Following Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate, candidates and viewers complained that the moderators failed to ask questions about immigration, climate change and LGBTQ rights while closing with one about the Ellen DeGeneres/President George W. Bush friendship controversy. However, overcoming the ideological differences as they did may be an imperative to solving our most pressing problems.
The story began with the photos and videos of DeGeneres and Bush sitting together at a Dallas Cowboys football game two weeks ago. The viral images led to criticisms from some of her fans. Then came her defense that friendship and kindness should transcend political differences.
“Sorry, until George W. Bush is brought to justice for the crimes of the Iraq War,” actor Mark Ruffalo tweeted, “we can’t even begin to talk about kindness.” Along with that judgment, he included a quote from a Hollywood writer for Vanity Fair that said DeGeneres’s “imagined utopia” about kindness “seems increasingly out of touch with reality.”
Brandt Jean doesn’t think so. He’s the brother of Botham Jean, the man killed by Amber Guyger, an off-duty Dallas police officer who shot him after mistakenly entering his apartment. She was convicted of murder earlier this month.
“If you truly are sorry,” Brandt Jean said after the judge sentenced her to 10 years in prison, “I know I can speak for myself, I forgive you.” He then asked for and got permission from the judge to give Guyger a hug.
“Can Forgiveness Play a Role in Criminal Justice?” was the title of a 2013 story by freelance journalist Paul Tullis. It’s about how 19-year-old Conor McBride shot and killed Margaret Grosmaire, who had been his girlfriend for three years. McBride turned himself in immediately after pulling the trigger. Charged with first-degree murder, he faced either a mandatory life sentence or the death penalty.
Margaret’s parents felt compelled to forgive McBride.
“Before this happened, I loved Conor,” Kate Grosmaire told Tullis. “Conor owed us a debt he could never repay. And releasing him from that debt would release us from expecting that anything in this world could satisfy us.”
Kate Grosmaire tells the full story in her 2016 book titled “Forgiving My Daughter’s Killer: A True Story of Loss, Faith, and Unexpected Grace.” In the months that followed the murder, the couple engaged in a process known as restorative justice. Working with McBride, his parents, the chaplain in the Florida prison system, a director from National Council on Crime and Delinquency in Oakland, and the prosecutor’s office, they helped reduce his sentence to 20 years.
Restorative justice focuses on healing and repairing the harm caused by a criminal act rather than punishment of the offender. To be effective, offenders must take responsibility for their actions. That allows cooperation and mediation to preempt the normally adversarial prosecution and defense.
Even though it’s extremely rare in cases of violent crime, the concepts of Restorative Justice could be applied to President Bush’s disastrous decision to invade Iraq. As a quintessential liberal approach to crime, it holds more promise than the unrealistic expectation that any elected official will be held accountable for the death and destruction the war unleashed. And it might give those who opposed the war a more prominent and respected voice on future matters of war and peace.
Like most Americans, I can’t speak for anyone who lost a loved one there. But seeking healing instead of judgment and punishment would invite Bush and others to accept responsibility for their decision and honestly reflect on the horrors of the war. To begin though, as in the Grosmaire case, forgiveness must be initiated by the those who believe the war was a crime.
“He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love” Martin Luther King Jr. said in his “Strength to Love” sermons.
And as Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, said in response to the question about the friendship between Bush and DeGeneres, “You cannot love your country unless you love your fellow countrymen and women.”
Extending Booker’s point, a barrier to meaningful, lasting progress on all fronts is the entrenched partisan warfare that divides the country. And we can’t end that without embracing King’s message and forgiving each other for the different ways in which we view our world.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector. My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire.
