I watch the Fareed Zakaria GPS show every Sunday morning. Religiously. This morning he opened the show with a hopeful message, similar to the article I wrote a few days ago, expressing optimism during one of the darkest hours in the US history, stating he immigrated to the US during the turbulent 1970s because he saw the resilience of the US system and he would do it again today.

He then moved onto the next segment with a question to his first guest Colin Powell: Is this a moment for accountability or healing? Colin Powell, whose reputation has been forever tarnished by the role he played in the Iraq War and rightfully so in my opinion, answered without any hesitation: This is a moment for accountability. Ezra Klein, a well-known journalist and another guest on the show, later reiterated the message and took it a step further to say that not only should the criminals who raided Capitol Hill be fully punished but we should also remember the real villains are those who fooled them, the Republican enablers like Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz.

My heart sank just a little. Not because I don’t think the outlaws should be punished, nor do I support any of these Republicans, but because I am concerned that the elites, feeling somewhat validated and vindicated, are now too eager to declare “I told you so”, further alienating the exact folks that they need to reach out to and build unity with. I do believe accountability is called for, but I also believe timing is critical. After four years of extreme divisiveness, this moment of agreement is precious and ephemeral. It could be either the launchpad for healing and unity, or it could be the cornerstone of finger pointing and reprehension only to evoke further conflict. Just imagine if you have a colleague who has been chronically late. You have been disgusted by his behavior and you may even have called him out that his behavior is unacceptable. But the moment he is fired, are you going to tell him “I told you so”, or are you going to resist that temptation and simply extend some empathy? He may deserve to be fired. He may never see eye-to-eye with you. He may never be your friend. But empathy at a moment of crisis is what makes us human. And even if empathy is too much to ask for, the least we can do is to give that colleague a moment of silence, some room for self-reflection, hoping that he would come out at the other end with a new understanding.

I have been appalled by Trump’s outrageous behaviors and wish this tainted episode in American history never ever happened, but the fact is it did, and for a good reason. There is real angst in America when the rich gets astronomically richer and the middle class see the quality of their lives diminish overtime. What Trump did was to divert the attention from this real problem to inciting a cultural war. It was exactly the wrong solution to the problem, but it does not negate the problem itself. The Trump voters are not inherently evil – they just want their voices to be heard. No one did, except for Trump, who unfortunately saw this as an opportunity to further his own interests. The Trump voters were fooled, but that does not make them evil.

All right… some of them may be true racists and bigots… but if we are truly progressive, we should also acknowledge the fact that we all have a darkness inside us, a force that could potentially turn us into the “bad” guys... you just need to look at history to see that. Many Nazis were normal people, decent citizens before they became Nazis. Nobody could have imagined they were capable of such atrocity, but all it took was the right (or the wrong) circumstances. The infamous Stanford Prison Experiment proved just that – When a group of college students were assigned to be either “prisoners” or “guards” by just the flip of a coin, the guards immediately started to abuse the prisoners, their acts so hideous that the experiment had to be halted within six days. I’m not getting into a pointless nature vs. nurture argument here (of course there is an element of both), I’m merely saying we should not overestimate our own virtues while underestimating human vulnerability when it comes to mistakes made by others.

If we start with that basic assumption that human behaviors are situational, at least to some extent, then we could focus on why a particular situation has led to the undesirable consequences and how we might change the situation to get to the desired results. We might start to see the Republican senators are not abnormally spineless for not “standing up to Trump”, they are, in certain ways, “doing their job” by representing the views of their constituents, and if you and I were in Mitch McConnell’s shoes, we may not have acted that differently. We might start to see that prioritizing the survival of their political career over doing the right thing is not a uniquely Republican fault, but a systemic issue that has rendered our political system dysfunctional. We might also see putting “racist” “misogynist” labels on people indiscriminately will only compel those who have made mistakes but in their heart of hearts have no real racist or misogynist intentions into defenders of the real racists and misogynists. 

I have not been a big fan of Joe Biden. Nothing about him is that extraordinary. He is just an ordinary Joe who had to suffer through a lot of personal misfortunes and somehow survived. There is a certain sadness to his story that is somewhat of a downer. But maybe this is the right moment for Joe. In my last article I compared what the US is going through to the “seven stages of grief”. My diagnosis was we are still in the early phases of shock and denial. Maybe this moment calls for a Healer in Chief like Joe, who has been humbled by enough tragedy to understand humanity. His instincts are right on – this is a moment for healing and unity. I hope others see that too.