You Give Them an Inch…

It feels scary to write about shades of gray.

After I’d written my last post about shades of gray, I asked Ron what he thought of it. He hesitated, screwing up his face in a frown, obviously struggling to speak without hurting my feelings.

With the semi-psychic ability I have as his long-term girlfriend, I guessed it accurately: “You’re worried that, if I talk about political shades of gray, it will make me and the other protesters look weak.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. He wanted me to use stronger language, he said—to make my own political position more clear. “You should say you do feel that you’re right about this one, that it is black-and-white and Governor Walker’s wrong. If you don’t say that clearly and a conservative reads it, they might think, ‘She’s cracking! The protesters must not have much of a leg to stand on.’”

“But this is what makes my blog different!” I exclaimed. There are lots of other writers who can rant about our cause, who can outline all the ways that Walker’s union-busting is destroying Wisconsin. I could join them and do that too, and to an extent, I have been.

But, I explained, I want my niche to ultimately be something different. “My blog is about this problem, what you and I are talking about right now. Why people don’t budge when they’re talking to the other side, and how we can start really listening to each other.”

I’ve written a lot about the protests, and most of it has been from my own pro-union, anti-Walker point of view. But I’m hoping that by writing this all out—my own views, plus my desire for better dialogue—I can untangle my thoughts. It’s okay for different people to have different viewpoints, and for me to have one, too. I just want to figure out how we can better work together despite our differences.

Politics has become a staring contest: no one’s willing to blink.

That said, I do believe Ron’s fear is legitimate. I even share it with him to a point. For me to admit that I may be wrong about some things, or that Republicans may have good arguments sometimes, is to appear weak, at least at first glance. It feels like, if the other side doesn’t budge while I appear ambivalent, then my side will lose ground.

That’s undoubtedly Walker’s strategy. He’s known for not budging, and by refusing to budge, he gains the esteem of Republicans around the country. And since he’s got control of the state legislature, he ultimately accomplishes all his political objectives.

I’ve heard that liberals are more likely to compromise than are conservatives. Michael Moore alluded to this “weakness” of ours at the beginning of his speech a couple weeks ago at the protests in Madison:

This kind of resolve we’re used to seeing on the other side of the fence… Only one [Democratic senator] has to come back [into the state]. And they won’t do it! Not one! And they’re Democrats! …Our side, we’re a little… ‘Well, maybe, you know, we should go back and talk to them, you know, we’re good-hearted people; they’ll listen…’ That’s what we’re kind of used to, right? Not in Wisconsin!

He said this with glee.

I do believe there are times to take a stand, to put our collective foot down. But I’m disturbed to find that those times, nowadays, appear to be all the time, on every issue.

Our democracy has become so damaged that listening and compromise are equated with weakness. Politicians are sneered at for compromising with Them, The Other Side. “We won’t budge” is something to brag about.

I hope our country will return to a day when citizens and politicians can reach compromises.

There’s nothing lost, and a lot to be gained, by listening.

But for now, I’d at least like to see us learn to disagree respectfully. Listening doesn’t have to equate to budging, after all. The lost art of listening would be a good first step for all of us to take, and that includes listening to those with whom we disagree.

The other night, Ron and I had an excellent conversation over a meal with another couple, both of whom are conservative. (These are the new conservative friends I keep alluding to—I’ll elaborate on them in an upcoming post.) We were discussing current events, and at one point we were talking about the fourteen Democratic senators who fled Wisconsin for three weeks to stall the passage of Walker’s Budget Repair Bill.

We discovered that our feelings about the Dems couldn’t be more opposite. While Ron and I see them as heroes, our conservative friends see them as traitors. We see them as champions of democracy, bravely putting their own reputations on the line and leaving their homes in order to give us, the people, the opportunity to have our voices be heard. But our friends see them as thwarting democracy, cowardly refusing to do a job they were elected to do by the people in a fair and open democratic process.

Looking across the dinner table, it became obvious that we’d never agree on this point. Ron and I could see their side; he even admitted, “If we were in your shoes, and Republican senators did the same thing, we’d be pretty mad, too.” And I hoped they could see our side, as well.

But we come from hopelessly opposing perspectives, and on this subject, we had to simply agree to disagree.

My point in this blog is not to convert others or be converted to my side of political arguments. Instead, my point is that I want Americans to learn to respectfully disagree. I’m proud that Ron and I had this friendly conversation with our conservative friends. Even though we disagreed, none of us stormed out of the room or called each other names, and because we remained at the table, we all had the opportunity to learn and probe more deeply into the truth.

Self-righteousness is a false foundation.

I wrote in my last entry that I could sense cracks in my foundation, at times. Ron was worried that this would imply weakness, as if my whole foundation of belief is cracking. No. I mean that when I allow myself to settle into the comfortable feeling of my own pure rightness—and the other side’s pure evil—I’m constructing a false foundation of self-righteousness.

That false foundation eventually cracks and falls away. But beneath it, the deeper foundation of my core beliefs still remains. Standing on this deeper foundation without self-righteousness, I can open my mind to a more nuanced version of my truth.

Standing on a false foundation of self-righteousness requires blindness. You have to ignore any inconvenient truths. For example, if you’re on my side, it’s most convenient to ignore the less-than-noble way the protesters heckled Republican Senator Grothman, or the fact that the fourteen Democrats were elected to do a job that they technically weren’t doing while in Illinois, or the reality that many unions do hinder the progress of promising young teachers or the punishment of terrible employees.

Likewise, some inconvenient truths ignored by the blind on the other side are: Walker did not campaign on stripping collective bargaining rights, so the argument “elections have consequences” doesn’t exactly apply. Union-busting is not actually a budget issue. Contrary to Walker and Grothman’s rhetoric, the vast majority of protesters are hard-working, ordinary Wisconsinites.

Of course, it’s always much easier to see the blindness on the other side than in yourself!

All of us should cultivate shades of gray.

So please, don’t get me wrong. I do believe in absolute truths, and that sometimes one side of an argument is just plain wrong. (The nation’s long and bloody conflict over slavery is a perfect example.) The title “Shades of Gray” isn’t meant to dilute the possibility that there may be a right answer, or to weaken the arguments on my own side of politics.

But the term “shades of gray” is a reminder against thinking in black-and-white terms, which is healthy whether or not you’re right. Keeping in mind that there are shades of gray, we can all practice opening our minds and engaging in true dialogue.