When You Think About It: An Eye for an Eye

F LoBuono

Recently, three incidents involving three different members of the Trump Administration have generated enormous media attention and controversy. First, Senior White House Adviser, Stephen Miller, and Director of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, were heckled out of Washington area Mexican restaurants. Then, Chief White House Spokesperson, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was denied service at a restaurant in Maryland.

The response to these events further demonstrate the tribalism that is creating the deep fissures so evident in our society today.

Most on the Left celebrated the incidents, basically calling it a tit-for-tat measure. They claim it could be seen as retaliation for the bullying tactics that seem de rigueur for this Administration. The President himself regularly Tweets provocative and incendiary messages that ravage his opponents. He mocked a disabled reporter. He uses inflammatory language when referring to illegal immigration. And, the Conservative leaning Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of an Evangelical Christian baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

Some, like my friend, Michael Mackin, an educator and outspoken critic of the President, frame it by saying it is not only our right to create acts of Civil Disobedience against a corrupt Administration, it is our duty. It a recent message exchange, he wrote this to me:

But, this is not normal. We are facing a slow-rolling authoritarian coup. These are acts of civil disobedience. This is the exercise of free speech and free association. This is a rather mild response, social shaming as a peaceful political tool, to the great harm these people are currently doing to our democracy.

I believe that most people of conscience on the Left pretty much echo those sentiments. However, not everyone on the Left agrees. On CBS This Morning, co-host Gail King, normally more liberal leaning, decried the acts for their lack of civility. Many democratic legislators also expressed their displeasure with the tactic.

And, so it is with most on the Right. They are OUTRAGED.

First, they support this President, seemingly right OR wrong and, therefore, have no issue with his, or the Administration's, bullying tactics in the first place. In fact, they will often claim his tough guy image is one of the reasons they voted for him in the first place. However, it does seem odd to me that with this in mind that the Right was SO outraged by the aggressive tactics of the Left. Ms. Sanders, in her afternoon White House Press Briefing, said "healthy debate on ideas and political philosophy is important. But calls for the harassment and push for any Trump supporter to avoid the public is unacceptable."

Once again, the lines have been drawn in a most partisan way, with no end in sight.

My own feelings are more ambivalent. On one hand, I acknowledge the need to confront what I see as an abusive Administration and to do so in an aggressive but non-violent fashion. Anyone who reads this blog, I believe, can readily ascertain that I am a devoted follower of Edmund Burke who famously wrote: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

We must do SOMETHING to put our Country back into the hands of people who put compassion over simply winning.

But, what?

Is virtually accosting these people the RIGHT thing to do? And, here within lies my dilemma: I also believe in the philosophy that virtually every parent teaches their kids: 2 wrongs don't make a right. With this in mind, if we resort to the same dirty tactics as our opponents are we then really any than they are? And, remember, an eye for an eye just leaves the whole world blind.

Plus, I simply do not support exclusion by ANYONE of ANYONE

at ANYTIME.

So, WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT, there simply has to be a better way . . .