I don’t know if this poisonous presidential campaign has completely severed some of my friendships, but I do know that it has strained a few.
One friend who opposes Hillary Clinton e-mailed a bunch of buddies the other day, “I’m starting to understand how Hitler came to power. And then in the name of public policy, disarm(ed) the people. I’m starting to understand how six million people were killed.”
Beyond the fact that in the last presidential debate Clinton only called for “reasonable regulation” on guns and also said, “I understand and respect the tradition of gun ownership,” the comparison to the atrocities of Hitler was heartlessly dismissive and insulting to the millions of human beings who Hitler and his Third Reich gassed, hanged, shot and tortured, not to mention the millions more American and Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen who died to defeat him.
Another friend sent me an over-the-top screed about Clinton’s “affection for jihadists” with the assertion that she is no patriot, which was fallaciously myopic and insulting to me, and the millions who support her over Donald Trump.
But I responded to my friend in an attempt at amity, “We simply have different views. But I hope you accept this: many of the people behind Clinton, like many of the people behind Trump, are patriots.” My point is, we all want the same things for our nation: to preserve and protect our security, our prosperity, our liberties. We just have different ways of achieving that. To which he wrote back, “You shared with me that patriots come with different stripes: a premise I don’t accept.” Really?
I’ve lived through a lot of elections, but I don’t remember anything like this.
Like the growing anger among some Trump supporters about the integrity of the election. Much of it is based on absurdly unscientific assumptions, like how big the crowds are at Trump rallies, and his lead in yard signs. A confident Trump campaigner told The New York Times, as if itap proof that Trump is winning, “If you get on social media, he’s got Hillary beat, 3 to 1.”
A 25-year-old man in Wisconsin told a reporter that if Clinton wins, Trump’s backers “are going to do whatever needs to be done to get her out of office, because she does not belong there.” A New York voter told The Associated Press that in the event of a Clinton victory, “Our only chance is if the military develops a conscience and takes matters into its own hands.” Even a former Illinois congressman, Joe Walsh, tweeted, “If Trump loses, I’m grabbing my musket.” Really?
Some of these fires burn because Trump isn’t just stoking them, he’s setting them. But even if he loses, then disappears the day after (which seems unlikely), anger like this will not disappear. To hear these people talk, there could be another Revolutionary War in the making. I, for one, am not ignoring them.
I’m not going to offer some utopian formula for making it all better. I don’t think there is one. My only remedy, and at best it is partial, is for every one of us to remember our ultimate goal: a nation where the streets might not all be paved with gold, but unlike other civilizations, they’re not running red with blood either. For all its imperfections, this still is the best nation on Earth.
The colloquial way of saying all that is, let’s not take our eyes off the ball. Just think of something every one of us has recited thousands of times: the Pledge of Allegiance, which describes us as one nation “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
It might be more easily said than done, but letap not make a mockery of the Pledge. And thatap my message to my friends. If we’re still friends when the election is over.
Greg Dobbs of Evergreen is an author, public speaker, and former foreign correspondent for ABC News.
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