TPS fifth anniversary: Micro-dissection of "respect" for one's adversary

With John McCain’s death, there’s been an embarrassment of rich narratives about his capacity to value and respect people he disagreed with, such as Barack Obama. Politico Magazine described this virtue by contrast: “. . . a capital city that under President Donald Trump no longer seems capable, as the late senator was, of balancing fights with friendships, of divorcing disagreement from disrespect, of recognizing the basic difference between opponents and enemies.”* It is well known – sickly well known – that Donald Trump can see those who oppose him only as enemies and deserving of no respect. We see this is the Narcissist’s way. But I think the idea that a person can actually respect, not just show de rigueur deference but feel a positive emotion about someone whose sense or philosophy of life is antithetical to his own deserves to be questioned, soberly if not brutally.

Do we really respect – have a positive or admiring feeling about – someone whose mind can’t see, whose attitude won’t accept, the reality that we so clearly see? One obvious response is: Look at all those who despise the Democrats for their ardor for the Mueller investigation. Look at the many who think Trump’s “base” are idiots, simpletons, evil. While wide consensus doesn’t prove a principle, it’s clear there is something assumed, viable and . . . respectable about the lack of gracious charity toward “the other.”

Contradicting the necessity of that human nature is the therapist’s ethic (and hopefully his nature). When a client owns an irrational belief – says she knows all people are untrustworthy and malevolent – I’ll have real compassion, which is closer to respect than pity, for the person whose injuries in childhood and later have made her so bent and wary. I have to ask myself, though, if I would feel so expansive if her cynicism had an obnoxiously superior and contemptuous air. I believe that would be much harder to love. Wounded and struggling to thrive is respectable. Implacable complacent contempt is not.

Why is this so? Can’t we see and appreciate all wrongheaded others to be the injured, the beaten, the snarling wounded animal backed into a corner? No, not when they are aggressively dangerous. Not when his or her values are actionably inhumane. And maybe, not when their superior attitude leaves no room for help, when they place themselves beyond a relationship. I think we would have to be Jesus to appreciate that flaw, because we would have to be outside the human compact.

My wife is much more liberal than I am, pretty “dyed in the wool.” I think she’s great. She need not agree with me. But she is not aggressively doctrinaire and I am not one with, invested in any of the American ideologies: I see they are societal compromises that I can’t expect her to dissect to their – or her – psychological roots. A politician, though, is so invested: His politics is his personal and career identity, his faith. To be against his conviction is to be against him, his heart and mind and ego and survival. This makes it impossibly difficult for me to believe a McCain or an Obama or any partisans could actually feel respect for the person of their adversary. Add the factor that the opposing ideology will be judged to be destructive of the society they value.

So. Are our heroes gallant pretenders, hypocrites who claim respect for their opposite when it can’t be true? Is there a way, that is not Narcissism, to have “healthy disrespect” for people who believe and work for a wrong way of being? Must Libertarians despise socialists? Must an atheist have dismissive contempt for religion, Muslims for Buddhists, Christians for Jews, progressives for the millions who see excellence in this president? Can we really “get along,” in our hearts?

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* https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/09/01/washington-mourns-john-mccain-and-its-own-demise-under-trump-219630.