Climb Into Someone's Skin. And Walk Around In It.
My former ABC New colleague-turned-Substack sensation
is out with a new column today, and as always, it’s worth a read. You can find it here:Terry Moran on Substack: It's hard to hate up close
Many of our fellow citizens in the current political climate, Terry writes, “have been given permission, from the heights of power, to become the worst version of themselves. A viciousness is loose in the land.”
But I also agree with Terry when he says that most people are still normal.
Terry’s post reminded me of my trip to Montana in 2017 to attend and cover what turned out to be a victory party for Greg Gianforte, a Republican running for the U.S. House of Representatives. Normally, the national news networks could care less about Montana, but Gianforte (and the special election) had recently drawn lots of attention after he violently body-slammed a Guardian reporter who had tried to ask him a few questions.
Gianforte later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault. (And elected governor in 2021.) He apologized that night in May 2017, but before that had been firing up his supporters by blaming the “liberal media” for his behavior.
There was a lot of tension in the room that night between Representative-elect Gianforte’s faithful and the dozens of journalists crammed into the Hilton Garden Inn in Bozeman.
But there was also something else. As the night went on and reporters and supporters spent more time in close proximity, the interviews ended and were gradually replaced by regular conversations.
After all the vitriol of the campaign and the coverage surrounding it, I was admittedly surprised at the amount of really insightful, thoughtful, one-on-one conversations that I had with people who were not the biggest fans of the national press.
I listened. They listened. As the crowd gradually thinned, we shared about our lives, families, and work. We even laughed a little.
Later, it reminded me of the advice from Atticus Finch to Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
That night in Bozeman the old saying (cliche?) was never truer. We have a lot more in common as fellow Americans than not. We didn’t solve all the country’s problems or see eye-to-eye on everything. But it gave me some faith in our ability to disagree and still be neighborly sometimes. And I guess that idea—in this political climate—is still what gives me a spark of hope.