These past four years the daily news has made my blood boil and my blood pressure rise. One way I’ve maintained my sanity is to watch YouTube clips of Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee. These talented folks helped me to cry less and laugh more. They do a brilliant job of calling attention to all that’s amiss in our world. I am grateful that they have carried me through some dark days.

However, as time has passed, my anger about hypocrisy and corruption has tempted me to develop a simmering contempt for those with whom I deeply disagree. It’s easy to transition from laughing about what is contemptable behavior to feeling contempt for whole groups of people.

To be honest, contempt does provide momentary satisfaction. By putting someone else down, we feel smarter. Weview ourselves as a superior. When we post a snarky comment on FaceBook, Twitter or Instagram, we buy into the illusion that we have righted a wrong. We are convinced we’ve accomplished a noble task, but the truth is that we haven’t.

Feeling and/or showing contempt accomplishes nothing. Well, nothing good.

Dr. John Gottman is an expert on contempt. By filming eye movements, after just a few minutes of observing a couple, he can predict with 90% accuracy how likely they are to get divorced. He watches for and then counts eye rolls, which he identifies as quantifiable evidence of contempt.  Simply put: the more eye rolling, the higher the amount of contempt. The higher the amount of contempt, the greater the likelihood of divorce. Gottman’s research demonstrates that contempt is a predictor of the dissolution of a relationship.

After Trump won in 2016, Joy Reid said, “We are not, in some fundamental ways, a single country. The map of that vast red swatch of states and rural counties that voted for Trump and the blue coastal edges and scattered urban areas where Clinton won are a pictograph of mutual contempt.”

Not much has changed. The current map tracking the 2020 election results looks remarkably similar. The results of our presidential election show that our nation is split in two. Both in word and deed, many members of each side are dripping with contempt for one another. Contempt is reductionist; we view one aspect of a person then regard it as representative of the whole person being, which makes it easier to dismiss the person all together. Contempt is a judgment about the worth of another human. When we feel contempt, we are more likely to dehumanize others and permanently severe relationships.

In Rwanda, in 1994, between 500,000 and 800,000 people were killed over a period of 100 days. Some experts point to contempt as one of the many factors that led to this genocide.*  Prior to the slaughter, Hutu print media and radio broadcasts referred to the Tutsis, Twa and moderate Hutus in denigrating and dehumanizing terms. This laid the groundwork for the contempt with which the Hutus viewed their Tutsi neighbors, relatives and former friends. They began to regard these people as less than human, people whose lives did not matter, therefore, a people who could be and should be slaughtered.

This is an extreme example. Yet, we can learn from the Rwandan experience. We all need to take a good hard look at how we view each other. If our country keeps on this course of contempt, we will self-destruct.

Laughter is good medicine for my bruised soul. I definitely want to laugh. For the sake of my mental health, I plan to keep watching those comedians. Over the coming four years, I hope our new administration will stand firm on righting wrongs and will not compromise on issues where compromise would be immoral. At the same time, I hope our nation can shed contempt so that true healing can begin.