When families split red and blue: We’re fighting a heart-to-heart battle
Siblings disagree in Irene Hunt’s 1964 lovely, timeless novel, “Across Five Aprils.” In the story, Kentuckian Jethro Creighton comes of age during the American Civil War; his reckoning begins at the family dinner table. There, his older brothers argue about the conflict dividing the country. Two brothers, Tom and John, the ardent abolitionist, plan to fight with the Union. The other brother joins the Rebel army.
It’s that brother — quiet, earnest Bill, Jethro’s favorite — whose words have stayed with me ever since I read the novel, decades ago:
“Slavery, I hate. But it is with us, and them that should suffer fer the evil they brought to our shores air long dead. What I want us to answer in this year of 1861 is this, John: does the trouble over slavery come because men’s hearts is purer above the Mason-Dixon line? Or does slavery throw a shadder over greed and keep that greed from showin’ up quite so bare and ugly?”
John’s rightness as a Yankee soldier was inviolable; it went without saying, for me and for many readers — clearly, surely right. But did Bill also have a point? Bill’s words helped me, even as a young teen, to consider what it means when beloved, thoughtful people hold opposing points of view.
I’m still working on that, as I field the differing political opinions held by my family. We’re scattered from Japan, across America, into France and Spain. We’re decent people, young to not-so, who love our country. We veer back or away from trouble; we work hard to send our kids to college. Some of us serve in the military. We donate time and money to causes we care about; we enjoy each others’ company and cheer on one another’s endeavors. We call, write and support. When there’s not a pandemic, we gather.
But politics are taking their toll, and it isn’t pretty.
My mom and her sister have gone many rounds over Blue and Red. Neither has swayed the other, not a smidge. Recently, Auntie wrote “the sweetest letter ever” to my mom. But Mom is also startled and saddened that her sister feels that “we shouldn’t talk to one another for a while.” My mom is 79. Though she’s in good health, I wonder how long “a while” will be.
On social media, my cousin and I diverged politically, and then — what? — he blocked me. Of course, I’ve blocked people myself. Protective, sure, but not productive: Now we don’t speak.
Should oppositional family members, friends, loved ones simply talk about something else? I’ve tried that. But it’s so easy to press — advertently or not — a sensitive political button; and then so tempting to react.
Each side persists in an overweening morality and condescension. Red feels Blue rejects the core values of America: liberty, opportunity, individual rights, a free press. Blue feels Red clenches only to narrow relics of those values, while refusing to recognize systemic, consequential inequity embedded in their foundations. Red sees that Blue wants to seize and disperse hard-won assets to the “undeserving”; Blue sees that Red employs any means to achieve its “righteous” ends. On it goes. John and Bill Creighton, the sequel.
Though it feels scalding and new, this escalated conflict reflecting the sorrow, division and heartache that worry me more than that between Antifa and Back the Blue. Like many among us, I can dish out my own “considered” opinions but have trouble taking in divergent ones ... and in this, a larger reality has become apparent: The rhetoric of discord and its damage to cherished relationships.
What did Abraham Lincoln mean when he urged “firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right”? Is there a way to hold fast and yet forbear? Can we honor our highest ideals and also listen to one another? Can we look for the salient, defendable notions undergirding the other side? As we do, can we employ the “better angels of our nature”? If so, could the fractures in our country be healed?
In Irene Hunt’s novel, Bill Creighton is tormented at his choice: his “thinkin’ is all of a tangle.” After he joins the Confederate Army, the community shuns and attacks his family. Bill never reconciles with his loved ones. All he can do, in the end, is send word that he didn’t kill his brother.
Yeah. That’s a pretty low bar.
Recently, a loved one emailed an apology for riling me up during a holiday phone call. I’d felt stung, not handled myself well, and much appreciated the message. Later I was surprised by a new email, railing against my earlier tone; so I guess we’re not okay. Injured and indignant, I can’t yet bring myself to call.
I did send holiday cards to relatives long wonderful to me and mine ... but with whom I’ve disagreed publicly and painfully. We still disagree. Yet my uncle responded with a card of his own: “May the choicest blessings of our Father in Heaven be with your family.”
Indeed, may those blessings abound across the land. May we court the better angels that impel and inform each of us. May we strive together as families, friends, fellow citizens — despite our disagreements — in the crucial labor of preserving and protecting our relationships.
Maybe as we do, we’ll also be rescuing our democracy.