Some of the news this weekend focused on the word “divisive,” referring to Donald Trump’s leadership style. It ranged from high-profile TV sports to kitchen tables around the country. On one hand we had the NFL’s rebuttal to Trump’s criticism of their leadership regarding kneeling during the national anthem, which split sports fans rooting for the same team into armed camps. On another, we heard about the study session Oprah conducted in Michigan for 60 Minutes. Participants were asked about the influences of Trump's leadership, and they answered with stories of dividedness across regions, classes and occupations, down to the family level. Many expressed fears that this dividedness could lead to civil war.
I had intended to explore the word “divisive” for this week’s edition until I watched the sixth episode of Ken Burns’ Vietnam series Sunday night. Although I know our country is divided now, the series is reminding me of the deep divisions we experienced then - and lived through. That is what I want to explore with you now.
The Vietnam series is chronicling the U.S. involvement in another country’s war. I was a child when our involvement started and a teenager when it escalated to full-fledged commitment of troops and materiel. The sixth episode took us through Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in June 1968, the month of my high school graduation. At that point, like so many people interviewed in the series, I believed the government’s version of the Vietnam story. At that point I did not believe our government would lie to us.
Then I went away to college, to the quiet campus of Willamette University in Oregon’s capitol, Salem, where I’d received the best financial aid package. Most of the students were from conservative, middle-class families who wanted their children safe, and campus activities reflected that desire. But the outrage unfolding on other campuses around the country wafted through, and by the time I went home for my second (and last) summer, the sorrow of the Kent State student killings in Ohio had become outrage in me. Not only had our government lied about the deaths and waste of Vietnam, they’d lied about the freedom of speech guaranteed by the Constitution. Protesting could get you killed in the U.S. as easily as in the U.S.S.R.
My outrage extended to my family’s conservative, WWII values system, and drove me from them more completely than any fight over the 2016 election would have. I did not notice (nor was I told) when my brother, the curly-headed second child, signed up in early 1971. Late 1972, when he came home in a body bag we could not unzip, sorrow and outrage merged with guilt and pain to form a canyon I barely recognized. As a family, we never really recovered.
But the country did, eventually, though I wouldn't say it healed. What the Vietnam series is providing now is an understanding of the issues that both led us there and kept us from addressing the root causes at the time. With that understanding - and a modicum of forgiveness and humility - I feel that healing might be occurring as we watch.
Our current president’s management style, learned from the competitive world of business, is divide and conquer. It was defined by Machiavelli, and employed by despots like Julius Caesar and Napoleon. According to Wikipedia, Immanuel Kant wrote that “divide and conquer” is the third of three political maxims, the others being “act now, make excuses later,” and “when you commit a crime, deny it.” The power of divisiveness as a political strategy has been proven over and over, to the woe of peoples around the world.
But what the dividedness of the Vietnam era shows us is the necessity of respecting its source. When an issue divides us, a real issue and not just a rude comment stemming from an inexcusable attitude, and we recognize the validity of complaints on all sides, then we have a prayer of coming together in true unity.
The issues that divide us now are real. We need leaders who help us find ways to address them, not shame those who stand (or kneel) in protest of the status quo.
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Trudy Wischemann is a Gold-Star Sister who writes. You can send her your protests c/o P.O. Box
1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
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