I’m a communicator. I’m a writer and a professional facilitator, and I like to talk — to share stories, ideas, feelings, beliefs. I like to listen, and learn, and I like to understand. Much of the joy or healing or growth in my life comes through conversation.
And so this election season has been deeply frightening to me because so many of us have stopped talking to each other. We’ve divided into our issue groups and our party affiliations, raised our voices at each other in outrage, called each other names, demonized each other. And here we all are, hundreds of millions of us, looking at each other across enormous gaps of values and beliefs about what is good for us and for the United States of America.
The United States of America.
Nicola and I talk about how people can surprise each other sometimes. I think one of the things that has often surprised her is my absolute passion — my brand of patriotism — for the founding principles of the United States of America. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are brilliant as documents and as foundations of government.
I love these documents. I love what they mean and what they promise. They are living ideas for me, and they literally move me to tears. Through these tears, I ask that if you’ve never read them, please please do. Because they are the work of people who overcame deep differences, competing needs, and radically different beliefs to unite. To come together as a nation. To frame a better government than any they had known before. And because of who I am, I look at these documents and I see the United States of America as a great ongoing conversation.
It is in this conversation that we as a nation expose and then explore our differences, and ultimately take action. I believe that the worst parts of our history as a nation come straight from the refusal to listen; and the best parts come from the willingness of people to keep talking, even when it’s hard.
The bedrock of that conversation is our vote.
Please — even if you feel shouted down, marginalized beyond repair, oppressed, ignored, angry, aghast at the drift and discord and divisions that have arisen between us all, please do not leave the conversation. Because if enough of us do stop talking to each other, we will never, never understand. We cannot build bridges through silence. And refusing to vote is the first step to the ringing silence that breaks even the best of ideas and the best of nations.
Please vote. And regardless of the outcome, please, let’s all keep talking to each other.
The story below is long, but I offer it in the spirit of conversation. It’s from the book Bono: In Conversation with Mischka Assayas.
Bono: Harry Belafonte is one of my great heroes… He told me this story about Bobby Kennedy.
Harry remembered a meeting with Martin Luther King when the civil rights movement had hit a wall in the early sixties: [impersonating croaky voice of Belafonte] “I tell you, it was a depressing moment when Bobby Kennedy was made attorney general. It was a very bad day for the civil rights movement.”
And I said, “Why was that?”
Harry said: “Oh, you see, you forget. Bobby Kennedy was Irish. Those Irish were real racists, they didnât like the black man. They were just one step above the black man on the social ladder, and they made us feel it. They were all the police, they were the people who broke our balls on a daily basis. Bobby at that time was famously not interested in the Civil Rights Movementâ¦. We knew we were in deep trouble. We were crestfallen, in despair, talking to Martin, moaning and groaning about the turn of events when Dr. King slammed his hand down and ordered us to stop the bitchinâ: ‘Enough of this!’ he said. ‘Is there nobody here whoâs got something good to say about Bobby Kennedy?’
“We said, ‘Martin, thatâs what weâre telling ya! There is no one⦠There is nothing good to say about him. The guyâs an Irish Catholic conservative bad ass, heâs bad newsâ¦.’
“To which Martin replied: ‘Well, then, letâs call this meeting to a close. We will re-adjourn when somebody has found one redeeming thing to say about Bobby Kennedy, because that, my friends, is the door through which our movement will pass.'”
… that was a great lesson for me, because what Dr. King was saying was: Don’t respond to caricature — the Left, the Right, the Progressives, the Reactionary. Don’t take people on rumor. Find the light in them, because that will further your cause.
— from Bono: In Conversation with Mischka Assayas
I have been angry and I have been afraid. But today I am looking for the light, and I hope you will too.
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Presidential elections generate so much stress and division. I always fly back to Mexico to vote during those times. I think it’s important to have conversations with my people. But sometimes they got so angry or frustrated or afraid that they just shut the channels down. I know what you mean when you say, “so many of us have stopped talking to each other.”
It saddened me that many people I appreciated would rather kill a friendship than keep a conversation going. It’s also what made me totally suspicious about one of the Mexican candidates: that he refused to give any interviews or participate in any debates. A guy that is so afraid to listen to what others have to say and expose himself in any way is not to be trusted. How do we know he’ll listen to us when he’s Mr. President? Somehow, a large population didn’t think conversations were that important.
I hope the United States of America lives up to its founding principles one of these days. It would certainly make the world a much better place for us all. I’ll have you and you and you and your country in my thoughts today, tomorrow, and almost every other day. It’s been like that since I can remember. The US is always in our thoughts.
Hm… I don’t like how that reads. It’s not like the US has to fix the world’s problems, it’s not what I mean… Ah, I’ll just go get coffee. Happy voting! Is that better? No? *sigh*
I love those documents too. They are the foundation of what is great about this country, and it seems kind of miraculous to me that they were created as they were. Lately my experience has been that it seems like lots of people are talking, but not so many are listening…
People seem to forget that we are all in this together. They forget how we got here and why. They forget this:
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
and this, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of the divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
And I really like your excerpt from that book. I’ve often thought of it since I read it from your VP archives. — “because that, my friends, is the door through which our movement will pass.”
Ok. Looking for the light.
Yes, I like that door. I’m a desert creature, so I also love the light.
I guess what I meant to say is that it matters to me. That the conversations that take place in the US matter to me and many more. I am listening. I also have things to say, but it’s not my place to say them in your election tomorrow. So I offer you my ears and my hope. Because it matters to all of us.
I’m thinking of Andrea Gibson’s “Say Yes” poem. The one that goes:
this is […] for the radical anarchist asking a republican to dance
’cause whatâs the chance of anyone moving from right to left
if the only moves they see are NBC and CBS
this is for no becoming yes
for scars becoming breath
for saying i love you to people who will never say it to us
for scraping away the rust and remembering how to shine
for the dime you gave away when you didnât have a penny
for the many beautiful things we do
for every song weâve ever sung
for refusing to believe in miracles
because miracles are the impossible coming true
and everything is possible
So here’s to Possibility, to the Open Doors of dialogue and to the Light of understanding.
You are as usual, eloquent. Eloquence was a forgotten and dissed skill until Obama ran for president. We forget how persuasive beauty of expression can be. The Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of rights are nothing if not eloquent. Let’s hear it for the beauty of ideals and the beauty of their expression.
I like that anecdote about Belafonte, King, and Bobby Kennedy, but let’s remember that Belafonte was right — that the Kennedys were not friends of the Civil Rights movement in America. King’s response was correct, as a recognition of the proper tactics for dealing with those in power, and of the actual balance of power in the society. That’s quite compatible with recognizing what a scumbag they had to deal with.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, I’ve been standing here trying to think of one redeeming thing to say about Bono, whose interpretation of that anecdote is quite outrageously off. Um… he used to be a good singer?
Duncan, I think you are absolutely wrong on both counts. The Kennedy’s were initially reluctant friends of the civil rights movement, but once RFK became educated about the situation, he played a major role in turning the tide of civil rights in this country. It was his enforcement of the law that turned the tide for civil rights in this country after desegregation. Because of him Pres. Kennedy appointed more African Americans to public posts than anyone ever before him, including 5 federal judges. I’m pressed for time right now, or else this would be much longer with specific examples. MLK came to know and like Bobby in the end. The world would be a much better place if he had not been murdered.
Bono is a huge talent, and he has done an untold amount of good as an activist in recent years. Look at his “Red” campaign and his efforts to fight poverty there and globally.
It’s a lot more than I have done.
And since I am looking for the light, that is all I will say right now.
Barbara, nice to see you! Yes, I agree, that expression matters in our leaders. The thing I appreciate about Obama is that he often sounds quite authentic to me… I’d almost forgotten what that’s like.
And I’ll be he never ever says “nucular” instead of “nuclear” (Shrub drives me insane with that).
Duncan, I probably should have included the rest of the story about MLK and Kennedy, but it felt like it was getting long and I wanted to get to the light (grin). The rest goes like this (again quoting Bono):
“Well, it turned out that Bobby was very close with his bishop. So they befriended the one man who could get through to Bobby’s soul and turned him into their Trojan horse. They sort of ganged up on this bishop and got the bishop to speak to Bobby. Harry became emotional at the end of this tale: ‘When Bobby Kennedy lay dead on a Los Angeles pavement, there was no greater friend to the civil rights movement. There was no one we owed more of our progress to than that man’….And whether [Harry] was exaggerating or not, that was a great lesson for me, because what Dr. King was saying was: Don’t respond to caricature…” Etc.
Not trying to make you like Bono more (grin), just worried that I had not given you the full context.
Thank you all for responding to my hope for the possibility of opening doors and finding light behind them. It’s important to me right now, and I appreciate the chance to share it.
Kelley, I agree that it’s more pleasant to listen to Obama than to Bush. But I don’t put much store by that. Even though I’m a grammar neurotic myself, I have no use for people who go into conniptions over the pronunciation of “nuclear” as “nukular,” who look down on people for their accents, and so on. Such petty obsessions should be kept private in my opinion, especially when so much is at stake. After all, Hitler was a great orator too. (I’m not saying that Obama is Hitler, only that great eloquence can and does coexist with vile politics.) Second, “authentic” is a sound that can be and is cultivated; it’s what acting is all about, learning to fake sincerity and authenticity. If you find yourself lulled by any politician’s authentic sound, you should pinch yourself and pay more attention to what is actually being said. I’m not in love with Obama, so I apparently find it easier than his fans do to attend to his content, but I usually rely on transcripts and such more than video and audio. It’s as much because I’m a reader first and foremost as anything else. (By the way, it’s probably past its freshness date by now, but have you ever read Mark Crispin Miller’s The Bush Dylexicon? It’s a great analysis of Bush’s rhetoric in particular, and in the way it worked politically and with the media.)
Thanks for adding context to Bono’s story, but it doesn’t really change anything. Jennifer also seems to have forgotten that the story is about RFK when he was first appointed attorney general, when he was still basically a McCarthyite, and there’s nothing in the story to indicate that King and his associates were wrong about him — only that, thanks to the intervention of his bishop, instigated by King and his people, RFK changed. While JFK lived, he and his brother were trying to block and contain the Civil Rights movement, trying to stop the March on Washington and doing nothing while people were being beaten and killed in the South. I don’t have enough books on that period at home, but I found my copy of Taylor Branch’s Pillar of Fire, and it confirms what I’m saying here. Even more, privately King seems to have held JFK in contempt even after his assassination; Branch reports an obscene (not a word I use lightly) and enraged outburst King made while watching JFK’s funeral on TV. He tempered that disgust in public commentary, but it doesn’t seem that King ever forgave JFK for his deadly intransigence. The book ends in 1965, so I can’t trace King’s relations with RFK, but it doesn’t matter much since the whole point is that RFK changed his views after the period Belafonte was talking about, as the material you added shows. Which doesn’t mean he wasn’t a racist prick before; there’s nothing in that story to indicate he wasn’t.
Which is why Bono’s interpretation of the story is wrong, as I said. King was not, as far as I can see, saying that we shouldn’t “caricature” and so on. I’m sure King would have agreed that we shouldn’t, as do I. But King’s insistence on finding something positive about RFK was, as I said, tactical. Like a Mafia boss, if you like, saying, “How can we get to this guy?” They found someone RFK would listen to, and that was a major factor in his change of opinion. This doesn’t diminish King in my eyes. I remember Sarah Schulman saying that she and other Lesbian Avengers read Taylor Branch to learn King’s tactics for direct action.
As for Bono, I don’t know much about him (except that he used to be a good singer), but people whose opinions I respect see him as a self-promoting hustler. I’ll withhold judgment on that score, but this excerpt doesn’t incline me to like him. Still, doors can be opened, and conversation (I agree) is important. Thanks, Kelley, for allowing and encouraging it here.
Duncan, sure, I agree that King’s insistence on finding a door into RFK was tactical. It’s a good tactic. We often have to work with or through people we don’t like in order to get things done. Finding something we can feel positively about connecting on, or a positive way to influence each other, is a good thing.
I think that all Bono is saying here is that anything we can do to humanize other people in times of conflict is more conducive to resolving the conflict. I don’t think he’s trying to make a point that RFK was a saint. We can disagree on his interpretation (honestly, who cares?). I don’t think we disagree on the overall point.
I do try to encourage conversation here. I want to be open to different opinions and disagreements. But I do need to ask for some clarification from you. Your first paragraph seem to read to me as though you’re assuming that because I called Bush out for his pronunciation, that I am a person who looks down on other people about accents in some global sense, and that I am petty. If you’re intending to describe me that way, then we’ll need to talk more about that. Actually, it’s not clear to me whether the whole first paragraph is addressed to me specifically or to some general reader.
Duncan, my comments re RFK were based on my knowledge of history and not on the excerpt Kelley shared with us. I try not to (but sometimes emotions do influence me) make generalized statements about people/things about which I have no knowledge.
I like and highly respect the host of this blog, and it so happens that Kelley knows more about Bono than most people. I assume that you also respect Kelley, Duncan. Maybe you should do a little more digging into some of the things she’s written about U2.
Jennifer, I’m glad I have your respect (right back atcha) and I’m entirely sure that I have Duncan’s too, as he has mine. We’re just disagreeing. That’s cool. Not everyone has to like Bono (in fact, I’m sure Bono is more than used to it, grin).
No, I agree not everyone has to like him. I’m not the huge fan you are, but I still have a lot of respect for the guy.