January 1, 2020
Page 9
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Anger and Forgiveness in Our Politics
We can work
together for the
betterment of all
l eslie d. g regory
t oM h. h astings
Forgiveness is a popular topic.
Forgive your cheating spouse and
put it behind you. Forgiveness is
how you achieve closure and can
move on. Forgive your lying boss
or co-worker--how can you reduce
your toxic workplace stress unless
you just let it go?
“Forgiveness is for you, not for
the perpetrator.” That is the com-
mon refrain. And it has precedence
in philosophy: “Anger: an acid that
can do more harm to the vessel in
which it is stored than to anything
on which it is poured.”—words at-
tributed to both Seneca the Young-
er and Mark Twain. The assump-
tion is, if you want anger gone--and
you should--you must forgive.
That will calm your heart, ease
your mind, and soothe your spirit.
But what if anger is a good thing
in many cases?
Rosa Parks was asked why she
decided to risk her well being, her
freedom, her employment, possibly
even her life by refusing to obey a
command in December 1955 by an
Alabama white bus driver to give
her bus seat to a white man and
move to the back of the bus? She
said that she was propelled by an-
ger at what violent racists had done
by
and
to Emmet Till, the young black boy
from Chicago who was accused of
whistling at a white woman while
he was visiting family in Missis-
sippi. His body was found lynched,
tortured, disfigured, and tied to a
weight in the river.
Rosa did great work and lived
long. She sparked one of the great-
est upheavals of nonviolent citizen
demands for basic civil rights in
the history of the US.
Both Gandhi and Martin Luther
King Jr. wrote frequently about
anger and its value in the freedom
and liberation struggles they led.
Gandhi, who was born and raised
in the Steam Age, had the best met-
aphor, noting that anger is much
like steam; you can let it build up
until you explode destructively or
you can harness it to do great and
difficult tasks.
The rise of anger in our politics
did not start with Trump, though it
worsened badly beginning with his
campaign and has carried on into
his time in the White House. The
difference in the anger expressed in
bigoted terms is significant and one
wonders how Latinx voters can
set aside the anger in being called
animals by Trump? One wonders
how the tiki torch-wielding white
nationalists can draw down their
rage against people of color? We
have to ask where we are headed
if this full head of steam continues
to build up?
Clinically, equanimity might
be a factor in reducing hypercor-
tisolism, a condition produced
by overproduction of cortisol by
the adrenal glands in response to
threat. Perhaps we are indeed now
the Not-So-United States of Adren-
aline Overload and our national
heart is at risk.
Achieving equity in our society
may be one of the best ways to find
social, collective equanimity and
thus help heal our body politic as
surely as finding our inner calm
and balance can help heal our indi-
vidual bodies.
If so, investigating processes
of restoring civil discourse and re-
affirming common decency might
involve some admixture of ac-
knowledgement of hurt and harm
to our polity, some bits of apology,
elements of graciousness however
grudging, a smattering of forgive-
ness, and some long term deeper
work on our history of traumas to
each other.
A great starting point would be
to seek health care coverage and
access for all, by whichever path a
bipartisan coalition might choose.
Republicans can call it “VA for
Every Patriot” and Democrats can
continue to use Medicare for All
(while maintaining private insur-
ance for those who prefer it, so a
“public option). Everyone wins.
Health care in America costs
more than in any country on Earth,
but VA for Every Patriot would
radically reduce costs while great-
ly improving access, attenuating
over time the horrific health care
outcome disparities such as black
mothers of every income class dy-
ing in childbirth at rates that sky-
rocket by an order of magnitude
more than white women’s.
If Democrats believe racism is
a threat to public health, Medicare
for All is the single fastest and most
realistic way to begin to mitigate
that threat. If the Republicans want
to stand up for their base of poor
whites, VA for Every Patriot will
help measurably.
Then, we pray, everyone can
calm down a bit and continue to
work together for the benefit of all,
slowly forgiving themselves and
others for this time of acrimony
and chaos.
Without this work, we fear for
our democracy and for the human
and civil rights of all of us.
Leslie Gregory is a certified
physician assistant and is the ex-
ecutive director of Right to Health.
Tom Hastings of Portland is direc-
tor of PeaceVoice.
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