“I never want to be part of any group of people,” Liel Leibovitz says, “where a political disagreement could empty your heart of love.”
On the right were people who only cared about money and held benighted and scary ideas.
I never doubted that premise. But then, I noticed things on the left you weren’t allowed to say.
It was fine to criticize some people for saying objectionable things, but others were somehow beyond reproach. You start asking yourself, what can I say and not say?
You figure out that the self-proclaimed party of the working class supports an oligopoly of corporations. You realize the party of science uses media to quash inquiry into scientific issues. And once you discover that, you take the turn.
It’s a series of small vibrations, of small moments.
I’ve had a bunch of those moments. One day, I had lunch with my dear friend and mentor in the university where I studied.
He told me that comments I was making about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict were no longer acceptable to a large number of our colleagues on the faculty. [What] struck me about that statement was how perfectly Soviet it was: “Watch out, comrade. There’s talk in the party you are expressing wrong ideas. This is not good.”
It was strange coming from a person who represents an institution that, to me, is the bedrock of the free and unfettered exchange of ideas. But what hurt even more was how empty of love his voice was. It wasn’t, “Hey, I just want what’s best for you. Let’s work this out together.” Instead, this cold authoritative voice said, “Straighten up or else.”
I never want to be part of any group of people where a political disagreement could empty your heart of love.
To me, that’s a wonderful sentiment. I want to be politically homeless.
Because being politically homeless is the moment in which you stop thinking about these structures in old and unhelpful terms.
What’s important is who’s in your camp and what we believe and what we could do together to rebuild our country. And while I think the chaos that we’re experiencing is weird and scary, I couldn’t be more optimistic for the future of this country in the long term.
Let’s rebuild, because our universities have been corrupted. Let’s build another news media outlet, because our newspapers have been corrupted. Let’s build another way of doing business, because our big businesses have been corrupted. That fills me with so much hope and so much joy.
That’s what successful people are doing.
Americans are doing what Americans have always done, which is be resolute, creative, resilient, and community-minded.
If your commitment isn’t just to yourself, but to your children and to their children and to your community and to your fellow believers and, above all, to the almighty, then your perspective on life is very different. If you start every morning saying “thank you” for all of this, that’s one thing.
Now, imagine you woke up in the morning and literally believed in nothing.
Imagine you have massive student debt and also no job, because the whole premise that you would go to college and then get a good job and career, that doesn’t happen anymore.
Imagine that you saw all around you tremendous misery. Imagine that the people entrusted with keeping you safe, well-fed, free from disease or want were failing their jobs miserably and blaming all kinds of other ephemeral structures. That’s a recipe for disaster. That’s a recipe in which you seek the devil. “Who can I blame?” “Blame Trump. Blame the Republicans. Blame Russia.” Blame this. Blame that.
That’s a difficult conundrum for most people. It’s also possible you might alienate a loved one or a family member.
But the freedom to speak the truth is great. And here’s the reward for that sacrifice. The connections you make are real. I was no longer able to continue teaching at New York University once I was unwilling to express views and ideas that I knew to be completely nonsensical and offensive.
I lost quite a bit, but I gained the friendship and love of a group of human beings that I had never known existed.
I came to them with humility and with an understanding that I, too, can make mistakes and built some of the most beautiful friendships of my life.
When you live not by lies, you get relationships with amazing people you never would’ve thought would become your friends.
The second is, understand that many people around you want to connect with you.
And that leads me to my third and most important prescription, which is to be focused on building.
Your job isn’t to fix America. Your job isn’t to fix health care, politics, or national security.
Your job is to fix the thing that’s in your backyard. Maybe it’s some kind of food bank because you really care about this issue. Maybe it’s helping a couple of homeschooling friends, because you’re thinking about doing this too, and you want to start a group.
Those kinds of small grassroots positives are what I’m seeing.
If you feel you’re creating something sustainable and nurturing in your community, then you’re on the right path.
