Equitable Justice for All?

All the hype. All the hysteria. Media overload. And it still isn’t over it seems.

Voting in person (after living overseas so many years) chokes me up. The right and the privilege to have this kind of a voice simply an unimagined reality in so many countries of the world.

Repatriating to my home country during the coronavirus pandemic, race riots, and an election year has jacked up the level of reverse culture shock my family is experiencing.

Going cross cultural and then reversing that in coming “home,” clarifies how my perspective is different than many of my fellow Americans.

After living in a former communist country (Kazakhstan is part of the former U.S.S.R.) and brushing shoulders with so many international friends, my view is broadened and deepened. I take both my citizenship as a global partner and an American seriously.

So, this reverse cultural shock demanded I engage to understand the “home” culture, where I’ve returned now, to the same level with which I engaged to understand society when I lived across cultures.

My reflections and questions have come into clearer focus at the end of this election cycle and will certainly continue to shape my understanding as we move into the days, weeks and months ahead. As we’ve heard too many times (ugh): “Elections have consequences.” Um, yes, they really do.

Feeling like a “newbie” in a sense – back on American soil to vote for the first time in over a decade – I wanted to be prepared. I did a lot of listening (as I’ve been admonished many times to do) and then more digging and researching and reading, and a lot of watching.

This is what left the biggest impression on me: It’s time to start speaking up and pushing back against repressive intolerance (quite frankly, socially acceptable bullying) by asking questions (even though new rules deem that hateful) that demand evidentiary answers.

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“What’s happening to America?!” I’ve shouted into the milieu of voices screaming the very same. “WTF?!” international friends have WhatsApped or FB Messengered me over the last few months, which are not the kind of questions that get the kind of answers we need but are instead indicative of the rampant emotionalism that’s hijacked our society today.

By the way, these people asking me these questions aren’t the ones who are disgusted by a maskless Trump, that “bad, very bad, orange man.” Surprisingly. These are people looking at America and wondering at the luxury afforded a first-world country that screams and burns and loots its own cities and people unchecked. “How can it be so bad?” they ask. “People all around the world give up and sell everything they have to come to the greatest country in the world,” they say. “I don’t know,” I responded, repeating this more times than anything else over the last few months.

I have been the indirect (and unfortunately direct, sometimes) recipient of some very angry and hateful rhetoric, and been shocked. Heated conversations reveal a missing ingredient, the art of civil discourse. Digging more, assessing my own conviction, and working to build understanding, I revolted against making important decisions emotionally in reaction to personas.

The biggest reverse culture shocker is this new norm, a triggered kind of emotional thinking.

Conversation after conversation, post after social media post, I see and hear the same things I read in mainstream news outlets. All the same “talking points” like ripples going out from one same source. I haven’t been able to stop asking myself where did the construction of this narrative start?

I began tuning into this lack of objectivity in the news back when I studied journalism in the early 1990’s. Incredulous and naïve in my youth, I wondered how journalists could handle the news so irresponsibly. That sense has only grown over decades of trying to be informed by reading and watching “the news.” It seems clear by now the news does mostly lean a certain way.

And here reverse culture shock has struck again: where is the American who is asking questions and pushing back? Oh, right, those Americans are being systematically cancelled. Cancelled by their friends. Cancelled by their cousins. Cancelled by their companies. Cancelled by their churches.

You don’t like the term “cancel”? Me either. I think it’s more accurate to call it bullying.

In a remarkable age of creating “safe spaces,” our society has created its own monster, the not-thought-through consequences of cultivating a society where raising questions and genuine disagreement justifies hate.

Yes, the term “bully” applies quite appropriately to describe this phenomenon, as the Cambridge Dictionary states: “someone who hurts or frightens someone else, often over a period of time, and often forcing them to do something that they do not want to do.”

Someone somewhere has artfully mastered something, don’t you think? Or maybe that’s the point.

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As this election is over and done (maybe?), a new one will already begin in earnest (can’t you already feel the under current?). How much more will the polarization and division grow, even as whoever is the new president takes office?

As I listen to and read about how the projected president-elect and his followers demand unity, I realize I am having one of those out-of-body experiences. Has this ever happened to you?

People are talking (some yelling) and writing about it. They are demanding things like empathy and unity and understanding, and kindness too. But these are the same ones who were accusing others of hatred and bigotry and fostering division.

All the voices jumble over one another. Is anyone really listening to anyone? Does anyone honestly or genuinely care or expect anyone to believe it? Calls for unity or empathy, even kindness, seem to fall on ears stuffed with all kinds of noise and resonance.

As images and sound bites overwhelm, friends who shouted, “Anyone but Trump!” trample some real issues under foot, covered in the debris of new slogans and new agendas, grinding their heels on dearly held liberties. Chaos and confusion not-so-gently groom us for a soft totalitarianism to step in, promising someone’s idea of equitable justice for all.

As I process my own out-of-body experience, I wonder why those making accusations and demanding unity lack the ability to offer the same empathy, understanding and listening ear. The accused may find it too hard to offer empathy, too impossible to extend the kindness they were denied.