You know, just the thing for a humanities major in a Bukowski phase.

One section of the poem has always stuck with me and is useful for today: “But, my friends…/there is so much hate These Days/that hatred is just love with a chip on its shoulder.”

No matter whether you think any of what’s happening is a good idea, there is no mistaking the fact that this period in American history is definitely going to be assigned a proper noun by the future. Though we can’t know at this point whether These Days will be named for the crisis, the response, or the recovery, it’s certainly going to be named something.

And, since trying to talk about the crisis is like trying to describe the details of a housefire from the inside, and who knows what the recovery will look like, it’s best to start with thinking about the response. In particular, the response of those of us who count ourselves as part of the opposition.

When the news broke, I cannot be the only one who thought, “Well, I guess refusing to support Harris because she wouldn’t add ‘from the river to the sea’ to her campaign website didn’t really work out … ” Similarly with the various anecdotes about Trump supporters suffering from the effects of his administrative paroxysms: I know I’m not the only one who has thought “good.” Afterall, what’s a little schadenfreude between strangers?

But we have to be careful about how we are reacting to the harms and ironies being visited upon our neighbors. One of the principal diseases of our political situation is a widespread withering away of solidarity within the American community. Some have even argued, there may not even be much of an “American community” anymore. And satisfying though it may be to see people suffering from the consequences of their own short-sightedness, we must bear in mind that lack of foresight is not a moral failing.

Of course, it is definitely a moral failing to see the horrifying consequences of one’s lack of foresight and to continue pursuing the same course. But if we hope, as we should, that we can someday put this country back together, we are going to have to figure out a way to leave the door open as wide as we can.

Nothing will calcify someone in a wrongheaded course of action quite like judgment for pursuing a wrongheaded course of action. And, in fact, it’s more than fair to say that the rising tendency towards fastidious moralizing and scolding among American cultural progressives is a major contributing factor to the emotional timbre of Trump’s support.

I am reminded of a story Pete Buttigieg told about bringing Chasten to church with him in South Bend. One of the older parishioners approached Pete and said that his “friend was very nice.” As he tells the story, he felt stuck in that moment with a choice: he could correct and chastise her for mischaracterizing his partner as a mere “friend;” or he could see this as a tentative first step in the right direction of acceptance of his “non-traditional” relationship and merely say “thank you.”

He describes this in the terms of language the church uses to talk about “calling out” bad behavior, versus “calling in” the wayward to the community of love and righteousness. I’m always suspicious of any claim to righteousness, but I do know that if we ever hope to get from the crisis of These Days to the recovery, we are going to have to make sure that our response is informed by an honest desire to call everyone back into the American community.