Jim Slusher
In Sunday’s “Our view” editorial, our Editorial Board reflected in some detail on the importance of decency in leadership. Events of the past week or so have me thinking a lot about the importance of decency in all our politics, in all of us.
By its nature, and somewhat contradictory to its mission, politics does not bring out the decent in people. It boils the blood. It divides us into teams — or in a more popular contemporary image — tribes. It induces otherwise honest people to snatch yard signs supporting candidates they don’t like or disparage whole segments of humanity as “deplorables” or “trash” or “garbage.” It far more often causes us to band together under calls to battle than to unite in hope for better things to come.
Does it have to be this way? I know it is hard, almost contrary to our nature as human animals, to be otherwise, but shouldn’t we try harder than we do?
The outrage of the moment began in Madison Square Garden Sunday when a comedian warming up the crowd for an appearance from Donald Trump described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage.” Many Republicans, as well as Trump’s campaign, quickly rose to condemn the remark, but as politics is wont, it soon ignited a political furor days before the election is to be decided.
And that led to a jumbled response from President Joe Biden that Trump supporters were quick to interpret as a Hillary Clintonesque “basket of deplorables” remark, generalizing them all as “garbage.” As did Republicans with the comedian’s statement, Democrats, and President Biden himself, were quick to walk back the statement and try to present it in a limited context.
Leading, let’s admit, to a juvenile argument that can only be “won” depending on our partisan positions. I don’t want to litigate it here. Rather, I’d like to ask why candidates, or any public figures, have to stoop to such characterizations at all.
I confess to a certain hypocrisy here, for I’m probably as quick as anyone to laugh at jokes made at the expense of others, but it has occurred to me in recent years that somewhere in the 21st century, the crux of our comedy has turned away from things that are funny in life to things that are funny about other people, especially when they are people we want to dislike. Perhaps this is mildly acceptable in private company, but have we come to accept it in what once was called “polite” company? Has ridicule become the go-to stratagem for a laugh on stage or screen?
I fear it has. I would like myself, and each of us, to work harder to resist that trend. Which brings me, in closing to a quote I think is pertinent to this theme and to the politics of our time. It comes from a Muslim cleric from Zimbabwe called Mufti Ismael Menk: “Insulting others,” he writes in an essay on Islam, “is never a way of correcting them. Instead it causes more damage and proves that we need help ourselves.”
I suspect that President Biden and other Democrats are rueing the sting of that lesson today. For their part, many principled Republican leaders are as well. But I’d like to separate the maxim from the centerpiece of politics and bring to all of us as participants in the democracy and consumers of media. To the extent that we as individuals can dismiss the politics of ridicule, perhaps we can help our leaders and our entertainers find a more successful path toward hope for better things to come.
At least, let’s try.
• Jim Slusher, [email protected], is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His new book “Conversations, community and the role of the local newspaper” is available at eckhartzpress.com.