About Those Who Believe Otherwise

I’ve lived these past few years with a tremor of fear that the world is going dark. It hasn’t been absolute, or constant. It’s been interrupted by moments of ecstatic joy, some intimate and some public. But when I was alone and let my mind wander, it often wandered into a place of leaden darkness.

Some darkness is the depression I feel over racism and the rising tide of antisemitism. I hear echoes of Pastor Niemoller’s “They came after the Jews….”

I feel the dark chill of night when I hear Christian nationalism’s desire to redefine what it means to be a real American: White, Evangelical, gun-toting and mean.

Then there’s the feeling that global warming is heading us toward extinction while we elect idiots who claim it’s all a hoax. That’ll darken your spirits some.

This coming Sunday (18th) I will once again light the first candle of Hannukah. If there were a lesson for me, and for America, in this year’s holiday, I think it would come from the wisdom of (Rabbi) Jonathan Sacks: “Hannukah is about the freedom to be true to what we believe without denying the freedom of those who believe otherwise.”

I’m going to do my best on Sunday evening to shake off the shiver of darkness, be grateful for the nation that has given me so much and light a candle for those who believe otherwise.

Learning to Follow

For a movement to be sustained, it needs leaders. And there are signs that we may, as a nation, be experiencing a youth movement toward national leadership.

Until a year ago – or, before the most recent mid-term elections – it felt as though America was at risk of becoming a gerontocracy. But the trend toward aged leadership may be turning.

True: President Biden and Senator Mitch McConnell are both 80 years old. But in the month since the mid-terms, Democratic leadership on The Hill has shifted as Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn “have stepped out of the top three leadership roles in the House to make way for members of a new generation” noted Heather Cox Richardson. This move , lowered the average age of leadership by a full three decades, from 82 to 51. 

Two generations are coming up behind us and coming fast: the Millennials born between 1981 and 1996, and Gen Z born in or after 1997. The evidence that these two generations are looking over our aging shoulders lies in voting patterns.

Historically, youth voter turnout has hovered around 20% during midterm elections. In last month’s elections, “turnout was significantly higher in some of the battleground states — including Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin…[where] turnout was roughly 31% in those states” (NPR).

For me, the midterms stirred hope. I welcomed the utter defeat of zany candidates proposed and supported by Donald Trump. I admit to gloating a bit as we watched his gang of deniers suffer one defeat after another.

But the best, the most promising news that emerged from this year’s elections is the deluge of votes poured in from young people, often in support of young candidates. “Maxwell Frost Will Be the First Gen Z Congressman,” trumpeted the Wall Street Journal’s headline. Maxwell Frost is the first of a crowd that will follow.

By a significant majority, younger voters represent and endorse what I value: diversity, calls to equity and justice, civil and human rights.

But beyond my preferences lies the promise of youth leadership. We don’t need to have the nation wait until we die before younger others can take over. We who are older by decades can actively, purposefully encourage youth to go to the polls, to become and to elect leaders reflecting youth’s (and our own) priorities. Before we die, we could learn to follow our youth rather than tell them to wait.

We can support a host of youth-registration organizations. Check the websites of Rock the Vote, or Alliance for Youth Action, or NextGen America. Go to one of my favorites: 18byvote.org, a “youth-led and youth-driven, non-partisan organization… that aims to help 16, 17, and 18-year-olds understand how, when, and why to vote.” Of those enrolled in “18by” programs, a majority are young people of color, coming from Native American, Hispanic/Latinx, Black, and Asian communities.

Youth voter turnout this year, although impressive, was slightly lower than in 2018. What constrained the organizations driving turnout was, according to each of them, less funding available in a non-presidential election year. Well…!

Youth-registration organizations are training the next generation of Americans not only to vote but to lead. They’re now devising strategies for 2024. Folks from earlier generations have bank accounts we could raid a little, enough to give energy, resources and hope to our youth.

We need their success, and they deserve our support.

The Truth We Tell

I’ve been persuaded in recent months that the time has come for anyone capable of bearing witness to the truth, to do so – including me. My integrity isn’t rooted in who listens to me; it’s based in what I say whether anyone is listening or not.

We’re in a critical time. We need to be clear about the truth because the air around us, especially air that originates as “political commentary” from Fox News and its right-wing partners, is full of lies.

Some lies are huge (e.g., President Biden did not win the 2020 election). Some lies are just ridiculous and would, if no one believed them, be almost amusing (how about the myth that Hillary Clinton was abusing children in a Washington DC pizzeria?). Some lies nearly seem true; others are obviously false.

What concerns me most isn’t one lie or two, but the combinations of falsehoods that weave a dishonest reading of history, for example, that the rioters who killed police officers protecting the Congress on January 6 were legitimate patriot protesters.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” a claim generally attributed to Nazi Joseph Goebbels. His disciple Donald Trump translated the claim into a strategy: Lie loud. Lie often. Lie consistently.

Every American capable of speaking the truth needs to do it now. This is the time. This is the crisis. The consequences of speaking out are likely to cost some popularity, perhaps expose us to some risk. It doesn’t matter. We need to speak out now.

There are crowds who love the angry speeches delivered by Trump and his minions. They love the fury, the protection of their guns, the domination of women’s bodies, the claim that crime is a pleasure in communities of poverty, the demonstration that immigrants are worthy of abuse. My witnessing to the truth may not change a single mind in those crowds. Their motto may be, “My mind’s made up; don’t confuse me with the facts.”

But testifying on behalf of the truth is still the right strategy. The truth is not that hard to uncover. The parade of witnesses and deluge of evidence produced by one Congressional Committee provides truth enough for any of us. The truth isn’t mysterious, it’s just ugly. And in this setting, silence is complicity.

Perhaps one reader, one friend or cousin, is genuinely uncertain about what’s true and what’s not. I’d invite him or her to look with me at the evidence. The strange theory that promotes hate or rage isn’t justified; it’s a naked claim, and readily set aside by someone of good will. Besides, if a lie can win by noisy repetition, maybe the quiet truth can win support by our testimony.

“What you do to resist evil affects me and my resistance affects you,” wrote Fred Smith. “Every time you tell the truth when you could have lied…you are restraining the power of hopelessness and lawlessness.”

Against the flood of lies and deception stands the truth. Each time we speak the truth, says Smith, “It is one more sandbag stacked against the flood.”

This is my sandbag for today. Join me with yours and we’ll soon have a wall that, unlike the Trump debacle, is truly worth building.