Henry Abbott

After spending ten weeks working in the oppressive heat and humidity of D.C., I was more than ready to go back home to New Hampshire, a place with friends, family, beaches, mountains, a “live free or die” attitude and a state monopoly on liquor sales.

I returned home to find most of my friends still working 9–5 for a few more weeks, so I spent my days cutting down trees, chopping the trees and then stacking the wood. Meanwhile, I spent time canvassing for the New Hampshire Democrats (who Bowdoin’s campus squirrels frequently rival in terms of intellectual heft).

For those who have never canvassed, it’s remarkably simple: You knock on doors and try to convince voters to support your candidate or position. After exchanging pleasantries and asking if they had a minute to chat, I’d start by asking voters their thoughts on the upcoming presidential election and what issues mattered to them. While the issues we talked about were all over the map (and sometimes entirely off the map—I had multiple conversations about Benghazi that I still don’t quite understand), almost every conversation would, at some point or another, eventually arrive at the economy.

I’d start by laying out the two candidates’ dueling positions. Trump, I’d explain, wants to raise tariffs on all foreign goods by 10–20 percent, which would raise prices on all goods for everyone. Trump then wants to use that money to cut taxes for corporations. On the other hand, Harris wants to raise taxes on corporations and use that money to give first-time home buyers a $25,000 tax credit. It’s pretty simple: Trump wants to take money from Americans and give it to corporations. Harris wants to take money from corporations and give it to Americans.

After I finished my spiel, some would agree, some would ask follow-ups, but others would respond, “I just don’t think that’s true.” So, I’d try to understand what they thought wasn’t true about the economic positions of the candidates I provided to them. Did they believe that Trump hadn’t repeatedly called for a tax on imports, or that more taxes will raise prices?

And so, befuddled, I’d move on to another topic they cared about, typically immigration. Trump opposed the deeply conservative border bill because he wanted to campaign on the issue as opposed to solving it. I’d hear the same refrain, “I just don’t think that’s true.” Okay, but what part do you think isn’t true, the border bill being conservative or all the Republican senators explaining that Trump told them to kill the bill?

I’d move on to another issue, the Affordable Care Act, and when that didn’t work, energy, unions, crime, policing or international relations. However, as repeated conversations made clear, we each had fundamentally different basic facts. The reality I described was as equally foreign to those voters as was the reality they described back to me. We would stand, together, on their front step, each in our separate realities.

But if we each had our own reality, at some point we must have split from the shared reality, right? But when did the split occur, 2020 and Covid? What about Obama and the Tea Party? Farther back yet, the 1960s and the civil rights movement? But how far back? I’m fairly confident we didn’t inhabit a shared reality during the civil war. Have we ever truly shared the same reality as the rest of our neighbors? I’m not sure anymore. I’m not sure we have ever all truly operated from the same basic set of principles and drawn our conclusions from them.

What we need isn’t some new idea, but an old one: grace. We need to live with grace towards those who don’t see the world the same way we do. We ought to be open to those we fundamentally disagree with and treat them as human beings worthy of respect, not instantaneous condemnation. As former President Barack Obama said, “Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us.”

After all, I stood on the porches of people who told me they thought I was a radical snowflake Marxist-Leninist leftist who hated America, but they still listened to me. So, I returned the favor and listened to them. I’m pretty sure I didn’t change many minds, but I’d like to think I planted a seed that not everyone who believes differently from them is a horrible human being.

Grace means even if we disagree, we still understand that we all share this particular affliction known as the human condition. Judge Learned Hand, in a famous speech long forgotten, described the spirit of liberty as “the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.” Liberty means the freedom to be intellectually humble. True freedom allows the chance to lower our defenses so we can treat others with grace and vice versa.

Throughout my time in D.C., and back in New Hampshire, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this all—clearly. But our nation is still divided, and we are facing questions of profound importance about its future. This fall, I’ll be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, but that doesn’t mean I think everyone who supports Donald Trump and J.D. Vance must be instantaneously condemned. (Though I do believe Trump is an emotionally insecure narcissistic billionaire who only cares about himself. Two things can be true at the same time.) But I also think we need to live with more grace towards others in our lives. Living with grace won’t change the world overnight—nothing can, but it’s a start, and it’s one I’ll happily take.

Sam Borne is a member of the Class of 2026.