It’s hard to hate up close

That’s what Michelle Obama says. “It’s hard to hate up close.” And she’s right—for most of us.

The photo here was taken by Eleanor Mueller, a reporter covering Congress for Semafor (she’s @Eleanor_Mueller on X). You’ve probably seen this picture. That’s Minnesota Senator Tina Smith, a Democrat, confronting Utah Senator Mike Lee, a Republican, about Lee’s social media posts in the wake of the shootings in Minnesota over the weekend.

In those posts, Senator Lee assumed the persona of so many social media bullies, making light of the horrific killings in a tiresome and sadly familiar effort to garner likes from strangers and attaboys from other trolls. He suggested that Marxists and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz were somehow to blame. Both claims are ludicrous and false.

Senator Smith, a friend of the murdered State Rep. Melissa Hortman, told reporters later, “I wanted him to know how much pain that caused me and the other people in my state, and I think around the country, who think that this was brutal attack.”

Mike Lee was once a serious man. A fine lawyer, the son of a great lawyer, he was the leader of a last-ditch effort to block Donald Trump from getting the Republican Party’s nomination at the convention back in 2016. Now he abases himself for Trump at every turn. Charlie Sykes recounts the sorry tale of Senator Lee’s descent here).

But I don’t really want to talk about Mike Lee. I want to talk about us.

Take one more look at Eleanor Mueller’s photo. Senator Smith looks so vulnerable there, as she extends her hands and seeks to communicate her pain and the pain of others. And there’s Senator Lee, his hands withdrawn and stuffed in his pockets.

We are now being bludgeoned on a daily basis in our civic lives by deliberate cruelty, in the making of policy and in the execution of policy, in social media and in some mass media, in the halls of our Congress itself. The intoxicating force of this cruelty has deranged many of our fellow Americans; they have been given permission, from the heights of power, to become the worst version of themselves. A viciousness is loose in the land.

The toll all this is taking on people is tremendous. Many Americans—and not just Democrats and those on the left—are exhausted, disheartened, scared. It feels like the Mike Lees of the world are winning. But they aren’t.

The best-kept secret in American life is this: Most people are still normal.

They don’t get gleeful and giddy at the sight of immigrants, women and children among them, getting rousted out of their homes and rounded up for deportation to God-knows-where. (This includes many Trump supporters, like Joe Rogan.)

They don’t want federal troops sent into cities or federal disaster relief withheld simply because the people in those places elected Democratic officials and the president is angry at them.

They don’t want a “national divorce” or civil war or whatever crackpottery is on offer from the ranters and ragers on the far right this week.

They don’t want an all-powerful president who tramples our laws and traditions and defies the Supreme Court.

People are still normal. And I can offer a little first-hand testimony about this.

When I was (essentially) fired last week by ABC News, I had all the usual, awful emotions. Still do, at times. You find out who your friends are.

I live in Frederick County, MD, closer to Gettysburg, PA, than to downtown Washington, DC. It’s a purple area; plenty of Trump supporters, plenty of Trump opponents. And I have been so moved and gratified by the genuine support and kindnesses shown to me and my family by neighbors and friends on both sides of our country’s Great Divide.

The father of one of my son’s friends, a softball teammate of mine just out of the Army who voted for Trump, is checking in on us regularly. The mom of one of my daughter’s travel softball teammates, staunchly for Trump, was one of the first to reach out to my wife (and never underestimate the strength and solidarity of travel softball moms). Across the teams and neighborhoods around here, we are being lifted up by what you might call a bipartisan coalition of decency. I can’t tell you how much it means to us.

It’s hard to hate up close. That’s what Senator Smith was trying to show Senator Lee. That’s the truth our neighbors and friends are living out right now.

And that’s what we must remember in these troubled times. For every Mike Lee, there are a lot more normal people who don’t buy into the cruelty and viciousness. They aren’t going to become Democrats, of course. But they are normal. Across that great divide, there are friends to be made.