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.

 

A Tree in the Road

 

February 08, 2020

 

Our reversal in velocity as we approached the Chain Bridge was sudden and had been a long time coming.  I’d driven past this particular tree almost daily for more than twenty years, vine covered and gnarled like so many witnesses to season upon season of human history, fraught with its unsettling progress.  On this bright and blustery February day that familiar old face came down after all those years, just five car lengths ahead.

Such times yield momentary confusion; we’re all used to fallen trees, but also to warning lights and detours and hardhats erasing the damage done.  And yet yesterday there were none.  We were in it, facing at that moment an immediacy of choices almost always made for us.  A few turned back.  A few simply sat, frozen in place.  A few beats, a few U-turns, and then from my wife came the hale words, “we should help.”  She quickly grabbed the wheel, taking charge of our daughter and piloting our car as I headed down the hill toward that old familiar face by the lane.

I was not the first.  A few were in the road, trudging steadily back and forth, branches in hand.  Much of the smaller debris of my old friend was already removed by the time I arrived, evidenced solely by bits of bark in the wake of the winter wind.  And there he sat now alone, leafless vines hovering just above his trunk, waiting to be returned to his resting place beneath the canopy.  More appeared, but none spoke a word.  We pulled together with almost a hush, and the trunk began to move.  Bespoke silk suits of K Street and walking shoes from Maine found shared need and common purpose, shoulder to shoulder, clearing the way for ourselves and those to follow.  

We are at such a national moment.  

That which lies in our path took many years to fall, and while it is natural to want to turn back, and easy to simply stop, to sit, and to wait for others to come along and clear the road before us, this is not the path of Americans.  Our intrinsically self-reliant yet somehow collaborative spirit compels us to face our challengers together, side by side, understanding we do it not only for ourselves, but for our children and our neighbors and our shared beliefs.

It will be difficult to forget this particular afternoon in the Potomac River gorge; not for its fleeting spectacle, but for its wordless efficacy.  For its unifying purposefulness.  For its reminder that despite prevailing ill winds of malevolent grievance, like those that toppled our tired old gnarled totem, we can still put our arms around the tree, and we are still capable of putting our arms around one another and working together in pursuit of what lies beyond the lane.

No one said anything as we turned to go, but it somehow didn’t seem right.  The words, “thanks everyone” emerged a bit awkwardly from my lips as I brushed off and started back up the hill.  All turned and smiled, to man and woman, and a few cheerful words came back as we headed to our cars.  My family and I don’t know any of those people.  But I am grateful to them, grateful for them, and grateful for you, my friends and fellow countrymen. 

May a tree fall in your path today.

 

Send Me Back

 

August 26, 2019

 

I have awakened in a country I do not recognize, surrounded by people I do not know.  It’s a jarring sensation, the sudden loss of something so core to one’s belief system, so innate in one’s sense of security and familiarity.  Lost is any sense that our American citizenship shields us from mercurial and vindictive strongmen, from spiraling political whims, from the willful incitement and unleashing of our more violent inclinations… and so relegated to a distant and dreamlike state is the comfort of believing you will never be forced to flee your native land.  All of that is gone. 

Certain to follow is that stale rejoinder, “If you don’t like it, leave.”  And so please (as the chant goes) send me back. 

Send me back.

Each new day in which we are forced to endure such unrelenting assaults on our intelligence, such sustained injury to on our senses of decency and shame… each new day brings me closer to wanting out.  So, send me back to that America where we all viewed one another as countrymen, not as enemies.  Send me back to that America where we all worked together, across the aisle, to tackle and to overcome our mutual obstacles.  Send me back to that America where we aspired to decency and professionalism, to a higher intellect, and to social grace.  Send me back to that America where we at least pretended to understand that racism and bigotry were considered wrong, and not to be brazenly displayed and shouted at one another in anger.  Not to be broadcast on the nightly news.  Not to be placed behind the wheel of a car, or the trigger of the Almighty and Revered AR-15.

Perhaps that America was never more than aspirational – but at least we aspired to it.

We are no longer the people we claimed to be, if we ever truly were.  Many of our fellow citizens, especially of color, have labored under no such illusions; they have never enjoyed that innate sense of belonging and trust so many of us had taken for granted.  It is impossible for a white male to fully appreciate what they have long endured, but today it is as if at least a small window has been opened to such feelings.  And the view, even from here, is terrible. 

Empathy however seems in short supply. 

Our questions, increasingly laden with bewildered sadness, are most often met with anger and dismissive ad hominem; these are the tools of modern debate for the voters who matter.  It’s been said that everyone believes he or she is the good guy.  That we must therefore acknowledge the legitimacy and altruism of both sides.  Both sides.  In the spirit of objectivity, we must always lend credence and equal weight to those who express opposing views to our own.  And so we have tried.  Did the schoolyard bully who kicked you in the teeth and stole your lunch money believe he was the good guy?  Did the adults and other children who stood idly by, or perhaps cheered him on?  Were they the good guys?  How, exactly, did they square that with the lessons those same adults pounded into all of us, together at Sunday School? 

Oh, were you not the one kicked in the teeth?  Which one were you, then?

We all have a choice to make.  Do what is right.  Silence is complicity.  That bully now occupies your highest office, surrounded by a predictably sycophantic crowd, and that’s the America to which so many of us have awakened: unfamiliar, unwelcoming, malevolent.  Having been assured our entire lives that such a vicious kid never really makes it… well, we’ve all been disabused of such farcical notions.  The bully has made it; he has come out on top, and it is an ill omen indeed, for all of us, that so many of the Sunday School teachers find joy and comfort in his ascent.

Send me back.

 

The Choice We Can Make

 

May 21, 2019

 

It’s curious that the personal trait so many seem to hold most dear these days – race – is the one they had zero role in choosing.  No one selects it.  No one creates it.  One’s ability even to claim it is due to decisions made wholly by another.  And yet… so many people cling to a haphazard (and Damocletian) mix of physical, racial, and cultural identifiers as if any credit for their history, merit, aptitude, or worth can somehow be ascribed to their own doing.  It cannot.

We can’t make that choice.

We simply do not determine how we launch out of the gates and into this world.  No one gives us a form to fill out ahead of time or hands us a set of swatches from which to select, nor do we take some test to see if we qualify for one racial makeup or the other.  I did not choose to be a white American male.  Such as any might be given, I can take zero credit for it.  The likelihood is higher, seems to me, that I might have been born a Honduran boy, or maybe a small girl in Tanzania.  Or Asian, statistically.  But by some turn of events here we are.  After the better portion of a half century here it strikes me as incongruous and odd, upon reflection, that any of us should look down on one another for something which is completely beyond one’s control.  Our fellow travelers in this life are making the best of who they are, where they were born, how they were raised, the path on which they found themselves; and honestly, the one you least expect might very well be standing there beside me or you on the metro train, looking at us and quietly thanking heaven they didn’t wind up like that.  Probably are.

Give the people around you a break.  We’re all stuck here with one another, trying to do the best we can, trying to raise our families, trying to do a decent job of things, and generally wishing to be a good neighbor.  We don’t always look the same or start out on the same path, so the best we can do is give one another a helping hand or welcomed shoulder along the way. 

That’s a choice we can make.

 

Strongmen

 

May 1, 2019

 

We have seen populist strongmen win democratic elections before.  With disdain and from the comfort of our redoubt of freedom, prosperity, and order, we have witnessed it in other nations.   We have witnessed their nationalist attacks on civility, their singling out of minority groups for blame and resentments, their constant impugning of perceived enemies and the free press, their greed and corruption displayed openly and defiantly, producing little more than feckless protest.  We have watched them sneer while they peddle brazen, disprovable lies and dare defiance, their increasingly cultish followers convinced to cover their eyes and slavishly imagine a world only as their leader portrays it. 

We have seen all of these things before.

It has never ended well. 

It has never ended peacefully.

It has ended with destruction. 

It has ended with death, and with fleeing masses.

Eventually, these straw houses collapse under the weight of their own bloviating ineptitude, the increasingly intolerable daily struggles faced by their sycophantic followers, the erosion of real conditions on the ground that ultimately lead to collapse.  Puppet legislators and appointees, their hands in the pockets of both those who set them on this path and those who foolishly and naively elected them, know well that when the tables turn, and the house collapses, they will be buried with it – and thus they will do anything to forestall their ruin, and to avoid it.  It is why we are witnessing people say things we never believed we’d hear, repeating blatant lies, defending the indefensible.  These people know they are lying.  They know that we know they are lying.  But their fear of the strongman and his slavishly loyal followers perpetuates our national theatre of the absurd. 

All of this is happening today in the United States, God help us. 

In America we do not fear our presidents; yet now it seems we do.  This is the most deeply troubling and deeply un-American thing I have ever witnessed in our politics.  In a nation of laws, no man is to be feared, but we are apparently no longer a nation of laws.  The minority which has captured power, and is doing everything it can to avoid losing it, knows that if it does, its house will be in ruin.  And with it will fall storied careers and once sterling reputations, lost will be so many lofty places of privilege and power.  Perhaps, in some cases, even freedom.  And so they will do almost anything to forestall it. 

They will not be the first to fall.  It will be those in their charge.

First, you will lose your freedom.  It is unlikely you will even notice until it is too late.  Next, you will lose your prosperity.  This has been happening for years, but it has not yet become intolerable.  Finally, when it does, you will lose your stability and order.  Your institutions, and the reliable and predictable structure of your society, will begin to collapse.

It is dusk in America.  The dark of night is rapidly approaching.  Our nation of laws, our shining city on the hill, our place of hope and refuge for the oppressed, will soon be irretrievably lost, at least to us.  What will it take for our children to reclaim it?