The Virus Infecting Political Discourse

In the aftermath of the national elections, rancor continues to rise in a crescendo of ill-will.  It’s happening on a daily basis, hour-by-hour. The civility and mutual courtesy which once existed between and within the Congressional and Executive branches seem to have melted away in the last three decades.

Lately, I’ve recused myself from publicly sharing my views and commentaries on this blog, refusing to wade into the muck.  Yet the Public Square will not go away, and there are no rocks to hide under.

But don’t expect my blog to justify one side of the political argument or the other during your reading of this essay.  Very few people are listening these days except to the sound of their own voices, insisting that they are correct and, therefore, that all others are wrong.  I hope you are different.

Instead, I refer you to the words of Thomas Merton, one of the great thinkers of the 20^th century.

Although Merton never lived to see a situation quite like the one that exists in recent times, he wrote wide-ranging commentaries.  At least one of those applies to the dissonant sound of political discord spreading outwardly like a tsunami from within the Beltway.

For your reading consideration, I offer below some of his views that I’ve excerpted from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, originally published in the mid-1960’s, yet wholly applicable today.  If you’ve read this far, don’t stop now.

Here is what Merton thinks of how differing positions on a topic are often presented and argued erroneously and acrimoniously while ostensibly chasing the light of truth:

In politics, as in everything else, . . . [there is] the conviction that, in order to be right, it is sufficient to prove that somebody else is wrong.  As long as there is one sinner left for you to condemn, then you are justified.

  

We are all convinced that we desire the truth above all. Nothing strange about this.

But actually, what we desire is not “the truth” so much as “to be in the right.” What we seek is not the pure truth, but the partial truth that justifies our prejudices, our limitations, our selfishness.

 

This is not “the truth.”  It is only an argument strong enough to prove us “right.”  And usually our desire to be right is correlative to our conviction that somebody else (perhaps everybody else) is wrong.

Why do we want to prove them wrong?  Because we need them to be wrong.  For if they are wrong, and we are right, then our untruth becomes truth:  our selfishness becomes justice and virtue.  . . .

What we desire is not the truth, but rather that our lie should be proved “right,” and our iniquity be vindicated as “just.”  This is what we have done to pervert our natural, instinctive appetite for truth.

No wonder we hate.  No wonder we are violent.  . . .  Our own lie provides the foundation of truth on which [the other person] erects his own lie, and the two lies together react to produce hatred, murder, disaster.

Great minds have a way of discerning the nature and impact of sin as it weaves its way through human relations.  Oops! did I use the word sin? Well, as my Mom was fond of saying, “If the shoe fits, wear it.”