This summer, as if out of nowhere, what seemed a sure path to a Democratic win in November’s presidential election has suddenly been undermined by the entire liberal media – TV pundits, pollsters, and even moderate newspapers like the New York Times and The Washington Post- challenging Joe Biden’s candidacy because of one poor debate performance. With important party figures like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff worried that “Biden can’t win,” the Democratic unity crucial to prevent the prospect of a second Trump presidency weakened. Progressives were panicking, liberals felt doomed. Now with Vice-President Kamala Harris on the scene, the stakes are different. The political game has changed, but, in all likelihood, not the way it is played.
How does non-violent discourse come into such a scenario? Can the methods that Merton, Gandhi, and King propose be applied to this current crisis?
First, let’s take a closer look at what is meant by “non-violent discourse,” how Merton, Gandhi, and King approached the issues, and how this is relevant to our situation today.
Non-violence in politics: What it means and why it matters
Long before today’s awareness of how destructive tendencies are built into social systems, the American Trappist monk and peace activist Thomas Merton wrote “The problem of violence is not the problem of a few rioters and rebels, but the problem of a whole structure which is outwardly ordered and respectable, and inwardly ridden by psychopathic obsessions and delusions.”
Should you get into a heated argument with someone possessed by such delusions, you are both likely to express yourselves in a power/over style of discourse, which is the opposite of a power/with conversation. “Non-violence, ideally speaking, does not try to overcome the adversary by winning over him, but to turn him from an adversary into a collaborator by winning him over.”
Merton draws from the nonviolent philosophies of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., who propose a radical change from despising your enemies to approaching them open-heartedly.
For Gandhi, “Nonviolence is a power which can be wielded equally by all – children, young men, and women or grown-up people, provided they have a living faith in the God of Love and have therefore equal love for all.”
For all three of these great twentieth-century activists, the difficult tasks of nonviolence can only be accomplished by recourse to a higher power. Although secular adherents of their methods might not follow any divinity or established religion, they can still be empowered in their nonviolent work by being faithful to personally chosen values like justice, equality, and compassion.
In his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community, King argued against the bourgeoning Black Power movement’s turn to violent tactics. These are useless, he insists, against white people who control America’s economic, military, and political levers.
Even worse, by resorting to violence you do moral harm to yourself: “I am concerned that Negroes achieve full status as citizens and as human beings here in the United States. But I am also concerned about our moral uprightness and the health of our souls. . . like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. . .Time is cluttered with the wreckage of individuals and communities that surrendered to hatred and violence.”
On the personal or psychological level, violence produces moral harm; by sticking to your principles, however, you keep your psyche healthy. In Non-Violent Communication, Michael Rosenberg describes violence in discourse:
“ If ‘violent’ means acting in ways that result in hurt or harm, then much of how we communicate – judging others, bullying, having racial bias, blaming, finger pointing, discriminating, speaking without listening, criticizing others or ourselves, name-calling, reacting when angry, using political rhetoric, being defensive or judging who’s ‘good/bad’ or what’s ’right/wrong’ with people – could indeed be called violent communication.”
As I recently noted here, James Baldwin wrote his novels and essays from a deeply felt experience of white hatred. Nevertheless, he advised his beloved nephew that “The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand/and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.” (see also
There is no question that American Black citizens have made some progress since Baldwin wrote, especially now that demographics are moving in their favor. The problem is that white racial hatred in the form of Christian Nationalism and Trump’s MAGA movement channels rage that the United States is transitioning to a majority BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) nation. This takes the form of a vicious racism and misogyny in the Republican Party, as can be seen in its adherence to the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 program to replace democracy with authoritarianism, a phenomenon which seems duplicated in the rise of European Right-Wing parties raging against immigration.
Related Articles: Political Polarization in America: The Way Forward? | Losing All Optimism, Almost | Life Won’t Be Easy for NATO’s New Boss | Abuse of Power in a World at Risk
How “non-violent discourse” could be effectively used in this coming election: Messages to young voters, Democrats and Trumpist friends
For Teens and People of Reproductive Age: I engaged in a senior (high school) to senior (ancient of days) dialogue last winter. When I brought up my interest in politics these newly registered eighteen-year-olds treated it as if it were one of my hobbies and one that they did not happen to share. They might vote for Cornell West, they said – a third party candidate who embodied their values- or, both Biden and Trump being (equally? Similarly?) unattractive, they might not vote at all.
Keeping a scolding tone out of my voice I asked “What if you don’t vote and wake up the next morning with Trump as president? Did you know that the Republicans have vowed to ban contraception along with abortion?” That seemed to get their attention.
For Freaked-Out Fellow Democrats: Many of my friends have thrown up their hands, turned off their TVs, and refused to read the newspaper: “I can’t and won’t “think about it,” they tell me: “stop talking about politics! I can’t stand to hear any more.”
“I can understand how you feel,” I reply,” It does seem hopeless. My problem is that if I don’t find something to do to help elect Biden, I won’t be able to look at myself in the mirror the morning after Trump is elected.”
“What do you mean do,” they mourn. “It is all too overwhelming!” First, thinking it might buck them up to get involved, I sent them MSNBC commentator Joy Reid’s eloquent exhortation to ”Keep Hitler Out of the Whitehouse: As far as what to do, I said that the simplest thing is to stand up and witness, with a Biden/Harris yard sign or by wearing a button. Then, of course, vote, and urge everyone they know to vote too.
For Trumpist Friends and Neighbors: The idea is to open conversations with Trumpists along non-violent lines, meaning not in an argumentative but in a respectful, reasoned tone of voice.
Here’s the gospel on that, according to Rachel Maddow. On the day after Thanksgiving 2023, she and Chris Hayes sat down for a live taping at City Hall in NY of his podcast called Why is This Happening.
Maddow’s core advice is neither intellectual nor political but (strikingly for a famously intellectual political wonk) markedly personal. She recounts how she has moved to rural Massachusetts with her wife:
“living in rural western New England…it has taught me is that politics is only one thing in any one person’s life. There is, I believe, something very important that you can do in your non-political life that can improve your political life: have face to face relationships with people that are everything besides politics. Know all the dimensions of your neighbors. . .where I live now, Even committed news junkies also have bears getting into their trash; talk to them about the bears!” (bolding added)
The idea is that, once you share a common problem with Trumpists, they might feel safe enough with you to peek out of their MAGA bubble. In other words, you seem to be a human being, not an enemy, and also care about the marauding bears. Maybe they will go so far as to consider that other things you stand for might (just might, that is one tightly sealed bubble) be worth considering. If all else fails, you have at least benefited from doing moral good to your psyche by standing by your values.
The principal value I draw upon to work up my courage for actual conversations about politics is that every individual on earth has worth and dignity and is, thus, worthy of respect; or, if you follow classic non-violent philosophy, of love. Then, I figure out some way to open the conversation, like asking them what their concerns are in the upcoming election and then listening. Maybe there will be an opening when I can insert my greatest concerns. Mine, for example, are the rule of law and the preservation of American democracy, values that many Republicans and Conservatives share.
Alas, I flubbed it royally. I asked my neighbor about his concerns in the upcoming election. What came out of the mouth of this lovely man, with whom I have chatted and exchanged Christmas cookies for years, was pure locked-in-the-bubble Trumpism: accusations against immigrants, praise for what economic life was like in Trump’s term – the whole nine MAGA yards. I found myself arguing angrily, accusing Trump of Hitlerism in promoting Fascism. We concluded at loggerheads, me begging him to google the 2025 project and him begging me not to call Trump Hitler.
Fortunately. I have a chance to salvage our relationship in our equivalent of Rachel Maddow’s bears: in an exchange we had about the migrants who pick cherries in Northern Michigan, he said that he hadn’t had any Traverse City Cherries in years, and I promised to bring him some.
Upshot
Two nights after that, a young man took a shot at Former President Trump. To my shame, when I saw the blood on his ear my first thought was “Oh, goody!” This reaction horrified me so much that I prayed for forgiveness. Soon after, a friend posted a reminder that harboring such thoughts makes us every bit as culpable as those who overtly advocate political violence.
Then the Republicans accused liberals of fomenting this abhorrent act by calling Trump Hitler and found Biden was culpable when he said his campaign should “put a bullseye” on him. Had I let myself down by posting Joy Reid’s “Don’t Put Hitler Back in the Whitehouse” speech? I had clearly goaded my neighbor into turning even more of a deaf ear to me: The Hitler accusation doesn’t work to keep communications open in the kind of bipartisan discourse I aspire to.
Non-violence, as King once noted, is tough to carry out, going, as it does, against basic human nature. If I want to learn how to converse non-violently, I will have to accept the fact that we humans are, morally, a work in progress, essentially flawed, in whom the humility of reasonable speech is an extremely difficult habit to cultivate.
The thing about human beings is that we are given to setting lofty goals that we consistently fail to reach. In The Pursuit of Happiness, Jeffry Rosen reminds us that the founders of the United States understood happiness to mean the pursuit of virtues, an aspirational process rather than a final accomplishment.
Rosen notes that one of Thomas Jefferson’s favorite sources of wisdom was Cicero, who held that we are kept from achieving a “happy life” by “perturbations of the mind,” by which he meant unreasonable emotions like the intensity and anger stirred up when we want to “win” an argument. It is (somewhat?) encouraging to note that Rosen brings up all kinds of examples from the lives of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin in which they failed to live up to the virtues they aspired to, picking themselves up off the floor time after time to pursue them once again.
“This is going to be a weird year,” said Rachel Maddow in that late November podcast: “This is going to be a very difficult, frightening year. It doesn’t come to every generation, but it has come to us this time, this year.”
Let’s hope we find the strength to keep on pursuing our American democratic values by means of non-violent, respectful discourse, no matter how many times we fall on our faces.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com — In the Cover Photo: Former President of the United States Donald Trump speaking with attendees at the 2022 Student Action Summit at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida (left). U.S. Senator Kamala Harris speaking with attendees at the 2019 National Forum on Wages and Working People hosted by the Center for the American Progress Action Fund and the SEIU at the Enclave in Las Vegas, Nevada (right). Cover Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore.
