We can heal our division with compassion

Last week, with pipe bombs mailed to prominent liberals and two people gunned down at a Kentucky grocery store seemingly because they were black, was horrible. Then came Saturday, when a virulent antiSemite invaded a place of worship in Pittsburgh and gunned down 11 elderly Jews attending a baby’s naming ceremony.

Is something worse than normal at work in America? Even worse, will it become the new normal?

On Sunday, we attempted in this space to address the seasonal tide of campaign lies and scare tactics and urge people to read and learn about candidates and issues from responsible sources before voting. Our editorial carried the headline “Fight the politics of fear and lies with facts.”

While the arguments in it (written on Friday) still stand, in light of Saturday’s fresh horror we’d like to put a bit less emphasis on that first word. Fighting against injustice, fighting for what’s right always will be legitimate. But it seems in our society the urge to fight is overpowering all of the other responses that should come first — moreconstructive things such as learning, understanding and showing compassion.

The “fight or flight” response is described as the body’s physiological reaction to acute stress, danger or a perceived threat. It seems to be at work mentally, as well. In an uneven economy that is leaving millions of Americans behind and widening the gap between rich and poor, we live amid a ceaseless storm of harsh rhetoric about who’s to blame. Many Americans seem ready to lash out and in no mood to have their views challenged.

Knowing that hatred grows from fear and fear grows from ignorance, it follows that the hostility in our society could best be defused with more knowledge and understanding. Not just of the sort that The Dispatch and others try to provide every day, but the kind that comes from human connections.

When you know little about a group of people or a religion or a country, it’s easier to see them as an “other” and to believe those who would blame that “other” for our problems. If you personally know an immigrant, a wealthy stockbroker, a Jew or a religious conservative, it’s harder to demonize those groups.

More important, it’s easier to see their humanity, and from there to understand how their hopes and needs are a lot like your own and that hating them isn’t likely to help make progress.

Following such a brutal series of events, many Americans feel helpless. What can anyone do to stem the hatred? Certainly, the pipe bombs and the Kentucky and Pittsburgh shootings were the acts of deeply disturbed people. Demagoguery and a corrosive atmosphere alone didn’t cause them.

Still, how different might our politics be if more of us knew more people outside our social circles? Someone who knows Jews and understands their centuries-long history of persecution would be a lot less likely to buy some hatemonger’s claim that they are sinister agents of an evil agenda.

If we could talk individually with desperate Central American migrants trying to reach the U. S. by foot, would we really see them as an invading force of criminals?

Americans face common challenges, and the best way to face them is together, with compassion for others rather than fear of “the other.” Enjoy cartoons by Nate Beeler at Dispatch.com/opinion/beeler