Pandemic postcard #27: The book of Ruth

My mom loved the old saying that "you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." As a kid, this didn't make a lot of sense to me; I'd wonder why I would want to catch flies at all. I was more interested in lightning bugs and praying mantises and caterpillars--critters I could catch, watch a while, and release. (Unless I forgot the release part, which I did once in a while. Sorry, bugs.)

Eventually, I understood the saying as my mother intended it: You can influence more people by being pleasant and kind than by being bitter and sour. My parents lived that idea. Mom and Dad were both easy-going, low-drama people for the most part. They had a strong religious faith, but they also revered reason, and they weren't afraid to change their minds. They were Eisenhower Republicans from the Land of Lincoln until Vietnam and Watergate made them reconsider their loyalty to the GOP. 

 

I've been thinking about Mom and Dad a lot this week as we mourn a famous woman of their generation who shared my mom's first name. Ruth Bader Ginsburg also shared my parents' devotion to the common good and to finding common ground. The late justice was rightly hailed as a liberal lioness, yet she was no firebrand. When, as a young litigator for the American Civil Liberties Union, she brought cases before the then-all-male Supreme Court, Ginsburg didn't frame them in terms of "women's rights" but of equal rights. And although she supported a woman's right to end a pregnancy, she favored legislative reforms to safeguard access to reproductive healthcare. She correctly foretold how the sweeping Roe v. Wade decision would ensure pitched battles over the issue for decades to come.

 

One of the RBG quotes I've seen most often this week is this reminder: "Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you." As David Cole, current national legal director for the ACLU, wrote this week in The New York Review of Books, "Her dissents did not aim barbs at the majority, but instead coolly, painstakingly, and effectively dissected the ruling’s errors, and often placed her emphasis on areas of agreement and avenues the majority decision left open." She was able to dissent without being disagreeable, and she famously was close friends with her opposite on the high court, Antonin Scalia. 

 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg consistently chose honey over vinegar. When she died a week ago just as Jews prepared to observe the High Holy Days, Jewish theologians noted that the timing made her a Tzadik, a person of great righteousness. I'm not sure what this makes Mitch McConnell, who refused to take up President Barack Obama's nomination of a Supreme Court justice more than seven months before the 2016 election, yet who now seeks to swiftly confirm a third lifetime appointment for a man who lost the popular vote four years ago and seems likely to lose it again on November 3. Calling on another religious concept, I'd like to think that karma will eventually have an answer for the likes of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, but I'm not sure where that leaves us this fall.

 

"The problem for America, as for many other democracies at this point in history, is this is not an even match," Robert Reich wrote in The Guardian this week. "Those who fight for power will bend or break rules to give themselves every advantage. Those who fight for principle are at an inherent disadvantage because bending or breaking rules undermines the very ideals they seek to uphold."

 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg became an icon, but it wasn't a role she chose. Like Thurgood Marshall, her life and work were grounded in principle as she fought to make sure everyone's equality was recognized under the law. Is there still time to make this election about that fundamental (if yet-unrealized) American value? And if nakedly unchecked authoritarian power prevails--even as it is being dismissed by a majority of voters, many of whom are already casting ballots--what happens next? 

 

Our news feeds suggest we're about to find out. I miss my thoughtful and moderate parents. Part of me wishes they were still here to see what they would make of this circus--and another part is grateful they didn't live long enough to experience it--but their legacy of valuing love over fear remains strong with me as I seek to chart a course of nuance, reflection, and hope in these darkening autumn days. 

 

I also take heart remembering that my parents were people who were never afraid nor ashamed to change their minds. Just as my folks eventually turned against Nixon, I am sure others like them have finally seen enough to put country over party.

 

Rest in Power, Justice Ginsburg, and thanks for all you did--and the way you did it.