{"id":29674,"date":"2017-06-25T15:28:21","date_gmt":"2017-06-25T22:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/seeking-the-best-on-the-other-side\/"},"modified":"2017-06-25T15:28:21","modified_gmt":"2017-06-25T22:28:21","slug":"seeking-the-best-on-the-other-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/opinion\/seeking-the-best-on-the-other-side\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeking the best on the \u2018other\u2019 side"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m guilty of missing the opportunity to recognize something of the divine in the face of the Other\u201d George Yancy wrote in a New York Times philosophy forum last Sunday. The \u201cOther\u201d was homeless man approaching him. Instead of seeing him \u201cas a neighbor,\u201d Yancy turned away.<\/span><\/p>\n

I thought about Yancy\u2019s essay the next day when I read Jay Ambrose\u2019s opinion piece published in the Empire. It was about the one man shooting rampage that targeted Republicans in Congress and critically injured Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise. Ambrose saw it as fallout from \u201cthe most hate-filled, legally amiss, intellectually stupefying political rancor\u201d of self-righteous Democrats and liberals whose \u201cchief target is President Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much to my dismay there\u2019s evidence which gives Ambrose\u2019s arguments the appearance of credibility.<\/p>\n

We should never condone violence against anyone. It was wrong when Trump supporters physically attacked protestors at his rallies. Those who thought it was justified, or acted with irresponsible indifference, were rightly condemned.<\/p>\n

It was no less wrong when a masked activist punched Richard Spencer in the face the day Trump was inaugurated. It can\u2019t be justified because he holds abhorrent white supremacist views. But Natasha Lennard likened videos of that assault to the \u201ckinetic beauty\u201d of Roger Federer\u2019s \u201cballetic precision and mastering of time\u201d on the tennis court. The American Conservative aptly accused the Nation Magazine of implicitly endorsing violence for publishing Lennard\u2019s article.<\/p>\n

After Scalise was shot, James Devine tweeted, \u201cI have little sympathy for the Republican Congressman who got shot today.\u201d The longtime Democratic party strategist from New Jersey had no national name recognition before making his miserably cruel statement. He suggested Scalise deserved that fate \u201cbecause he viciously opposed President Obama\u2019s effort to reduce gun violence\u201d while accepting \u201cmore gun lobby money than all but 15 other members of the House of Representatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such stories gave credence to Laura Loomer\u2019s disruption of the Public Theatre\u2019s production of Julius Caesar in New York. During the scene when the Trump look-alike emperor was stabbed, she walked onto the stage shouting \u201cStop the normalization of political violence against the right.\u201d And like Ambrose on steroids, she followed with \u201cYou guys are ISIS, CNN is ISIS,\u201d as if there\u2019s one giant leftist conspiracy. Conservative talk show hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham applauded Loomer\u2019s misplaced bravado.<\/p>\n

None of this began with the election of Trump. The Tea Party\u2019s anger toward President Barack Obama contained the violent overtones which made it easy for pundits on the left, including the New York Times, to blame Sarah Palin when Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot. They pointed to her \u201cdon\u2019t retreat \u2014 reload\u201d tweet and a map with crosshairs over Giffords\u2019 district. Because that false narrative is still believed by many, the Washington Post fact checker debunked it again after Scalise was shot.<\/p>\n

And in 2012, the Guthrie Theater cast an Obama-like figure for Caesar. However, there was no outrage on the left. Instead, thoughtful critics on all sides understood the rhetorical mastery in which the last word is Mark Antony\u2019s condemnation of Caesar\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n

The misplaced acceptance of violence by Devine and Lennard is grounded by the same phenomena which animates the arguments made by Ambrose, Loomer and their counterparts on the left. Instead of acknowledging there are bad actors on every stage, they eagerly project their behavior onto the entire political party or mass movement.<\/p>\n

We can, and must, do better than that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are more than the worst thing we\u2019ve ever done,\u201d Bryan Stevenson wrote in his award-winning book \u201cJust Mercy.\u201d He developed that philosophy while providing free legal services to inmates on death row. Many were exonerated after years in prison. But to correct those injustices, he had to also counsel some of society\u2019s most heinous offenders.<\/p>\n

Stevenson\u2019s insight offers an intelligent alternative to accepting anyone\u2019s demonization of whole groups of well-intentioned people. It might teach us to \u201cweep together, hold hands together, commit together to eradicate injustice,\u201d as Yancy writes, believing we might then \u201cunlock our sacred doors, take a real step beyond our sanctimoniousness, and see one another face to face.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such leaps of faith will be necessary if we\u2019re to begin the work of ending violence and injustice around the world, in America, and in our neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2022 Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m guilty of missing the opportunity to recognize something of the divine in the face of the Other\u201d George Yancy wrote in a New York Times philosophy forum last Sunday. The \u201cOther\u201d was homeless man approaching him. Instead of seeing him \u201cas a neighbor,\u201d Yancy turned away. I thought about Yancy\u2019s essay the next day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-29674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29674"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=29674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}