Thanksgiving gatherings after bitterly fought election seasons tend to be a little dicey. Let’s admit it, not all thin ice can be chalked up to global warming. But a little restraint and decorum can usually see families safely through the rituals of togetherness without someone pulling down the temple. The national myth, after all, is about very different neighbors sitting down midst fall splendor to feast together.
But that myth may not be sufficient to preserve the peace when families gather to cut da toikey this year. While we have weathered previous seasons of rancor and political storm, this campaign has breached even the generous allowances made for electoral bluster and sharp elbows. And what threatens the poise of the Thanksgiving table will surely also be at work in our national life after the election results have been announced. Recent talk about “pitchforks and torches”, of mental pathology, of revolt from settled norms, of jailing political opponents and insurrection have set the table for a post-election landscape of near-“irreconcilables.” Demonizing one another is devilishly hard to undo.
While no one should be so naïve as to think that the campaign will be any more temperate in its closing days, it would be well worth considering how we might address its battlefield aftermath. Might there be some framework anticipated to bind up wounds and foster mutual acceptance, if not harmony? The incentive to seek this is strong. How long can it be before overheated rhetoric and fisticuffs, thwarted passions and dreams boil over into violence, even bloodletting?
When South Africa teetered on the brink of calamity, as townships seethed with bitterness, the airwaves, newspapers and television screens carried the words and images of Nelson Mandela: his tempered eloquence, that face crinkled with a smile, hand raised in a sign of pleasure and reassurance, at his side the fading figures of a discredited era. The transition that threatened to plunge the country into bloody disarray proceeded with decorum. The worst fears of pundits and prophets were defeated by a magnanimous leader who during a quarter century of confinement mastered his own reasons for personal resentment. From that story, there flowed an exacting national dialogue about laying to rest a shameful past.
That example reminds us, as much of history and spiritual wisdom affirm, that modeled grace and breadth of spirit can forestall doom. That demonstrated respect and earnest conversation with adversaries can reclaim the common good, can turn the course of history toward dignity and understanding, can nudge an entire society toward promise and neighborliness. Every leader in our city, whether in classroom or business or church or temple or masjid, or family or neighborhood would do well to tear this page out of the how-to manual for building healthy communities. This is a moment to wash hands of enmity, suspicion and partisanship, to seek the company of those we have excluded or demeaned.
And the surest way to undergird this urgent enterprise is to see it modeled by our most visible leaders. If Hillary and the Donald are too entrenched in campaign mode and unsuited by temperament to model this, then let Tim Kaine and Mike Pence set out in a national itinerary of real town hall meetings when they explore with civility, humor and mutual appreciation our most inspired dreams. Let their nobility and gestures of friendship, their honest aspiration for each other, their mutual affirmation beyond political differences be on generous display. Let them urge us in unison to take up the unfinished task of building a society free and whole, and profess their affection for what is good about each town, city and state. And let the nation hear from them that these virtues will carry the day despite our now-manifest flaws. There are many other leaders of influence and persuasive powers who could follow in that same train in service to the nation.
And the fruit of such a venture? It may be possible for families and households, for you and me, to draw up chairs to holiday tables with satisfaction, confidence and best of all, gratitude. That savor would be a shame to miss.
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