The kindness of strangers

I've been playing in the public arenas of politics and commentary, of columns and television and campaigns, for long enough not to pretend that it was all warm and fuzzy back then. It was mean and sometimes scary. But mostly not. Even during the "hottest" times, we mostly managed to separate the professional from the personal. We disagreed; we fought, even. But hate was the exception. And that has changed. The internet is a cesspool of vicious diatribes and personal assaults. That is the nature of discourse. Republican influencers slash at each other, much less at those they oppose, who slash right back. Social media has changed the way we engage in discourse, and no one has done more to coarsen it than its primary user, President Donald Trump. It's ugly out there, which is how a lot of people explain their reluctance to participate in public debate. Or, even worse, in the desperate search for relevance in a world in which only the extreme is relevant, people go for the extreme. I have been attacked for 40 years for coming out as a rape victim and advocating for victims' rights. I have been attacked for being a pro-choice liberal feminist, a Clinton defender. I have been attacked for the causes I champion and the clients I represent. I'm used to it, sort of, and I don't play for the extremes that get you attention. But I still don't always read my mail. I read it this week. Last week, I wrote a personal column about my daughter's struggle with long COVID and the frustration and helplessness I feel as the HHS office is closed and funding is cut. And strangers reached out to me, they read the column, they told me they prayed for my daughter and me, they offered hope. It reminded me and perhaps like me, you need reminding, of the miracle of the internet in its ability to bring comfort from community, to create community, to communicate meaningfully. This is how we touch each other and if it doesn't have the physical satisfaction of a hug, it brings at least its virtual equivalent. I don't often quote Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, but he spoke out last Wednesday, appropriately bemoaning the decline of civil discourse and the danger that decline poses for the institutions of civil society. "I don't know how you bring back (civility) in the current environment with social media and name-calling and all people accusing each other of various things and animus. I don't know how you do that. And I fear that that's going to infect the institutions such as the court and judges, etc., in the future, because these are the young people who will be in these jobs." Justice Thomas spoke at the University of Texas at Austin. Social media certainly didn't invent name-calling and invective, but it amplifies it, simplifies it, rewards it and thus encourages even more extreme versions. But when I say social media, don't I really mean us? We can blame it all on the algorithms, but they're mostly our mirrors. They may reward the worst, but is that all that is stopping us from being better? Still, what I get a glimpse of sometimes is what we are also capable of, what social media enables and even simplifies, which is the random acts of kindness, the outreach of strangers, the sense of connection that makes us human. And that, perhaps perversely in retrospect, first attracted me to politics. It was not the debate as much as that sense of common purpose. And connection. So to those who wrote to me this week, or kept us in your prayers, I say thank you. To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website.