of discontent. We must remind ourselves that we’ve all been in the position to have believed or backed a lie, whether it was an idea or a cause, for reasons that had nothing to do with logic or reason. No-body is exempt.

What the host on MSNBC failed to comprehend is we can’t interject our facts into being someone else’s truth just because our candidate won an election.

The fact remains, seventy-four million Americans supported Trump’s presidency. These people are part of our communities. They work with us. Under normal circumstances they sit across from us in restaurants and shop in the same stores as we do.

And antagonizing them is not the answer. What we need to exhibit is empathy. And in that empathy we must recognize that it’s always easier to believe a comfortable lie, than it is to venture into the dark unknown of a new truth.

Just telling someone they’re wrong just leads to more declarations of defiance. I won’t back down! I won’t apologize! We will never get through to anyone by telling them they’re wrong. These people feel neglected, betrayed and left behind. And until we empathize with and understand that, we will never get through to them.

The bridges we must build between us will be made from the very commonalities we share. The sum of what we are will always be greater that that which we are not. All we have to do is take a moment to remind ourselves. We all want a safe and free society. We all want our children to have more opportunities than we had.

We all want public officials to be held accountable for their actions—the government should be afraid of its people not the people of its government. We all want the armed forces to serve legitimate agendas of national security, not agendas of wealth accumulation for a few at the expense of the many.

We believe in the idea of the republic, the idea that a body of citizens can chart its own course through the vicissitudes of circumstances to a place of harmony through the democratic process. A place of laws and rules that are equally applied to everyone. A government not controlled by money, but by the will of its people.

A government that will not be swayed by the greed of the few, but by the general consensus of who we choose to be as a nation. At this very moment we have the opportunity to win the hearts and minds of everyone who resides within these borders.

Not through rhetoric but through action. And that action must begin with a recognition that we as a people of every race, creed or ideology have failed one another.

When someone has to drive four hours to a free medical clinic and then spend another six hours waiting in the parking lot to be screened for breast cancer, we’ve failed.

When people are five seconds from being unemployed and homeless, and that’s considered acceptable, we've failed. When a decent education requires  six-figure debt, we've failed.

When the marginalized masses of those who are incarcerated, bankrupted, or poor are denied a fair shot at contributing to who we are as a nation, that too is because we’ve failed ourselves.

Our current stratagem of enriching the few at the expense of the many is leading to our collective enslavement to those same few. And browbeating someone into believing what we believe is like torturing someone to get the truth. This type of behavior leads to mistrust, then fear, then hatred, then to a place where none of us want to go.

If we don’t engage and involve them in the ongoing, constructive process of building a better republic, then we will forever lose them. What awaits us down that road is a civil war.

And while some will argue that that’s precisely what this country needs, I suspect that very few of them have ever been exposed to an oppressive regime exercising psychological and physical warfare on a continual basis. That has been my life for 17 years, which qualifies me to say that warfare is not what we want.

When we look at why people love someone like Trump, we see that it has nothing to do with his ethics, morals, eloquent discourse, or his intellect. Seventy-four million Americans loved him for the simple fact that his message coddled their fears. He promised them a return to a way of life that was better for them.

He reminded them of simpler times, when households were supported by one income, and that one income was enough to provide a comfortable life. He assured them that their problems were not their fault. He blamed immigrants, globalism, and the liberals for every societal ill with the fervor of an evangelist.

The solutions he preferred had nothing to do with encouraging people to innovate or adapt themselves to the  realities of a global economy; his rhetoric didn’t cover how to work together as a nation as leaders in a global community to bring about sustainable solutions to the difficulties we face; nor did his posturing on the world stage serve any real purposes other than his own.

He was nothing more than the collective manifestation of a populace who was fed up with being ignored.

The forty-fifth president could just have easily have been Ted Cruz or Sarah Palin, and the conversations and circumstances of today would be much the same. It’s not about Trump. It never was.

He was merely how the rising discontent of a minority chose to express itself. What my co-worker Eric and I needed then is exactly what all Americans need now.

Someone to say, Hey, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you lost your job, then your home, followed by your marriage and your family, and that nobody was there to listen and help. I’m sorry that some unexpected medical expenses wiped out your retirement savings, and now instead of spending time with the grand kids, you’re making food deliveries for Uber.

I’m sorry that your drug addiction has led you to incarceration, where instead of rehabilitation you were given a pathway to recidivism.

I’m sorry that the color of your skin, the language you speak, your sexual preferences or identity, or your beliefs on God have led to persecution.

I’m sorry, because what you have lived through is not representative of what this nation stands for. We are imperfect. But we believe that if you stand with us, we will all be the better for it.

Thank you for reading this publication from MYLIFEplus25. Look out for more coming every week.

-Mario