On February 3, 2025, I sent Sen. Roger Wicker, my senator, the senior senator from Mississippi, an urgent email. It read in part: “Sen. Wicker, PLEASE stand up to the President! Shutting down USAID invites China to move into the countries we will abandon. … Your silence hastens the end of America. PLEASE keep informed of what Trump is doing. And ACT!”
Boy, was I mad. Since then, I have sent Sen. Wicker dozens of emails pleading with him, as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to stand up to the president. He has seniority. He is 75. He served in the House 12 years and has held his Senate seat for 19. He doesn’t run again until 2030. Donald Trump can’t hurt him politically.
Richard Conville
Wicker responded with a note bearing his Washington office letterhead. In the first paragraph, he thanked me for sharing my concerns and looked forward to receiving the results of a Trump-ordered audit of USAID. In the second paragraph he outlined the mission of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The third paragraph went like this: “Regarding the issue you raise, I have long believed that USAID is an important way to combat the efforts of our fiercest adversaries, who scheme to gain influence in developing nations around the world. On top of that, providing care to the most vulnerable is the right thing to do. It is critical that we ensure continuity of lifesaving programs while eliminating any waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars. I am eager to see an audit of the agency.”
The closing paragraph began with: “Be assured I will continue to advocate for diplomatic and humanitarian efforts that help keep our country safe.”
Nice words for a constituent letter to be sure, but beyond that, Crickets! Silence. No standing up to the president.
Sen. Wicker has chosen to be a team player in the Republican Party. He has not publicly separated himself from the president’s foolish ways. He may believe what he wrote in his letter to me about valuing the work of USAID or he may not. For all I know, he may admire what Trump did to the agency and to our standing in the world, and he may not believe those actions constitute a threat to national security. I don’t know. And I ask myself, “How could he see the world so differently than I do?”
Seventeenth century French philosopher Blaise Pascal captured this common human experience of difference in his famous aphorism: “What is truth on one side of the Pyrenees is error on the other.” The Pyrenees are the mountain chain that separates France from Spain. Simply put, where one lives influences one’s beliefs.
“Growing into adulthood is a process of coming to terms with the conventional wisdom we were born into.”
“Where” can be taken to mean place or geography, time period or the people we interact with. From all that, we get our sense of conventional wisdom, that is, what one “just knows,” or what one “just does,” unreflectively or automatically.
My grandfather’s former tenants still worked for him on the farm after the tenant system faded away. When it was dinner time, they ate what we ate, but they ate in the kitchen or on the back porch. To me as a 10-year-old sitting at the dining room table, that was simply the way things were: conventional wisdom, I would say now, looking back.
For the most part, we do not choose which side of the Pyrenees we live on — where we were born, when in history we entered the world and who are the people surrounding us. Many if not most of us remain in that cocoon all our lives. It’s hard to enlarge one’s nurturing bubble. It takes deep curiosity and courage and hard work. For many, growing into adulthood is a process of coming to terms with the conventional wisdom we were born into: shedding the impediments and nurturing the valuable parts.
I have found it useful to remind myself of these (to me, self-evident) facts of life whenever I meet someone “from the other side of the Pyrenees,” like Sen. Wicker. They are in their bubble, but so am I in my own bubble. I have found that sometimes it is worth the effort to cross over the mountains and feel what it’s like on the other side. But that’s not easy either.
Richard Conville is professor emeritus of communication studies and service learning at the University of Southern Mississippi and a longtime resident of Hattiesburg where he is a member of University Baptist Church.