Both Sides

January 24, 2021

In nearly eighty pages of essays over the last four years, you have read my repeated warnings about the politics of demonization and fear, my predictions of violence, and of the inevitable wreckage ahead. You have read that when leaders of a political party can no longer resist the siren song of fealty which accompanies fear – they are carried along by it and ultimately dashed upon the rocks. Or in the prescient words of John F. Kennedy, they ride the tiger and wind up inside. Whichever metaphor, it ends poorly.

There can be no more false moral equivalence after the events of January 6th, 2021, no more decrying of the language of “both sides”. It is shockingly clear: one party embraces the Constitution and rule of law, and the other, authoritarianism. Period.

The deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol pulled back the curtain on the malign and undemocratic intent of those who waved their pocket Constitutions, shook their Bibles, and flew their Gadsden flags in our faces for so long. This is OUR country, they shouted. And we will take it from you by force.

We are left with the irony of witnessing a policeman nearly beaten to death by someone carrying a “Thin Blue Line” flag. We’re left with images of a gallows erected in front of our Capitol, and of armed men with zip ties charging into the Senate chamber. We’re left with the chilling chant of, “Kill Mike Pence” ringing in our ears. With photographs seared on our retinas of enraged and costumed partisans roaming the halls of Congress, their shirts and banners emblazoned with Nazi imagery, Confederate flags, and wild conspiracy theories. With the realization that so many of those who call themselves patriots and real Americans marched beneath distinctly un-American symbols, attempted to assassinate the Speaker of the House, and tried to sell information they stole from her office to Russian intelligence.

Wednesday, January 6th is a day we’ll not soon forget. It is the day when, for most of us, the inevitable path of the Republican party became unmistakably clear. Those who still deny their complicity in the deadly insurrection fool no one. Those who still support this unthinkable attempted coup on American soil should be labeled for what they truly are: domestic terrorists bent on installing a largely white, theocratic, and authoritarian government.

And so we find ourselves in yet another crisis handed off by a Republican administration, left to Democrats to fix; yet this time it isn’t one, but three: a pandemic out of control, an economy on the rocks, and a violent minority within, bent on inciting civil war. Unrepentant, unreconcilable, unreconstructable.

As Juliette Kayyem writes in The Atlantic, “For the past four years, Donald Trump has been playing two roles: one as president, and the other as the rallying point for a coalition of theocrats, internet fantasists, white supremacists, and various other authoritarians who are in no way committed to peaceful transitions of power. Wednesday’s insurrection at the United States Capitol made Trump’s latter role all too clear.”

Today’s crisis of national disunity, however, did not start with Mr. Trump, nor are there any near-term solutions for it in the wake of his departure. Much of our population has voted directly against its own interests for years, vilified the cities and states which funded its roads, bridges, schools, military, and social security checks. Pledged blind loyalty to the very businessmen who closed their factories and shipped their jobs overseas. Fantasized about a Christian rapture and civil war.  And the answer they would give to people who only wished to be treated like human beings? Who only asked not to be killed?  Their answer was to become a seething horde of gun-toting cosplay militiamen, menacing, intimidating, and attacking their fellow citizens.

That some might wave the American flag and profess to love Jesus while threatening others makes them no less a danger. While we have long ignored the openly vocal threat from a white supremacist subset of our population (itself responsible for most domestic terror attacks since 1994), we can neither excuse it nor look past it anymore. And we can no longer tolerate the hate speech by which politicians and pundits fan the flames of hatred… a hatred so brazen, so normalized today in GOP politics, that the Capitol rioters actually recorded themselves carrying out a deadly insurrection and attempted coup against the United States. Consider that for a moment. They really did believe in what they were doing.

There are signs however that the chronic instigation of hatred and anger, or at least the enabling of it by some Republicans, is abating. On Tuesday January 19th, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor that, "The last time the Senate convened, we had just reclaimed the Capitol from violent criminals who tried to stop Congress from doing our duty. The mob was fed lies… they were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government." That McConnell would make such a statement after years of tolerating the chaotic destruction of our democratic norms and institutions is remarkable.

This madness must end. The election that returned even more Republicans to Congress than before is the same one that selected a Democratic Executive.  So, again, which election was rigged? Many GOP stalwarts who were widely admired just weeks before – judges, justices, secretaries, representatives, executives, attorneys general – embraced their sacred Constitutional oaths, carried out their duties as honest public servants, and are now shunned by their party. That they have done so is to their credit; they deserve our thanks and respect, not threats to their lives and families, not a noose.

Finally, we must recognize the fearmongering for what it is. President Joseph R. Biden has been a devoted public servant for nearly a half century; were he a communist, it would be pretty obvious by now. If Democrats craved the penury and depravation of Soviet-style Marxism, they’ve had plenty of opportunity over the years to impose it. Instead, they’ve presided over falling unemployment, waning deficits, and rising equity valuations. Nothing ever came of those endless Benghazi investigations. Obama never came for our guns, never invaded Texas, nor did he round us up in FEMA concentration camps atop Wal Mart stores. There was no basement full of enslaved children waiting to be eaten by Democrats in a DC pizza joint. In fact, there wasn’t even a basement.

As it turns out, the Covid-19 pandemic was not a hoax, there was never any real plan to deal with it, and now nearly half a million of our friends, neighbors, and family are dead.  After all the t-shirts were printed, there was in fact no “Great Awakening” as predicted by the QAnon conspiracy theorists, and President Trump did not declare martial law, nor did he put to death all the Democrats or install himself permanently in office.

And there are no alternative facts.

No politician has taken away your freedom, your liberty, nor your franchise. But they have offered you healthcare, education, and a living wage – things most every other developed country has, but we don’t. And you know which side they’re on.

It’s yours. So don’t hate them for it.

Cross the Bridge

 

September 6, 2020

 

Reckoning with our own shortfalls isn’t easy.  I grew up in a time, and in a place, where prejudice was on a low simmer; it didn’t flare and flash as it does today, though it was always there.  But time and distance, for me, have long since conspired to engender an evolution of mind, and shared experiences an openness of heart.  So to make it clear:

Do not tell me you love me, but not my neighbor.  For we no longer share a definition of love.

Do not say all are equal, but strive to separate.  For we no longer share a definition of equality.

Do not profess piety, but dismiss the less fortunate.  For we no longer share a definition of sanctity.

Do not admonish, but abide another’s cruelty.  For we no longer share a definition of morality.

For too much of my life I did not listen, as I should.  I did not seek to understand, as I should.  And that was easy; my world was easy.  It welcomed me.  Protected me.  Abided my indiscretions, and sent me forward.  Without fear.  Without prejudice.  We all understand now that so many among us cannot say this; yet I, with a hubris shared by too many, willfully disregarded the presence and impact of those guiding hands in my own life.  Willfully disregarded the absence of such hands in the lives of so many others.  It was – and is – difficult to come to terms with this.  But time brought me together with neighbors and colleagues and friends who looked different, loved differently, worshiped in other ways.  Distance from the furnace of those simmering notions cooled old fears and doused old fallacies.  And our ubiquitous connectivity would eventually lay bare, for us all to see, the stark injustices many of us never experienced, the stories we so effortlessly and callously ignored.

We can no longer ignore it.

We now have a particular duty to speak out.  Those like me have a special obligation to extend a hand.  We must do the big things, and the little things; we must be better countrymen to those of different races, sexual orientations, of different origins and creeds.  We must support the policies and causes that improve the lives and experiences of those without our starting line advantages, upbuilding the common good, not just our own.  And we must smile.  Wave.  Speak.  Welcome.  And one day soon, God willing, embrace.

We are all in this together.

We all want to work and to feel pride in our lives, to be valuable and productive.  We all want to feel safe.  We all want to gather with our friends, to enjoy a peaceful home, and to raise happy and healthy children who will become better stewards of our nation than ourselves.

This is our moment; this is our time to cross the bridge, together.  We share these aspirations, and we share this place.  We share our home, the country we love, and have few chances to get it right.  Take them when they come, or they’ll soon be gone.

Cross the bridge.

 

There is a Deep State – but it’s not what you think

 

June 3, 2020

 

As we watch the events of the last week unfolding since George Floyd’s appallingly brutal death in Minneapolis, the breadth and intensity of the public reaction to this latest in a long line of injustices lays bare a truth so obvious in retrospect that we can conclude no less: there is indeed a Deep State.  But it’s not what you think.

Right-wing politicians, pundits, media figures, and their supporters have decried a shadowy “Deep State” for years, some supposed liberal bureaucracy entrenched in our agencies, from land management to law enforcement, an unseen hand directing both national and world events and allegedly shaping our society in progressive ways, an insidious cabal that must be resisted and rooted out.  Oh, were we to have such an effective force in our government!  The things we could accomplish. 

Imagine.

Aside from such a fanciful notion, the absurdity of which is clear to anyone who’s ever lived or worked alongside our federal institutions and their admittedly dedicated civil workforce, the very fact of the protests and demonstrations for these people on whom the greatest injustices of our society have disproportionately fallen flies full in the face of any assertion that some lurking and powerful faction of those very same people even exists.  Had we a Deep State acting as a mendaciously tenebrous force of government, steered by some leftist, minority, globalist dogma, it would surely follow that our poor would be lifted up, our wealthy persecuted, our capitalist and rent-seeking corporations pilfered, and our minorities ever elevated to greater status. 

But of course, none of that has happened.  Even throughout administrations far more friendly to egalitarian social and economic policies, we have managed to roll back programs benefiting the disadvantaged and underserved.  We have allowed wages to lag our cost of living to the very point where many can no longer work and live.  We have enacted tax policies valuing capital so much more highly than labor that our wealth inequality in this country has reached an extreme, the likes of which we have not seen in over a century.  We have dog-whistled and targeted individuals and whole groups of our citizens with overt cruelty and inciteful rhetoric.  We have heckled and berated those who simply wish to be acknowledged, turning our knives inward on our own countrymen and declaring them the enemy.  And yes, we have allowed black men and women to be killed by the State, with apparent impunity, in our streets and even in their very homes.  If there is a liberal Deep State, it is obviously not worth the stale fare served at its annual meeting.

No, the Deep State is far older and more institutional than that.  The Deep State enacted laws denying the franchise to women and minorities.  The Deep State drew red lines and separated God’s children from one another in our communities and schools, in our restaurants and playgrounds.  The Deep State donned its white robes and pointed hoods and marched on Washington.  The Deep State turned its fire hoses and batons on those who only wished to be free.  The Deep State swept aside our priests and parishioners from the very steps of the church with tear gas and riot police.  The Deep State kicked those who to took a humble and anguished knee before it. 

The Deep State took its own knee on the neck of our brother. 

As he cried out, in one final breath of life, for his mother.

Yes, America.  Conspiracies are real.  A conspiracy has been at work against the people of the United States now for almost three decades, a conspiracy to enrage and divide our nation, so that the few can secure their votes and thus secure their own perpetual power and wealth.  It has found fertile ground and succeeded more wildly than its original instigators and collaborators could possibly have imagined.  But having removed the guardrails of our Republic and pranced upon the cliff edge, we have now gone over it together and cannot yet see the bottom. 

Those who have been so craven and reckless with our fragile American experiment must face a reckoning long overdue, or we will all face a darkened and deserted harbor of extinguished liberty.

 

The Language of Truth

 

May 16, 2020

 

You don’t need to use the language of truth.  You don’t have to aspire to the language of truth.  We must, however, at least recognize and value the language of truth.  It is our only way forward.

Sir Francis Bacon, a father of modern science and crafter of the scientific method, once wrote, “Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.”  Oh, to find either today.  Most recognize the higher truth of a divinity, but many no longer seem to recognize the language of truth either as legitimate, or worthwhile, or perhaps even at all. 

As students, we learn to recognize the linguistic patterns and methods of the pursuit of truth.  We learn to recognize credibility in the acknowledgement of observations running counter to anticipated results.  Such candor establishes veracity and objectivity, encouraging a spirit of self-criticism beneficial in the improvement of methods, of knowledge, of understanding, and thus outcomes.

As students, we also learn to emulate and leverage such elevated writing styles, delineating objective and subjective material in a clear and distinct manner; we are taught to support our assertions with credible citations and observable data.  Regrettably, however, those lessons appear largely lost.  Were he our instructor today, Bacon would encourage us to set aside our preconceived assumptions, and teach us to catalog purely neutral and disinterested observations.  That is science, the pursuit of truth.  The zeitgeist’s reactionary derision and dismissal of science for inconvenient or disappointing outcomes is absurdity and folly; the words science and certainty are no more equivalent in their meaning than planting and harvesting – though like the two, one naturally follows the other.

Much of what is read and heard today appears absent any objectivity or acknowledgement of contrary evidence and competing observations; it presents speculation as fact, eschews credible supporting data, and is disappointingly rife with ad hominem.  It is the antithesis of the language of truth, and many now view such language not only as persuasive, but even aspirational. 

This is utter madness.

As our population devolves toward anti-science, the precision and objectivity of scientists, researchers, mathematicians, statisticians, physicians, and other essential professionals continues to fall out of favor with a public no longer valuing nor aspiring to academic achievement.  We are left with a notion that lesser knowledge is more, that willful ignorance is preferable to learned understanding, and thus by logical extension, we draw the conclusion that lower levels of effort yield greater results.  We are all – in this hour of global crisis – witnessing the failure of such assumptions.

These failures form the lessons our children take away.

These failures stain the pages of our history.

So, we can no longer leverage the assets of our academic and scientific communities as we did during the mid-twentieth century, at the apex of American leadership around the globe.  We have scant desire for it.  We cannot do what we did when America was great.  We no longer command those heights.

Instead we are gripped in a collective and cultish cognitive dissonance, unable to distinguish fact from fiction, susceptible to manipulation, placing the entire nation in grave danger.  In consequence, those who recognize the language of truth are ever more disconnected from those who do not, exacerbating our naturally occurring geographic cultural divide.  Other nations whose people do not share such anti-intellectual biases are now actively exploiting our cultural (and resultingly systemic) weaknesses, as are many of the very citizens we have together entrusted to steer our ship of state. 

A lee shore awaits us all.

"What is truth?" - Pontius Pilate

 

April 10, 2020

 

As we approach the close of Lent, this particular work, painted in the late nineteenth century, should speak to us all.  Nikolai Ge’s ‘Quod Est Veritas?’ possesses an unmistakably cynical and sinister undertone; the earthen color palate, the blood-red of the cloak, the pale light cast upon Pilate as he stands so cavalierly before Christ, the look on Jesus' haggard face - one part curiosity, one part pity, one part resignation - it strikes a chord.  It is the cold light of truth against a dark shadow cast, exposing a disappointing and yet predictable turn of events.

This image is indeed seen though a familiar lens by so many in this centennial moment of challenge to our humanity and decency.  Pilate knows what is right; he wrestles internally with what he recognizes in his heart to be the truth, but ultimately washes his hands of the matter, abdicating responsibility.  Jesus understands what Pilate will do - what he must do - and his visage leaves little doubt.

The Irony of the Moment

 

 

March 07, 2020

 

So here we are.  At the mercy of the unknown, facing an elusive and unseen opponent.  The irony of the moment is that we, in a country so adept at braggadocio, have only managed to achieve a tiny fraction of the testing volume of a nation ravaged with poverty and war in living memory.  By the first week in March, South Korea had performed over 140,000 tests for COVID-19, compared to fewer than 2,000 in the United States, which had botched its own rollout of a small number and by nearly all accounts still lacks the immediate capacity to do substantially more.  We couldn’t even muster the proper gear or procedures for repatriating our own citizens exposed overseas.  And now we can only guess at the scope of our problem.  Could be more – or could be less – than we fear.  We don’t know.

It’s pretty rich to spend so many years trashing government and education, only to suddenly find ourselves at their mercy.  The irony of the moment is that we, in a country which has for too long eschewed the value and veracity of science and the urgency of public access to healthcare, now face an enemy against which these are our most effective weapons.  We have, in some bewildering fit of masochistic national obstinance, willfully denied ourselves both the intellectual ordinance and policy defenses to combat such a virulent invader, one which our public health officials have repeatedly warned us was on the horizon.  Instead we cut their funding and built mansions on the Potomac.

While this is not about national pride – far from it – it is nevertheless enormously embarrassing.  And not only are our comic ineptitude and misplaced hubris on full display during this global public health crisis, in stark contrast to the swift responses of other countries, but now we actually risk being a weak link in the chain, forced to rely on a community containment strategy of social distancing and self-quarantine instead of the aggressive therapeutic and programmatic public interventions we see in other nations – nations we are so often quick to dismiss.  And forced to do it with a population that can neither afford to see a doctor nor miss a day or work.

There was a time in our history when we could do better.  There was a time when we were capable of meeting the challenges of the day.  When we did not turn to chronically outraged televangelist politicians to hurl feckless tweetstorms at our opponents, but rather to scientists and engineers, to physicians, to mathematicians, to machinists and master craftsmen to solve problems.  Problems they solved through careful study, through thoughtful research, and with calculated precision and preparation.  If we are ever to regain the high-water mark of American achievement, we will not do it with empty rhetoric.  We will not do it by vilifying those who are actually equipped to defend us in times of emergency.  We will not do it by declaring academics and intellectuals the enemy of the people.  We will not do it by lining gilded pockets while handing rusted pikes to the guardians of our gates. 

We’re not the first to try this.  History provides many such examples and they always fail.  Our nation’s inability to rise to this occasion is an unwelcome alarm bell for us all, and the irony of the moment is that we really are capable of better.

 

Tears for a Dog

 

February 25, 2020

 

I did not expect you today.  Stirrings of coffee, of clocks and machines, of hastening demands drawing nearer the doorway; yet one mis-click and you are there on my screen, my old companion now spirited out of reach, and yet you have come to remind me.

I did not expect you today.  Your form was not your own but the shared image of a friend’s grief, your deep round eyes mirrored in an unfamiliar coat yet somehow the same, full of adoration and longing for a touch.  Pleading for an embrace.

I did not expect you today.  But a spring bursts forth from within, tears for a dog I didn’t even know, as I struggle with your absence once more.  A silent heave.  An insuppressible sob.  Nothing is left to contain the pain.  It has been months, even years, but now it is yesterday.  It is only a moment ago.  The unbounded energy you gave of yourself in youth, the infectious peace you imparted in your settled age, and the unceasing love you granted us throughout is with me again, yet just beyond reach… it is a hole unfilled and no photograph can cover it. 

The strength of this bond cannot be articulated, cannot be fully understood.  Perhaps it is your ever-present simplicity and sincerity, or perhaps your clarifying reflection of what we wish ourselves to be.  In your heart there is boundless capacity for joy; in you there is no malice, only bliss.  There is no regret, only anticipation.  There is no despair, only ebullience.  There is only hope.  Only love. 

My friend shares his grief on a scattered map of timelines, but does he truly understand what he shares?  Does he know how many grieve for him and with him as well, and that it – somehow – is a gift?  The lives of those with whom we weep are forever altered, forever separated from those who do not.  Which of you sheds no tears?  Our loyal friends now gone are that which is truly best in us, that which shines so bright in some, yet lies still buried within so many.  The embrace of a paw, the nose on a shoulder, the tail incessant, these bind us and stand us apart from those who will not feel, from those who will not wrap their arms around one so helpless, so trusting, so devoted.  From those who will not wrap their arms around one another.   

There is no choice here; I embracing the grief we share together, yet alone, reminds me of you and of the people you would want us to be.

I did not expect you today.  But on that cold winter morning as I stood at the bridge and watched you go, I knew you’d never wander far.