Amy Barrett Is an Antidote to Our Culture of Contempt

By Kathryn Jean Lopez

Monday, October 19, 2020

 

‘Dude, I want you to punch Donald Trump in the face.” During Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings, Democratic senator Cory Booker of New Jersey quoted a man who approached him at a town hall. “Dude, that’s a felony,” is how Senator Booker described his response. Good for him, fighting against our crazed political culture of anger, contempt, and even violence. I don’t agree with Cory Booker on a lot of things, but I agree, as he went on to say, that we need “a revival of civic grace.” He said: “Somewhere along the line, there’s going to be a moment. It’s coming. I think it’s long past that there has to be acts of heroism when it comes to extending grace.”

 

Now that was his pitch to Republicans to hold off on a vote on Amy Coney Barrett. Largely because I think Barrett may be the best thing that has happened to American politics in a long time, I disagree. Washington needs her. America needs her. She embodies grace in a lot of ways in her public witness. Listening to her in some of the exchanges was a civics lesson, when it wasn’t insane, to borrow the word of Peggy Noonan — Pulitzer Prize winner, speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan — about the state of the nation’s capital today. And we do mean insane. I’d walk away from the hearings, come back, and find a senator asking about whether Barrett had ever sexually harassed someone. What? Where did that come from? I had flashbacks to when Democrats threw the kitchen sink at Brett Kavanagh. One accusation was one thing, but then it seemed like they were ready to pull women off the street to make accusations against him.

 

Booker’s comments were an unexpected turn in the hearings, which were dehumanizing, as they tend to be. Amy Barrett having to sit with a facemask while she was listening to herself be attacked as a puppet of Donald Trump, understood to be the greatest threat to democracy there is or ever was by those suggesting as much. It did liberate her from having to smile through it all, at least. Previously, while opening with what seemed to be a sincere kind moment about the Barrett family, Dianne Feinstein quickly, creepily, jumped to abortion. Even a Republican senator in one of those over-the-top performances these kinds of hearings unfortunately have a reputation for cruelly and unnecessarily brought up abhorrent social-media attacks on Barrett and her husband for adopting two children from Haiti.

 

Last year, Arthur Brooks diagnosed what’s ailing American politics. “America is addicted to political contempt. While most of us hate what it is doing to our country and worry about how contempt coarsens our culture over the long term, many of us still compulsively consume the ideological equivalent of meth from elected officials, academics, entertainers, and some of the news media. Millions actively indulge their habit by participating in the cycle of contempt in the way they treat others, especially on social media. We wish our national debates were nutritious and substantive, but we have an insatiable craving for insults to the other side. As much as we know we should ignore the nasty columnist, turn off the TV loudmouth, and stop checking our Twitter feeds, we indulge our guilty urge to listen as our biases are confirmed that the other guys are not just wrong, but stupid and evil.

 

Sound familiar?

 

“Contempt,” Brooks writes, “is impractical and bad for a country dependent on people working together in politics, communities, and the economy. Unless we hope to become a one-party state, we cannot afford contempt for our fellow Americans who simply disagree with us.”

 

And that, my friends, has escalated quickly. There are fears on all sides about exactly that. The confirmation hearings, in fact, were the frontlines of escalation. Did you notice the explosion about the phrase “sexual preference” during the Barrett hearings? That’s exactly what more conservative-minded people fear. That one day “up will be down,” as was said in other contexts during the hearings, and we will all have to submit to new “facts.” Amy Barrett didn’t mean to make any political statement by her choice of words. But the rules of what is tolerated by polite society (which is somewhat brutal) were changed by the Democrats on that committee during the hearing, leading Merriam-Webster to immediately designate the phrase offensive.

 

If you’re an American who fears Amy Barrett on the Court, consider that there is another point of view, as I acknowledge you. I’d like us to have old-fashioned debates about ideas. I want to see America survive with freedom of religion and speech and all. How about you? I suspect there are more of us than not. We just aren’t often the bullhorn types.

 

Broaden what Senator Booker was talking about beyond the Senate. “This is a point,” he said, “when millions of Americans are suffering and hurting and losing the very idea of what it means to be an American in terms of the dream and the promise of this country. This is the moment that this nation needs — actions of grace.” Take that as a challenge. Work with someone you disagree with on even fundamentals for a greater good. Listen. Be an agent of grace. It sanctifies. It heals. It’s a way forward. And people of prayer, pray that the impossible will be possible. Because it sure feels impossible just about now! But, as they say, with grace all things are possible.