The closer I look, less I see things clearly. What was once easily put into the categories of right or wrong, quickly becomes both/and. The 36th President, Lyndon B Johnson, is such a great example of this.
LBJ was a tremendous leader — gave us incredible bills that helped change everything from civil rights to environmental protection to early childhood education. The story he wanted told of his legacy was that he loved all people of this country, and wanted to make a great society. And in many ways, he was wildly successful at meeting that goal. So many of the things that make the US a wonderful place to live, are here because of legislation that LBJ made happen.
The legacy that is not included in his museums and national parks, are the stories about his sexual harassment, his extramarital affairs, his vulgarities and regular use of the “n” word. He was lewd, crude, a racist, and often slimy. While he won the presidency with the widest popular vote in modern history, he boosted the number of Americans who fought and died in Vietnam and was highly unpopular as a result and didn’t seek a second term.
He was great except for all the places where he wasn’t. It’s so easy to tell just one side of the story — the good or the bad depending on what side agrees with you more. Learning about LBJ is such a great reminder that everything and everyone has multiple sides to the story, that everything and everyone are a both/and.
Seeing this both/and about LBJ and his politics has lessons for me that are applicable to my thoughts about current events as well.
T picked up a card in town after our tour of the ranch that had a quote from MLK Jr. On it:
“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
Maybe when we stop hating our enemies, the mental energy that frees up will help us to imagine new ways of all being together on this planet.