Come Together

As you'll see, politics really does make strange bedfellows

According to music superstar and activist, Bono, “America is the greatest idea that the world has ever had. It just doesn’t exist yet.“

As a way of expressing that there is hope in unity and unity in hope, he tells a story of his AIDS activism, and how he approached the then-elderly senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms, who was famous/infamous, depending on your point of view, for his homophobic, segregationist views. Bono called Senator Helms, and said, look, I’m a Christian and you’re a Christian, and Jesus wasn’t concerned about what was happening in anybody’s pants. Jesus, he said, represents love and service. He wondered aloud to Senator Helms, “What vision of God do we have? Jesus never denigrated anyone. His sole concern was how we treated the poor and the infirm.”

Bono went on to enlist a skeptical Senator Helms in what—until the pandemic—would become the largest relief effort in the history of the world. It was the United States, brought together by these unlikely partners, in getting the Bush administration to fund AIDS research and relief in Africa.

Bono remains the picture of humility. Still a dedicated activist, he now says “I don’t have anything to teach, I rely on a great Franciscan scholar, whose only teaching was, ‘listen.’” He said for America to save itself, and achieve its unrealized potential, we must listen to those whose views and ideology we oppose, to those who annoy us, and to those who we just don’t like.

One of the “He Gets Us” commercials that ran in the Super Bowl reminded us that Jesus “loves who we hate,” an excellent message for unity, but it’s funded in part by Hobby Lobby’s CEO, who also works against LGBTQ rights. I suppose they’d say “love the sinner, not the sin,” but the pro-Jesus/anti-people message is confusing, if not totally hypocritical.

Division is not just a problem in the Christian world. Israel is undergoing its own constitutional crisis as a coalition of its ultraconservative, ultranationalist, and ultraorthodox Jewish community that is at odds with its secular history, moves to place the courts under political control, jeopardizing its well-respected judiciary whose very independence hangs in the balance.

Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, represents the secular majority in opposition to Israeli strongman, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has his own very personal reasons to take over the judiciary: Bibi, as he is known, is under criminal indictment for corruption, and controlling the courts might keep him out of prison. President Herzog said, “I’m telling you loud and clear: This powder keg is about to explode. This is an emergency.”

Again, we see two sides diametrically opposed to each other’s governing philosophies, unwilling and unable to listen.

There are so many ways in which we talk past one another. We alternately live in ignorance of hateful stereotypes, and bend over backwards to maintain them. Film producer Michael Becker recently wrote, “Attention and fear. The only currencies that we find monetizable in the 21st century.” 

He’s right, and somehow, if we are to dig our way out of the multiple crises we find ourselves mired in, we’ll need to keep attention, but convert fear to love. It’s a tall order because love doesn’t sell magazines, scandal does; love doesn’t crank up cable news ratings, fear does; and love doesn’t inspire politicians or their followers, enemies do.

Maybe it begins with a dedication to discernable facts—what used to be known as the truth. The oft-quoted historian, Heather Cox Richardson, deals in the immutable facts of history. Here’s her take on our current situation: “There is a difference between political spin—which virtually all political operatives use and which generally means making a statement without full context so it is misleading—and rejecting the reality-based community in favor of lies and attacks. Political decisions that are not based on reality rob us of our right to make informed decisions about our government and what it will do…Voters need fact-based information to elect people who will enact the policies a majority of us want. We need politicians to participate in the reality-based community.”

Unfortunately an entire industry dedicated to monetizing division and contention has grown up around our fragmented media. Political fundraising, the internet, social media, cable news, and talk radio all thrive on controversy. They don’t care about truth. They routinely invent controversy to further their financial and political goals.

What we need is unifying leadership, but none is in sight, and Bono doesn’t want the gig. Historically, we have rallied around the mission to stop a common enemy. The very real threats of Covid and climate change turned out to be divisive rather than unifying.

We have such great potential, but if existential threats don’t pull us together, what will?  

©2023 Jon Sinton