Horseshoes

Headliner, I challenge you to a game of horseshoes…a game of horseshoes!

There’s not much difference between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

This recently hit home during a shift at the neighborhood rec center where I was the only staff on duty for a one-year-old girl’s birthday party. The birthday girl wore a huge, toothless smile stretching out to ears adorned with the teensiest gold studs I’ve ever seen. She was so cute! 

Most of the partiers were Spanish speakers who claimed “no English,” so we had to overcome the language barrier to communicate logistical details and stuff like that. Their English was generally no worse than my half-decent Spanish, and we figured out what we needed to figure out. They were singing, dancing, laughing, and having so much fun. When it was time to close the rec center, they initially tried to pretend like they didn’t understand me, but, fortunately, I had the perfect word in my Spanish vocabulary to meet the moment: “¡Adios!”

Hearing their laughter and feeling their palpable joy, I thought many of these humans probably weren’t voters and may not even know who was running for president. I knew their lack of information about U.S. politics didn’t make me better than them. If anything, they seemed way happier than me, as these days, I often experience anxiety about the election and a possible Trumpocalypse. 

I thought about my coworker, Manny, who had recently told me he’s an undecided voter because he doesn’t see much difference between the Democrat and the Republican. What Manny said made me feel superior to him. Unlike the partiers, Manny spoke perfect English, and I thought his failure to see the candidates’ stark differences on “the issues” meant he was either not bright or willfully ignorant. Fancy words like “policy,” “nuance,” “pragmatism,” and “democracy” came to mind as I launched into a speech about why Democrats are better than Republicans. I didn’t make it five words in before Manny’s eyes glazed over, signaling it was time to shut the lecture down and move on.

As the partiers broke into a spirited rendition of what sounded like a K-Pop remix of “Cumpleaños Feliz” complete with background music, it hit me that Manny was the smart one, and I was the dope. Manny understood on a basic, human level that both sides only care about winning and being right. 

When winning and being right becomes the point, whatever you’re fighting for doesn’t matter so much. The policies and values we think are important start melting into egoic noise. When winning’s the point, we cut ourselves off from higher-minded problem-solving and run exclusively on the lower mind. Lower-minded problem-solving can be clever, but it’s never intelligent because it always produces outcomes that elevate the ego over the greater good. When the lower mind drives how we engage with the world, our behavior resembles that of apes and other beasts.

Manny had the smarts to cut through the noise and see that while words and policies are important, they don’t matter much on their own. Instead, it’s the feeling behind our words and policies that matters. No matter how noble our goals, pursuing them causes harm and destruction unless we do so from a joyful, loving place. I saw that the partiers, now singing the English version of “Happy Birthday,” and everyone else fearlessly daring to put love first and live in the present moment know this is how life works.

I’m neither a Christian nor a theologian, but I believe this is what Jesus was talking about when he said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

One look at the presidential candidates these days tells you all you need to know about where their heads are at. Gone is Mr. Trump’s sly smile that tells you he’s in on the joke that someone like him gets to be president. Gone is Ms. Harris’s ebullient joy that lifted her party up and electrified the country.  In their places are pinched faces and stiff body language. Listen and watch the nonstop, divisive rhetoric coming from both sides. There’s no joy at all. Only division and separation. 

This pair isn’t about advancing the common good or finding common ground. They’re about winning and being right, meaning they’ve already lost spiritually. 

As the political horseshoe theory shows, if we travel left enough, we find the very same nasty and reckless bullyball tactics used by the right. The two extremes of the political spectrum meet like a horseshoe at the top, symbolizing totalitarian control from above. The common example used to illustrate the horseshoe theory are the mid-20th century Soviets and the Nazis.

Ms. Harris is no Stalin, and Mr. Trump is no Hitler. Yet they’re driving their respective political parties’ climb toward the top of the horseshoe with their words.

As Stalin and Hitler had way more in common than modern neo-Nazis and far-left disrupters care to admit, so Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have way more in common than most voters realize. Fortunately for me, Manny and the partiers showed me the way.