With all the presidential election happenings I keep thinking most Americans have lost their way. Almost daily there’s some new effort by each side to claim moral superiority or launch a new attack effort, all while assuring us only their side has the magic formula to save democracy or save us from Trump or save us from Kamala’s radical agenda. This post is going to be mostly about family and how we treat each other, even though I’m going to use examples from our political circus.
At the DNC the other night, Tim Walz accepted the nomination for vice president. His teenage son, Gus, was openly weeping and very excited. Within a few seconds watching his son, I suspected some special needs problems in his behavior and then read an article about Tim and Gwen Walz talking about their son’s special needs – a learning disability, ADHD and anxiety problems. On right-wing social media, quickly there were memes and hateful comments mocking this boy, while Democrats posted angry condemnations of the attack on this boy. I agree that mocking a kid (any kid) deserves condemnation. However, Democrats and liberal media don’t have a moral leg to stand on.
Then yesterday there was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announcing he was dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump, which led to his family posting this:
JD Vance has shared stories about his grandmother, he called his Mamaw, so I’m going to share a childhood story about my great-grandmother, we called Mammy. My parents, my five siblings, and I grew up living in my great-grandmother’s house, which was an old farm house divided into two homes. I think at some point my great-grandparents rented out the side we lived in and I think my parents paid rent too (along with constantly sinking money into repairs). My mother longed to buy a house and move. I remember several times my parents looked at houses when I was in my teens, but it always came back to my father, who was raised by his grandparents and had promised his grandfather he would take care of Mammy. It was a deathbed promise and my father was big on if you give your word, you keep it.
Mammy spoke PA Dutch more easily than English, had a third grade education, and married at 13 years old. She had 9 children. She was a Democrat, not that that matters really. She was a very hard-worker, expert gardener, and loved all kinds of sewing and needlework, especially quilting and crochet. I spent many hours sitting with her and becoming her sewing and gardening helper bee. I loved her dearly. I spent many afternoons sitting with her in the afternoon, when she made hot tea and set out cookies or cake. She was a gifted storyteller and I wish I had written down her stories.
Now, on to other things about my great-grandmother. I knew she held racist views, but when I was probably around 13, I was in her living room watching the evening news with her and Henry Kissinger was speaking. Mammy started ranting about him being a Jew and reverted from English to PA Dutch, so I knew how strongly she felt. I didn’t understand why she was so angry. Later, I asked my mother (lifelong Republican) about this, because I thought Kissinger sounded knowledgeable about foreign policy. My mother told me he was a very smart man, that Mammy was just ignorant and to ignore it.
So, my Mammy was racist, anti-Semitic, bigoted, but her most reviled group of people were “Pine-swampers”. So you might be wondering who on earth are Pine-swampers. Well, to the best of my mother’s understanding they were people from one county over, where my mother was from. Yes, Mammy hated my mother with a passion, that scared me sometimes. My mother on the other hand always treated Mammy with respect and she made my siblings and me clean Mammy’s side of the house and help take care of her. No matter, how ugly Mammy treated my mother, my mother never raised her voice or argued with her and my mother would not allow us to be disrespectful to her. She said that’s your great-grandmother and that was that.
That old house had a coal furnace in the cellar and a smaller jack stove connected to a water tank, both requiring manually shoveling coal for heat and hot water. My mother shoveled a lot of coal in her life and carted out heavy ash buckets from the cellar. My mother had terrible varicose veins in her legs and had surgery several times. One time, in my teens, I came downstairs early one morning and after sitting there a while I wondered where my mother was. There was a door between our kitchen and Mammy’s living room, so I went over there to see if my mother was over there or in the cellar (the door to the cellar was in Mammy’s living room.
As soon I opened the door to her living room, I heard my mother yelling for help, as Mammy sat in her rocking chair, just rocking back and forth and ignoring my mother’s cries for help. My mother, was recovering from varicose vein surgery in one of her legs and she had caught her foot going down those old stairs. She was hanging upside down over the side of the stairs, with her head an inch or two from the cellar floor. I wasn’t strong enough to lift her up to get her foot loose, so she told me to turn her foot to get it loose. She had her elbows on the cellar floor to brace herself from smashing her head when I got her foot loose. Turning her foot ripped open the stitches in her leg. I helped her up the stairs and into our kitchen, then called my father at work to come home and take her to the emergency room. My mother, a registered nurse, calmly assessed the damage to her leg and she didn’t even cry, even though I knew she was in excruciating pain. I was crying and very upset about the entire situation.
After my father got home and took my mother to the hospital, I went into Mammy’s living room. I was so angry and upset that I raised my voice at her. I asked her how she could do something like that. She just ignored me and kept rocking. I told her that she should be ashamed of herself and told her she better think about the Bible she was always reading and wonder what God thought about her behavior. She did give me a glance and I know she knew she had done something very wrong, but she still hated my mother with a passion.
After that episode, nothing changed with my mother making us clean Mammy’s side of the house and my mother treating her with respect and demanding we do too, except my mother desperately wanted to buy a house and move away from Mammy, but she understood my father’s loyalty and his giving his word to his dying grandfather.
In my teens I took on a lot of the caregiving duties when Mammy’s condition deteriorated, under my mother’s direction, because Mammy adored me and it was less commotion than if my mother tried to help her. My sisters had to help too and even when we had a hospital bed and Mammy was bed bound, my mother was vigilant about her care.
Hate is the most dangerous emotion in the world. I determined after that incident with Mammy ignoring my mother’s cries for help, that no matter what wrong or hurt anyone causes me, I refuse to ever hate anyone. Evil can take over your heart, if you open it even a crack to hate.
Watching the craziness in our politics, where “thought” pieces have been written (mostly by liberals) in the Trump-era about how to deal with (or abandon) your relatives who hold differing political views at holiday time, or jumping on board mocking kids, or families turning on each other over politics, I am more determined that no matter what, I refuse to hate anyone – ever. The mocking and mean comments about Gus Walz were horrible and that Covington kid video was a Dem spin operation claiming that kid wearing a red MAGA hat made ethnic slurs against a Native American war hero. Joy Behar rushed to get into amplifying the Dem attack on that kid, saying he had a face you’d like to punch. The truth was that vet was a Dem activist and no war hero, who had went after those kids, not the other way around..
With Mammy, I chalk up a lot of her behavior to ignorance, xenophobia, and feeling defensive, because my mother was a registered nurse and a lot smarter. And naturally, I think there was some possessiveness of my father, whom she had raised. The degree of her hate for my mother, left a lasting mark on me, but all the positive lessons of my mother’s ability to rise above it and do the right thing, no matter what, became my role model.
It’s very easy to jump on board cheap political attacks, on either side. One of Trump’s things is coming up with derogatory names for people, which his supporters seem to love and cheer on. On the left, it’s Trump derangement, smearing Trump as Hitler (or worse) and ranting about Deplorables or MAGA extremists.
Your family, friends and neighbors should not become your enemies, especially over politics.
Rushing to join in pile-on attacks often generates lots of clicks online and media attention, but it’s always wrong – no matter who is doing it. Instead of making excuses when people who agree with you on politics engage in bad behavior, you should call it out – that includes when Trump or powerful Dems do it.
I like buying books and often I find very nice books used, at yard sales or at discount stores. My local Ollie’s often has discount books on history, gardening and loads of cookbooks. Recently, I bought a book on leadership, The Wisdom of the Bullfrog: Leadership Made Simple (But Not Easy), by Admiral Willian H. McRaven. As I was reading the back cover blurb and inside the jacket covers, I was debating whether I even care what Admiral McRaven has to say, because he joined the chorus of “retired generals publicly trashing Trump” and I refer to them as the Dem generals. Having such nakedly partisan retired generals is bad for America and it’s bad for the US military, which should be an apolitical institution dedicated to defense of our great country.
Finally, I decided it was only $4.99 and that I should be open to ideas, even from people I disagree with. McRaven gave a 2014 commencement address at the University of Texas, that became famous and then he wrote a book based off of that speech. The speech was excellent and inspirational:
Then McRaven joined a 2019 partisan effort by retired generals to attack a sitting president. They were outraged about President Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria. I never heard any of these Dem generals write op-eds about their outrage over the Biden Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. However, I bought his book and he offers many valuable insights on leadership. The book also contains great quotes. Chapter Seven is called Sua Sponte and begins with a Victor Hugo quote, “Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.” He explains that Sua Sponte, a Latin phrase, is the Rangers motto and means Of Your Own Accord – doing what needs to be done without being told to do so.
It can be hard to take initiative on your own sometimes or to speak out when what you believe is right doesn’t fit the prevailing views, especially when partisan fervor is high. Most engaged partisans want to promote their side and make excuses for or lie to cover up bad or damaging information about their side’s candidates. Many partisans have more anger for defectors from their side or if someone on their side disagrees and speaks out, than they do for the opposing partisans. You won’t win friends among partisans if you speak out against bad behaviors on both sides, trust me on this, but luckily I am not a paid politico, but just an ordinary citizen, so I don’t care.
As an American I think more people should take the initiative to call out bad behavior – no matter who is doing it. And even though I was disappointed in McRaven and other retired generals publicly acting in such a partisan manner, that I believe is detrimental to military cohesiveness or our national interests abroad, I bought his book and am reading it. I have been appalled and very disappointed with Trump’s repeated attacks on “the generals” and think that conduct is totally unacceptable for a CINC and extremely damaging for our military cohesiveness. I keep hoping Trump learns how to be a more principled leader. He could benefit from reading and thinking about the leadership lessons in Admiral McRaven’s book. And I think McRaven and other Dem generals should rethink their nakedly partisan public attacks of a sitting president.
If we are willing to open our hearts, even a tiny sliver, to working to find common ground with people we strongly disagree with or intensely dislike, miracles can happen.
We might even find a bridge to becoming friends.
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