Delusions of Grandeur are Doing Us In

But America’s humiliating fall from grace might humble us enough to save our bacon...

Image: Bay Area Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Center website. Artist unknown.

I. This is just a wild guess, but I figure that “humble” is not a word you’d use to describe America’s new king and his courtiers. Four months into the Golden Age they promised us, it’s clear that most of these wannabe royals suffer from delusions of grandeur. But given their job performance to date, I can’t think of a single one who has a right even to delusions of adequacy. To say nothing of their contempt for the rule of law, universal human rights, simple facts, common decency and truth itself…

Still, credit where credit is due. Under this regime’s “America First” policy, the U.S.A. has been humiliated on the world stage almost overnight, and that’s an amazing achievement. For 250 years, we’ve seen ourselves as a city set on a hill, a light unto the nations. Despite our transgressions against humanity—genocide, slavery and unjust wars—we’ve spent a lot of time puffed up with arrogance while looking down our noses at “lesser” nations around the world. Now we’ve lost our bragging rights as the world’s leading democracy, and had the stuffing knocked out of our national ego.

That’s a good thing, it seems to me. It gives us a chance to embrace the truth of the very mixed bag that we are. Today, nations we once pitied because they suffered from authoritarian rule pity us. They know what it means to wake up each day to creeping despotism, and they know how fast it can get worse. We have a lot to learn from them about pushing back on tyrants and thugs, and by now we should have enough humility to welcome their help.

II. Last month we got some much-needed advice from freedom fighters in Poland, where they’ve learned how to wrest democracy back from illiberal regimes on both the left and the right. “Our eastern European political culture,” they said, “shaped by historical catastrophes, has developed some antibodies against oppressive power. So here is a handful of suggestions for Americans who seem disoriented and overwhelmed.”

All five of their brief but on-target points are well worth reading. Here I want to focus on their final recommendation:

“Plan ahead. Perhaps the most psychologically difficult task is extending a hand to those with whom you have political disagreements. The facts are hard to ignore: in democracies, [right wing] populists win through elections. Hardliners won’t change, but the 10-20% of swing voters in the center can be decisive.”

Yes, you read that right. Our Polish friends are urging us to reach out to some of the voters who helped create the nightmare we’re now living, to join hands with them in hopes of growing the pro-democracy vote we need to save our bacon in the midterm elections.

I can already hear the protest from my fellow progressives, because I have the same voice in myself: “No, no, no! Those people are democracy’s enemies! I don’t want anything to do with them.” That, of course, is why our Polish friends called this recommendation “the most psychologically difficult task” of those they named.

III. The current misleaders of the U.S. aren’t the only Americans who have a problem with arrogance. I’m not arrogant enough to accept a Qatari jumbo jet—and I’ve put them on notice about that—but I have my own form of overweening pride. It kicks in when I fancy myself to be one of democracy’s righteous few, and it gets in the way of conversations that need to happen.

To be clear, I refuse to discuss whose race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation is superior to the others. Inspired by Nobel laureate Eli Wiesel who refused to debate Holocaust deniers, I will not give oxygen to people who spew evil. But that should not keep me from reaching out to folks whose votes were driven by legitimate concerns, who now have buyer’s remorse. Do the math: all of us will be needed in the midterms if we want to start clawing our democracy back.

In my experience of hosting bridging conversations, I’ve found a few reminders to be helpful:

• Before the conversation begins remember that you, too, have made bad decisions, and would resent being treated as if they defined who you are. Do unto others…

• Refrain from “making points.” Stay focused on sharing stories about the experiences that have shaped you and your views. Remember that the more you learn about another person’s story, the harder it is to diss them.

• Go into the conversation with understanding, not conversion, as your goal. This is a chance to listen deeply to another’s point of view, not to change their mind.

• Deepen your listening with honest, open questions that help you understand more fully. “How could you believe that?” is not an honest, open question! “Can you say more about how you felt in that moment?” is.

• Success means creating a container strong enough to sustain an ongoing conversation. When stereotypes fall away and real people show up, the “space between us” becomes safe enough to host complex explorations that don’t explode.

IV. If you need encouragement to reach across lines of divide, here’s a story that never fails to encourage me, a story John Lewis told during the 2011 Civil Rights Pilgrimage across Alabama. On the third day—after we marched across Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge to mark the 46th anniversary of Bloody Sunday—we took a bus to the Montgomery Airport for the flight home. Seated directly behind Lewis, I overheard him share this account with his young aide.

In 1961, Lewis and a movement colleague were at a bus station in Rock Hill, South Carolina, when several young white men attacked and beat them bloody with baseball bats. Lewis and his colleague did not fight back, nor did they press charges. They treated their wounds, got some rest, then went on with their Civil Rights work, as Lewis did for the rest of his life.

In 2009, forty-eight years after this event, a white man about John Lewis’s age walked into his office on Capitol Hill, accompanied by his middle-aged son. “Mr. Lewis,” he said, “my name is Elwin Wilson. I’m one of the men who beat you in that bus station back in 1961. I want to atone for the terrible thing I did, so I’ve come to seek your forgiveness. Will you forgive me?” Lewis said, “I forgave him, we embraced, he and his son and I wept, and then we talked.”

John Lewis and Elwin Wilson, 2009. Photo: Spartacus-Educational.com.

As Lewis came to the end of the story, he leaned back in his seat on the bus. He gazed out the window as we passed through a countryside that was once a killing ground for the Ku Klux Klan, to which Elwin Wilson had belonged. Then, in a very soft voice—as if speaking to himself about the story he had just told and the memories it must have stirred—Lewis said, “People can change. People can change.”

At that moment, it felt as if I had seen into the soul of a true healer, a healer of the wounded heart of democracy. I saw the faith in our shared humanity that kept John Lewis on the march all those years, despite the abundant evidence that we are more than capable of being unloving, unjust, and untruthful.

V. When I heard John Lewis say, “People can change,” I felt hope, not just for “them” but for me. The knowledge that change is possible—personal and social change—can help us stay engaged with the daily demands of democracy, as we open ourselves to a more humble and generous way of being in the world with and for each other.

[NOTES: The story I heard John Lewis tell in 2011 appeared in the New York Times in 2013 as part of Elwin Wilson’s obituary. My 10 books are HERE and HERE. The Center for Courage & Renewal is HERE, with programs that honor the virtues of diversity, equity and inclusion. I post on Substack once a week. Free as well as paid subscriptions are welcome. Both will always have access to everything I post.]