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My
First Republicans
Learning a lesson in
civil discourse
by Nora Gallagher
In
August, a year ago, my former husband called to tell me his mother
was near the end of her life. I wrote her a letter about what she
had meant to me.
Sara
read my early, bad poetry with a furrowed brow. She gave me her
time, her money and consistent, reliable advice. Being forgiven
and forgiving, she once said to me, are what releases us from the
past, while making promises and keeping them are what bind us to
the future.
She
died of lung cancer and Alzheimer’s. The day she died, my
former brother-in-law called and told me his father, David, wanted
me to come to her funeral and speak the words I had written in my
letter.
I went to the funeral and to the reception at the cottage she had
renovated and lived in until she died. She had hired a woman architect.
Photographs of her children lined the walls.
By
inviting me to Sara’s funeral, David called me back into his
family. He gave
me back not only himself, but also his daughter, his two sons, and
my memories. “Restore to memory and hope,” are the words
of a prayer we use in my church. Now I talk to David on the telephone
often and make arrangements to visit him at least four times a year.
It
was in the midst of one of our phone conversations, right after
a remark about how much he loves the Art Institute in Chicago, as
do I, that David said, “I think Dick Cheney is an admirable
administrator, an able man.”
I
breathed in, and I breathed out. I had been so young and self-centered
when I knew him earlier that I don’t think I ever considered
that his politics, and Sara’s, might be different from my
own.
David
was my first Republican. They followed like a linked chain after
that.
Next,
I edited an essay by Russell Train. For eight years, under the administrations
of Nixon and Ford, Mr. Train was Undersecretary of Interior. He
was the first Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality and
the second head of the Environmental Protection Agency. We can thank
Russell Train for the important environmental legislation passed
during the Nixon administration. Russell Train has been a Republican
all his life.
Then
I went in for an eye check-up with the brilliant, compassionate
retinal specialist who has cared for my eyes for ten years. As he
stared through the scope into my dilated right eye, I asked him
who he was supporting in the election. “Bush,” he replied
matter-of–factly.
Finally,
there was a TV producer in Los Angeles, a close friend of my literary
agent. That March day in 2003 when Colin Powell testified about
weapons of mass destruction at the United Nations, I drove down
to the producer's house for lunch with her and my agent, who was
visiting from New York. Over delicious food, the producer said,
“Well, we’ve given Iraq a lot of time. Now we’ve
got to get in there.”
I
sometimes wonder if the Holy Spirit has plunked me into the midst
of these people just to have some fun.
These
four people have taught me how complete my political isolation was
before I met them. I live among liberals, my friends all live in
the Bay Area and New York. I read Harper’s. (We are
so liberal that when the nice nurse came to our house to examine
us for long term care insurance and asked my husband, as part of
the memory test, who was president of the United States, he replied,
“Al Gore.”)
Negative
politicking has affected me as much as anyone. I am not immune to
the partisan trick of dehumanizing political rivals so that you
not only revile their ideas you revile the person as well. I have
demonized Republicans with the best of them. But not one of these
four fit the stereotype leftists often have of conservatives: They
are not Christian fundamentalists. They are neither stupid, narrow-minded
nor selfish. They are not bigots or racists, neither are they homophobic.
They read, they think, no one has pulled the wool over their eyes.
I
hope I don’t fit whatever stereotype they have of a liberal.
You know: more taxes! Doomsday predictions! Language police!
What’s
been amazing is the talk. This is the first time I have spent a
lengthy amount of time talking to persons I knew to be on the opposite
political side.
We
disagree about a lot of things: the role of government in the United
States, the nature of that government. We interpret history differently;
we have different heroes. On the TV producer’s wall when I
last visited was a photo of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
They
have fundamentally different world views from me. This is not to
be minimized or prettied up. At lunch with the TV producer she said
something about taxes. I said, I’d really like to see more
results from the taxes I pay, thinking, more healthcare, better
public transportation. She said, blinking, I can’t think of
any good result from taxes. I was stunned and then fascinated, and
I was wide awake.
We
behave these days, because the campaigns and the pundits are so
negative and mean, that disagreement in and of itself is a bad thing.
But it’s not. Talking to someone who is not me is interesting,
compelling and awakening. A person who is different from oneself
enlarges, not only the mind, but the whole world. And, while it’s
probably human to want to be among those who look like us and act
like us and talk like us, to carry that longing for familiarity
too far is to end up in the murderous land of purity, where we desire
not only to be among those who agree with us but to purge all that
is different, all that is not us. And we liberals know how to do
that with the best of them.
With each of these persons, especially David, I have a treasured,
ongoing relationship that will outlive the elections this year.
It’s a relationship of diversity,
of opposites in some areas, like-mindedness in others. I
am stuck with them and they are stuck with me. This is the most
important thing I’ve learned this year. This is not a war,
we are not meant to kill off those who vote differently. More important,
we are not meant to fight over politics and then retreat into separate
camps. The God I believe in longs for relationship, for the bonds
that are as hard to see and as strong as a spider’s web. We
are in this messy public life together, citizens all.
Nora Gallagher is the author of two memoirs, Things
Seen and Unseen and Practicing Resurrection both published
by Knopf and Vintage books. The names of her former in-laws were
changed for this article.
Copyright
©2004 Nora Gallagher
To
purchase a copy of Practicing
Resurrection visit Sacred Path Books & Art. This link
is provided as a service to explorefaith.org visitors and registered
users.
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