Respectful disagreement between men who loved each other anyway used to happen right between the gravy boat and the peach cobbler. We traded that table for a screen, and we are worse for it.
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News for the America we remember |
My grandmother had a blue floral tablecloth that only came out on Sundays after the morning service. It was thick linen, probably bought from a catalog before the war, and it had a way of making a simple roast chicken feel like a state dinner. We would sit there for two hours, sometimes three. The men would loosen their ties, the mashed potatoes would go cold in the bowl, and the real talk would start. My father and my Uncle Howard didn't agree on much of anything when it came to the statehouse or the Oval Office. Dad was a budget hawk who still missed the way Eisenhower ran a room. Howard thought the government ought to pave every road in the county and pay for the gravel, too. |
They would get into it right there between the gravy boat and the peach cobbler. Their voices would get a little louder, and their faces would get a little redder. But here is the thing I remember most. Nobody ever walked out. Nobody called the other one a traitor or a fool. When the meal was over, Howard would help my dad carry the heavy oak table back toward the wall so we could sweep the floor. They were brothers first, neighbors second, and voters somewhere down the list. |
Back then, we didn't have a screen in our pockets telling us that the people across the street were the enemy. We had the evening news with a man like Walter Cronkite, and then we had each other. It is a lot harder to say something cruel to a man when you are passing him the salt. You saw the calluses on his hands from the machine shop or the hardware store. You knew he helped you jump-start your Buick when the battery died during that blizzard in 1978. |
Today, it feels like we have traded the Sunday dinner table for a digital shouting match. Instead of hearing a grandfather explain why he trusts a certain candidate, young people are getting their news from a fifteen-second video made by a stranger three states away. There is no nuance in a thumb-swipe. We have built these little bubbles for ourselves where we never have to hear a discouraging word, and it is making us brittle. |
President Reagan could spend the day sparring with Tip O'Neill, and then they could sit down for a drink and a laugh after the sun went down. They understood that the system only functions if you assume the other guy loves the country just as much as you do. They learned that at their own dinner tables, long before they ever stepped foot in a capital building. They knew that a different opinion |
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