American Fatigue

As I write this column from my mother's home in Phoenix, I am well and fully aware that in a few days, the temperature will be 111 degrees. Last week, the temperature rose almost that high. The conditions are oppressively hot in the desert this time of year.

How appropriate... because America is an emotionally exhausted country. Americans are hot and tired and worn out on both sides of the political divide.

Yes, there are plenty of moderates who haven't been sucked into the extremes of our polity, but among those who regularly participate in our politics -- creating a series of close elections which are likely to continue into the near future -- the emotional temperature of political discussion has become severely overheated. Like a couple in an irreconcilable marriage -- two people doomed to suffer through a bitter divorce -- the competing sides of American politics have nothing charitable to say about the other and don't want the other party to receive any credit, any joy, any redemption.

Political rivalry and intense competition will always create an intense theater of intellectual and ideological combat. Intense dislike of political opponents is nothing new. Moreover, America has suffered through profound divisions before. What we are seeing in the realm of immigration policy is hardly the exact same thing as the Civil Rights Movement -- the issues and dynamics involved are unique in their particular dimensions, to be sure -- but the larger reality of Americans seeing disturbing visual images of treatment toward ethnic minorities is a striking similarity. Cultural transformation and education did not emerge quickly or easily on that set of issues, and a similarly gradual process awaits this nation again.

The key point is to at least be able to initiate this process of growth and understanding, but in this political climate, it is hard to be confident that a 2018 reconciliation can occur.

Making sense of why -- and how -- we got here is the difficult but necessary prelude to any real attempt to bridge the divides which are tearing this country apart.

With that, let's dive into this highly complicated and unsettling conversation. It is not meant to satisfy or reinforce beliefs. It is not meant to make anyone comfortable. Exactly the opposite. We have to be willing to be uncomfortable to grow and stretch and change and evolve, and that's why this is such a crucial starting point for Americans of all worldviews at this moment in our history.

With my preamble over, the first essential point to establish at the heart of this conversation is that Americans don't know what to do with pain. We think of pain most immediately as a physical thing, but if we have learned anything from the suicides of enormously creative, talented, and materially successful people such as Robin Williams, Anthony Bourdain, and countless others, pain is a gigantic internal monster, a beast shredding the psyche, the spirit, and the soul.

The American mind has no clue how to fight this kind of pain, and we are seeing this in the fatigued, exhausted, frayed nature of our politics, like two wild beasts intent on fighting to the death with no intent on stopping.

What does pain do? It often makes us immediately lash out at someone else, so that we don't have to look inward at ourselves to find blame, responsibility or ownership. Pain can be a response to a genuine injustice we have suffered, or to a perceived unfairness which is understandably hard to accept. Feeling pain is universal to the human condition; no one is exempt from it. Feeling pain is not a sin or a deficit. It is not something meant to be denied or wished away. Pain is an inherent part of life, and it is not weakness to feel it or be hammered by it.

Pain is wrenching. It sucks... but it can't be avoided. The great spiritual teachers tell us we have to walk through our pain instead of denying it or ignoring it.

The challenge -- which American society has failed to respond to -- is to process pain in ways which transform suffering into enlightenment, wholeness and healing. That's where we fall short.

Here's how this failure to process pain emerges in our politics, specifically in relationship to the highly emotional occurrences at the U.S.-Mexico border:

I have talked to conservatives and Trump voters on Twitter, as I consistently try to do. In conversations about the immigration issue, multiple people have responded by saying two things in particular:

A) Where was the outrage about repressive immigration policy during the Obama Administration, either from Democrats or from the media?

B) Why are liberals so concerned about religion and what the Bible says now? This isn't mentioned on the abortion debate.

As a Catholic Christian, I profoundly agree with these lines of thought.

Let's start with item A.

Yes, the Obama Administration -- while not quite as severe as the Trump Administration on immigration policy -- was nevertheless extremely repressive and harsh on the issue... just not as much as the current POTUS. It is widely acknowledged by people who have studied and reported on immigration that previous presidents made it easier for Trump to do what he is doing now. Bill Clinton is part of this trend, which has generally provided successively less "soft" approaches to immigration and asylum seeking. Yet, Democrats did not cry out against their President when deportations and confined-space detentions significantly increased relative to the Bush 43 years. The media simply did not apply sustained critical scrutiny toward Obama on immigration; only now, with Trump in office, are we seeing what sustained scrutiny looks like.

It is hard to NOT acknowledge -- if we're willing to be honest with ourselves as a country -- that conservatives and Trump voters bring up a fundamentally valid point about the lack of concern expressed by Democrats and mainstream media on immigration until the occupant of the White House changed from a Democrat to a Republican. Stormy Daniels occupied a lot of space and time in MSNBC coverage very recently, even while it was known that immigration policy was getting much worse. This is a more than fair critique. ICE behavior, procedure and dysfunction were already significant stories (not in terms of being right or wrong, but in terms of representing a change in operations relative to Obama) in 2017, but the Russia frenzy crowded that story out of MSNBC's main line of sight until the issue became too powerful to ignore.

Let's be clear: Whether you agree or disagree with Trump immigration policy, it is true that Obama made it easier (not harder) for Trump to do what he did. It is similarly true that MSNBC and other mainstream outlets didn't grill Obama on this issue (not nearly to the extent that they are finally doing on Trump) and were even late to the party on Trump because of Russia and Stormy Daniels, two versions of ratings catnip.

Now, item B.

Catholic Church leaders aren't constantly visible in American politics, and to be sure, the politics of Catholicism have changed a lot in America since the sex-abuse crisis blew wide open in 2002. Nevertheless, the one issue on which Catholic leaders could reliably be counted to make public appearances or statements over the past few decades has been abortion.

The Democratic Party and politically liberal voters -- many of them Catholics who became ex-Catholics in the wake of the sex-abuse crisis -- have had no use for Catholicism this century. Disgust at the hypocrisy of the institutional Catholic Church has been a central driver of this standoffish attitude. Genuine disagreement with conservatives about the breadth, depth and consistency of applying "pro-life" principles at very different stages of human life has also made American liberals more entrenched in their resistance to Catholic teachings on abortion and more skeptical of the place of religion in informing and shaping political values and priorities.

Now, in this immigration theater of activity, Catholic leaders are finally beginning to speak out in a way reminiscent of abortion. This is not the exact same thing as familiar abortion controversies of the past involving Catholic Democratic politicians such as John Kerry in 2004. Abortion attained a fixed place in political debate for multiple decades. It was not a moving target; it became a predictable element of the culture-clash between the two main political parties and the messy but generally recognizable ideologies they represented.

Immigration -- largely ignored by both parties (yes, by Democrats as explained above, at least to the extent that it was not a needle-moving issue in election campaigns) -- doesn't own that fixed place in our politics. It is a much more fluid topic whose political potency is unknown. We will have a much better feel in November. Yet, in my inbox this week, the appeals and messages from my former Catholic parish in Seattle, various national Catholic legislative advocacy groups, and other Catholic faith groups have piled up. They and their foremost leaders are speaking up against Trump immigration policy.

Meanwhile, MSNBC -- on Monday night -- brought on Father James Martin, the Jesuit writer who is also the editor of the Jesuit publication, America Magazine. Father Martin appeared on Lawrence O'Donnell's nightly show. Liberals on Twitter are referring to the Bible a lot more, especially since Attorney General Jeff Sessions invoked the Bible (Romans 13) on this issue and Sarah Huckabee Sanders also made reference to the biblical nature of this policy.

Conservatives and Trump voters, to varying degrees, are surely noticing this sudden interest in Scripture from Democrats, and as reflected in my conversations with Christian conservatives in recent days, yes, the anger about selective use of religion and the Bible is real.

For the secular liberal person (in many cases from an urban center in the Northeast or on the West Coast) who has never had a use for religion, personally or publicly, it might not ever register that other Americans might be pissed about this abrupt invocation of the Bible by liberal journalists or lefty media outlets. For the many ex-Catholics created this century in the United States -- ex-Catholics, by themselves, comprise one of the largest groups identified by religion in this country -- the invocation of Scripture on this issue is probably welcome, but also a reminder of what is, to these ex-Catholics, Republican and conservative hypocrisy on Christianity and "family values" issues. Evangelicals and conservatives would naturally and reasonably respond by saying they have held down the family values fort for decades and never had any help or support from Democrats who were all too ready or willing to disparage Americans who embraced Christianity.

What you have been reading in this piece is not a personal statement of approval or disapproval of any line of policy or law. What you have been reading is an explanation of the fault lines in our politics as they relate to ideology, primarily through the prism of religion, sometimes through the prism of the media. This is not an endorsement of any person or group, but an attempt to explain various groups' political views to each other and underscore the depth of the divide between or among groups.

This is the portrait of American fatigue we all need to appreciate. Policy fights are important and urgent, but knowing why policy fights -- legitimate tugs of war over a course of action -- have become so impossible to conduct in public discourse represents a problem Americans need to learn (or perhaps re-learn) to solve.

No, the point of this is not to change minds on policy, but to soften the intensity of opposition toward each other. Of course we -- as liberals and conservatives -- will maintain a lot of fundamental disagreements. Of course we will continue to preserve our larger worldviews. Yet, in a time such as this -- on the immigration issue -- we should all be able to agree that separating toddlers from their mothers is immoral. (That's my first and only policy advocacy statement in this piece.)

A key insight: If we loosen our grip on wanting the other side to suffer in mortal political combat, we can achieve that "softening" of opposition which will emotionally allow us to agree on at least a few lines which the United States Government should never cross.

Let's try to soften opposition, then... which begins with accepting the reality that it will be very hard to achieve that goal.

Why is "own the libs" such a big deal for a lot of Trump voters? Why, on the other hand, is it so important for liberals to persist in using secular language, self-consciously and very visibly avoiding an embrace of religious language in national political discourse?

We are tired -- emotionally and spiritually -- as a country. That's why.

Over the eight years of the Obama presidency, the lack of media attention to Obama's hard-line immigration policy and numerous other issues which are only now receiving scrutiny under Trump created an enormous, deep and intense source of resentment among conservatives and the voting bloc which pushed Trump into the White House. A number of these people aren't wildly supportive of Trump, and some didn't even vote for him, but when presented with the Trumpian worldview and the view of either Democrats or media outlets which stand on the culturally liberal side of the American landscape, they will lean more toward the Trumpian view than what they see as the intellectually dishonest and morally selective outlook of the liberals.

The purpose of outlining this climate of resentment is not to say that it is right or wrong, but merely that it is emotionally understandable, in the ways which emerge when a marriage breaks apart. The two parties' disagreements in these especially nasty divorces become unshakable declarations of principle, as though it is inconceivable -- and personally repugnant -- for one party in the marriage to ever admit that he or she is at fault for anything. The wrongs done by the other party are always magnified, turned into eternal and profound betrayals which can never be walked back or compensated for.

In this climate of pitched battle, "no concessions -- EVER!" is the first, last and only priority. Much as the most bitter divorce proceedings seek total victory in litigation, current political "discourse," such as it is, seeks total destruction of the other side in a two-party system.

I see this every time I talk to my liberal mother and to liberal people of my mother's generation: They don't understand how anyone could steadfastly maintain such a diametrically opposite set of views. They can't articulate a coherent explanation of a conservative or Republican line of thought. They merely think it's horrible and appalling, and are either unwilling or unable to give expression to the competing worldview they are opposed to.

My teachers in high school and college told me -- this is a great piece of advice for any young person -- that in order to understand a person with whom you disagree, you must be able to explain their philosophy or worldview in the way THEY intend that philosophy/worldview to be applied. In other words, the principles or policies they advocate must be articulated in a way which doesn't demean or diminish said principles/policies. The articulation must contain the positive vision or identity of the philosophy, even if you disagree with the merits of the philosophy. That way, the political opponent understands that you GET -- you really do appreciate -- what their philosophy is trying to achieve.

It doesn't mean you APPROVE of that line of thought, but that you have taken the time to see the world from that OTHER point of view.

THIS is the thing which very rarely enters into current political conversations, and it is the very reason why our political dialogue is essentially a bitter divorce proceeding, soaked in extreme emotional fatigue all the way through. Understanding the depth of fatigue -- flowing from an unwillingness or inability to articulate the opponent's ideal framing of the world -- will help us soften opposition to each other.

One more idea needs to be underscored before concluding this piece, and it also involves the attempt to soften each other's hearts to begin to loosen the entrenchedness of opposition we have toward each other.

That idea: We as Americans often relish election victories more for the fact that our opponents suffer than for the idea that the country will be meaningfully improved.

In 2016, the election was carried out under the banner of "no," the banner of opposition to what each candidate and side stood for. "LOCK HER UP!" versus "DEPLORABLES!" very succinctly characterized the clash of worldviews and animating purposes in play in the election. If asked to provide additional rallying cries on both sides: "BUILD THE WALL!" and "RUSSIAN PUPPET!" would suffice.

The 2016 election was all about "preventing the other side from winning," not about a positive program to enrich citizens. Conservatives might say that building a wall represents positive action, but the very image of building a wall represents a preventative action -- that might be enlightened from a conservative point of view, but the act itself is an expression of, "No, you can't do this," so it is a negative act -- not as a value judgment, but in terms of being a deterrent.

When elections are so thoroughly about preventing the other side from winning, or about preventing groups of people (immigrants) from being able to do various things, the winner of the election is more easily inclined to feel happy not because of the personal victory, but because the other side lost. This is exactly the "broken marriage/bitter divorce" climate of emotional fatigue we have in America.

When I interact with conservatives on Twitter, I see this fatigue, just as I see it when liberals on Twitter refuse to be gracious toward Laura Bush for her comments on immigration, or when liberals wish death or suffering on Republicans, or when liberals think it's okay to harass Kirstjen Nielsen -- the Secretary of Homeland Security -- inside a restaurant.

Conservatives are so emotionally fatigued from the Obama presidency -- and all the body blows they suffered during that time of media neglect of problems such as immigration -- that they want to see liberals suffer. They are not yet emotionally ready to let go of this need to have liberals "see how life is on the other side of the presidency." Dislike of Trump's policies matters less than making sure liberals wallow in the emotional misery conservatives feel they had to deal with when Obama was given kid-glove treatment by a compliant, culturally liberal media. The resentments created by that era are now in evidence. Payback -- the desire to want to have it and dish it out in full -- is motivating a good chunk of conservative animus toward liberals on immigration and other issues where a broader consensus SHOULD emerge... but has not.

It flows from elections being attempts to hurt the other side and deny its contributions or value to the American story.

This is a broken marriage wracked -- and wrecked -- by runaway emotional fatigue.

Is our nation finally ready to seek couples therapy, to be able to honestly and generously articulate what the other side sincerely wants to achieve?

We have to do this... or a bloody Second Civil War WILL manifest itself.

Then the U.S.-Mexico border might become a problem for a whole different set of reasons.

A Country With A Conscience

This is a story which is relevant to the gun control debate, but deals very little with guns.

In order to understand where this is going, you need to start with a little political history, arrive at some conscious realizations about journalism, gain an awareness of religion's place in developing whole persons, and then make larger connections among different components of American life.

*

Religion is complicated. Christianity, as Jesus could tell you, is not for the faint of heart -- it caused the carpenter's son to be nailed to a cross.

How complicated is religion? The Reverend Billy Graham, who died on Wednesday at the age of 99, was a Baptist. That Baptist denominational experience was shared by two other old Americans who will not be with us much longer, former President Jimmy Carter and longtime journalist Bill Moyers.

Even within specific Christian denominations, in America and elsewhere, you will find important or memorable figures whose life paths led to very different worldviews, conflicts, hardships and outcomes.

This reality of life is not particular to the early 21st century or to the balance of the 20th century, in which Billy Graham lived. The difference between Graham's lifetime and previous centuries is that the emergence of mass media (20th century) and social media (21st century) enabled so many more individual people to see or learn about public figures and the messages they put forth.

This wider awareness of information, perspectives, and human activity should be a good thing for society. Access to more information, combined with greater exposure to a fuller range of human events, can only help human persons, right?

It has not worked out that way in America.

Though many facets of our society are undeniably improving -- medical technology, rapid communications, light rail, online shopping and payment services -- the way Americans process, litigate and digest political debate is getting much worse.

Sure, political debate has always been contentious and cutthroat. Think of Lee Atwater in 1988 or Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton having a duel (which meant the death of one man) over 150 years before. Think of the Civil War. Think of the Civil Rights Era. Politics has plummeted to very low levels at more distant points in our nation's history, so I do not mean to say that our polity has steadily declined without interruption for the past 50 years. The 1970s, for example, demonstrated the resilience and strength of our political system. When Republicans saw that Richard Nixon had disgraced himself and the Presidency, they acted accordingly. Figures such as Sam Ervin, Howard Baker, Peter Rodino, and Elliot Richardson transcended party affiliation (Ervin and Rodino were Democrats, Baker and Richardson Republicans) in service of higher goals, acting the way citizens hope public officials would act in a time of crisis.

In the 1980s, the United States Senate was populated by men with prodigious intellects and fertile minds who did not fit into very convenient ideological boxes. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Warren Rudman weren't impressive politicians because of where they stood on the political spectrum -- Moynihan, a Democrat, and Rudman, a Republican, would both disappoint their parties' most dedicated voters if they ran for office today. What made them stand out was that they put intellectual heft behind their positions and regarded opponents with respect. Politics was a battle for them, but it was a battle for ideas. Richard Lugar, Sam Nunn, George Mitchell -- these and other figures have positions on various issues that I strongly disagree(d) with, but they were formidable elected officials. I always got the sense that they cared about the material they were discussing. They might not have arrived at the most enlightened conclusion according to my political framework and worldview, but they sincerely pursued what they felt was the best course of action. They did not severely shift their points of emphasis depending on who was in or out of power.

Those kinds of Senators -- those kinds of public servants, in mindset and temperament if not in their ultimate policy recommendations -- are increasingly rare.

In the 1990s, political hot-take shows such as Crossfire and The McLaughlin Group began to take off in popularity. The O.J. Simpson chase occurred in 1994 and showed that news networks could grab eyeballs with a helicopter camera and talking heads. News organizations -- part of media companies publicly traded on the stock market -- realized how cheaply they could produce hour-long blocks of programming instead of investing large sums of money in the kind of enterprise reporting which produced Edward R. Murrow's seminal 1960 CBS News documentary, "Harvest of Shame."

The road to 2018 began -- for journalism, yes, but also for the theater of politics journalists were ostensibly supposed to cover. Politics has become more and more of a shouting match, with cable "news" shows populated almost entirely by talking heads, to the near-total exclusion of enterprise reporting in the vein of Murrow. Only 60 Minutes carries on the Murrow (and Don Hewitt) legacy among non-PBS mainstream outlets. Good reporting on non-PBS American TV (in other words, what you don't see on Frontline, Nova, or other programs) is largely the province of fringe/niche outlets.

What we have as a result is a fragmented society in which access to information merely means "access to information from ideologically friendly and emotionally convenient sources," not from any outlet which might challenge the mind or offer inconvenient truths.

What facet of human experience is SUPPOSED to confront the mind with inconvenient truths, even more than journalism? Religion is not the only answer, but it is an answer for many, and -- in its best moments -- has often been the best answer throughout the centuries.

I can't speak for Muslim or Jewish brothers and sisters, but the Christian message is not a convenient one at all. The central figure of Christianity was nailed to a piece of wood and crowned with thorns. He is celebrated even today at Christmas -- in kids' pageants you might have attended, and at the Vatican's midnight papal mass -- as being born in a manger, outdoors in the cold, with farm animals, a product of being given no indoor place to sleep. The story of Jesus -- called Christ by Christians -- is an enormous overturning of linear human expectations.

Christians believe Jesus is the Son of God. Linear human expectations would embrace the idea that if a being was the Son of God, He would be omnipotent and dominate the world. Jesus, though, flips everything upside-down and turns it inside-out. "Though being in nature God, he did not deem equality with God something to be clung to," a quote from Scripture in Paul's Letter to the Philippians. Jesus is the humble child born with no crib for a bed -- he is ignored by the world in birth and, decades later, hated by the world in his public and humiliating death, led to say, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Jesus dies alone, misunderstood, naked, in immense suffering... some Son of God.

That, however, IS the point of Christianity. It is a message of humility and suffering -- not for the sake of suffering itself, but because that is the way to holiness... not to violence. Leadership is servanthood. Power is magnified not by accumulating it, but by giving it away. "I am in your midst as One who serves," Jesus said.

Peter cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest in the hours before Jesus's death. Jesus saw this and told Peter to put his sword away, because those who live by the sword will also perish by it.

Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and yet he succinctly uttered words of nonviolence to Peter -- an enduring expression of anti-war, anti-retaliation principles -- precisely before he himself was going to be violently put to death by an oppressive government in a community where the religious leaders were all too happy to see him die.

It is true that today is very different from Jesus's time in so many ways -- too many ways to count. While certain aspects of Jesus's life and the Gospel stories contain a timeless and unchanging resonance, the particular complexities and difficulties of modern life are profound, and not always easily reconciled with the past. We can't retro-fit the Bible to claim that Jesus had a direct, exact answer for every political issue under the sun.

Yet... even the most liberal and conservative people -- either within Christianity or outside it -- could reasonably agree on this much: Jesus did not condone physical violence as a general way of life. This didn't mean he didn't get angry. It didn't even mean he was incapable of physical violence against an inanimate object -- the tables he overturned in the temple when he saw the moneychangers disgracing a holy place. However, Jesus was and is consistent in speaking against committing physical harm to other human persons.

Even in a context of self-defense -- when it is acknowledged that a person can kill another person without moral stain or guilt -- taking the step of ending another human life should never be taken lightly. Phrased differently, one must identify or conclude that all reasonable options other than killing the person have been exhausted or do not credibly exist. Taking a life must be a last resort, not a first inclination.

Any competent and historically aware teacher of Christianity will uphold this.

I am now ready to offer a few words on guns, the topic consuming our nation's politics after the Parkland (Florida) shooting earlier this month.

Some people (liberals, generally) think the age for legal gun ownership should be moved to 21. Others (conservatives, generally) think the age for legal gun ownership should remain at 18, and that the legal drinking age should also be lowered to 18. Most Americans agree (though not on the same terms) that entrusting an American with a beer should not come later than trusting an American with a firearm.

I have my own opinions on policy recommendations such as these -- along with many other aspects of the issue of gun control -- but those opinions are irrelevant.

What I care to stress, on this day of Billy Graham's death, and in a time when American religion is torn apart from both ends of our polity -- secular liberals spitting on and insulting Christians and/or religious people; conservative evangelicals supporting Donald Trump in large numbers despite everything they knew about him on Election Day 2016 -- is something which is simple on a conceptual level, but hard to live out in practice.

Surely, Billy Graham would note -- if he had the chance to preach to one more stadium full of people, some staunchly conservative and others devotedly liberal -- that regardless of one's stance on guns, it is important that anyone who picks up a gun must cultivate and acquire a well-developed conscience.

We can agree on this, right? I sure hope we can.

Yes, I have my opinions on what sensible gun policies should be, and to be sure, formulating good policy on guns is hardly an irrelevant or minimally important consideration in American life right now. It's a very big deal.

Yet, it is -- in a powerful and permanent sense -- secondary to something else: conscience formation.

I realize our nation is not at a point where conscience formation is taught particularly well, or pervasively, or carefully, or with general freedom from a strong ideological influence. Nevertheless -- speaking purely on a conceptual level -- it should be unassailable that if a person has a well-formed conscience rooted in moral discipline and the self-control of impulses, s/he will not carelessly use a gun or go on the kind of rampage we have seen all too often in the past 20 years in the United States.

Let me reiterate one more time: I am NOT saying that religious faith is the only thing which matters here, to the exclusion of any considerations about gun reform legislation. No, the policy component of this topic is hugely important. Moreover, the 2018 elections will put this topic front and center, especially if the Parkland students are savvy and resourceful in carrying out their activism.

What I AM saying -- in a spirit of trying to bring our fractured country together -- is to tell both liberals and conservatives that no matter what we do in realms of policy, we need to be more conscious of the need to educate our children in the ways of conscience formation, moral and ethical decision making, dealing with pain, and befriending the stranger or loner who carries -- and conveys, in his/her eyes, face, and gait -- great sadness or hurt.

Our society needs to confront guns and take concrete steps to limit the ability of guns to spray large numbers of bullets in a very short period of time, which enables a lot of lives to be wiped out in seconds. Yet, in a context of "first things" -- the most central way to heal a problem -- Americans have to know how to display self-control (so that teenagers realize shooting up a classroom is never the answer to their pain). Americans also have to realize, in looking at other people, that the frustrated or lonely person "over there" is not someone they don't have to care about. That person "over there" in the corner could be tomorrow's next shooter if he doesn't know how to handle his pain or sadness or confusion.

Conscience formation is not just about the internal management of emotions, but about obligations to a community, to one's brother and sister, to one's neighbor... which, Jesus said, represents everyone, not just our family or the people we know really well... OR, for that matter, the people only WE agree with under the same political banner or within the same political tribe.

On the day when Billy Graham died, Americans on my Twitter feed continued the very familiar process of political mortal combat on both sides of the gun control issue. No one person committed a grave sin, or any sin for that matter. Good people on both sides (I hate to use the Trumpian term, but it is true -- there ARE good people on both sides of this) reiterated their positions, generally expressing the familiar exasperation with the opposing side's stance.

Gun-control advocates on the left and second-amendment defenders on the right are not about to agree on everything, or even most things... but in honor of Billy Graham, a man who sincerely tried to preach the Gospel of Jesus for everyone, can we at least agree that regardless of our positions on guns, we need greater conscience formation in American life, so that our young people are more equipped to handle difficult interpersonal realities and heavy emotional burdens... and so that they won't be as easily inclined to kill someone, even if their emotions might be tearing them apart? (It can't go without saying that while these shootings happen, law enforcement captures other would-be shooters before they carry out attacks. One stockpiler of weapons was apprehended earlier this month.)

Without litigating the gun-control issue here -- or on Twitter -- can we work through our grief and our shared dismay to be more attentive to the pain and alienation in the lives of young people, and to make moral and emotional education -- not just textbook education -- a centerpiece of how we walk with our children during a very emotionally volatile and delicate period in their lives?

Surely we can agree on that.

I hope that in this context of withering contempt and increasingly bitter divisions in our political culture, Americans can find this shared common project of improved moral education and emotional self-management for their children and grandchildren.

Billy Graham would certainly think we need it.

The Post, Daniel Ellsberg, and a Principled Consistency

Americans live in a tumultuous time, an age in which the hypocrisy and blindness produced by political tribalism have been laid bare in much of the country.

A new movie – highlighting a part of our history which is nearly half a century old, but owns timely connections to the present day – offers younger generations a great opportunity to understand what it means to fight for principle in season and out of season, when convenient… and especially when not.

“The Post,” the new Steven Spielberg film, will naturally grab attention for the Washington Post’s role in the publication of the Pentagon Papers. However, one must not forget that before the Post and the New York Times went to court, someone leaked the documents. That person? Daniel Ellsberg, a consultant to the makers of “The Post.”

When Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, Richard Nixon was President of the United States. The presence of Nixon in the White House is significant for many reasons, but within this discussion, it is primarily important because it was easy for the American left to oppose Nixon.

I was not alive when the Pentagon Papers were leaked, but part of my life’s work – specifically at a soup kitchen run by the Seattle Catholic Worker – gave me an awareness of Philip and Daniel Berrigan and other peace activists in the Vietnam era. Ellsberg gravitated toward these circles in the course of his life. Leaking the Pentagon Papers marked the biggest product of his personal, moral and spiritual epiphany.

In his earlier professional years, Ellsberg served in the Marines before moving to the RAND Corporation, which worked with the Pentagon. As the 1960s unfolded, Ellsberg -- once a proud member of the military-industrial complex – evolved into a person who realized how dishonest the government was, and how dangerous U.S. military policy had become. Ellsberg wasn’t the first American in the Vietnam era to experience such an awakening and conversion, but he became the paramount military whistleblower of his time.

That he was at odds with a Republican administration makes it easy for contemporary American liberals to regard Ellsberg as the hero he is and – moreover – deserves to be.

This is where hypocrisy and blindness enter the story.

One would naturally look at Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning – people Ellsberg has praised as heroes – and draw a straight line to the Pentagon Papers, which “The Post” will explain to generations of younger Americans.

Yet, among many establishment Democrats, Snowden and Manning are viewed as malicious wrongdoers, not principled whistleblowers resisting the Military-Surveillance State. One does not need a grand explanation for this political reality: A Democrat – also the first African-American President of the United States – was in office when Snowden and Manning (morally) broke laws as Ellsberg did.

Snowden is an easy target because he has taken refuge in Russia, which Democrats now oppose with more vigor than Republicans, in a tidy inversion of American politics relative to the anti-communist fervor of the late 1940s and the 1950s. Democrats – while having legitimate and urgent reason to support Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump White House – have gone well beyond a reasonable and measured approval of specific FBI activities. They have supplanted Republicans as cheerleaders for the Deep State, for institutions which (in the FBI’s case) once urged Martin Luther King to kill himself, or (in the CIA’s case) brought about violent, anti-democratic coups such as the one which toppled Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973.

Democrats and liberals are entirely right to accuse Republicans of being hypocrites on family values and Christianity. “The Post” will hopefully make Democrats recognize their contemporary blind spot on two whistleblowers Daniel Ellsberg regards as heroic, but receive a fraction of the praise Ellsberg is accorded.

Perhaps the next Snowden – taking the torch from Daniel Ellsberg – will be viewed in a more positive light. “The Post” has a chance to remind American liberals what they are supposed to support and oppose… no matter which party occupies the White House.