You might not think that how to manage opposing views and find common ground is something a medical school, which deals with hard science, has to concern itself with. But last week Des Moines University, whose graduates go on to be doctors, held a forum for its students, board members and staff on how to speak to one another when we disagree. These days it's something every institution has to be concerned about. And some of our biggest influences, like Hollywood and the U.S. government, are not modeling it well.
Whether you welcome this president's brash talk as plain spoken, or recoil from it as uncivil, it has had a major impact on the national tenor of discourse. Policies aside, it's unprecedented to have a president who belittles people who take issue with him, or with his frequently unsupported pronouncements.
Most of the time, this is analyzed through the prism of politics, and power struggles within or between parties. But there is a larger human dimension in the impact on people's souls. What has happened to the old rules of fair play? Does the truth even matter anymore? If our leader sees the worst in everyone, should we also?
Speaking out in this combative climate is risky but keeping quiet when core American values are at stake is riskier. It makes us bystanders to bullying.
"Did Trump go too far?" asked a CNN headline on a story about his verbal attacks on the family of a slain soldier. "The swift condemnation of Trump's response raises questions about whether this controversy is different from the ones that came before it." Evidently not, since that story was three months before the election, which Trump went on to win.
It was after the Democratic National Convention, when Trump had lashed out at the parents of 27-year-old Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who had died from a suicide bombing in Iraq. His father, Khizr Khan, commenting on Trump's proposed Muslim ban, had noted in a convention speech that under such rules, his son couldn't have enlisted.
Trump lashed back, saying Khan "has no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution, which is false, and say many other inaccurate things." He mocked Khan's wife, Ghazala, who stood by her husband's side, suggesting as a Muslim woman, she wasn't allowed to speak.
The president has since taken issue with Myeshia Johnson, a war widow he called after the death of her husband, Army Sgt. La David Johnson. He disputed her account that he had struggled to remember her husband's name, or said her husband "knew what he signed up for." He called Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, who was with Ms. Johnson when his phone call came, a liar, for saying the same. And he inaccurately accused "most "other presidents of not making such calls at all.
These are patterns. When senators and fellow Republicans Lindsey Graham and John McCain issued a statement saying Trump's immigration ban on people from Muslim nations was "not properly vetted," the president pounced on them on Twitter. Now, when Republican senators Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona have announced they aren't seeking re-election because of Trump's divisive and resentful style, Trump tweets, "The reason Flake and Corker dropped out of the Senate race is very simple, they had zero chance of being elected. Now act so hurt & wounded!"
Even if true, what president talks like such a schoolyard bully? His spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who shares Trump's style, has chided the press for lacking a sense of humor when asked about her boss' tweeting that he has a higher IQ than his secretary of state: "He made a joke. Maybe you guys should get a sense of humor and try it sometime."
Isn't public service supposed to be about putting the public first? We teach our children that telling lies and behaving badly brings consequences. So what are they to conclude when it wins elections and emboldens the perpetrators? We talk about an equal playing field and freedom of speech, then watch the nation's chief executive shame and humiliate his critics in hopes of silencing them.
So how do we help set the record straight without degenerating into more finger-pointing and name-calling? Without mentioning the president, DMU panelists (I was one) offered some thoughts. "We focus too much on who is right and not what is right," said a high school senior, J.J. Kapur.
"Too often we attack the morality component and don't attend to the justice component," said Pastor Jeremy Johnson from the Lutheran Church of Hope, stressing that winning should not be the goal. Peg Armstrong-Gustafson, the founder of Amson Technology, advised focusing narrowly on a single issue and not trying to "change the person whole-scale."
But one audience member suggested maybe our assumption that "we all care about the humanity of others" was itself flawed.
Maybe not all; there are many kinds of motivations. But we can as a society pull together and hold each other and ourselves accountable for modeling the values we preach. We can demonstrate the empathy, honesty and sense of responsibility we want in our leaders. And we can use the democratic process to take care of the rest.
