“This is the time to heal in America,” Joe Biden said in his election victory speech. I thought it was an obvious sort of “who could disagree with that?” kind of statement, but it was fawned over by commentators nonetheless. (Actually, there are some that might well disagree about healing because they think the USA needs a cultural revolution of a sort, but that’s a conversation for another day.) He quoted a Bible verse to support the sentiment (Ecclesiastes 3:3), but that doesn’t serve to make it more eloquent, especially since the context around that verse is about vastly more than healing. Nonetheless, it’s a good thing Joe said.
My concern is whether, as a nation, we sufficiently understand what healing means.My concern is whether, as a nation, we sufficiently understand what healing means. Do our leaders and thought leaders, beginning with Joe Biden, recognize that the hurt is on all sides, and that what’s most critically ailing is the nation’s lifeblood of dialog? The arteries are clogged with manipulative partisan diatribes and cultural exchange silencers. Do leaders recognize the wrongs done on both sides? Do they know what relational healing actually requires? Simple statements like “the time to heal” are but platitudes, and the problem with platitudes is that they mean nothing — and anything. What we need, from leaders and citizens alike, is to take ownership of the hurts we’ve caused and to live out examples of words and actions that truly foster healing and a collaborative path forward.
Nice words, vague ideas
Joe said a few more words about it. Things like “put away the harsh rhetoric” and “listen to each other” and “stop treating our opponents as our enemies.” These are nice, but just stop? If I’ve been twisting your words and stabbing you in the back and calling the dogs on you and I just stop, does that make me trustworthy? A knife wound needs not merely for the stabbing to stop, it needs positive healing action.
Wondering how Biden supporters
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think the nation can heal, BBC found a crowd of them, where many held signs mocking Trump, and asked some what their message to Republican friends would be. They said:
- We need compromise.
- We need serious reconciliation.
- Understand peoples’ pain and suffering.
- Give Democrats a chance.
- We should understand where Trump voters are coming from.
- If you voted for Trump, cry about it.
- I don’t have any Republican friends or family.
- Even though you’re “angry and disappointed” at your family, tell them that Biden is for all, “You just don’t know it yet.”
As with Joe, there are some nice words here — even if there are some mixed messages. The bits about understanding are the best part, but mostly I put these sentiments in the same category as another platitude: “If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you.” Who defines “nice”? If there’s healing that’s needed, doesn’t that mean there were wrongs that were done? What do we do about those?
If all our leadership encourages is a vague “let’s be nice again” approach, it will fall far short of the need and the reality. The weight of wrongs done, by people on all sides, is much greater — in some cases far, far greater — and needs an appropriate counterweight. “Be nice” is a plastic bandage where heart transplants are needed.“Be nice” is a plastic bandage where heart transplants are needed.
A long history
Recognizing the weight of wrongs done is important, and just as important is recognizing how long the rift has been going. Though it grew to a crescendo in the Trump years, it did not start then. In times before, we were told certain policy proposals were only common sense, implying that those with a different policy idea had no common sense. With the stroke of an executive order pen, major shifts in the character of daily citizen interactions at public facilities were enacted, with no regard for public debate that might give consideration to the valid concerns of many. Name-calling, quote-twisting, suppression-via-crowd, voice cancellation, litigation-based agenda pushing…it was all there, growing through the years, in good measure across the spectrum. The rift was not then one-sided, and neither has it been in Trump times.
It’s natural that tensions would grow over time. The more one tries to improve, personally or as a nation, the harder it gets. The longer one side blames the other, the more the other pushes back. The longer one group’s ideals don’t become law, the more willing they are to run roughshod over the ideals of the other, and the more vocal the other becomes. The more tensions rise, the more it becomes a power battle to win by might-makes-rightThe more tensions rise, the more it becomes a power battle to win by might-makes-right., and the more people descend to using policy ends to justify disingenuous, misleading, and overtly dishonest rhetorical means. Compromise becomes impossible.
Let’s-be-nice healing is impossible in the face of all this. We must realize the depth of wrongs and hurts, take responsibility, and respond with a weight of healing action that matches the extent of injury.
Healing needs truth and reconciliation
We can learn from other nations. Though the current rift in the United States is of a different type and magnitude than rifts in South Africa and Rwanda (and others), and thus not fully comparable, the underlying principles for national healing are the same: “contrition, confession, forgiveness and restitution”2 (South Africa) and “memory, truth, justice, confessions and forgiveness”3 (Rwanda).
For our post-election societal rift, it is not the formality of these country’s commissions that we need4, it’s the weight of their foundations in relationships and Western science.5 We need to recognize, own, apologize for, and repudiate the hurtful and unhealthy ways we have treated each other.
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I offer below examples from right and left of what I think this could look like. I have picked real examples of things said and/or done and crafted a possible way for the perpetrators to begin to made amends. The ones hurt or offended in these cases may be specific individuals or they may be groups of people. The foundations of my sample begin-healing statements are that:
- Perpetrators take ownership for specific wrongs said or done.
- Perpetrators apologize.
- Perpetrators reach to understand the other by expressing something of what they had failed to consider about the perspective and reality of the other.
- Perpetrators state a specific way that they aim to be more inclusive and relational moving forward.
- Perpetrators offer some way to begin to build a bridge or make specific reparations.
As is my custom, I do not name the individuals behind the quotes because my intent is to focus on the content, not the person. Be assured that I have sources for each and will provide such for any that are non-anonymously requested via the comments to this article.
| Said or done before | How perpetrators could own and begin to heal it |
|---|---|
| Trump voters were “looking the other way at the plight of 50% or more of the country” and “that…is despicable. It is un-American.” | I’m sorry. I was wrong to negatively label you based solely on your presidential vote. I realize now that, although the issues I am focused on are very important, my issues are not the only issues. There are other important concerns that affect 50% or more of the country and reasonable people may prioritize issues differently. Going forward, I will allow that your public policy priorities may have their own way of addressing the plights of many citizens. Can we sit down and talk, so that I can better understand how you prioritize issues and reconcile conflicting concerns? |
| “First, [Democrats] wanted to abolish private health insurance, then it was capitalism and now it’s the police. What’s next, the fire department?” | I’m sorry. I was wrong to exaggerate the core content of your proposals for police reform, as if all Democrats espoused full disbanding of police departments. I realize now I should stick to specifics and not play games with emotional hyperbole. I want to make more clear that I also aim for reduced overuse of deadly force by police. Can we work together to frame the root causes, identify options, and think through the secondary and tertiary affects of each possible solution? Public safety is greatly complex. I’m very concerned about unintended consequences with proposals like reducing the criminal severity of assaulting police, not charging looters with crimes, and especially large scale disbandings or sudden reductions in police presence. I want change, but not without incorporating your experience, concerns, and ideas. Can we please work together? |
| “If you see [any Trump administration officials] in a restaurant, in a department store, and a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd to push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” | I’m sorry. I was wrong to sic crowds on you and wrong to advocate forceful exclusion and segregation against you. I realize now how this is dehumanizing. I realize how it encourages similar action against regular citizens. I realize that this type of oppression is precisely the opposite of what I stand for and try to champion every day. Will you forgive me? Can I take you out to dinner or on a shopping trip so that people can see my change of heart. |
| Mexico is “sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us [sic]. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” | I’m sorry. I was wrong to exaggerate the dangerous bordercrossers versus the not dangerous. I realize that this type of hyperbole encourages negative views of not only those who cross the border outside of the law, but also others who look like them. I want our country to be known as a land of opportunity for many. It seems to me that our biggest differences center on how to do this humanely, responsibly, and compassionately. Can we talk at length about it and perhaps even create a joint position paper enumerating the principles and policy goals that should be considered as we try to find a solution? |
| “All White people are racists. All. Of. Them.” | I’m sorry. I realize now that this mode of dialog tends to increase racial misunderstanding and tension. There’s a better way I could have said it to make clear that I’m using a different definition of racism to get to a deeper point. Going beyond overtly racist words and actions, my intent was to increase awareness of and foster work to correct subtle forms of racism like 1) the unexamined, unconscious emotional, relational, and family-of-origin biases that all humans are subject to and 2) societal structures that favor White people, sometimes in subtle ways, that have carried-on from earlier times while the nation focused on overt racism. Will you sit down with me and help me work out how to articulate specific examples of these types of racism, example actions that each person can take against them, and public policy ideas that might encourage right actions? |
| “The left has devolved into intolerant, inflexible, illogical, hateful, misguided, ill-informed, un-American, hypocritical, menacing, callous, ignorant, narrow-minded and, at times, blatantly fascistic behavior and rhetoric.” | I’m sorry. I was wrong to go over-the-top in the way I painted all of liberalism so negatively. I realize now that liberals do want to help people and care for them humanely. I share that desire and I want to work together. Aside from my over-the-top statement, perhaps there are other ways that I act forcefully or callously. Can we craft some type of joint statement about how each of us can channel our strong passions for the issues and frame conversations in ways that foster constructive dialog and cooperative working together? |
| I’m sorry. I was wrong to put your well-being and livelihood personally in harm’s way — and especially that of your children and loved ones. I realize now that personal safety and privacy are foundations of our society, and public policy differences do not justify vigilante-like invasions of that safety and privacy. Please forgive me. I cannot undo what I’ve done, but please, let’s sit down and talk. You can help me understand how I’ve impacted your life and whether I can do anything to make amends. |
True healing fosters integrated, inclusive public policy
In my proposed begin-healing statements, there is another characteristic beyond those I listed above, one that is more foundational and more critical to the nation’s future: The perpetrators specifically aim to find ways to work together on identifying, framing, and coalescing the nature of problems and how to think about solutions. In other words, they go much farther than agreeing to be nice and seeking compromise on solutions, they seek collaboration on and co-development of the questions to be asked.
Compromise was really never the right approach. In the historical divides — Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, traditional or progressive, or <insert your dichotomy here> — each side tends to ask only half the questions that need to be asked. What’s needed is not a middle-ground between two bad solutions, but rather an integrated way of thinking through the problems, the options, and the second- and third-order effects of proposed solutions.What’s needed is not a middle-ground between two bad solutions, but rather an integrated way of thinking through the problems, the options, and the second- and third-order effects of proposed solutions. And that requires the profound ability to work across lines that only true healing fosters.
Healing can be much more than a return to some half-baked status quo ante. It can be a starting point for building true camaraderie, community, leadership, and social justice.
Endnotes
1 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. The Gulag Archipelago. Éditions du Seuil, 1973. Part I.
2 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report (Volume One). 29 October 1998. p. 108.
3 Ndangiza, Fatuma (Executive Secretary of National Unity and Reconciliation Commission). Presentation on National Unity and Reconciliation Process in Rwanda. 1-2 December 2005. p. 3.
4 There is, on the other hand, a discussion to be had on what such a commission in the U.S. to address slavery, civil rights, and indigenous concerns would look like. Particular differences and challenges include the fact that original perpetrators are long dead and systemic racism does not tend to emerge as discrete incidents that an individual might confess.
5 Shaw, Rosalind (United States Institute of Peace). Rethinking Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. 2005. p. 7.
