“When they go low, we go high,” Michelle Obama used to say, something I believe she and President Obama managed to do with grace during their time in the White House. Indeed, they are still living by this ethical standard.
That’s why anti-Trump Republican David Frum made reference to it in an a recent Atlantic article on Trump. He wrote:
“Back in the 1980s, a rabbi published a book making sense of When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Bad things, though, also happen to bad people. What then? The first family specializes in mocking the misfortunes of others. How should they be treated when they suffer misfortunes themselves? It’s a natural and powerful temptation to do unto them as they have done unto others. They have abused, reviled, and humiliated others: So let them be abused, be reviled, be humiliated?”
Not really, Frum says because “…if you go that way, you do not repudiate Trump. You become Trump.”
He’s exactly right. It is tempting for those of us who believe Trump is dishonorable to treat him (and his supporters) the way he treats everyone else, only that is precisely how we become him.
The nation doesn’t need more people like Trump. It needs fewer.
So what do we do? Frum says we follow Michelle Obama’s advice, we keep going high as they keep going low.
But what exactly does that mean? How do we go high in the face of such lows by the President of the United States?
It is an important question, and I invite you to share your answers in the comments you make, even as I offer some of my own here.
I think going high means we keep believing in ourselves, in the country we were before Trump became President, flawed as it was.
We keep believing that most Americans don’t hate the government, that most people still believe in honesty, respect for others, compassion for others, that most people want the best for others as well as themselves, that most people support justice and peace.
It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking America has become like Donald Trump, especially when 84% of Republicans think he is doing a great job, including evangelical Christians.
But I don’t think Trump represents the majority of Americans because I still believe our national character is better than his.
For all the Sean Hannity types on Fix News who lie the way Trump does, for example, there are major Republican voices like David Frum, Nicole Wallace, Steve Schmidt, David Brooks, Norm Ornstein, Joe Scarborough, even ultra-cobservative Bill Kristol, and others who believe Trump is a dishonest man and a political disaster.
For all the Republicans in Congress who support him or are silent in the face of his extremism, there are Senators like John McCain, Jeff Flake, Bob Coker, Lisa Murkowsky, Susan Collins, the Bush family, and others who believe Trump poses a genuine danger to our democracy.
It is easy to forget these voices of dissent, to be persuaded that the nation has gone over to the dark side, but we haven’t. It can happen, but it hasn’t happened yet.
So going high as Trump and company continue to go low is a challenge to remember that America is still a better nation than Donald Trump is a president.
I think it also means holding firm to the most fundamental value anyone can have – the willingness to give better than you get.
That is how an army chaplain described the 1962 Second Lieutenant graduates of West Point who died in Viet Nam in the book, The Long Gray Line. The nature of being a soldier, he said, requires that you are willing to give better than you get.
Anyone willing to embrace this basic value will make the world a better place because it means going as high as high gets.
What is more, there is no more effective way to ensure that Donald Trump will never shape the country into his own image than that.
I also believe going high means we engage in self-examination on a regular basis in order to avoid thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought to.
We might wish Trump would do some self-reflection, but he shows no capacity for being able to do that.
So he speaks of himself and his actions in superlatives – he has done what no one has ever done, more than anyone has ever done, is making things greater than they have ever been, he himself is the greatest businessman, greatest negotiator, greatest president.
The difference between Muhammed Ali calling himself the greatest and Donald Trump describing himself the same way is that Ali knew it was an act, while Trump believes it is true.
Before he became President, he said of the building he had built, “In truth I am dazzled as much by my own creations as are the tourists and glamour hounds that flock to Trump Tower … or any of my other properties.”
This is the man who now leads America and wants it to become a reflection of himself.
I don’t believe it will happen, but neither did I believe he would become President.
To make sure it doesn’t happen, then, to ensure most of us don’t become Donald Trump, we must be determined to go high during these days when he keeps going lower and lower.
That brings us back to where we started.
It is a demanding standard to keep going high when there seems to be no low to which Donald Trump will not go in regard to anything and everything.
But it is the only way to save ourselves from becoming Trump, something none of us wants to be nor the nation could survive if we did.
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