Be Wary of Everything
When I was in my late teens, I did a fair amount of hitchhiking to get to where I wanted to go. My longest trip was from a camp in upper New York State back to Rhode Island and home.
Rides were not hard to get. Usually someone stopped within five or ten minutes. Some went out of their way to drop me closer to my destination.
Fast forward 50 years. I am living in rural Wisconsin and ran out of gas four and a half miles from home in one direction and four and a half miles from the nearest gas station in the other direction.
I stuck out my thumb, looking for a ride. Drivers going in my direction swung wide, looking straight ahead. I walked the four and a half miles to the gas station, borrowed a container for gas and talked another customer into giving me a ride back to my car.
My son, when he was in kindergarten some 20 years ago, came home one day and said his teacher in a lesson about safety told the class to stay away from strangers.
At the Buffalo County fair one summer, I wandered through the 4-H building and was attracted to a series of posters. The theme was danger. Be wary of this. Be wary of that. Nicely illustrated and described by the kids.
I forget all the specific warnings, except the last. I paused and contemplated it for some time. “Be wary of everything.” I wondered what are we doing to our children and what will they be like when they are adults.
What do stories of hitchhiking and children’s posters have to do with politics? Fear has grown during our lifetime, seeping into our consciousness, shaping our thinking, changing the way we act. Stranger danger and be wary are taught in many ways. Fear becomes embedded in the culture. Fear diminishes trust. Divisions widen.
Opportunistic politicians see an opening to exploit. When fear is already present, it is easier to make that fear worse, focus that fear on the “other”, the “stranger”, and cast oneself in the role of protector against real or imagined dangers. Fear is the solvent that dissolves community. Fear is a more immediate emotion than hope. Those who use our fears against us are rowing with the current.
Since Richard Nixon ran in 1950 against Helen Gahagan Douglas for the U.S. Senate in California and earned the nickname “Tricky Dick”, Republicans in particular have made stranger danger a campaign strategy.
The identity of the stranger changed with the election and over the years starting with communists, socialists, fellow travelers, Blacks, flag burners, war protesters, and moving on to welfare queens, felons, gays, Muslims, immigrants, and transgender students. But danger was the unifying theme. Danger to traditional values. Danger to the social fabric. Danger from a stranger. Danger to fear. Danger Republicans would protect us against.
Those who would win by advocating trust, cooperation and community have the more difficult task. They are rowing against the rising tide of fear in all of us.
There is more at stake, however, than two competing campaign strategies and the question of which will win on election day.
The idea of democracy, government of the people, by the people and for the people, depends on trust, cooperation and community. We are diverse but not strangers. We are part of the same community. We can accommodate our different ideas, interests and values within a political process that honors diversity and recognizes individuality.
When some are designated strangers, held up as objects to fear, and excluded from community, democracy begins to wither.
History tells us that once we abandon the idea of community and divide people into “us” and “them”, those allowed to be among the chosen gets smaller over time. The demands for uniformity in thought and action get stricter.
The argument for conformity begins with an appeal to history, tradition, and generally accepted social standards. The justification, however, rises quickly to a cosmic level. Social standards are not the product of human effort but come from God and natural law. They are not ours to create or amend, but to follow.
William Barr, Attorney General in the recent Republican administration, made the case for religion – a particular religion – to set the rules for all of us. “Judeo-Christian moral standards are the ultimate utilitarian rules for human conduct. They reflect the rules that are best for man, not in the by and by, but in the here and now. They are like God’s instruction manual for the best running of man and human society … violations of these moral laws have bad, real-world consequences for man and society.”
When God speaks, there can be no accommodation of differences, no political process for respecting other beliefs and including those with other values. We are left to do battle. Battle between Right and Wrong. Good and Evil. God and Satan. Chosen Ones and Strangers. Repression is inevitable. Democracy retreats in small steps.
In the lead up to the January 6 attempt to overthrow the presidential election, Mark Meadows, then White House Chief of Staff, wrote in an email, “This is a fight of good versus evil … Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues….”
Even when the “evil” is not widespread and there are not many of the “other”, the fight has to be fought. Principle matters. Earlier this month the Utah legislature passed a law barring transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports. The Republican Governor Spencer Cox vetoed the bill noting that of the 75,000 high school students who play sports in Utah only four are openly transgender. Of that four, only one student plays on a girls’ team.
“Four kids and only one of them playing girls sports. That’s what this is all about,” Cox wrote in his veto message. “Four kids who are just trying to find some friends and feel like they are part of something … Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few.”
The Republican controlled legislature overrode the Governor’s veto three days later.
Democracy requires trust, cooperation, community. Trust is basic. Without trust there is no cooperation. Without cooperation there is no community.
Fear destroys trust. There can be no trust if we fear the other. The stranger we don’t know. Fear diminishes with connection. People didn’t stop when I ran out of gas. I was a stranger on the side of the road with my thumb out. At the gas station I got a ride back, because I could tell my story and make connection.
For Jesus, if not for our former Attorney General, the gospel is about inclusion, diversity and community. “I was a stranger, and you took me in.” Fear dissipates. Trust grows and democracy has a chance.
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press
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