When Does Compromise Go Too Far?

My radical grandfather, Alligator Alcatraz and the burden of moral high ground

Note: This is the long first draft of an entry I wrote for the Relationship Fitness Newsletter, which I write weekly for YourTango. It was too personal to publish there, but if you also subscribe to the RFNL, you might find a few paragraphs familiar.

When I was young, I was sure my opinions were right. As you can imagine, I led a pretty high-conflict life as a result. .

I think it’s fair to say that being “often wrong, but never in doubt” is a cultural tradition in my Dutch-American family, where dinners can go on for hours as we debate the merits of one idea over another. To us, testing someone’s stance by trying to poke holes in it is intellectual “play”. It’s not an insult. It’s just conversation.

It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I realized this was not normal to most others, that it pushed a lot of people away. My life-long friend Martha always loved to brag about being the only person who has never been in a fight with me.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve practiced keeping (some of) my opinions to myself. But every opportunity to take a stance leaves me wondering: When is it right to stay quiet?

Is taking a strong stance (and never relenting) a form of bullying that pushes important people away, or do people leave because they can’t “hang” with the rhetorical big dogs? And does letting someone’s problematic opinion go unchecked make us complicit in the harm done by that opinion?

The early stages of an answer came to me during a deep conversation with my grandfather. He was turning 90, so my cousin, Amanda, and I traveled to bitter and icy Iowa to surprise him. Ever the stoic, he surprised us back with long, teary conversions about his past: his hopes and dreams, disappointments, fears and regrets. Did he love my grandmother well enough? Was he too harsh with his boys, our fathers, when they were young?

Amanda and I held onto one another, not knowing if we should reassure him that it wasn’t worth worrying about or if we should just listen. We opted for the latter.

One admission that stands out most to me today, 10+ years later, is that he felt he no longer knew for sure that he was right. Sure, there were obvious things that were very clear to him. But what about situations that require more nuance?

This may seem obvious to some of you reading this, but our grandpa was a radical and black and white are primary colors for most radicals. Rarely do they see grey.

Our grandpa and grandma after getting married while he was in service with the Society of Friends in the Virgin Islands

I can say that almost all of our grandpa’s social and political choices have stood the test of time, despite how unpopular they were when he made them. This man spent 85 years doing what he thought was right, including but not limited to:

• Refusing to commit acts of violence due to his religious beliefs

• Service with the Society of Friends (including caring for people with Leprosy in the 1930s and 40s and arranging healthcare for children with physical disabilities)

• Early and fervent advocacy for racial equality

• Offering sliding-scale counseling to gay men who were often kicked out of other therapy offices — especially if the didn’t want to “change” being gay, as early as the 1970s

• Standing up for the dignity of LGBTQ folks during the 1970s, 80s and beyond

• Establishing and running one of the earliest dignity-based supportive living communities for adults with intellectual disabilities

Yes, he was ahead of his time. He was also stubborn as a mule. He’d raised his sons as stoics, with harsh critique and firm back pats instead of hugs. When he took a stance, he never backed down.

But, he told us, once he hit 80 and everyone around him started “keeling over”, he was no longer terminally committed to his “rightness”. His ideals didn’t budge – he left a position of authority over LGBT rights in his 80s, for instance – but he no longer felt a need to argue people into dust, like he’d done his whole life.

These days, it feels like everyone is dead-set on arguing other people into the ground. It’s become our culture, especially online. As Andrew Bird sings in the song Sisyphus, “History forgets the moderates” and, it turns out, so does social media. Nobody clicks on that nuanced take, Thoughtful, balanced observations rarely go viral. “I’d rather flail like a mortal than fail like a god,” Bird sings, and, most of the time, so would I.

But what about real life? What about in our everyday, human relationships? When should we take a stance — and when should we approach one another with radical nuance?

In the last few weeks, people in the USA have watched our already contentious world become dramatically more high-stakes. Four people were shot in a politically-motivated assassination attempt, two of whom are dead. The President got into a very public verbal battle with his former friend and advisor and people in highly elevated positions took sides. A bill passed that cut millions of people off from their healthcare but allowed people to write off 100% of their private jet expenses.

Massive protests drawing crowds of hundreds of thousands gathered and, in some cases, were met with armored vehicles, non-lethal bullets and tear gas. People burned flags while others laid flowers at the feet of the National Guard occupying Los Angeles while musicians from generations-old Mariachi families played their instruments in the background.

Self-proclaimed Christians left public comments all over social media praising “Alligator Alcatraz”, signing their names to comments like, “I can’t wait for those alligators to get their first meal!” As if delighting in the suffering of other human beings isn’t in direct opposition of the teachings of Jesus.

America seems, on the surface, more torn apart than ever — and in many ways, it is. But something unites us: our willingness to fight for what’s right. The problem is, we’ve lost sight of what’s right in favor of partisanship. We believe that the leaders of our sides are doing what is objectively right, too often following them blindly.

You’ve heard this from a thousand people before me, but too many people have joined cults instead of political movements. Yes, I think one side does this more than another, but just today I saw this tweet from a leftist political group and was shocked into silence:

Credit: Twitter

I’m with Sunny (whoever that is) on this. If you don’t think an internment center is legal, ethical or constitutional, you should wish for it to be closed — not wish for someone you hate to be in it. It’s painful, but it’s true.

In order to stand on any moral high ground, we have to stay true to what we believe, even when we have to apply it to people we hate or people who are evil. This take won’t make you go viral or land you on the morning talk shows, but it feels like the only good answer.

Ultimately, dehumanizing anybody is the biggest step toward losing our own humanity.

I wish I had an answer for this question, but I don’t. Still, I will ask it: How can we bring this nation back together? Because being torn apart has only led to more suffering, specifically among those who are the most disenfranchised.

This isn’t a rhetorical question. I genuinely want to know what you all think we should do next. Because we cannot continue this way.

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