“I think prej­u­dice is the stu­pid­est thing on the plan­et,” said come­di­an Lewis Black many years ago.  “There are so many per­fect­ly valid rea­sons to hate peo­ple on an indi­vid­ual basis.”*  And I’ll be the first to admit that there are some self-absorbed, atten­tion-crav­ing, ener­gy-sap­ping, val­i­da­tion-seek­ing, con­ver­sa­tion-sab­o­tag­ing, advan­tage-tak­ing, smelly-food-eat­ing indi­vid­u­als on the plan­et** whose inher­ent worth and dig­ni­ty I find it dif­fi­cult to recall over the course of rou­tine inter­ac­tions.  But cat­a­logu­ing the indi­vid­ual short­com­ings of oth­ers (not to dis­count the puerile delight it brings me) is a pret­ty inef­fi­cient way to wreak dis­cord among human­i­ty, espe­cial­ly when com­pared to the crys­talline phe­nom­e­non known to gram­mar­i­ans as the “sub­stan­tive adjec­tive.”

We use them every day—and no, they’re not all bad.  It real­ly is con­ve­nient to refer to “greens” rather than ram­bling on about “plant-based foods high in fiber, vit­a­mins, and min­er­als, whose chloro­plas­ts tend to give them a green col­or when fresh.”  But recent­ly (yeah, I’m slow) I’ve start­ed to notice how easy it is to pre­tend the adjec­tive we’ve “sub­stan­tivized” is the only impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tic of what­ev­er it is we’re describ­ing.  (It’s this ten­den­cy that’s gen­tly lam­pooned by din­ing-room come­di­ans who order mint ice cream so they can say they’re “eat­ing their greens.”)

I noticed it first, I think, when a col­league I’d enjoyed work­ing with for a long time made an off­hand remark indi­cat­ing that she felt dif­fer­ent­ly than I did about some hot-but­ton issue or anoth­er.  Intel­lec­tu­al­ly, I knew that this new fac­toid was sim­ply some­thing “else” I knew about her—a drop in the buck­et of her identity—but I spent a sur­pris­ing amount of men­tal ener­gy try­ing not to let all that I knew (and liked) about her plum­met into a bot­tom­less pit of oth­er­ness: “Oh, she’s one of those?  Hor­ror!”

So not too long ago I did some­thing that, frankly, I was a lit­tle ashamed of.  I took the politi­cian mag­nets off my car.

The shame, I think, came from the same part of me that had been afraid to put the mag­nets on the car to begin with.  My per­son­al polit­i­cal lean­ings aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the most pop­u­lar ones in the neigh­bor­hoods I spend most of my time in, so it felt like a real act of courage to make a pub­lic state­ment in sup­port of, let’s say, Pat Spin­net, the fron­trun­ning can­di­date for the Pianistar­i­an Par­ty.  “There are bound to be oth­er Pianistar­i­ans out there,” I rea­soned, “and they need to know they’re not alone.

“And fur­ther­more,” con­tin­ued the voice in my head, “I’m such an intel­li­gent, com­pas­sion­ate, well-respect­ed indi­vid­ual that when peo­ple see my ‘Spin­net For Leader’ bumper stick­er, they’ll know that Can­di­date Spin­net is worth vot­ing for, and they’ll rethink what­ev­er oth­er, less enlight­ened vote they had intend­ed on cast­ing.”

In oth­er words, I had cre­at­ed a nar­ra­tive in which any­one whose gaze fell upon the rear pan­el of my vehi­cle would be com­pelled to embrace the ideals of pro­gres­sive the­ol­o­gy, erad­i­cate income inequal­i­ty, eschew racism….  You know, before the light turned.

But that’s not how these things work.

Dur­ing the last pres­i­den­tial elec­tion I vol­un­teered for a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date, vis­it­ing vot­ers who had sym­pa­thet­ic vot­ing his­to­ries and encour­ag­ing them to make it to the polls.  I signed up so I could feel like I was doing my part for democ­ra­cy.  But instead, I felt kin­da slimy: why were we only encour­ag­ing some res­i­dents to vote?

In the pre­vi­ous pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, I had vol­un­teered for a non­par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion who worked to make sure that all cit­i­zens knew their rights and had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote.  True, the orga­ni­za­tion sent us vol­un­teers to neigh­bor­hoods where vot­er sup­pres­sion was sta­tis­ti­cal­ly higher—and true, high­er vot­er turnout does tend to favor a par­tic­u­lar demo­graph­ic at the expense of anoth­er.  But there was a uni­ver­sal­i­ty, a wel­com­ing, to my work with Elec­tion Pro­tec­tion that gave me a sense of integri­ty, of jus­tice, and (don’t let this get out) deep patriotism—and I missed all of that when I cam­paigned for Can­di­date X.

Now, I’ve done a lit­tle bit of research on the can­di­dates, and I do have my favorites, of course.  And in con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple I know (and yes, this includes friends of my per­son­al Face­book page) I’m not ter­ri­bly hes­i­tant to express very spe­cif­ic polit­i­cal views.  But cam­paign bumper stick­ers, yard signs, and the like are a bit like polit­i­cal “dri­ve-bys”: we throw out our own beliefs in a way that pre­vents feed­back, insist­ing that oth­ers agree or dis­agree, sub­scribe or reject, iden­ti­fy or repu­di­ate.  There’s no room for nuance, no oppor­tu­ni­ty for con­ver­sa­tion, no chance of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion; we’re forced to label each oth­er sub­stan­tive­ly as “Repub­li­can” or “Demo­c­rat,” “Con­ser­v­a­tive” or “Lib­er­al,” “Friend” or “Foe.”  (Remem­ber that “green” mint ice cream?)

There’s too much hate in this world.  And hurl­ing epi­thets at one anoth­er is worse than use­less at solv­ing that.  What would the world start to look like if, instead of see­ing noth­ing but red and blue (and what­ev­er) T‑shirts and bumper stick­ers, we took the time to see the fright­ened, lov­able human beings hid­ing behind them?

*Or words to this effect. It’s been a while.
**Not you, dear.  You’re per­fect.