Marco Ament recently wrote something I have thought so many times over the years:
If I learn today that my neighbors have political views that my “side” considers unacceptable and unforgivable, should I be able to have dinner at their house, shovel their snow, or even greet them outside? … Maybe we were better off before we knew everyone’s hot takes on everything
It also reminds me of this passage from Wendell Berry’s The Need to Be Whole. (I haven’t read the book yet. I’ve come across this passage in a few places online.)
There has been a good deal of talk of the way political division has been intensified perhaps mainly by social media, so that people need to deal little or not at all with the others who are politically unlike themselves. Such exclusiveness, it seems to me, is possible only in large towns and cities. In my own rural community, oriented to the very small town of Port Royal, it is not possible. This is not to Port Royal’s credit, but is a matter only of the size and density of its population. This precinct voted for Mr. Obama in his first race, but in 2020 the majority of its supporters voted the Republicans and Mr. Trump. My family and I are not Trumpists, but there is no chance that we could live here and have to do only with people who voted as we did. That impossibility in fact reduces our interest in who voted for whom. Often we have no idea. Almost never do we try to find out. When on our visits to town we meet our neighbors face-to-face, it does not occur to us to question if they may be our political opposites. We are asking how they are, and how are their families, and did they get enough rain. Somebody tells a joke, and we laugh. Our one store, which sells farm supplies, hardware, and some groceries, also serves breakfast and lunch. At the long table in the back, where mostly men sit and there is much talk and laughter, both political sides surely are represented, but there is almost no talk of politics. Perhaps this is because we live more in the wide world than city people do. All of us have had engine trouble or been stuck in mud or snow out on the roads somewhere, and who was there to help us but one of our neighbors? And we have all participated, on one side or both, in the ancient ceremony:
“Many thanks. What I owe you?”
“Aw, I may need help myself someday.”
“Well, much obliged.”
In Port Royal, thanks mostly to its nature and circumstances, humanity remains a larger category than political allegiance.
If two neighbors know that they seriously disagree, but that either of them, given even a small change of circumstances, may desperately need the other, should they not keep between them a sort of pre-paid forgiveness? They ought to keep it ready to hand, like a fire extinguisher, in case it may prove useful.
“So that people need to deal little or not at all with the others who are politically unlike themselves.” This is key. He points to social media in the first sentence but then moves on to city versus rural too quickly. Believe me, the exclusiveness has been learned from social media by rural folks as well.
Does anyone still need to be convinced that social media platforms quickly turn into echo chambers? That we too rarely are required to negotiate face-to-face conversations? That those who barely exist apart from their devices are the sickest of all, and most to be pitied?
In 2020, Rachel and I were depressed. COVID, of course. But also because we were growing angrier at our hometown. We went to a Black Lives Matter rally on the courthouse square. It was about the least radical event of that sort you could imagine. The main speakers at the event were a local black couple; the husband was a pastor and the wife ran a community kitchen. And yet there were armed guys on motorcycles revving their engines and counter-protestors making all kinds of wild claims about our “true” intentions. Our car mysteriously developed a big dent in it that day, even though it was parked by itself.
It was a year full of such depressing displays by the people in my hometown. We wanted out and we developed a plan. It had to be a blue city in a blue state. We wanted, for once in our lives, to be in a place where the people around us didn’t think we were a threat to the republic. It had to be walkable because we were also sick of cars. We had other requirements but you get the idea.
After some perfunctory research, we settled on Portland, Oregon. We watched walking tours on YouTube and fell in love with it. We talked about it constantly. We found an apartment over a Starbucks. We started following the local news. The rent was four times higher than our house payment but we could do it, right? Where would I get a job? I was a CPA! That wouldn’t be a problem.
Darcy was a freshman in high school. We figured we could wait and save up money for four years and then make the move. In the meantime, we’d visit the place, which we did in 2021. It was the best vacation we ever had. Completely magical. Ocean and rivers and waterfalls and mountains. On the final night as we walked back to our hotel, someone was beautifully playing the violin in one of the parks and all three of us cried.
After we returned home, we slowly began to realize it would never work. We had responsibilities toward our parents that no one else was going to handle if we moved. Paying that much rent for a tiny apartment would have wiped out what cash we had. Rachel might have had to start working outside the home, which was not our plan. And what would Darcy do? Move with us and make starting out even more difficult for her? Stay in Bedford, two thousand miles away? And besides all that, Portland had problems of its own.
I don’t recall us ever being overly sad as we realized this. It was more a matter of accepting what was becoming increasingly obvious. But I do remember Rachel saying that if we’re going to stay in Bedford, we needed to learn to love the place we’d both lived in our whole lives. I knew that was true, and so I started revisiting all those Wendell Berry books on my shelves.
In the five years since, we’ve settled in. Rachel turned our yard into a garden. We started volunteering at the warming shelter. We started talking to our neighbors. We became lifetime members of the county historical society. I’ve started exploring genealogy and local history. I’m on the finance committee of the community foundation. Most importantly of all, when the opportunity arose, we decided that I should leave the job from which I intended to retire, to start a new job at the community credit union near my house.
What have I learned from this experience?
- That the local woman who has the most mind-numbingly MAGA social media posts also rallies her large social network to support the old and sick, like when she helped get my mom a lift chair last year.
- That the evangelical churches I rolled my eyes at also have members who are faithful volunteers at the warming shelter and have more compassionate ideas about the homeless than I would have assumed.
- That is really does all turn on affection. That when the place where you live becomes your place, warts and all, you find that you don’t need anyplace else. That all the beauty you need can be found right here.
I have learned that it is better to live in the friction of disagreement than a bubble of consensus. Living here requires me to look into the eyes of those who are easily hated online, and see something deeper than political opinion there. There are, of course, hateful people here, as anywhere. But patient, affectionate staying reveals much more than that.