Political peace at the table, please

By: JIM TRAGESER - Staff Writer | Wednesday, November 22, 2006 8:39 PM PST ∞

Saturday night, a friend and I took in Hal Holbrook's wonderful "Mark Twain Tonight!" one-man show at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. In his more than a half century of doing his Twain show, Holbrook has memorized roughly 16 hours of Twain's quotes, essays and other writings.

So he's got plenty to choose from when deciding what to include in any two-hour show.

All of which leads me to believe that, fresh on the heels of yet another vicious, divisive election cycle, it was no coincidence that Holbrook chose to include Twain's century-old thoughts on America's periodic inclination to become nasty during political seasons.

While my increasingly creaky memory doesn't remember the exact quote, and I've not been able to find it after several hours searching online, Holbrook -- as Twain -- said something along the lines of: We don't need to agree with our friends and neighbors' politics in order to get on with them. It costs us nothing to respect their different views; does no harm whatsoever to acknowledge that they're not insane or evil. That maybe they simply see things differently than we do. And that's OK.

It hasn't always been this nasty; there have been long periods of our history when Americans have displayed a great tolerance toward one another, have agreed to disagree on matters politic with grace, good humor and even affection.

We're not in one of those periods, now, though.

We live in a time when friendships are ended over how we each vote our conscience, when family members no longer speak because of political and philosophical differences.

Rather than simply disagreeing with those who vote differently than we do, we assign them evil motives, deny them the sincerity of their beliefs. Political ads seek not to enlighten or ennoble, but to tear down and destroy.

Far too many of us from all segments of the political spectrum seem to have an attitude of "You're either with me or you're against me."

It's not a lot of fun, frankly.

Perhaps on Thanksgiving, of all days, we could all try Twain's suggested approach. To forgive each other's different politics, to accept the fact that living in a truly open society means we're all going to disagree with one another sooner or later.

Some other sharp writer -- well, sharper than me, anyway -- once wrote that the First Amendment practically guarantees that each of us will be offended at some point.

But being offended is a choice; there is nothing inherent in someone else's words, views or voting pattern that causes us to be offended by it. We choose to feel offense -- perhaps subconsciously, but we choose it.

We can also choose not to take offense.

We surely don't have to agree with those whose politics differ from ours. But we can disagree while also accepting those differences as sincerely held, as being molded from intelligence and ethics equal to our own, as being the product of the totality of that other person's experiences -- rather than as a defining measure of the person.

-- Contact staff writer Jim Trageser at (760) 631-6628 or jtrageser@nctimes.com.

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