Gary and Dan are making a serious point here, and I want to address it in a separate thread. A lot of plain Mennos take exactly the position they outlined above.GaryK wrote:I couldn't agree more with your last paragraph. I just feel it's going to be difficult to address this in a meaningful way if we have a dog in the fight such as having voted for someone the other person has voted against. The very nature of politics is divisive and has always been intense.Bootstrap wrote:I may not be trying it the right way - and I'm happy to learn how to do better - but I am definitely trying it. Please teach me if you have things I should learn, and let's learn from each other. I do see a difference between opposing political warring and taking sides in the political wars.
Maybe it starts with Paul's frequent approach of looking at who we are in Christ and who we are as God's children. It is not right that we, as God's children, take our identities from the political factions among us, often repeating the memes they give us and the words carefully designed by their marketing geniuses, and bite and devour each other.
I want to honor that, but it's not the way that I see it, and I'd like to explain my view too. I don't think voting is the same as joining a political party or declaring loyalty to a political party, I think it is deciding which of the candidates is best for a particular job, picking one of the choices the parties give us. For me, at least, it involves taking time to research their backgrounds, their positions, the plans they have stated, usually focusing on what they have actually done in the past rather than what they are saying in the heat of a campaign. I try to do that carefully and fairly, and that's one reason I won't join a party - I think it makes it harder to be fair. To me, this is part of public engagement, like picking up the trash on the road or in a park, or attending parent's meetings at school. And I think of public engagement as a good thing, building a sense of community and being in this together. The most important community is our church, of course, but we also need community beyond that.
I don't see voting as warfare. Where I grew up, and in the circles I live in, nobody asks someone else if they voted or who they voted for. That's considered rude, and a vote is considered private. That etiquette evolved precisely because politics can get pretty emotional. You can often guess from the conversation, but sometimes you aren't sure. In online forums there are people who ask you straight out who you voted for, speculate if you don't tell the, and brand you and demonize you if you voted for a candidate they didn't like. I consider that a form of bullying, but I haven't quite figured out how to tell people that it's really none of their business who I voted for without seeming rude myself. But if you can't vote without being in a war, then democracy is in danger.
The winds have shifted, so maybe some people can understand this now in a way they couldn't under the last president. Suppose you have advocated Trump in public or voted for Trump. I don't think we will know how the Trump presidency turns out until he's had some time to govern. Suppose it turns out that Trump isn't a great president for some reason or another, or some very serious flaws become very obvious. I hope that nobody will try to make you responsible for all of Trump's shortcomings. And if you think Trump was the better choice, voting for him was the right thing to do. That's what democracy is all about.
So on balance, I prefer a world where we vote in a democracy, your vote is private, and nobody demonizes you for your vote, even if the candidate doesn't turn out great.