Letter from Waldo Johnston

Johnston: No More Limericks

Some of you will be pleased and others may be disappointed that I will not be submitting any more limericks to “The Freeman’s Journal.” Those of you who read my first entries will recall that my goals were to raise critical issues in a readable way in hopes of encouraging each of us to question our understanding of contentious issues in our national debates, to put our own convictions on hold even for a moment, and to consider other points of view in respectful discussions with those holding alternate opinions to reduce our damaging national divide.

I anticipated that some readers would be uncomfortable with the questions I raised, would think I was promoting my own agenda, and would call my limericks “harsh, prejudicial, and disruptive” and I was right. But I also realized that these sentiments, hurtful as they were, allowed people with all views to come out of the shadows and share them.

My own experience demonstrated this yesterday when I realized my neighbors, like several of you, found my limericks offensive and said so. As those of you who know me well, I don’t harbor ill will toward anyone, so I immediately visited them to acknowledge that expressing complex issues in five lines invites misunderstanding, to explain my real views, and to seek a revival of our friendship.

To my delight, for the first time in the five years we have been neighbors, we expressed our respective opinions on topics long considered taboo with honesty and intensity. Sometimes we were uncomfortable and sometimes we laughed. Often, we disagreed but sometimes we found common ground. We ended up surprised that we had broached these volatile topics and not only survived, but with our friendship now more honest and stronger, and our minds expanded. If such exchanges could happen to us, they could, and must, happen to everyone.

This matter is urgent. Those of you familiar with Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” will recall that central to his 13 rules is to divide the populace to allow those in power to effect social change. As I see it, we are carrying out his instructions to the letter, and we are being manipulated by stealthy individuals and entities such as the media, our politicians, our enemies, and even our Hobbesian natures. It is critical that we counter this insidious movement by “binding up the nation’s wounds,” which can only be achieved by voluntarily abandoning our respective echo chambers, even for a moment, and listening to each other.

Waldo Johnston
Vero Beach, Florida and Cooperstown