how to be good

“I just wouldn’t want to speak,” Cassie tells me, describing the tension among her friends following the election. Something shifted in the local discourse, for both those in and out of politics. “Everyone’s on the defensive now…With the last election, I felt more afraid to be a conservative woman in a liberal city,” she says, but conversely, she felt a mounting fear surrounding her interracial relationship given the rising racial tensions sparked by today’s politics. But she had to catch herself, to know that her fear was also a result of quick judgments, “As someone who was recently baptized in the Catholic church, I now give people the benefit of the doubt.”

Working in higher education in the district, Cassie makes up part of the odd contingency of residents who don’t work in politics, policy, or bureaucracy. Regardless, the conversations grew tenser, it was no longer a difference of political opinion but somehow a difference in inherent goodness.“I felt afraid to speak about what I believed in, especially amongst my friends… When it comes to politics I’m not very vocal,” a notion rooted in her southern values, “you don’t speak about politics at the dinner table.” But her silence now was not out of politeness but out of fear. “A lot of my friends had vocal opinions, but I feel like a lot of my friends had vocal opinions on Social media and not in person.” She noted this stark divide between what social media allows us to say to one another or about our politics, things we may never utter in person. But things aren’t as bad as they seem, she noted the physical altercations over policy in the wells of Congress in America's early days, or in parliaments around the world. To her, it comes down to the power of words, “We’ve really put a turn on ‘action speaks louder than words;’ words are cutting at the way people are feeling rather than action…Words have such a political meaning now.” Much of this war of words comes down to our notions of political correctness, “There’s a difference between politically correct and polite,” she notes. The assumptions of one another, especially those made about one’s politics, can be toxic, they can be divisive. “I’ll give my boyfriend as an example, he’s very vocal, however, when you meet him for the first time he’s not impolite because he doesn’t know you. And everyone is now coming to the assumption that just because you don’t know a person, but you already have an idea of what they might think and believe in, you’re automatically going to think that they’re going to be impolite to you.” We have forfeited that benefit of the doubt we once provided to our neighbors.

Cassie’s office sits a few blocks from the White House, so I walked over to snap the usual tourist photo, but I was struck by the crowd. There is an evangelizing woman who appears to be running for president, there are street performers in waxy Trump masks, a band of drummers set up and perform on the curb, the longtime demilitarization protest continues in Lafayette Park—and these are just the regulars. There are then the tourists, mostly school groups that have been bused in to teach the kids about the nation’s capital. In the midst of the chaos of individuals fighting for my attention in this space, my focus couldn’t be snapped away from their bright red Make America Great Again hats. I was surrounded by a sea of children in MAGA hats. It was discomforting on many levels, something about the propaganda-like nature of the caps makes me uneasy, and then to see them on children was another confounding factor. Do they know that for many people seeing one of these hats is unsettling? I think of black and brown friends who have voiced their concern about seeing a white man in a red cap, the association to violence is so strong that fear becomes an instinctual reaction. But there just kids on a field trip. It’s just a fun souvenir like my own red, white, and blue tie-dye shirt purchased from a kiosk in front of a Smithsonian. There just kids on a field trip, I tell myself.

I spent the evening with Run for Something, an organization that spurred after the 2016 election that is training thousands of people to run for office at every level of government. That night alone, they raised a quarter of a million dollars to support their down-ballot races. Speakers such as Cory Booker, Kristin Gillibrand, and Elizabeth Warren (a real who’s who of Presidential hopefuls,) gathered, spoke, and then played cornhole, to support the organization. I spoke with one attendee at a bar afterward about the role of comedy in the political sphere. Sam is in the process of leaving his job as a bureaucrat to start a public access political comedy show based in Washington. “The problem is the people who are having fun don’t understand politics,” and vice versa, so many comediennes, take aim at DC but do it out of New York or Los Angeles. His show will focus on the politicians themselves as well as voting rights, which Sam sees as a fundamental problem in our country.

He considers himself an ally to many marginalized communities but knows that it is a difficult time for allies to find a way to help that is respectful and impactful. “It’s interesting to be a straight white guy and know how much I’m not needed.” Especially in light of the #MeToo movement, he finds it difficult to speak out for the issues he cares about. There is a broad progressive narrative against straight white guys, and those that want to help can often get lumped in, “I don’t know how to bridge that gap,” he tells me solemnly. It’s a shift in the American experience, he sees this highlighted in one of Hillary Clinton’s adages, “America is great because America is good,” she often says, “What is good anymore?” Sam asks in response, “That’s what I’m struggling with, how to be good."