I do.

Well, not for everything that’s wrong, but for one specific American obsession that’s causing us no end of trouble at this moment. That obsession is our unbridled romance with “The Tell-Off.”

Let me back up. I am a huge fan of Norman Lear, and the above statement is mostly tongue-in-cheek. The late, great Mr. Lear brought us, beginning with All in the Family, entertainment that challenged our deepest-held beliefs and forced us to consider the topics that nice people just didn’t talk about. He gave us the Jeffersons, Sanford and Son and Good Times, changing as he did the way the majority of America saw an important minority group– onewhose history was just as “American” as that of countless families of White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. He gave us Maude and One Day At a Time, making us take a hard look at the roles of women in America. He founded People for the American Way to stand up to the Moral Majority, and he shared with me a great love for the Declaration of Independence.

But, if you watch enough of his shows, you see something happen again and again: The Tell-off. Many, if not most, of the episodes climaxed with one of the main characters, dripping with moral outrage, wreaking verbal havoc on the episode’s “big bad,” making their opponent look small. It was immensely satisfying. Some of those beats were brilliant: Edith finally telling Archie to “Stifle!” is the standout, but I also loved George Jefferson’s response to a boorish client who told him that, because he stood up for his maid Florence, he could kiss their proposed contract goodbye. “I ain’t gonna tell you what you can kiss,” quoth George.

Classic 70s put-down.

The archetypal Tell-off had a profound effect on the behavior of my generation, and thus on the behavior of the those that followed. We worshiped those who brought utter defeat to their enemies with one well-placed wisecrack. We practiced on our friends, our enemies, our parents, our teachers…

Oops. It didn’t have the same effect in real life, did it? The Tell-off got us in a lot of trouble, in fact. But that was not the fault of the Art of the Tell-off. That was just the result of us being surrounded by idiots. If the real world wasn’t welcoming to our art, then the real world needed to adapt.

Of course, that wasn’t gonna happen; but, to this day, we remain resolute. We’ll take the emotional satisfaction of embarrassing, belittling, even frightening our opponent over the mealy-mouthed solution of trying to find common ground with him. It makes us feel better. I makes us look strong.

It makes us bullies.

The endgame of personal interaction is not to conquer. It is to maintain diplomatic relations. Help and be helped. Maybe even encourage growth and receive encouragement in return. That endgame is only accomplished via a meeting of the minds.

Ultimately, making people feel small does not bring about a meeting of the minds.

I thought of this example as I read a lot of social media posts objecting to the Trump Administration’s efforts to eliminate D.E.I. programs at the Federal, State and Local level. Why, a lot of my friends are asking, would anyone want to get rid of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion? It’s just there to make society more fair!

(Sidebar: When you describe any politically connected initiative with the opening words, “It’s just,” I guarantee you that whatever else you say is going to be incorrect. No initiative in American public policy is “just” anything. It’s at least four things:

• The thing it claims to be (Let’s stop global terrorism!)
• The thing that goes along for the ride (And let’s stop Meth while we’re at it!)
• The financial benefits to the privileged few (Military Industrial Complex, anyone?)
• The unanticipated outcomes (I can’t buy Sudafed at the drug store except during pharmacy hours.)

There is no “just.” So if I say we need to stop giving CPR to the Patriot Act, it’s not because I’ve forgotten the attacks on the World Trade Center, it’s because Congress lost the damn plot when they passed it the first time.)

Some (maybe only a sliver) of D.E.I.’s proponents shot it in the foot from the get-go. They let the rhetoric around it turn into moral finger-pointing–a Tell-off. They told us our culture was blighted from birth, that we were colonizers, that racsim was our destiny, not our choice. “White Fragility” might be an interesting premise for a sociology treatise, but it’s almost impossible to dress it up in enough lipstick to make it not sound like white guilt. Similarly, declaiming that any law which does not advance the cause of African Americans is an inherently racist law is not going to win a majority of supporters… outside of the universities and the T.V. and film Studios.

The sad thing is that I don’t believe D.E.I. was necessarily intended to put those ideas over. I believe it was just trying to make us celebrate our differences and maybe root out some negative behaviors that we didn’t know were there. Just like the Patriot Act was meant only to secure Americans against attacks like the ones on the World Trade Center in 2001. But, like the Patriot Act, the D.E.I. initiative also turned into an opportunity for some people to get rich, and it was mis-used by a few as an excuse to tell off their opponents.

So D.E.I. became very unpopular, and, as I’m sure we’ve all seen, became something of a scapegoat for other ills.

America tends to course correct in the same way a 15 1/2 year old driver does—by turning the wheel WAY to the other side. And that’s what’s happening to D.E.I. programs today. It’s sad for those who meant well and those who could have benefitted, but it was inevitable because no one likes to be told they’re a sinner.

Of course, there have been sins in our nation’s past, and slavery is an easy candidate for chief among them. We’ve been trying to repent of that sin and correct its consequences since the 1860s. D.E.I. was, in part, a component of that effort. But an observation by Pullitzer Prize-winning author and poet Stephen Vincent Benet talks about the early stages of that effort, and why it didn’t work so well:

“The old plantation system of the South was wrecked and the South impoverished by the long years of struggle. If Lincoln had lived, there is no doubt that the whole problem of reconstruction and bringing the Southern states back into the Union would have been more wisely and sanely handled. Instead, it was clumsily handled, on the whole, by vindictive men who wanted to punish the South more than they wanted a great country.”

This quote introduces a chapter in James Branch Cabell’s collection of essays on his native Virginia, Let Me Lie. Search engines unassisted by A.I. are useless for, well, searching; and Google’s Leo A.I. made a real hash of trying to find a primary source for the quote. I’m still looking, but I believe Cabell that Benet said it… somewhere.

It still rings true today. We don’t need to punish each other. We need to heal.

We don’t have an obvious Lincoln in charge right now, but I still believe that his signature qualities might help us heal. They’d be more effective than any government program, and certainly more effective than an endless series of tell-offs. We need honesty, we need malice toward none and charity for all, and we need a steadfast belief that the United States can survive, can heal, can thrive because of the brilliance of its design.

And I think we’ve done enough telling off… for now.