What happened? What’s next?

By SKIP MENDLER

Greetings from the past—specifically, the weekend before the election. Something just happened to you folks in the future, out there in that unknown territory called “next Tuesday,” and I have no idea what it was.

For you, the news might now be of the pathetic failure of Democrats to dislodge Republicans from control of Congress, and the triumphalist orgies of vindicated Bushites who now seem to have no restrictions on their power. Or, maybe there’s some fretting about the apocalypse sure to follow with Nancy Pelosi running the House… and Democrats coming to the sobering realization that they have only two years to produce concrete results.

Or something entirely different may have happened—heck, they might not even have all the votes counted yet. (How well did those electronic voting machines work, anyway?)

But whatever the results, whatever has been decided or not decided, I suspect that the divisions in our society are no closer to healing, and have probably been exacerbated; the campaigns were in many cases just too nasty. I’m guessing that people are not burying hatchets or singing “Kumbaya”—but are stocking up ammo (only in the rhetorical sense, I hope) for the contests to come. The level of fear and distrust has probably not decreased; the losers suspect foul play on the part of the winners, and I bet the winners are not being particularly gracious in their victories.

And somewhere, there are thoughtful people, in various parts of the political spectrum, wondering just how much longer we can keep going on like this.

Some folks at a Republican campaign rally were asked by an NPR reporter what a Democratic takeover of Congress would mean. “Disaster!” said one. “Catastrophe!” said another. They weren’t just concerned, or worried—they were terrified of what might happen. You might have seen some letters in the papers from a fellow from Livingston Manor who lays out those fears pretty well—the suppression of religious expression, terrorism and unrest in the streets, punitive taxation, evolution, gay marriage, the whole bit. I realized that I could lay out my own corresponding list of nightmares in response… but then I saw that many of my own fears were simply the mirror reflections of his: political repression, restrictive surveillance, corporate fraud and corruption in the name of “homeland security.”

In this regard, let me point you to a very interesting article in the October issue of the Quaker magazine Friends Journal that I personally found both challenging and hopeful, “Conversations from the Heartland,” by Kat Griffith (available on the web at friendsjournal.org/contents/2006/1006/feature1.html ).

Griffith, a homeschooling Quaker mom from Wisconsin, invited other homeschoolers that she had known for a while (mostly members of the “Religious Right”) to her house for discussions about faith and politics. As you might expect, she and the other participants found quite a bit of common ground, a lot of unfounded fear to be dispersed and a newfound respect for the inarguable differences. However, it required a willingness to really lay down one’s preconceptions and listen, deeply and carefully, to each other—and to each other’s fears.

Something like that is going to have to happen, on a much larger scale, across American society. Otherwise our internal divisions are going to end up doing far more damage than any terrorist attack possibly could. Kat Griffith and her conservative friends had an advantage, in that they already knew each other quite well and had built up a level of trust among themselves. If we can’t establish similar trust in our communities, and start that kind of conversation, then we are all going to be easy fodder for demagogues of whatever stripe to manipulate and deceive in future campaigns.