Potential Converts vs. Enemies

Suppose a genie appears. You get a message from Beyond. You magically just know it to be true: your neighbor or co-worker, that person over there you see practically every day? They vote for the other side. And they will never, ever change. You will never persuade them that they're wrong to vote for so-and-so person/party or such-and-such issue/position that you passionately oppose.

What then?

In all the bridge-building initiatives like Better Angels or Dialogue on Race Louisiana that I research and work with, the empathic listening and patient sharing I engage in have a tacit agenda: I might eventually convince enemies to convert. Such an agenda often figures as a rationale for civility in this polarized era. Pundits lecture, for example, how liberals need to listen more to conservatives if they want to win in 2020. I heard several presentations at the conference I attended last weekend about how the anti-abortion (or anti-choice) movement revamped itself in the last twenty years, going from sign-and-slogan, in-your-face yelling with gruesome pictures of aborted fetuses to a savvier, more empathic mode that favors listening and forming relationships (via, for example, crisis pregnancy centers).

There's an evangelical impulse to civility, a hope that a friendly overture might lead to transformation. I don't mean that civility is merely a cynical front for a sales pitch, though sometimes it may be. I mean that a natural (for me, anyway) resource for empathy is the idea that someone who isn't on my side really should be for their own good. I want everyone to be more feminist because I think feminism benefits everyone. I want people to step back from market fundamentalism (the free market will take care of all ills) because I think a bit more socialized organization would provide for people's needs better than competing profit motives. I want people to resist racism because a world without racism is just plain all-around better for humanity. It makes me sad that some people really believe that Drag Queen Story Hour poses a dire threat to children. It frustrates me that some people think that vaccinations are harmful or that immigrants are dangerous, dirty invaders. That's just not a great way to be.

So yeah, if I have a way I think is better, I want other people to be on board with me in following that way.

But what if, somehow, that hope were extinguished? What if I'm left with the neighbor who stands on the other side of an unbridgeable worldview gap?

We can't just agree to disagree on everything. At some point, one of us is going to vote for or against something or someone that's sacred to the other person. I'm pro-choice; my basic belief is that pregnant people should get to choose what to do with their bodies and should never be forced to be pregnant if they don't want to be. That belief runs smack into the deep conviction held by others that a pregnant person's desires must balance with (or, more often, be trumped by) the value of preserving embryonic life.

Most people believe neither in an absolute pro-choice or absolute pro-life stance. But legislation is about drawing lines that are functionally absolute. Laws and court decisions turn grey zones into sharply bordered zones of black and white. We just can't have it both ways. Either people have the legal ability to end pregnancies at a certain point or for certain reasons, or they don't.

The issue is political in Carl Schmitt's sense. It divides people into friend/enemy relations. No meta-rationale or meta-value has enough bilateral credibility to resolve the question. There's no scientific/historical fact, no ethical or religious system, that we can point to in a way that settles the matter for everyone. Abortion and reproductive rights necessitate straightforward agonism (struggle).

This, I think, is a better way--a more challenging way, at least--to think of the Christian precept of loving your enemy. The enemy isn't a potential friend or ally. The enemy is the opponent who espouses a stance you would resist with every fiber of your being.

How shall we treat the enemy?