I think I would like to talk to you about the word “respect”. It’s a word you use quite a lot. (Overmuch, I always thought . . .)
I also need, somehow, to speak with you about “civility” which does relate to “respect” in a particular social and political context. But first, I want to focus on the deepest meaning of “respect” and how I think all of us sometimes use and, perhaps, misuse the word.
It seems to me when you use the word, it’s often a demand involving the flag, certain undefined ideals involving our nation, work, independence, your masculinity, or your very own being: your “self”. Sometimes it’s as if you are demanding sternly “respect” for respect itself.
At the risk of sounding disrespectful, I think it’s time to make sure we both clearly and seriously understand the meaning of the word.
Respect
Am I wrong to suspect you too carelessly conflate the meaning of the word respect with “fear” the way I, as a snotty child, might have feared my father’s belt or the back of his angry hand? Don’t we all do that sometimes because of slack common usage?
Maybe, if you trusted me enough to be thoughtful together, you’d say your idea of “respect” involves much more than fear of punishment or retribution. Maybe you’d say it also involves the idea of “awe” as in the somatically overpowering impact of an erupting volcano or a towering cyclone swirling giant chunks of earthly debris leagues into the air while hurling hot deadly thunderbolts in every direction?
Would that lead you to think I was trying again to provoke you by comparing you to mountebanks who manipulate scripture for hypocritical ends? That, I feel, you could legitimately view as “disrespectful”.
But if I haven’t affronted too much, you might even have jumped ahead of me in my tendentiousness to remind me that you fully appreciate how “respect” is not simply due to beings more powerful. You might even, with humane forbearance, patiently remind me of your heartfelt struggles to protect the dignity of an aging dear one or to provide nurturing guidance to a wayward youth of no blood relation who might have been bred by darker skinned people with foreign customs and strange accents.
If you did, I would respect that you shared such true stories out of your respect for me as well as out of your own rightly treasured self respect. That’s because I respect how you would never permit the likes of me (or anyone else) to compel you to justify yourself or your humanity to anyone’s impertinent scrutiny. And neither would I. But maybe there I’m letting myself shift away from the essence of “respect” by tainting it with purplish shades of pride because respect is ultimately what we owe each other even after a humiliating fall.
If we could get so far together, we might even agree how “true” respect is not something that ever needs to be earned because “respect” actually involves mutual recognition of the sublime (we might even choose to agree on the word “divine”) in every being. And we might even agree how it is correct to omit the word “human” before “being” because it is right for us to respect the earth, certain ideals, various symbols, and even the diseased mosquito we slap dead for sucking the blood she needed for her precious, but (perhaps) mindless offspring. And you, unlike me, may have served in combat (authorized, of course, by our questioned government) and understand in a deeper way than I am capable of how one can respect an enemy and still choose to kill him cleanly - or brutally.
THAT would be a good place to pause, to put down my writing implement, reread and revise because I have much more I would want to say to you without any fear except for the fear that true respect might be lost. That’s because, even though respect cannot legitimately be earned or denied, it can certainly be lost, or at least lost sight of for some thunderous moments - especially in fevers of fear and rage when powerful pained loyalties and entangled strange notions of “identity” are threatened and nothing seems available to defend them except atavistic lunges of animal aggression.
So I before I stop, I still need to speak with you about “civility” which is indeed related to respect, though it should never be confused with it. Civility is necessary for democracy, something I hope we both respect and will try to preserve in what I fear are coming trials for all of us. Civility is necessary for democracy, but, much more importantly, civility is often necessary for preserving the grounding contact with the mutuality which is what we legitimately call “respect”. Think for a moment on how incivility or (worse) the sneering obviousness of an intentionally false facade of civility can make us liable to forget the mutuality we owe each other and how such can lead to irrevocable tragedies including, but not limited to, lost friendship.
Now you might think I’ve started to verge beyond a realistic understanding of our troubled times and am indulging again in some form of self righteous hysteria. After all, I call this a “Letter to a Right Wing Friend” invoking Albert Camus and his post NAZI “Letters to a German Friend.” But I don’t want you to be insulted and I do want you to be thoughtful. Very thoughtful. That is why I will spend so much time clarifying ideas about respect and civility before addressing my pressing concerns.
I know you tend to think me unrealistic, naive, caught up in ideals divorced from the nitty gritty harshness which informs every life at times, and I’m glad (too glad perhaps) to let you be the “more practical”, but here is where I BEG you to to be (I repeat) very thoughtful. Without meaning to declare or even imply YOU a fascist or a NAZI, I urge you to remember that both “parties” were supported by everyday honest hard working parents and teachers, nurses and postmen with their own particular view of life’s troubles grounded in family and face-to-face loyalty and obligation. (Notice I didn’t say “blood and soil” even though those same salt-of-the-earth types could have been stirred or disturbed by such rhetoric without ever truly grasping their destined implications - and who really blames them individually? “In every avalanche each snowflake loudly proclaims her sincerely perceived innocence.”)
Yes, I will insist we must talk about fascism. The atrocity of family separations at the border was the last straw, and unless you choose to fully break with me I am going to persist no matter how annoyed or impatient this makes you. And even if I ever forget myself enough to be rightly accused of hurling or implying epithets associated with Hitler and Mussolini your way, let me assure you of what I will never forget:
You are not, never have, and could never be the beer soaked hooligans of Munich or the white sheet, tattoo scarred thugs of Carolina whom I would still speak with if I could. And you are right, they are only a slim fringe of addled traumatized casualties. I don’t fear them by themselves. I worry some about how they might interact with ANTIFA ninjas who may or not be guided by too much impetuous self important reactivity. (They are a reaction, after all. And I pray they guide themselves with a humane and strategic awareness of how they could be “played” by the same forces which have long generated the divisions of racism, nativism, and fearful intolerance that only benefit the idiot designs of certain elements with irresponsible control over too much concentrated wealth. And yes, this is what I have been talking with you about for a long time before families began being forcible separated on our border.)
What I fear most is your own stance towards Klansman and Neo Nazis whom you rightly deride and disown. But that is not enough. Not when you employ the same tactics of minimization in the face of the clearcut atrocity that took place on our borders. We can agree to pretend to ignore street bullies and internet trolls to avoid intoxicating them with false self importance, but we cannot do the same with the massive Federal Police Force that is ICE. We cannot do the same with the person now entitled by some obscene mishmash of mishap, contrivance, and complacency to be called “the president of the United States of America”. For, you see, I must accuse you of insouciance regarding the forces driving the street thugs, the Federal Police, this administration* and their proposed concentration camps (no matter how air conditioned, well appointed, and chock filled with toys and classroom supplies).
I freely admit I was already on very high alert before the cries of the children stabbed me in the chest. And I do not blame you for the ties and loyalties which make you loathe to consider the implications of this ongoing atrocity (and which even mislead you to deny the word “atrocity” is appropriate.) I will have patience even though I may sometimes seem harsh because the family separations and proposed encampments cannot be isolated from a deeper and wider context even if we only (it would be a fatal mistake) looked no further back than or afield from the current “commander in chief”.
There is certainly quite a lot we need to look at, but now most such matters must now be viewed in the lurid brights and frightening shadows cast by family separations. I will insist upon it. And I hope you will help me respect respect even if certain forms of deference must be put aside to confront the dreadful possibilities that lay ahead.
