“With the ascension of Charles I to the throne we come at last to the Central Period of English History …, consisting in the utterly memorable Struggle between the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right but Repulsive).”
Listening to this morning's NYT "The Daily" is worth the time. It profiles two restaurateurs in the Wisconsin north woods who are running for the state legislature. The first is a Trump-supporting Republican and the second a Biden-supporting Democrat. They are both men who were born in Wisconsin, but the Democrat went to Harvard and worked in New York politics for Anthony Weiner.
The Trump-supporting Republican comes across as a warm, down-to-earth businessman struggling to keep his restaurant-bar afloat and his employees with paychecks. He's a little lax on following the governor's guidelines for fighting the pandemic. The Biden-supporting Democrat follows these guidelines to a T, but comes across as an egotistical jerk. The Democrat doesn't seem to realize that nobody likes a condescending know-it-all, but that doesn't mean he isn't right. The Republican is wrong but romantic; the Democrat right but repulsive.
The Republican represents a longing to remain in a familiar, comfortable past; the Democrat the necessity to confront an uncomfortable, disruptive future. The first represents "common sense" if by that we mean understanding the world the way people have always understood it. The second represents a clearer-headed, shrewder understanding of reality as it is, not how we wish it to be.
It's understandable that lots of people find the Republican more attractive and the Democrat obnoxious. And it explains why a lot of sensible people find Trump preferable to Biden, but as with the slaveholders vs. the abolitionists, the choice cannot be between who makes us comfortable or uncomfortable, but who is actually right. In the run up to the Civil War almost everybody, Lincoln included, found the abolitionists to be insufferable, condescending, moralistic prigs. But they were right, and any decent person sooner or later came around to seeing that they were.
It's the same for us now. As Jamelle Bouie pointed out in the article I excerpted in my post the other day. The Democrats represent the future and a a desire to meet head on its dynamic, historical challenges. The Republicans represent a comfortable complacency that screams, "Can't you just leave us alone?"
So It's understandable why people who live decent, quiet lives just want to be left alone so the can live as they've always lived, but as in the South in the 1850s, that way of living no longer aligns with reality–or with what on a deeper level is right or what is called for.
Being "right" in this context does not mean that you are morally superior, but only that you are better aligned with the thrust of history. Traditionalist "common sense" no longer makes sense in this brave new world, and practical wisdom requires being more flexible and adaptive.
The more you resist history, the more violently it will come to smash you in the mouth. Most of those associated with the smashing, like the Yankees during the Civil War, are not better human beings. They are simply people who are more aligned with the realities as they are rather than as the resistant "romantics" wish they would be.
Being flexible and adaptive does not mean "anything goes". There is right and wrong–there always is. There are evils that must be resisted. But right and wrong are not determined by some hard-hearted, judgmental, abstract code shaped by the rigid, moralistic Right or the priggish, politically correct left. It is rather discerned by a supple heart, one that errs, if unsure, on the side of generosity and kindness, especially toward those with whom we disagree. We all, me included, need to do better in that regard.
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