It was August of 1990; I was 11 years old. I was about to start the 6th grade. It was my last year of elementary school (which ran from kindergarten to 6th grade). My parents had been divorced for about a year. The news that evening (because my mother has always watched the news), started out with this sentence: "The United States is at war." I think Dan Rather was the news anchor.
Those words stuck with me. My country was at war. What did that mean? I remember being afraid. Would I be safe? Would there be fighting near me? Would bombs fall in my neighborhood?
I obviously had some notion of war - enough to be wary and fearful upon hearing that the Persian Gulf War had started. And it was the first time I ever recall hearing about my country being involved in war on the news. Somehow, this became a formative memory.
Fast forward about 30 1/2 years later - and I once again have become afraid by what I saw on the news. A mob of people storming the Capital while Congress was trying to their job (a task they handle once every four years which normally gets very little attention). It's been emotionally unsettling. I've been angry and fearful. I've vented with friends, and sought to think about my faith. I've made jokes against the side I think is most at fault. But all of this is really early coping mechanisms. Now, the hard part comes. Hard work is called for to make sense of what happened on January 6, 2021.
Faith will be needed. The Christian faith I treasure teaches me that God is never caught by surprise. I can go to sleep at night because He sees the full picture, the end from the beginning. And when I read the Bible, I will now read passages mentioning mobs of people differently.
Listening to understand (rather than listening to immediately refute or argue my next best point) will be needed. Thanks to the invention of the internet, it is far too easy to find articles and support for what I want to believe about anything and everything. It's so easy to find an article or a website to support what I've already decided. I can easily find articles on how dogs really are the best pets to have. Someone else can find different articles saying that I'm wrong - the best pets are actually cats. Does it seem a trivial example? Maybe so or maybe no. Abraham Lincoln once said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free". Right now, it is so easy for people to live in completely different information spheres and worlds; each side or group finding information on the internet to support their beliefs. This automatically creates division. Without some way to easily determine what information is true - any group could be guilty of spreading misinformation. Somehow we must listen to understand, and not judge the person in front of us as being good or bad. This is incredibly hard to do - especially in a world that rewards moving fast that taking time to be deliberate and intentional isn't always celebrated. To be clear, listening to understand where someone is coming from doesn't mean I just fail to form opinions, beliefs, and thoughts of my own. But it does mean I maintain a posture of openness to learn why someone thinks differently. It's a way to value the people in my life and agree to disagree when necessary.
The violence that occurred on 1/6/2021 and the threat of more violence concern me. I really don't want to live through a Civil War in our country. Bu the tension is there - the competing narratives are there.
I don't really think that every person who went to the Capital is a die hard Trump supporter. I'm not sure everyone really went just because of the rally that was planned. I do think that there were some groups who were more opportunistic than Trump supporters. The rally gave them a reason to be there. But I do think some of the language and rhetoric Trump has used facilitated these groups making plans and acting.
To be fair I think there are extreme groups on both sides - and I don't condone violence used by either side. There has been a lot of focus on white supremacy groups (which is fair considering someone carrying the Confederate Flag in the halls where Congress conducts their business). And I do think white supremacy groups are a threat to our nation. But I also think that misinformation may be a bigger threat. But combatting misinformation in the age of internet, where anyone can post anything (take this blog - no one is reviewing this before I hit 'publish'), is going to be a challenge. I hope the American people are up for such a challenge. It will be a challenge to be as careful as we can that we don't spread misinformation (intentionally or unintentionally). Words have consequences.
From time to time, throughout my 40 something years, I've made numerous international friends. I've made international friends living overseas and have made international friends here in the United States. Some internationals come here to study or have come as the spouse of a student who is here to study. Some of the conversations that have made me think the most have come from friends from China. Their questions about 'what is truth and how do you determine truth'? intrigue me. Many of them have grown up being told that an event in Tiananmen Square (1989) never happened. Upon arriving in the USA, many of them seek to do research using resources found here to try and discover what really happened. But I appreciate their struggle and questions - 'what is truth? How can I know truth if that truth is not what the government say is true'? And I appreciate their willingness to question and seek to know the truth.
In the meantime, I will pray that God gives us mercy that we don't deserve and that we learn from our failures as a nation. I hope that there won't be any more violence in the near future but I hope we all learn to listen and participate in constructive dialogue where all sides can be heard (not all sides get their way, but rather all side genuinely feel heard). I will be praying for Biden and Harris - hats off to anyone who wants to serve the public in the midst of a pandemic and all the political tension. And I hope our nation can find a way to show just mercy. We don't need to ignore what happened as a way to lower the tension (that's not kind to any family member who just lost a loved one). May any punishment be appropriate and not simply retaliatory. These are my immediate hopes and prayers for our country as we look forward the next few weeks and months.