Some thoughts on yesterday’s events…
I wrote last year about the implosion of the Titan submersible, and the online battles between those who made jokes about the tragedy and those who sought to shame the joke makers. I am old enough to remember kids at school getting into fights in the hallway the day after John Hinckley wounded Ronald Reagan in March, 1981. Some kids expressed the view that it was a shame that the president survived; others expressed outrage that anyone could say such a thing, and the matter was resolved with blows and detentions. Today, we resolve similar arguments with mockings and cancellations and blockings.
We are a people obsessed with telling other people how to feel. Half of social media seems devoted to telling other people that they are disgusted by what should not disgust them, and untroubled by what should upset them. Your empathy is misplaced. You are doing feelings wrong. You are angry at the wrong guy. Weep for this, not for that. Be upset at this, not that. Worry about this, not that.
Today, many of my friends on the left admit to feeling as if yesterday’s assassination attempt was all a sham designed to boost President Trump’s popularity. The heroic fist-pump photo came out too quickly and was too well-composed. Their cynicism matches that of my friends on the right, who believe that January 6 was an orchestrated inside job. (The one constant of all conspiracy theorists is a belief that someone on the other side is incredibly proficient at engineering a charade. Too many people have watched too many television programs featuring too many darkly malevolent — and invariably hyper-competent — villains! )
No one is quite as gullible as the person who affects a world-weary cynicism, declaring everything to be fake. Few are as easily manipulated as the person who believes that they are always being lied to. Suspicion is a useful tool, but a tyrannical and all-consuming master.
Part of living in society is learning that not everyone cries or laughs at the same things. Not everyone operates according to the same standard of evidence, either, and while we can wish that they would, we cannot browbeat or mock or threaten or unfriend them into accepting our priors. The hard task now is finding a way to live alongside people whose tastes, fears, anxieties and understandings of evidence are radically different from our own.
At this point, you may wish to mutter about wanting a grand divorce. Let Blue States go this way and Red that! Let me cut all ties with The Wrong and seek to live alongside The Righteous! When I press you on how exactly that will work politically and economically, you usually say something along the lines of “I don’t know, but I know there’s no other way.” With respect, that’s not a coherent political program. Outrage and exasperation and paranoia can make you long to be surrounded by those who see the world as you do, but believe me, my friend, you are not going to go off and build a fortified self-sufficient commune. (Some of you will try. The history of such attempts is not encouraging.)
We will have to live together, and it is up to each of us to decide what that living will look like. Part of that work of living together is letting go of the fantasy that we are nearing the end of the Great Drama, one in which we too might play a vital part.
In almost every myth, as Joseph Campbell so famously reminded us, there is a moment — near the end — where the hero suddenly faces a setback. His initial hope that the battle was won is shattered. Michael Myers rises from the floor once more. Gollum emerges from the shadows to seize the ring from Frodo. The six-fingered man stabs brave Inigo Montoya in the gut. It is only a temporary delay of an eventual triumph, but it is excruciating. The reader holds their breath. Seconds later, it turns out all right, and the relief is all the sweeter as a result of that final, desperate struggle.
We see ourselves as viewers and participants in a similar narrative, achingly close to a final victory, dangerously near to an unspeakable defeat. It is as if we are perpetually stuck in the opening scene of the fifth and final act — always approaching a decisive climax that never quite arrives.
I will not tell you not to feel afraid, or to feel angry. I will tell you, my readers, what I tell my children. There are times we must fight, even if we despair of the outcome. But how we fight never stops mattering. There is no threat so existential that we get to say, “Enough with that manners nonsense, I’m gonna get down and dirty.” We are defined as much by the weapons we use as by the cause in which we use them. There is no war — certainly not now in America — that requires you to be cruel and to cut off contact with your neighbor. There is no emergency that permissions your absence of charity.
This is not the fifth act of the play. This is not the penultimate scene of the movie. The road ahead is long, and on that journey, courtesy, curiosity, and civility are not luxuries to be discarded. They are air, our water, our food. We cannot go forward without them.
Oh yes - amen.
My daughter Alice postulates that it all went to shit after the Louisiana Purchase - that after that, this country became too big & ungovernable. I’ve certainly thought and said as much - that we are this grand experiment of 50 mini countries, living side-by-side.
And we should be proud of it! There isn’t another nation in the world that is made up of as many territories with distinct and separate priorities, identities and governments (is there Hugo?).
It’s remarkable that we’ve gotten this far!
I do agree with you that our civility is the only thing that carries us forward ….but I also wonder if we are Germany, 1932.