To the Editor:
There’s a movie showing now that offers, by example, an antidote to what ails this country. It stars Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers or “Mr. Rogers” as many of us would know him from his children’s show.
This dramatized story echoes an earlier documentary on the soft-spoken neighbor who always opened his show by slipping on a cardigan sweater and slippers. He was, astoundingly, the same man off-screen as on. The slow, gentle manner of speaking was not contrived for his show but a way to tread thoughtfully and gently as he engaged and encouraged people of all ages.
From his own childhood he carried scars that made him aware of trouble directed his way and anger and hurt in himself. His was the most human of reactions to that history…he didn’t want others to suffer as he did.
His message was that no one was perfect but everyone was important and could benefit by understanding themselves better, considering and appreciating others. He simplified his speech but not his insights and spoke honestly at all times respecting even his youngest visitors to think things over for themselves, find positive ways to deal with their feelings.
Such healing requires absolute trust and that responsibility shaped his integrity. Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers, care, honesty, and dedication to others…all of one piece. Justifiably, he was hailed in a skeptically-inclined magazine article as a genuine American hero.
His life begs the question, “Why should that standard be beyond us on a personal level and for the people we select, as our best, to represent us in government?”
If troubled children primed to lash out and disillusioned adults awash in cynicism were his target audience how different from that are we as a nation? How does President Trump’s approach rate for healing our country?
No matter how hard we squint, I think we all know Donald Trump does not feel obligated to speak the truth. His approach is more aligned with expediency than integrity.
His empathy is also not as principled as “everyone is important.” He tends to favor “winners” (by any means), the well-heeled, autocrats, and mostly of course, himself (because he checks all those boxes).
Mr. Rogers’ guiding star was people at peace with themselves and one another.
And here is Donald Trump’s gravest failing and abuse of power. Harmony does not recruit him an ego-feeding army of loyal followers. To achieve that he has goaded people — good decent people primarily, already hurting economically or socially — and told them to resent liberals who are characterized as looking down their noses at them.
He repeatedly brands his scapegoats as “elites” and thereby drives home a potent wedge of wounded self-respect into our nation. It has worked. We are well and truly split. Issues are no longer thought through, they are simply assigned the labels of “ours” or “theirs” and the battlelines are drawn.
Getting a voting bloc to look the other way with wrongdoing or forget their principles is easy peasy when people will die to maintain their sense of worth.
Anorexics will starve themselves to death for it. It is the cruelest and most invisible type of manipulation. It’s use defines how Donald Trump stands in relation to Fred Rogers. Can you say, “Anti-hero?"
