I voted for President-elect Biden and Vice-President-elect Harris. I wish their next administration much success. But I want to share a perspective with my fellow citizens.
I know some voters who supported President Trump will always think this election was stolen from him. He is certainly feeding information into that line of thinking.
I grew up in Columbus Mississippi, a place that I love. Many of the people I called neighbors, friends, and classmates, are supporters of President Trump. Many of them supported him in 2016 for very specific reasons, while not loving everything about him.
Adam Garner has been one of my best friends since elementary school. I still count him as a beloved, close friend. Someone I will always deeply love and support. He supported Trump in 2016 and may have supported him in 2020. But I also know him and his family (who also may have supported Trump) are extremely kind, loving, and God-fearing people.
As President Biden prepares to resume control over the executive branch, I want to make sure Democrats understand that America also belongs to a lot of good people who supported Trump. We must find a way to come together with them from a place of listening, understanding and love.
The answers to our dilemmas are nuanced and complex and deserve much debate and consideration. Progress is always dangerous work even when necessary because it could make things worse, and there are always unintended consequences to consider. But I do think we have to address some fundamental issues that are not even political.
For one, local and independent media have to break the stranglehold of the national media. The problem with such powerful and centralized national media drawing so much attention is that they naturally become polarized and draw the whole country into a wrestling-like caricature posture that makes any large change very difficult to find compromise to do. A renewal of local media mixed with new independent media shows on YouTube, Spotify and Twitch, can provide a pathway for a renewed conversation. As much as possible, we need to keep those spaces free and open for civil debate even if pointed.
Lastly, we need a return to the idea of nobility. The most corrosive and destructive ideas are ones that deny the belief that nobility exists at all. Often rich people use the idea of nobility to justify their wealth, but nobility isn’t a class thing. Educators are often the noblest people in society. What does it mean to be noble? For one, it must mean to be honest. I don’t mean honest in just the surface meaning of not saying something you know is not true. I mean honest in the deepest sense of the word. When you aren’t certain about something, admitting it, not pretending like you are more certain than you are. Truly considering the idea that your point of view may be missing an angle or information that would change your opinion. Admitting how much we as humans change our opinions over time, or how much of our opinions are situational. We need the deepest form of honesty possible if we are going to be able to negotiate our way out of this partisanship battle. We need honesty so powerful you can’t even cancel the person expressing their honesty because they aren’t afraid of the mob, either on twitter or on the comment sections of a new article.
I love Mississippi. I love New York City (I have ever since I was a child). I have loved trips to Atlanta, Memphis, Little Rock, living in Cali for a year. Now, my great love is Detroit, the city I choose. I have been all over this great nation, and I can say I love America, even when it feels like it does not love me back. Love is like that sometimes. President Lincoln once said: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reaches us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
We must never die by suicide. We must learn again (maybe truly for the first time) how to love one another.
Andrew Colom is a Columbus native now living in Detroit, Michigan.
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