When "They" Become the Enemy, America Always Loses.

“You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.” --John Steinbeck

They. They should just go back to where they came from.

They. As in “the other”. They: as in the stranger. They: because when I look at them, I see that they are different than me. They have a different skin color or come from a different country or speak a different language or worship God in a different way or in no way, or love differently than I do or claim a different heritage.

Thus, when I consider them, encounter them: because I am unable or unwilling to see “me” in them or they in me: well, why should I care about them or respect them or listen to them or honor them or accept them?

After all, they are just a “they”, right?

When “they” is used in this way, as our Tweeter in chief recently did, in criticizing four Congresswomen and people of color, one of whom is an immigrant: he was using that most ancient and time tested of methods necessary to hate or hurt or dismiss or dehumanize another, especially one deemed as the enemy.

Just call them “they”.

Because then the person is no longer a real flesh and blood human being or a fellow American or a neighbor or even child of God. No: instead “they” are now just an “it”, an object, not a subject; a stereotype not an individual, a mere thing, and when you think of someone else as a thing, it becomes very easy to attack them or even to chant as a crowd: “Send her back! Send her back!”

By an odd coincidence, I’ve been staying in the Twin Cities for the past month, and have attended numerous Little League baseball games in the city of Saint Louis Park, Minnesota, the home district of the representative who’s been attacked the most for her political views and her ethnicity, and especially for the fact that she came to the United States from somewhere else.

So, as I’ve sat in my folding chair, in the hot July sun, munched on a hot dog, and cheered for my Goddaughter BJ, as her all-star team tried to advance in the state tournament, I’ve also been looking around at my fellow fans and parents and neighbors.  At the older folks who live in a senior housing complex high rise building that sits next to Skippy Field, as the diamond is called, named after a peanut butter factory that once stood here.

I’ve been looking for the “theys”.

Because if “they” are anywhere, they must be here, right? They must all live in this seemingly radical, perhaps even un-American part of our country. I mean why else would they pick such a person to represent them in Congress?  This outsider? This agitator? This “other”.

But I must report I failed in my civic detective work. I found no “theys” here. Instead I’ve met just real people, like me, like you. Fellow Americans. Folks who have just as much of a right to be here as I do, as any of us as Americans do. People who love their country and love it so much, that they sometimes criticize it, in the hope of making it a better place for all.

The transplanted Dad from Boston who cheers on his son as that kid plays second base and we both lament about the sad sack Red Sox. The women in the bleachers who works in a nearby factory, is in between shifts and rushed over to see the game. The police officer who leans against the fence, takes a break from her rounds to watch the oldest of games. The senior citizen who leans on his walker and cheers at the top of his lungs for her grandson. The nurse, who works at a nearby clinic and never misses her daughter’s games.  The coach at third base, who sports a Twins T-shirt and an earring and waves the runner home.

Not a “they” in sight. Just us. Just “we”.  Just me and thee and thee and thee. 

Baseball fans.  Hardworking parents and umpires that sometimes get the call wrong and babies in strollers and tweens riding around on bicycles and families in the playground next to the field. Not an angry chant or a hateful tweet in sight.

As I look over the field on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, I see a flagpole keeping watch over us all, the red and white stripes, a field of blue, and fifty stars, flapping in the gentle breeze. And then I say a quiet prayer of thanks to God: that this flag flies, not for just me or for you: it flies for all of us.

And “they”? That’s me. That's you. 

That's a good thing to remember in these strange and perilous times.   

      

Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong and The Power of True Leadership

“I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer.”

 --Commander Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11

He did the work.  

And it was this work, in part, that made the mission such a success. Let that be how we remember Neil Armstrong, who fifty years ago this week became the first man to land a craft on the surface of the moon and then walk upon that ancient rock. July 20, 1969.

In some ways he was the last person you’d want to pick to lead the most significant scientific endeavor of the 20^th century, of any century, and he was also the best man to choose. Neil Armstrong was Ohio born, a small-town kid who idolized the Wright brothers and their invention of the airplane. An Eagle Scout, he later became a Navy pilot, a test pilot, and an aerospace engineer, one of those folks who back then always carried around a slide rule in their pocket and a pencil tucked behind the ear.

Not one whom you might expect to be a hero. Armstrong did not have the stereotypical swagger of a test pilot, nor the good looks and easy confidence of his fellow astronaut John Glenn. He didn’t like the spotlight, the media’s insatiable appetite for quotes and quips. Author Norman Mailer, in a Life magazine story, described him as “wooden”.  He was humble, often uncomfortable with the accolades that would come his way. He was intensely private, a faithful husband and Dad.

And he was an engineer.

The kind of person with a curious mind, who works to create a checklist or a process for doing something and then double checks it and triple checks it and tests it out, and hones it, to make it even better, and then, maybe, just maybe, then: it’s ready to go. So, Armstrong was the perfect person to lead the Apollo 11 mission, the most complex technological endeavor ever attempted by any civilization. It was the culmination of a seven-year race to get to the moon and beat the Soviet Union there. It cost $150 billion in today’s dollars, and at its peak it depended upon the work of more than 600,000 Americans.

On that summer Sunday afternoon fifty years ago, at 4:17 pm Eastern Standard Time, when the Eagle, as the lunar lander was called, touched down on the moon, the whole world watched. The landing attracted a global audience of almost 600 million people, including one wide eyed eight-year old boy in Quincy, Massachusetts, who was (and still is) enthralled by all that happened that day, oh so long ago. It even united a nation, at least for one brief moment, a country torn apart by an unpopular war, an unpopular President, political assassinations, and deep fear about how fast the world and culture was changing.   

A half a century later most folks now alive have no memory of this amazing achievement, know of it only through pictures in science textbooks, or movies like 2018’s “First Man”, that tells Armstrong’s story, or maybe they hear about it from witnesses like me. Yes, I’m tempted to wax nostalgic about it all, maybe even make Armstrong and his fellow astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins into secular saints.  

But here’s the real miracle: human beings took their God-given knowledge—of astronomy and engineering and rocketry and physics and geology—and then dedicated this wisdom to one bold act. To ensure that the only known sentient beings in all of the known universe were the first to leave their own planet and land on an alien world and return home.

And it all happened under the leadership of Armstrong, a quiet mid-western soul, an engineer who just did the work, always, the precise and endless and careful and meticulous and disciplined work. No tweets or selfies necessary. It’s refreshing to remember his example in a time when so many of our cultural, social and political leaders are more about self than country, more about style than substance, and more about “me” than “we”.  

This week take a walk outside at night and look up into the sky at the moon, our beautiful and mysterious moon.  Imagine this: a half century ago humankind traveled there and back. Wow.

Thanks Neil.