It’s election day. By tomorrow one of the most rancorous elections in living memory — which is different from historical memory — will finally be over.
I would like to hope that this day would signal an end to several trends that have become increasingly common:
(1) An unwillingness to listen to one another – to process what is being said, to ask questions that invite further conversation and understanding
(2) The tendency to attribute the worst of motives to people who, on balance, mean well and hope for the best, but disagree on how to get there
(3) An inability to focus on issues, to sort through the tough, tangled connections between action and vision
(4) A genuine acceptance of difference of opinion — not the differences we embrace with ease, but the differences that bite a bit, or a lot
(5) Our penchant for name-calling and character assassination as a substitute for real debate
(6) Our tendency to trade in fear as a means of motivating people to take our side
(7) Our partisan division – division that is easily exploited by politicians of every stripe, but makes it impossible to find practical solutions that defy ideological over-simplification
(8) And — most intractable of all — our unwillingness to have friends who differ with us
But here’s the problem: This election has never been about the two presidential candidates, it’s been about us, and the unavoidable spiritual truth that “Wherever we go, there we are.”
That is why our national character will always be about personal, as well as social transformation.
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