Gov. Cox,
First of all, congratulations on your victory over a MAGA-endorsed Republican in the gubernatorial primary. Brigham Young University political science professor Chris Karpowitz observed, “Utah continues to be reticent to fully adopt MAGA-style politics.” Given that the MAGA takeover of the 170-year-old Grand Old Party has been swift, sweeping, and without precedent, that is a notable achievement.
Part of the reason for Utah’s unique posture may be its deeply rooted Mormon faith, which Professor Karpowitz believes makes Utah “red in a different way.”
I do think the state’s history and religious tradition matters here. And that has led to a certain style of politics and a certain willingness to try to work for practical solutions that don’t involve completely demonizing people on the other side.
This practical, healthy approach to politics is reflected in your Disagree Better campaign, a commendable effort to de-escalate the polarization that grips our nation. I believe in efforts like yours and the bridge-building organization Resetting the Table, with which I’ve had a fruitful association as I’ve tried to close the gaps between evangelical Christians in my community who’ve been divided by politics and the culture wars.
However, I confess your recent comments in a POLITICO interview about two former members of Congress, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, got under my skin a little bit.
I’ll accept your statement, "I don’t know that they’re changing anybody’s minds. I don’t think they’re changing hearts and minds at all.” I have devoted much of my writing to highlighting the hypocrisy and corruption of evangelical Christians’ embrace of Donald Trump. However, lately, I’m wondering if all I’m doing is giving voice to the concerns of like-minded believers. I don’t expect my arguments to hold sway with anyone who is persuaded of Trump’s qualifications to be president.
Frankly, I deliberately refrain from sharing my work with a broader audience, and my reasons for that bring me to my disagreement with you. I will do my best to accord you the same respect and grace in disagreement that you ask of everyone.
I don’t share my opinions about Trump and his populist political movement with audiences outside of those where I believe they will be received favorably because I’ve seen how cruel they can be to people who disagree, even a little.
I have had a small taste of that cruelty; during the early days of the pandemic lockdown, when I encouraged people to follow public health guidelines as a gesture of care and concern for others, I was accused by a long-time friend and fellow believer, someone for whom I was there at his family’s worst moments when his wife was battling cancer, of being a pawn of Satan.
Perhaps you have the mental and emotional strength to handle that kind of insult coming from someone with whom you once had an intimate connection, but as a neurodivergent person, I don’t. A few more exchanges like that caused me to stop sharing my views on politics and culture altogether on social media platforms where I have thousands of conservative friends and associates because the tribe that once embraced me and cheered me on was changing and turning on me and others like me.
I have seen what this tribe has done to people with more courage than me, like my friend Karen Swallow Prior, who was driven out of her beloved profession of teaching by a mob that couldn’t abide her criticism of Donald Trump or the blind eye the denomination she served for most of her life, the Southern Baptist Convention, turned toward issues like Trump’s character, racism and misogyny, and clergy sexual abuse.
New York Times columnist David French described in horrific detail what happened to him and his family when they publicly spoke out against Trump, with opponents even turning to crude racist words and images to attack them because they adopted an Ethiopian daughter.
Some in Adam Kinzinger’s family accused him, among other things, of being a part of “the devil’s army” for voting to impeach Trump after the January 6, 2021, insurrection. They disowned him in a letter they shared with other GOP public officials because, in the words of his cousin, “I wanted Adam to be shunned.”
Liz Cheney’s rise to the third-highest position in the House GOP conference took years, but her fall from leadership was swift and sure once she dared to stand against Trump. She gave up a promising political career and, eventually, her position in Congress while fending off threats directed at her and her family. Many of her colleagues privately agreed with her but feared for themselves and their families, which speaks volumes about what those who oppose Trump face. When other politicians, initially vocal in their opposition to Trump, began to roll over to curry his favor, she stood firm in her convictions. She paid and continues to pay the price they were unwilling to pay.
I wonder if you are fully cognizant of your good fortune in Utah, which seems to have shielded you and Mitt Romney from the political consequences of your divergence from Trump and his politics. I’ve no doubt there have been personal consequences; you’ve hinted at them from time to time. However, your criticism of Mr. Kinzinger and Ms. Cheney suggests they should shake it off or be more charitable regarding the reasons why these people, including family members in one instance, are threatening their lives and livelihoods and condemning them to hell for opposing a deeply flawed man they have chosen to worship as their King Cyrus.
You call on us to be more understanding of Trump’s supporters and, speaking for myself, I have tried. As a man who adopted the late Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People®, as one of my preferred works of wisdom, I try to practice Habit #5, “Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood,” so that I may “influence others by developing a deep understanding of their needs and perspectives.” When Trump emerged as a serious contender for the presidency in 2016, I researched why a segment of the voting population that traditionally voted for Democrats, including Barack Obama as recently as 2012, was now overwhelmingly in his camp. Initially, I thought I understood:
This national election revealed a widening chasm between the party elites and the broader electorate, and while it's easy to dismiss them as evil or ignorant, as both political parties have done, it's also not accurate because, if the polls are to be believed, Trump appears to have broader support than conventional wisdom suggests, cutting across education, age, residential status and income groups.
Moreover, it's also not fair because it doesn't acknowledge the very real struggles the general public has endured as the economic, cultural and political landscape has shifted under their feet as if in an earthquake. Elites, regardless of their political stripes, are equipped to deal with such changes because they either benefit from them or have the means to shield themselves from the consequences. Those without means, however, are at the mercy of these tectonic shifts, and they are fearful, anxious and angry toward the elites who made promises they couldn't or wouldn't keep.
The research I've read on the Trump electorate has certainly opened my eyes to the crises confronting working class Americans daily, and the tragic consequences when there appears to be no solution in sight, and no one to speak for them. It has also changed my thinking about the politics which have contributed in some part to their plight. While I may disagree with their electoral choices, and while I admit there are some ugly undertones to some of what I read and hear, I've emerged from my research primarily feeling compassion for them. These are human beings in pain, and humans don't typically respond to pain in a rational manner.
My compassion deepened as I learned that whites without a college education, particularly middle-aged males, were dying “deaths of despair” due to drug and alcohol abuse and suicide, with nearly half a million people dead that shouldn’t have been. They were driven to self-destruction by economic misery and the sense that they had been forgotten and left behind as the economy abandoned low-skill, high-wage manufacturing jobs for knowledge workers. While I profoundly disagreed that Trump would improve their lives, I understood that they feared and mistrusted the current crop of leaders and thought someone unconventional was better than the elites who had failed them.
However, over time, I realized that these desperate people were only a portion of the population backing Trump, and the others had no positive motivation for supporting him other than their desire to reclaim power and influence they felt they had lost to the prevailing culture. To that end, they exploited the pain of the white working class and whipped them into a state of grievance and anger that split the nation in two. After all, people on the opposite end of the political spectrum also harbored a righteous anger borne of centuries of oppression and inhumane treatment by the dominant culture that most of Trump’s supporters represent. These people dared to stand up for their rightful place at the table in a secular, pluralistic democratic republic ostensibly and uniquely formed on the idea that all are created equal and hold the same unalienable rights. Their ongoing struggle toward equality threatens those who feel their position of dominance is preferable and, perhaps most ominously, divinely ordained.
Over time, my attempts to understand the perspectives of these people I disagreed with increasingly met with failure because of the character of the man they chose to lead them. With every post on Truth Social, with every 90-minute barely coherent stemwinder focused primarily on personal grievances, which he has managed to equate with the nation’s ills, with every untruth uttered audaciously and regardless of the harm they cause to people and institutions, he repels me and makes me question why tens of millions of Americans are persuaded of his worthiness to be president. Journalist and devout Christian Peter Wehner wrote recently:
I have struggled to understand how to view individuals who have not just voted for Trump but who celebrate him, who don’t merely tolerate him but who constantly defend his lawlessness and undisguised cruelty. How should I think about people who, in other domains of their lives, are admirable human beings and yet provide oxygen to his malicious movement? How complicit are people who live in an epistemic hall of mirrors and have sincerely—or half-sincerely—convinced themselves they are on the side of the angels?
Throughout my career I’ve tried to resist the temptation to make unwarranted judgments about the character of people based on their political views. For one thing, it’s quite possible my views on politics are misguided or distorted, so I exercise a degree of humility in assessing the views of others. For another, I know full well that politics forms only a part of our lives, and not the most important part. People can be personally upstanding and still be wrong on politics.
But something has changed for me in the Trump era. I struggle more than I once did to wall off a person’s character from their politics when their politics is binding them to an unusually—and I would say undeniably—destructive person. The lies that MAGA world parrots are so manifestly untrue, and the Trump ethic is so manifestly cruel, that they are difficult to set aside.
These are extraordinary times, and I expect things to worsen in the coming weeks and months. Based on last week’s events, I anticipate that Trump will win the election and ascend to the White House again. In the face of his unrelenting campaign to inflict pain upon individuals and institutions he believes meant him harm, and the exploitation of his grievances by people who mean to upend the very nature of our constitutional republic, I confess I lack your optimism. I wonder if it will matter whether we “disagree better” when there is no more reason for them to heed our objections because the power will be theirs.
I don’t anticipate my words will dissuade you from trying to find common ground with others, and that’s not my intent. I wish we had more leaders like you. However, I think you do a disservice to Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and others who have paid a price perhaps you have yet to pay. I suspect they tried to reach out and got their hands slapped away. Mr. Kinzinger said:
So look, I have nothing against them. I mean, maybe someday I’ll have to look back … but I don’t feel it right now. I just have no desire really to reach out and repair it, that’s up to them.
That sums up my attitude toward those who support Trump. I’m open to discussing our differences and trying to find common ground. However, I won’t tolerate abuse for my views, especially when I’m not directing it toward them. It seems to agitate them that while I understand and appreciate their anger with their circumstances, I don’t believe it justifies their rage and hatred toward others, which accomplishes nothing other than burning everything down. In my opinion, it certainly doesn’t justify giving the keys to our republic to Donald John Trump.
My life verse is Romans 12:18, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” However, I am mindful of Jesus’ advice in Matthew 10:14, “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.”
“Disagree better?” They can go first.
Respectfully,
Ron