Beyond Trump: The Politics of Courage
"He's essentially the American id," writes Glenn Greenwald, "simply channeling pervasive sentiments unadorned with the typical diplomatic and PR niceties designed to prettify the prevailing mentality."
The challenge Trump poses, it seems to me, is this: If the basest of human instincts -- fear and revenge and the hunger to blame our troubles on a scapegoat -- can enter, or re-enter, American politics, can the best of human nature enter as well and, in the process, challenge the prevailing status quo more deeply and profoundly than Trump could ever imagine?
Let me put it another way. "In the practice of tolerance," said the Dalai Lama, "one's enemy is the best teacher."
Such a statement poses a serious challenge, of course, on the order of a quote I heard several years ago from a seatmate on a transatlantic airplane flight: You're as close to God as you are to the person you like the least.
What if such ideas had political resonance? What if -- even in the face of tragedy, even in the face of murder -- we lived within a social and political structure that was committed not to dehumanizing and destroying a designated enemy but to understanding that enemy and, my God, looking inward for the cause of problems, not simply flailing outward with high-tech weaponry? What if human compassion, soul deep and without strings attached, played a role in international relations?
Believe me, I'm not asking these questions simplistically, with some pat belief that the answers are obvious. Rather, I'm pressing forward into a dark unknown, or so it seems.
"It is terrifying that on the one hand there is more and more impunity for those starting conflicts, and on the other there is seeming utter inability of the international community to work together to stop wars and build and preserve peace," Antonio Guterres, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said earlier this year, in the context of a global refugee crisis staggering beyond belief.
To grow spiritually is to begin to realize how little one knows and practice reaching out not with aggression but with humility. This is what takes courage. Can we begin creating nations with this kind of courage, whose "interests" embrace the welfare of the whole planet?
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(Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer, is filling in for Mr. Page. His new book, "Courage Grows Strong at the Wound" (Xenos Press) is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com, visit his website at commonwonders.com or listen to him at Voices of Peace radio.)
(c) 2015 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
