When I was a child I lived in a small world. I sectioned off one small corner of my bedroom where I spent time reading, drawing, and listening to The Shadow on the radio. I also had an isolated place on a tiny mound of dry land surrounded by 10 acres of wetlands. The tiny island was shaded by a couple of pine trees and adjacent to a stream. I was comfortable in these two places. My childhood world was my size: familiar, manageable, and felt safe.
When I became an adult, I put away my childhood world. Part of becoming fully human is stepping out into the workplace, the marketplace, the world of our forebears, and the world of possibilities. On vacations we meet people with different regional appearances, accents, customs, and histories. Horizons expand through news media, movies, books, magazines, and the internet. Many are fortunate to be able to travel around the world bringing back experiences of different political systems, climates, and cuisine.
Several times a week, I gather via Zoom with groups of people from dozens of different countries to share personal stories, discuss current events, reflect on opinions, and organize around common concerns.
In one way or another, we are invited to become citizens of the world. Potentially, the full life of the adult world has no boundaries.
However, there is trouble in River City! President Trump is urging us to shrink our neighborhood. He divides Americans into small groups of familiar people. He fosters fear through urging ignorance. He tweets and speaks fear of a country and a world filled with dangerous bad actors who are trying to annihilate America. Even though he’s traveled extensively, his home base is small, like the safe corner of a bedroom or a tiny island in the middle of a swamp.
In his July 4 speech he commits to exclusive communities of look-a-like, like-minded people: “We want . . . great communities and happy communities and safe communities. . . . We should all want the same thing,” he said. “How can it be any different than those things? Those who want us to be ashamed of who we are, have a goal of demolition.” He pronounces that anyone who thinks differently from him is seeking to destroy the country and is an enemy of American’s self-esteem.
Trump calls us into an either/or world of friend or foe. His method is to limit information, distort truth, and deny reality. He paints peaceful demonstrators as anarchists and terrorists. He insists that either local police clear city streets using force or he will send in Homeland Security and other federal agencies to use massive indiscriminate violence. He also views the “C” virus as nothing but a sniffle when caught by young people. Therefore, either work to strengthen the economy or choose to combat the fake danger of “flu-like” COVID-19.
Another example dividing Americans is Trump joining into the controversy over monuments of American forebears. The controversy arises over neglecting to reveal that some of these public figures were also supporters of colonialism and slavery. The president insists that telling the whole story demolishes patriotism and love of country. The greatness of America is ignorance of the lives of Black and brown people. His is a small world where people must choose between either patriotic forebears or flawed oppressive ancestors.
He also expects people to choose between either American righteousness or an oppressive wider world. For example, Trump has submitted an official notice to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO). This action effectively rejects WHO’s inclusive founding objective: “the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health.” Trump’s action makes America smaller.
Another of his actions is feeding fear of international neighbors and shrinking their influence. He has severely restricted the issuing of visas, keeps asylum seekers in Mexico, harps on building “the wall,” and deploys the National Guard to the border with Mexico. It’s the self-centered American way or the way of terrorist and anarchists.
The alternative to living in Trump’s world of fear and small spaces, is to live in a mature America that has a wide view, celebrating its diverse population and making way for kindred relationships with people worldwide. It is remembering a history that includes a nation’s corrupted origins and heroes enmeshed with character flaws. If one is uncomfortable including these complete stories, consider it a good thing. Discomfort makes way for change and gaining the wisdom for a wider vision of freedom and justice for all. “Either/or” restricts opportunities. “Both/and” expands horizons.
Other opportunities in an open society include rejecting fear of the unknown other. Fear is fed with lies, distortions, denials of reality, and feelings blind to truth. Fear is overcome with an openness to listening to the feelings of others, and becoming acquainted with a variety of systems, beliefs, customs, ethics, and international perspectives. Trump tempts us to “all want the same thing.” Opening our horizons and expanding our neighborhood says “no” to his temptation. As Max Strasser, international editor for the New York Times has written, “The truth is, we really are all in this thing together.” Our neighborhood is worldwide. Anything less permits oppression, shrinks democracy, prevents evolving improvement of the human condition, and exiles wisdom.
(John Buttrick of Concord can be reached at johndbuttrick@gmail.com.)