Working as a lawyer, you quickly become accustomed to conflict. In everything that you do, there is someone on the other side being paid to stop you from doing what your client wants.
It’s difficult to keep emotions out of the job, and I think if lawyers were honest, all of us have let our emotions get the better of us at one time or another. I know I have.
In my work here as a public defender in Churchill County I’m constantly going against the Churchill County District Attorney’s Office. It’s my job. And it’s their job to be against me.
I’m confident that there are times when they think I am a slimy defense attorney who is trying to keep a guilty person out of jail. And there are times where I feel that their office is using big government power to unfairly prosecute a Churchill County citizen.
But, at the end of the day, both they, and I, are people with jobs to do. And while we have been adversarial, we don’t have to be acrimonious. When I step back from the conflict, I see an office full of honest lawyers who work hard to make this county a better place. Even if I disagree with their methods sometimes, I can’t find fault in their morality or integrity.
I hope they can say the same about me.
The reason I’m writing this now is because our political discourse no longer leaves room for adversarial, but civil, interactions. Political ideology now almost requires a hatred for “the other side,” whichever side that may be.
I had hoped that following the 2024 election cycle, the temperature in these conversations would come down. But, it has not. It has escalated. To violence even.
I don’t know that I have a solution. But, as a lawyer, I know that it is possible to take an adversarial position to someone without being acrimonious toward them. It’s my hope that we can use that example in our political dialogue to promote enthusiastic, but civil, political rhetoric.
It is my hope that we remember that no matter what “side” we find ourselves on, we remember that on the other “side” there are good people with families and jobs who are just trying to make this country a better place, even if we disagree with how they are trying to do that.
It is my hope that we remember that before all, we are Americans. We are lucky to live in the greatest country in the world. Let us not let political disagreements divide ourselves so much that we jeopardize that.
God bless America.
Wright Noel
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