Thinking about our thinking

After we finished watching Meet the Press this weekend, I noticed yet again how good 45 and his cronies are at creating a bogeyman. The people currently in power seem to have no concept of personal responsibility, or if they do, it’s only when convenient and to point at an “other” who brought their hardship on themselves. It’s mental illness that’s the problem, not the way we choose to (not) regulate guns. It’s Obama’s fault that Russians interfered in our elections, but, wait, there is no Russian interference. The threat continues to be positioned as “out there,” rather than in our own minds.

As I watch this play out in the news and as I sometimes get caught up in participating it, I struggle to remind myself of what I know to be true. The way that we think creates the way that we see the world. Instead of trying to change 45, what role might changing our minds make? Our favoring of the individual over the whole has to play a role in this horror film of gun violence that we continue to play out. Our refusal to be discerning when it comes to what we read online has to contribute to how Russians were able to “meddle” in our elections in the first place.

When I think about teenage kids getting gunned down by a fellow (ex)classmate, and the weeping and gnashing of teeth that follows, which is then followed by inaction when it’s time to vote, I think the problem is internal. As a whole, Americans care more about their individual rights than they care about the whole. I am happy to have been born here. The idealist in me still believes that as a nation, we can do the right thing. But we have a track record of putting the one before the many. The people who founded this country wanted religious freedom, and they put that individual need before the rights of a nation of people who were here first. Then they wanted to build a nation, so they participated in the slave trade, and bought and sold other humans, forcing them to work the land and build the infrastructure necessary for the nation to thrive. When that was no longer legal, they used the political system, and Jim Crow laws, and redlining, and a host of other means to marginalize the people who had done the hard work. Obviously this is an oversimplification of our history, and yet, it shows a pattern.

So you can’t even pluck the God heart string to get people to change their thinking about guns.

Beyond the issue of rampant individualism, there’s the question of how do we know what’s true? Why do we think what we think? Do we even ask ourselves such questions anymore, or do we just quote something we read online? Do we think something because we feel a certain way, or do we seek out other perspectives, or do we just parrot the talking points of whatever political party we belong to?

I wonder how stepping back and talking about questions like these might help us to have conversations beyond whose fault the latest tragedy is and our refusal to give up individual rights. I wonder how we might get to conversations about what is right for the whole of us, not just some of us.

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