What Happens When a Tradition Dies?

Trump and Biden at last night's Presidential Debate

It’s way too early, as I write, to declare a winner in the first 2020 Presidential debate. Scholars, fact-checkers, and historians still need to comb the transcripts and put actual statements in context. As usually happens, the Internet echo chamber has essentially called victory for whomever most people supported going in; despite the “Undecided Voter” myth, most people’s votes change little. The only question is, will we vote this year?

Watching the overnight returns, I think we’ve uncovered a more important issue: our standards and expectations from presidential aspirants have changed. In advance, jokers flooded social media with debate “bingo cards” and rules for “drinking games,” but once it actually began, a consensus apparently emerged: neither the content nor the theatrics mattered. We simply became desperate for one candidate to say something, anything, to give the evening meaning.

Sociologist Duncan J. Watts once wrote something which has heavily influenced my subsequent thinking. Quoting the storied psychologist Stanley “Obedience to Authority” Milgram, Watts wrote: there’s two kinds of rules, those that are written down, and those that aren’t. Written rules have limits and parameters. You quickly learn when these rules don’t apply, when you can safely ignore them, and how to work around them without hurting anyone.

Former Vice President Joe Biden

Unwritten rules always apply.

The American Constitution, despite Americans’ love of talking about “Constitutional rights” and “Constitutional responsibilities,” doesn’t talk about freedoms much. It mostly describes how we’ll structure our government, the foundations for our bureaucracy, and how to federate authority over nominally independent states. Most of our Constitution reads like a short-form owner’s manual for a KitchenAid stand mixer, not a treatise on moral philosophy.

Much of American government depends on a pamphlet which, as amended, runs under 8000 words. That isn’t very much. The “government” we’ve grown accustomed to honoring, at least according to 11th-grade American Civics, depends on these brief few rules, written down explicitly and therefore difficult to ignore. But the largest portion of American civil society derives, like Watts says, from the unwritten rules. And we have hundreds of those.

Consider: although Alexander Hamilton wanted George Washington to remain President for life, Washington chose to voluntarily step down following his second term. Pop historians claim this established the tradition, validated by Thomas Jefferson, that Presidents serve a limited term, then relinquish power. This rule was written down nowhere; it simply had binding authority because everyone knew this was the rule. Until Franklin Roosevelt, that is.

After Roosevelt clinched an unprecedented fourth term, then died in office, we faced a chilling reality. Some wealthy Northeastern aristocrat, with delusions of superiority, could claim the Presidency for life and, with the willing connivance of voters, exercise wild executive authority. So the government swung into action. It passed the 22nd Amendment, formally limiting presidents to two terms; and the formerly unwritten rule became written.

Except, once written, it became negotiable. Discussions once considered unthinkable, suddenly became banal. President Reagan lobbied, albeit half-heartedly, for the 22nd Amendment’s repeal, while President Trump claims he’s “probably entitled” to a third term. Once the unwritten rule became written, it became acceptable to openly discuss ignoring all legal and moral precedent. Only once a rule is written, does it become acceptable to disregard it.

President Donald Trump

Until Donald Trump, we accepted that Presidents needed to demonstrate some baseline modicum of physical and mental fitness, public eloquence, and preparedness for the job. That’s the role served by presidential debates: showing off candidates’ ability to communicate under pressure, remain eloquent, and look presidential durning adverse circumstances. That’s been the unwritten rule, at least since Reagan talked circles around Carter.

In 2016, when a slovenly, sweaty, sniffing Trump still nevertheless prevailed over Clinton, the unwritten rule was demolished. Many of us reacted with natural horror, thunderstruck that the standards we’d long accepted were now trashed. Watts describes the physical symptoms of violating unwritten rules: nausea, muscle tightness, psychosomatic paralysis. Tell me this doesn’t describe how many Americans felt, watching our unwritten standards being demolished four years ago.

Many legal scholars and legislators have suggested laws, even Constitutional amendments, to prevent this happening again. Some have suggested making it constitutionally mandatory to pass physical fitness exams, release one’s taxes, and more. But that misses the point. Once these rules need to be written down, their moral heft has already gone. Setting it in black and white is a rear guard action.

We’ve heard President Trump called a “constitutional crisis.” But America, functionally, has two constitutions. And it’s not the written one that’s in jeopardy.

Susanna Clarke’s House of Mirrors

Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

The House spreads infinitely, a baroque agglomeration of marble colonnades and timeless statues. Happy, childlike Piranesi survives by fishing among the tides that flood the lower floors, and makes maps of the halls; The House is Piranesi’s entire world. Twice a week, he meets with The Other, a scientist, and shares his various discoveries. They are the only humans in existence, which they accept. Until a third human appears.

Susanna Clarke’s second novel drops a scant fourteen years after her first, and it’s tough to imagine a more abrupt zigzag. Where her first novel was massive, heroic, and dense with allusions to classic British literature, this slim volume brims with psychological dread, and oblique references to authors like C.S. Lewis, Jorge Luis Borges, and Sigmund Freud. Though both novels share overlapping audiences, Clarke isn’t content repeating her successes.

Piranesi considers himself and The Other both scientists. He maps The House’s measureless halls with great precision, runs subtle calculations to predict the sometimes violent tides, and speculates upon the identities of the nameless Dead, whom he reveres as mysterious ancestors. The Other, meanwhile, dragoons Piranesi into attempts to unlock supernatural wisdom, which he believes permeates the halls. Piranesi is happy to help his only friend.

It’s difficult to synopsize this novel without spoiling its narrative arc. Unlike her first book, Clarke’s second has a singular through-line, told entirely through one character’s viewpoint (more or less). Therefore everything builds consecutively, even Piranesi’s traumatic flashbacks. Clarke’s unsophisticated first-person narrator tells his story with the guileless charm of a Greek slapstick actor. But he drops persistent clues that more is happening than he realizes.

For instance, Piranesi recognizes real-world referents he couldn’t possibly share inside The House. He knows what wool suits are, and plastic, and guns. His journals include dates and places he’s never seen, and which he admits, when he considers them rationally, have no corresponding meaning in his world. Rationality, though, is an impediment in understanding The House. Only two purposes exist in The House: to survive, and to make maps.

Worse, we understand truths about The Other that Piranesi misses. Piranesi’s journals reveal The Other’s behavior as petulant, domineering, and sometimes menacing. Piranesi, however, has never met another human, so he receives The Other’s behavior as simply ordinary, and doesn’t question The Other’s motivations, or where he goes when he isn’t around The House. We know, as Piranesi doesn’t, to make a list of clues.

Susanna Clarke

Clarke expands upon themes present in her earlier work, particularly the double-edged charm of anti-modernism. Her characters embrace a pre-Christian ethos of reality as purely experiential. Modernity, Clarke implies, may be safer and more luxurious, but we march through modern life without living it. Her characters are really living, but not well. They engage in a Nietzschean battle of wills, which inevitably divides humanity into winners and losers.

That Nietzsche reference isn’t incidental. Her characters believe truth exists; Piranesi openly worships The House, and believes it provisions and protects him. However, that doesn’t mean anything particularly practical. Actions, not motivations, define Clarke’s characters, and Piranesi begins reclaiming a modicum of freedom only after he learns to lie. This is both melancholy and ennobling for our characters. After all, “doing the right thing” means little to the dead.

Throughout, Piranesi meticulously keeps his journals, detailing his discoveries, no matter how bleak and disillusioning. He states clearly that he does this because he knows humans occupied The House before him, so others must surely follow; he wants to ensure Truth for posterity. Here as elsewhere, though, we readers realize something he misses: huge blocks of knowledge have vanished from his brain. We await him rediscovering them with existential dread.

Perhaps this novel runs shorter than Clarke’s last (barely a quarter the page count) because she understood we’d sustain such dread only briefly. Humans have difficulty reconciling our finite being with the feeling that eternity exists, potentially just inches beyond our grasp. Clarke’s characters are seekers after capital-T Truth because they believe their knowledge organizes a meaningful world. But to Clarke, uncovering that Truth doesn’t necessarily set one free.

Audiences bowled over by Susanna Clarke’s first novel may find her second jolting. Though thematically consistent, it’s a very different book, written by an author in a very different stage of life. But then, we’re all older now too. The intervening fourteen years haven’t been kind to anybody—except, perhaps, those like The Other, who profit off others’ suffering. This is a much darker novel for a darker age.

The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

“But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”
—Matthew 24:36 (KJV)

As a Christian, I believe apocalyptic thinking is heretical. Claiming to have unique eschatalogical knowledge that the Bible explicitly says no human possesses, is essentially claiming to be God. Sure, we can speculate generously on what ends Christianity serves, both “ends” as purposes, and “ends” as prophesied conclusions. But God has reserved true knowledge of apocalypse for God’s self singularly, not for humans.

But perhaps we’d profit from considering what “apocalypse” means. The word itself derives from two Greek roots: apo-, a combining verb form meaning “to lift” or “to remove,” and kaluptein, “a shroud.” Apocalypse means lifting a concealing cover to disclose the truth hidden beneath. In Latin, the same construction gives us “Revelation,” removing a veil. In both cases, it means exposing hidden realities.

Under current conditions, it’s difficult to avoid believing we’re witnessing secular eschatology. As huge swaths of America burn, discharging toxic smoke into Earth’s upper atmosphere; as several of humanity’s largest democracies fail to grapple with COVID-19; as the world’s major nuclear-armed power descends into autocracy, I’m tempted to think the world is ending. I’m falling victim to my own despised heresy.

Yet watching events unfold, I’ve begun realizing apocalyptic thinking isn’t necessarily heretical. If we believe, as LaHaye and Jenkins do, that we’ve uniquely unlocked future events, found ourselves justified, and now expect God’s favor, yes, that’s heretical. But pausing such messianic dribble, there’s still the sense of apocalypse as revealing the truth. And maybe, just maybe, that’s what our generation is living to witness.

Nearly a decade ago, science fiction opened my eyes to something stained-glass religious language had clouded. Reading several end-of-the world novels in quick succession, I noticed contrasting patterns. Most such novels featured beleaguered protagonists who understood society’s innate corruption, stood fast, and were vindicated. We were expected to laud their countercultural heroism. Not all these novels were religious, but many were.

Opposite these novels, one book, China Miéville’s Embassytown, featured many references to the world ending. However, not once did anyone imply the planet would die, humanity would face purgation, or some theological (or quasi-theological) force would separate the sheep from the goats. Instead, Miéville states, the world ends when our accumulated illusions die. “The world” ends when truth begins, or at least is revealed.

That, I propose, is happening right now. Truth, long concealed, has made its presence known again. But what truth do we witness, and what lessons do we learn? That’s our real test.

For nearly three centuries, industrialized Western civilization has used our oceans as a toilet, our skies as an ashtray, and money as a shield. We’ve conquered distant nations and enslaved populations as tools to ensure constant supplies of cheap labor and natural resources. We’ve assured ourselves that we’re morally justified in these actions because they create aggregate wealth and  physical comfort.

But, like the rich man in Christ’s parable, we’ve built high walls to keep poor Lazarus invisible. Often literal walls, from medieval castles to contemporary gated communities. Sometimes we’ve created fortresses to keep the unclean and impoverished inside, as with lepers’ colonies and tubercular hospitals. Mostly, though, we’ve kept the disenfranchised outside, while heaping up feasts inside, which poor Lazarus helped harvest.

Biblical Sodom is so associated with sexual immorality that we say “Sodomy” to describe certain sexual acts. But the Hebrew prophets disagreed. Ezekiel wrote: “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” This, too, is probably why God destroyed Jericho, because it barred its gates against the wandering Israelites.

America has barred its gates against refugees. We’ve stolen our neighbors’ harvests, shit in their houses, fucked their daughters, then turned around and locked the gates. In consequence, our house is now literally on fire. Like Jonah’s Ninevah, we have one opportunity to recognize our sins, repent, and set our feet on the right course. Sadly, it appears a powerful minority is refusing the opportunity.

Writing this essay, I’ve used God-language and Biblical references. But one needn’t believe in a literal God to understand the message; many Jews today consider “God” strictly metaphorical. Even without God, we have an opportunity to open our eyes, witness the truth we’ve previously concealed from ourselves, and act appropriately. We’re witnessing a secular apocalypse. Will we take this opportunity to make it right?

The Last “Fair Deal” Gone Down

Chris Voss

Chris Voss used to be the FBI’s lead international hostage negotiator, and famously got American citizens out of difficult scrapes with organizations like Daesh and Hamas. After retiring from public service, he reinvented himself as a consultant for large-scale corporate negotiations. Fairly early in his book Never Split the Difference, Voss describes one of his most persistently effective strategies. Confronted by hostile negotiators, he’ll offer: “We only want what’s fair.”

This appeal to fairness makes sense. From childhood, we’re conditioned to consider fairness in decision-making: we play baseball in Phys-Ed according to established rules because it’s fair. We don’t charge classmates exorbitant prices for lemonade, because that’s unfair. We accept fairness as a necessary stipulation for any exchange between equals, based on one simple premise: it’s fair to treat others how we’d want to be treated, if the positions were reversed.

However, the fairness criterion crumbles if we lack one important presumption: fairness exists between equals. If one negotiation partner doesn’t consider others equal, things crumble. We’ve witnessed the tragedy of grade-school losers abasing themselves to earn admission into some clique, because they believe the “cool kids” possess some innate superiority, which the losers cannot approach with self-respect. In that case, one can never relinquish enough to buy acceptance.

We’re witnessing the opposite of grade-school losers now, with this weekend’s passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. People who consider themselves naturally superior, who believe they’re the “cool kids” and not beholden to lesser rules, have changed their own definition of fairness. Mitch McConnell, who held a Supreme Court seat open an unprecedented eight months in 2016, wants to rush an appointment in 2020 just six weeks before the election.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Centrists and Progressives have responded by throwing Republicans’ own words at them. Besides McConnell, Lindsey Graham specifically insisted no SCOTUS seat should ever be filled during an election year. Ted Cruz went further, stating a willingness to hold the bench open forever if Hillary Clinton became President. Even Cruz’s own home-state journalists have called out Cruz’s inconsistency, which evidently bothers him not at all. Fairness only exists between equals.

Therein lies the problem. Fairness can only exist between people who consider themselves, in some fundamental way, equal. People who seek power don’t consider themselves equal to those they seek power over. One cannot seek power without having an inflated sense of one’s importance, in both the political arena and life generally; one must believe oneself gifted with rare insight, and the even rarer discretion to use that insight wisely.

This isn’t a partisan concern; Republicrats and Demoplicans share this self-righteousness. However, it does manifest in different ways. The Donkey Party believes they can foster equality between everyone else, that judicious application of political authority can rectify injustices based on race, class, sex (in various forms), and nationality. Admittedly, they often approach it high-handedly, as Bill Clinton’s draconian drug laws demonstrate; and they’re painfully willing to snuggle with moneyed interests.

The Elephant Party, however, doesn’t share this precept. Not only do they not regard themselves as equal with the general citizenry, they don’t regard citizens as equal with one another. They openly believe money indicates moral favor, that the rich are innately good people. Though they verbally disavow discrimination on race, sex, or poverty, their willingness to authorize police shooting dissidents in the face demonstrates where their loyalties lie.

Ted “Mr. Consistency” Cruz

Therefore, cries that the GOP demanding a hasty judicial appointment are “unfair” reveal the differences we plebs have from Senators. McConnell and Cruz not only believe themselves better humans than us pedestrians, they believe that persistent divisions between Americans reflect a moral order that rewards good people justly: the poor are obviously bad people, because they’re poor. Ipso facto, QED.

Appeals to fairness will never work with people who don’t regard themselves as equal, or us as equal with one another. Republicans believe social inequities reflect an underlying moral order, one which rewards the worthy in perfect proportion to their objective merits. Democrats believe social inequities reflect a drift away from moral order. Both believe capital-T Truth exists, but disagree on what that means.

This difference will persist, sadly. Democrats will attempt to compromise, whittling away their moral core, because they believe fairness exists. Republicans, meanwhile, have grown increasingly rock-ribbed since at least Dwight Eisenhower because they believe themselves above fairness. The parties, and their electoral bases, don’t share core principles. And that’s because, sadly, they don’t share a belief in human worth. Unfortunately, you can’t teach somebody to care about other people.

Sensitivity, Shmensitivity

This is literally my co-worker's truck. These are the attitudes I work with.

“Well that was a complete fucking waste of time!” bellowed ‘Jack,’ though his tone was jocular. “I didn’t retain any of that. I can’t believe we wasted an hour of our lives on that shit!”

Late in his book Evicted, sociologist Matthew Desmond recounts an experience observing a chronically destitute Milwaukee family. Arleen and her elementary-age sons have a cat, Little. But because they’re evicted and forced to relocate immediately, Arleen has to leave Little behind. Coming back to retrieve some belongings, the boys see Little wandering the neighborhood and react with joy. Arleen doesn’t agree:

“Put it down, dang!” Arleen yelled. She jerked Jafaris’s arm back, and Little fell to the ground.

Desmond explains, with sources, that poor families teach children to “love small.” Caring about things, people, and communities, only works when we have stability and continuity. Poor people, who change jobs and residences often, can’t afford to care. So Arleen teaches her children to love pets, neighbors, even herself, as fleetingly as possible, so they don’t get devastated later. It’s perhaps her most loving lesson: don’t love too much.

I’ve written extensively on this blog, recently, about the racism I’ve witnessed, working construction. Growing up White, suburban, and lower middle-class, I once thought naked bigotry was a dwindling historical relic. Notwithstanding the occasional David Duke or Timothy McVeigh, I assumed I’d live to see the extinction of Jim Crow-ish prejudice. Because, basically, I assumed racism arose from ignorance and backwardness.

Working this industry, though, I’ve noticed it isn’t so. Not only does racism persevere, so do other sectarian hatreds. These guys love sitting around, bullshitting on the clock, and it frequently turns to attempts to verbally destroy anybody they consider weaker than themselves. Women, homosexuals, animals: they’ll demolish anyone they consider puny, isolated, and different.

For years, I thought it reflected the nearly all-male nature of the industry. Though we have some women electricians in our area, and some women working office and bureaucratic positions, they’re the exception; I can literally go weeks without seeing a woman on the job. Not until reading Matthew Desmond did I realize these men share another important characteristic: they’re all poorly paid and economically tenuous.

Dr. Matthew Desmond

So I had low expectations when, on Friday, September 18th, we attended mandatory “sensitivity training.” That is, the company wanted to institute top-down awareness and empathy in men who’ve grown scars on their souls to insulate themselves against life’s casual brutalities. I have co-workers who have Confederate flags on their trucks, who use the N-word conversationally, who drink to numb themselves to life. A one-hour Zoom seminar is likely to change nothing.

They entered the seminar already opposed. One guy loudly bellowed: “If I’d known this was happening, I’d’ve printed a mask that read ‘Fuck Your Feelings,’” a line which got wide laughs. (Though the seminar happened online, several of us piled into a company conference room to control the number of lines into the call. To my surprise, all wore COVID masks.) Such heckling was the norm, not the exception.

In an ideal world, like a novel, some guys might’ve changed their minds. We might’ve seen epiphanies happening like leaves dropping. Instead, as the facilitator, hired from an outside consultancy, launched into her pre-written PowerPoint presentation, even I, the company’s token Leftist, lost interest; when I realized she was reading a pre-scripted litany of buzzwords, I felt the compulsive need to check Facebook on my phone.

Afterward, to my surprise, I discovered almost the entire regional company was watching from local offices: when the Zoom meeting ended, twenty guys milled around the lobby, jeering what we just witnessed. After Jack’s outburst above, a site supervisor, ‘Dan,’ emerged from a back office and sneered: “So we’re only supposed to communicate in sign language now?” Dan is the supervisor who once suggested stopping asylum-seekers by shooting their leaders.

I leaned back and let my brain drift to Matthew Desmond. These aren’t “bad” guys. They’re hard-working and loyal; most are married, mostly to their first wives, some for decades. They maintain their houses, join civic leagues, and tithe at church. But they also slap racist logos on their trucks and use epithets conversationally. They have to limit their empathy, because they’re poor. (Our company owner has an Omaha mansion and a stable of show ponies.)

And yeah, maybe it’s also because they’re all men. This unscheduled after-party was a sausage fest; the local office’s only two women, a bookkeeper and a secretary, are working from home during COVID. Nobody who does something awful does it from an isolated cause. Poverty, powerlessness, lack of women, and the fatigue that comes with difficult labor, create an ecology of antipathy. Racism, sexism, homosexism, and other hatreds, just happen.

Desmond writes that nobody hates poor people worse than other poor people. This workplace intolerance, this knee-jerk opposition to “sensitivity,” is the inevitable consequence of men kept perennially poor while working multi-million-dollar jobs. They know money’s being made, and they’re not making it. The ownership economy has left them too broke to care.

Harry Potter and the House Elf Manifesto

The protagonists, with their house elves

Apparently J.K. Rowling can’t help herself. She knows her audience—mostly young, mostly center-left—doesn’t agree with her gender politics, yet she keeps tweeting about it. Her readers, incensed at her deafness, have begun combing her novels for evidence that she’s secretly been awful this entire time. Many nuggets they’ve uncovered are, indeed, chilling. But I must take exception with one piece I’ve seen thrown around recently.

Some jaded fans see Rowling’s house elves, a species of apparently willing domestic slaves, as proof that Rowling excuses slavery, and harbors secret racist sympathies. I have trouble seeing it that way. Harry Potter, the eponymous hero whom Rowling coaches us to consider our viewpoint into the Wizarding World, makes it his mission to free the first house elf he encounters, Dobby. We’re clearly meant to participate in this liberation.

In general, Rowling depicts the Wizarding World as resplendent with wonder, full of sensory pleasures, just waiting for anybody who approaches with enough childlike wonder to still believe in magic. From this, it’s easy to construe that she intends us to consider everything which happens in Potter’s world admirable. Far from it: she also depicts the Wizarding World as rife with racism, class conflict, and outright Naziism.

This includes house elves. We don’t encounter them until the second novel, which partly reflects how thoroughly the wizards take their elves for granted. Their labor is so completely pushed into the background of Hogwarts’ splendor that even the religiously bookish Hermione is astonished to discover their existence. This from the girl who prides herself on already knowing everything before Day One! Racism is just the Wizarding World’s background noise.

Harry is initially shocked at the house elves’ abjection. Dobby’s wretched clothes and submissive attitude offend Harry. This becomes more pronounced as the story progresses: elves, we learn, make all the students’ food, maintain their building, clean their quarters. Moreover, they do all this willingly; when Hermione attempts to liberate elves, they balk and act offended. This derives from Rowling’s source, the myths of brownies and other house spirits.

I understand Hermione’s revulsion, for reasons Rowling perhaps intended: because when I realized, in my youth, how thoroughly my American life depends on exporting misery onto others, it forced me to re-examine my presumptions. Americans, and citizens of other First-World countries, have cheap clothes because they’re manufactured in sweatshops in Latin America and Asia. Same goes for the cheap networked electronics we all carry in our pockets anymore.

This dualism becomes most visible where it concerns food. Anybody who’s ever grown a vegetable garden knows the autumn harvest is slow, difficult, tedious work. Now imagine doing that over tens of thousands of acres. American food is so cheap that, on a typical grocery run, you probably pay more for packaging than for food. This affordability only happens because impoverished workers, mostly undocumented immigrants, bring the harvest in seasonally.

The superficial splendor of Harry Potter’s Wizarding World requires unpaid labor. Rowling, who is economically progressive, notwithstanding her reactionary attitudes on gender politics, knows this, and I believe she inserted this deliberately. Because Harry Potter’s world only differs from ours in degree, not kind. Our lifestyles absolutely depend on somebody else making our cheap clothes, cheap food, cheap consumer goods. We know that, too, if we’re honest.

Worse, Harry, like us, becomes inured to this reality. Where Hermione maintains her anger, and purposes herself to liberate Hogwarts’ house elves one-by-one, Harry quickly realizes the problem isn’t individual, it’s systematic. He can’t change things by himself, especially while fighting Voldemort, Rowling’s in-house Hitler analogue. Liberating house elves would require re-orienting the entire wizard economy, which poor, working-class Harry doesn’t know how to do.

Already I envision one counter-argument to my read. Critics will assert that house elves aren’t coerced into labor, they give it freely, and Kreacher, Sirius Black’s house elf, resents even fleeting attempts at respect. I respond by restating my real-world analogue. I work daily around people who believe self-abnegation makes them moral, who feel false class solidarity with rich employers. I find Rowling’s house elf symbolism entirely too plausible.

Please don’t misunderstand me. Rowling has internalized a truckload of cultural baggage and vomited it onto the page: the anti-Semitic stereotypes inherent in her Gringott’s Bank springs immediately to mind. But house elves don’t say something similar to me. I see critique of an economic system that exports poverty to maintain an illusion of splendor, and workers who hug their chains. On this topic, I’m still with her.

Transgender Black Soy-Boy Hippie Beta Cuck Marxists!

“These are transgender Marxists — transgender Black Marxists — who are seeking the overthrow of the United States and the dissolution of the traditional family,” Bachmann said in the interview...while discussing the Black Lives Matter and anti-racism protests taking place around the country.
—NBC News

Former Representative Michele Bachmann

Look around you at the lawlessness you see unfolding, Brian. People standing up and demanding respect. Respect, Brian! Regardless of their bodies, or their jobs, or their nationality. It makes me sick, Brian, the idea that I, a God-fearing American Christian woman, have to treat others with respect, and am not free to feel reflexive revulsion at other human beings. Or shoot them in the face.

All these terrible people are coming to destroy the America you’ve loved your whole life! They’re coming with their liberty for the oppressed, and their sustainable agriculture, and an economy where people actually get paid for their work. Sick-making, truly. What’s going to happen to us good, normal Americans in the coming years when we can’t get rich off others’ labor? Total anarchy, Brian, that’s what’s going to happen!

Think about it. What happens if they make things more fair for Black people? What happens if Black people don’t have to hide from police in routine encounters, for fear of imminent death! Why, these Black people might come to the police and report it when a White landlord screws them on the rent! They might trust authority enough to not let abusive people run over them! Madness, I tell you, madness.

Letting transgenders participate in the marketplace. Blasphemy. I can’t imagine anybody being able to order a McPatty from a teenager without an immediate, implicit understanding of their teenage servitor’s genitals. Just think about what will happen if you need your air conditioning repaired, and you spend the whole time wondering about what your repairman… repair woman?… what they have in their pants. Just imagine. I’m imagining it right now.

Former Vice President Joe Biden

These children, with their deviant bodies and warped minds, they need to get with it, Brian, big-time. In the America I grew up with, we understood our genders from birth. Men were real men, and women were real women, all the time, even in their sleep. And if we did sleep, and we had that recurring dream, you know the one, about Kathleen, the checkout girl from the Piggly-Wiggly with the long red braid, and we… um… we dreamed… Do we have any water?

What were we talking about? Oh yeah, if we had that dream, Brian, we killed it with alcohol, like our mothers before us.

I grew up in an America where all people knew and understood their place. We worked hard to achieve what we gained from life, Brian, we didn’t half-ass our way through violent confrontations with armed police dressed like Sir Lancelot, breathing tear gas and dodging rubber bullets, like some pantywaist Communist peacenik. Let me tell you, I worked hard to make sure Kathleen got that promotion to work under my supervision! On the night shift…

Man, it’s hot in here.

Nowadays, these spoiled children think they can demand rights that my ancestors studiously worked to deny them. Marriage? Pshaw. I’ve always believed marriage is between one man, one woman, and the mutual doubt and recrimination they carry, bolstered by the guilt over having kids at an absurdly young age. My kids have been an absolute blessing to me, Brian. They give me someone to talk with when the nights drag on interminably.

Yeah, the nights get long, Brian, because my husband is such a dedicated volunteer in our community. He’s out every evening, providing free counseling and a hot meal to some of our city’s lost, desperate transgender street children. He makes me proud, Brian, he really does. Sometimes he’s out all night counseling these trans kids. And when he stumbles in around sunrise, with his clothes rumpled and smelling like nicotine, I’m proud of the good he does our town.

This kind of lawlessness, where we treat people with respect, oh my God. Seriously. If I’m not free to pass immediate and binding judgement on complete strangers for their lives and their bodies, I might as well live in Soviet Russia. Because that’s where we’re heading, Brian, complete Soviet takeover of our morals. What the hell, I might as well book the flight right now. Kathleen? Could you bring my purse over here, please?

Oh, yeah, Brian, have you met Kathleen yet? She’s my… um… she’s my personal assistant!

Fred Phelps, Coronavirus, and Me

“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
—Proverbs 14:12 (KJV)

Reverend Fred Phelps

Around the midpoint of his book Does Jesus Really Love Me?, gay Christian journalist Jeff Chu (now a seminarian) recounts meeting Reverend Fred Phelps, the notorious anti-gay activist preacher, in his Topeka, Kansas, office. On a shelf behind Phelps’ desk, in pride of place, Chu saw Phelps kept a plaque awarded to him by the Topeka NAACP. Early in his career, Phelps was a champion of racial rights and solidarity in Kansas.

This image has stayed with me for years, since reading Chu’s book. Throughout his career, Phelps embraced conflict; his particularly adversarial form of Christianity characterized his entire ministry. But early on, he embraced conflict on behalf of oppressed minorities, in a state historically riven between its urban, racially diverse eastern border, and its mostly white, rural, geographically vast west. He began his ministry uplifting the downtrodden.

What changed? I never met Phelps, never interacted with his congregation, so I’m reluctant to speculate. However, his congregation’s history includes an important note: Westboro Baptist Church began as a satellite campus of Topeka’s East Side Baptist Church, but quickly broke away. Westboro has continued without formal ties to any Baptist denomination, a solo traveler through a world its leadership regards as morally tainted.

Something happened in 1955. Fred Phelps suddenly decided he didn’t need other people. This means both organizational support and guidance, but also the religious instruction of other Christians. He decided to walk alone. Although he completed a law degree in 1964, and began working with the NAACP around that time, records indicate his courtroom behavior became increasingly hostile and belligerent, leading to his disbarment in 1977.

Phelps continued this pattern throughout his career. He started out collaborating with others, then became increasingly adversarial. Even his own congregation experienced this, and the Westboro board formally excommunicated their founding pastor in August of 2013, about seven months before he died. Phelps’ demand for righteousness gradually drove everyone away, even his own most loyal followers, piece by piece.

I’ve thought about Phelps recently, as isolation has become the standard behavior for Americans of all religious and political stripes. Trapped inside our houses, with only the company of our own thoughts and our most immediate nuclear family, many people find themselves going down roads they never anticipated: fighting with their spouses, turning into hoarders, and worse. Though the evidence is anecdotal, many Americans probably find themselves trapped in a spiral.

Like Phelps, many Christians have turned against their houses of religion and other allies: Oklahoma pastor Jakob Topper reports that about half of complaints pastors get today involve parishioners threatening to leave if the congregation doesn’t re-open, and the other half are parishioners threatening to leave if it does. Organized Christianity threatens to descend into a childish squabble over my feelings, not God’s work.

Nor is it exclusively religious. I’ve witnessed souls hurt and friendships ended over needless political fights, mostly conducted online. And I don’t mean fights between Trump supporters and the vote-em-out brigade; it’s mostly been between fellow Leftists, hurt and angered because somebody favors environment over labor rights, or whatever. As though, when facing the current administration, we could separate these issues from one another.

We’re all, like the young Phelps, unmoored now. The institutions that kept us stable, like work, volunteer organizations, and the arts, are indefinitely suspended or, in the case of schools, being run like something from a Hollywood dystopia. Only now are some Americans, including me, realizing how dependent we once were on our communities to shoulder the burden of our sanity. “Many hands make light work,” they say. I only now understand that.

Maybe that’s why so many people rebelled so quickly against quarantine procedures which many never actually honored. Even a very brief sojourn alone with their thoughts made them realize how badly they needed others. The wild, tempestuous, and frequently angry thoughts which, my friends report anecdotally, we’ve all suffered this year, proved too much for some to handle. Rather than stay trapped indoors, they turned that bottled wrath outward.

Americans are, perhaps, seeing our real identities exposed to ourselves, sometimes for the first time. The damaging power of loneliness forces us to admit we don’t like who we are, when forced to live by the way which seems right to ourselves. Isolation is destroying us, if the virus doesn’t kill us first, and there’s no cure for either.

Lone Ranger Christians and Community Dreams

Jerry Falwell, Jr., and Donald Trump: the unholy union of religion and power

Salted generously throughout his book One Nation Under God, Princeton historian Kevin M. Kruse repeatedly states one important phrase: “Christian Libertarianism.” The form of highly public Christianity Americans embraced, beginning around 1940, didn’t derive from St. Paul, Augustine, Luther, or Wesley. It came specifically, Kruse writes, from corporate salesmen and PR agencies, and it existed explicitly to reject the collectivism of FDR’s New Deal, and later, big-C Communism.

This creates a paradox, which Kruse doesn’t explicate (he’s an historian, not a philosopher), but which this Christian cannot ignore: millions of American Christians linking hands, in organized unity, to demand individualism and self-reliance. The massive groundswell of solidarity needed to espouse this kind of libertarianism makes my temporal lobe burn. “We’re stronger together,” such Christians insist, “even if what we’re doing together is demanding complete separation and egocentricity!”

Dressing such borderline narcissism in Christian vestments strikes me as weird, initially. Christian scripture is festooned with references to believers as a unified collective. “I will walk among you and be your God,” says Leviticus 26:12, “and you will be my people.” Likewise, in Hebrews 8:10 we find: “I will be their God, and they will be my people.” As Black slaves sang in America: “When Israel was in Egypt Land, Let my people go.”

Perhaps it’s because we’ve lost much original Biblical language. As Hebraicist Lois Tverberg writes, standard English lacks a second-person plural pronoun, a feature in both Hebrew and Greek. Both Moses and Jesus repeatedly address believers with a plural “you,” a term perhaps best translated with the American regionalism “y’all.” Very seldom did either leader address believers with a singular “you,” unless speaking directly and specifically with an individual.

The version of Christianity peddled aggressively in contemporary America endorses the idea that faith gives Christians complete license to act individually. We’ve witnessed this phenomenon with self-proclaimed Christians who use Christianity to justify rapacious capitalism. Recently, public Christians like Jerry Falwell, Jr., and Franklin Graham (son of Billy, whom Kevin M. Kruse cites extensively) have thrown their religious bona fides behind that notorious sinner, Donald Trump.

Historian Kevin M. Kruse

Fact is, the Bible comprehensively rejects Lone Ranger religion. The Hebrew prophets almost never condemn, or even address, individuals; they stress the entire people’s need to get right with YHWH. Jesus separates “his people” from the political state, even placing his movement in opposition to priesthoods and aristocracies, but he still requires the apostles to feed the multitudes collectively. We cannot save ourselves, Christianity avers; we must act in common.

Let me stress, I’m no advocate of big-C Communism. History and sociology stand robustly against Communist precepts, which actively attempt to abolish local knowledge and adaptability. Perhaps the greatest reason I distrust Communism, though, is its reliance on bigness. Mass movements which seek to establish or accrue power, from revolutions to political parties to PR operations, inevitably oppose the common humanity of individuals. They reduce us all to interchangeable parts.

This includes, ironically enough, libertarianism. Though big-L Libertarianism was founded by nudists, pot farmers, and Star Trek fans, the inevitable outcome of mass deregulation is almost inevitably the sweatshop factory. Christian libertarians generally believe that, if human laws are rescinded, God’s law will elevate the faithful, both spiritually and economically. But the actual denouement of soft regulation has historically been the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

Therefore my position pits me between extremes. Neither Soviet-style authoritarian collectivism, nor cowboy libertarianism, actually elevates most people, because both encourage selfish, violent narcissists to hoard wealth and authority. Both of these positions deny the human soul, and thus both deny God. Where, then, must the faithful, Bible-believing Christian land on the curve? Is there any available solution?

Certainly. Many Christians, from historic heroes like Dietrich Bonhoeffer to living innovators like Shane Claiborne, have bequeathed us the blueprints they used to build, or co-build, models of Christian community. These communities are bound together by shared values, a sense of mission—including political mission—and the belief that we’re in this struggle together. Most importantly for our purposes, though, these communities are small, and therefore don’t require either leadership or anarchy.

I cannot read Christian scripture without it reminding me how innately countercultural the faith initially is. Christ embraced lepers, prostitutes, and foreigners, while directing legendary wrath upon priests and potentates. But the only time he acted alone, was when he allowed himself to be arrested and dragged before Pilate. If we call ourselves Christ’s followers, we’d do well to remind ourselves: we may die alone, but we only live together.

In God We Trust, Sort Of

1001 Books To Read Before Your Kindle Battery Dies, Part 109
Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

The words “under God” weren’t added to the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954; “In God We Trust” didn’t become America’s national motto until 1956. This seems hard to believe. Literally so, as, speaking to a colleague who’s my own age recently, he admitted he thought these had simply always been part of America’s heritage. God has been part of America’s rhetoric so long, it’s tough to imagine a time He wasn’t so prominent.

According to Princeton historian Kevin M. Kruse, this difficulty isn’t accidental. An elaborate campaign was waged to create the impression, not only that America is a uniquely Christian nation, but that it’s always been so. And while many Americans realize public Christianity has roots in the Cold War, Kruse suggests the campaign began much earlier than that. He definitely agrees, though, that public Christianity is a battle for America’s soul.

Early proponents of American Christianity definitely had an agenda to push. They specifically saw Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal platform as un-American, and undermining morals of libertarian independence and free enterprise. They saw steering America toward more conservative politics as a moral enterprise. But, as captains of industry themselves, they couldn’t openly push such ethics. So they enlisted Christianity as their patriotic moral platform.

Kruse identifies three public evangelists who participated in this public-spirited revival: James Fifield, Abraham Vereide, and Billy Graham. These three very different theologians had their particular approaches to pushing public religiosity (as distinct from religion) in America. They shared several important goals, however, and just as important, they shared contacts inside American industry. Thus they saw American capitalism and Christianity traveling hand-in-glove through history.

Beyond a handful of public preachers, however, the Christian ascendency of the 1940s and 1950s wasn’t pushed by clergy. It mostly came from a consortium of industrialists, PR agencies, and A-list Hollywood entertainers. Much of America’s postwar religious revival was coordinated by, or with the aid of, two Hollywood executives not always associated with religion: Walt Disney and Cecil B. DeMille. No wonder mid-century churches sometimes looked like the movies.

Kevin M. Kruse

This tightly organized revivalism didn’t always go how its capitalist supporters intended, Kruse writes. They pushed Christianity as an antidote to small-S socialism and FDR’s regulatory state. But they recruited a figurehead they couldn’t necessarily control, in Dwight Eisenhower. Once Ike got elected President, he really believed the Christian message he’d carried into Washington, and governed by it. He had little interest in his backers’ economic agenda, to their horror.

But while pushing Christianity proved a successful political strategy nationwide, cracks quickly began appearing locally. Schoolhouse prayers, written by school boards to appear as nonsectarian as possible, managed to offend unbelievers by being too religious, and angered True Believers by being too secular. While monied interests pushed bland, homogenized religion from above, grassroots opposition began resisting public Christianity from below. Conflict was both inevitable, and heartbreaking.

As a Christian myself, I was most struck by how many "religious" reforms happened, not because of, but in spite of seminarians and clergy. As Kruse acknowledges relatively late, Christian clergy are often more progressive than their lay parishioners. This led to friction through the 1960s, as laypeople and ministers took opposing sides in the developing culture wars. Many of these wide divisions remain in place today.

Reading Kruse’s account, it’s difficult to avoid recognizing how many threads he describes, remain active in American life today. The political strain of public Christianity, which Kruse calls “Christian libertarianism,” looms large in today’s Religious Right, with its emphasis on wedge issues and individual salvation. Public Christianity also faces persistent identity problems: many Americans like the idea of shared Christianity, but turn squishy when you pin them down theologically.

Kruse doesn’t attempt an overarching religious history of America. He focuses on one specific aspect of public religiosity, within a narrow timeframe, mostly from 1940 to 1970. His principal question isn’t whether American Christianity is true, or whether it means anything to individual believers. Rather, he cares deeply about how Americans came to believe we have a rare religious national calling. That calling proves to be spiritual snake oil.

Religious salesmen pushed a specific kind of Christianity, a soft Calvinist self-help spirituality. (Kruse uses the word “Presbyterian” frequently.) But as Kevin Kruse unpacks the paper trail those salesmen have left throughout history, he reveals an underlying message which many Christians may be reluctant to buy. Public Christians often talk a good game, but as Kruse reveals in their own words, your soul frequently isn’t their number one priority.

The Culture War Comes To Nebraska

Saturday, September 5th, 2020, was a particularly bad day in America for Republican political optics. The same day that five small craft sank during a “boat parade” near Austin, Texas, a white Chevrolet Silverado was spotted driving around Lincoln, Nebraska, with racial vulgarities written on its back window. The reaction on social media was swift: many clickers, including Nebraskans like me, hastily expressed our outrage. Perhaps too hastily.

Makes me fucking proud to be a Nebraskan. 🤬 https://t.co/3dI2Qfy6PS

— Kevin L Nenstiel (@KLNenstiel) September 6, 2020

Nebraska is a deeply divided state. This statement can have multiple definitions. We could describe the way our two largest cities, Lincoln and Omaha, dominate the outlying state, economically and culturally. It might mean how these two slightly Democratic-leaning cities perch amid an otherwise overwhelmingly Republican-leaning state.Whenever outside investors consider sinking money in Nebraska, they seldom look outside Lincoln and Omaha.

Douglas and Lancaster counties, of which Omaha and Lincoln are respectively the dominant cities, have between them about one-third of Nebraska’s population. However, they have much more of Nebraska’s educational and financial services industries (the only doctorate-granting schools in the state are in these cities). They also have Nebraska’s media presence. The filmmakers behind About Schmidt reduced Nebraska to two parts: Omaha and Interstate 80.

The truck, photographed cruising Lincoln’s largest business district, has 34-county plates. That identifies it as Fillmore County, about an hour’s drive from Lincoln. Like most of what’s commonly called “Greater Nebraska,” Fillmore Country has an economy anchored on agriculture and light industry. As you’d probably imagine, this means it isn’t wealthy. That’s reflected in demographics: the county’s population has declined steadily, by two-thirds, since its peak in 1890.

Fillmore County is part of a larger Nebraska cultural and economic structure that’s largely been abandoned by modernity. Just as most of America’s economy and culture have concentrated in a few cities, like New York and San Francisco, Nebraska’s economy and culture have stopped at the Lincoln and Omaha city limits. The rest of the state is often fifteen years behind on technology, economic development, and demographic trends.

Someone like me sees this divide, where socioeconomic elites hoard access to life’s nice qualities in shrinking geographic enclaves, and think: we should rebel against our overlords. The financial services kings who shrink our state and starve our countryside don’t just hurt country-dwellers; they undercut their own access to healthy food grown on the soil. Nebraska’s economic caste system hurts the rich as badly, I believe, as the poor.

Many Greater Nebraska residents see it differently. Given evidence of massive economic oppression, they blame the poor and disenfranchised. As I’ve written before, many Nebraskans see themselves squeezed, not by rich urbanites, but by growing Black and Hispanic populations moving into the area, looking for work. So apparently, a rural truck owner took his message, tied to a “Trump 2020” banner, and drove it into the rich part of the state.

Apparently. But…

According to news reports, the truck’s owner denies everything categorically. He claims his vehicle was vandalized, that he’s been doxxed, and both he and his ex-girlfriend, a single mother, have been subjected to threats of violence. He only went into Lincoln for the reason most Greater Nebraskans do, to conduct commerce and while away an evening, and he got targeted with vulgar, offensive property damage for no apparent reason.

The "Sower" statue atop the Nebraska
capitol building reflects the state's
agricultural heritage

My mind boggles at the contradiction. Like many outsiders, I assumed he launched his offensive into Lincoln from outside. But did Lincolnites actually attack him, possibly for his out-of-town plates? Was this possibly not a small-town attack on perceived city elitism, but an attempt to keep the country people down? Right now we only have “he-said, they-said,” though news reports indicate nobody else reported similar vandalism, so I’m skeptical.

Joining blue-collar life in Greater Nebraska has made me deeply doubtful that America will reform itself voluntarily. As long as America’s White working class sees itself as primarily White, and working class only secondarily (or not at all), they’ll never unify against their mostly White economic oppressors. In Nebraska, where economic elites are geographically concentrated and the working class are spread out, this conflict becomes territorial as well as economic.

But the rural-urban divide has two sides. Since I moved to Nebraska in 1992, I’ve witnessed hostility run both ways: Western Nebraska cattle ranchers wear their boots and Stetsons defiantly into Lincoln and Omaha, while the state legislature repeatedly cuts funding for schools and social services in Greater Nebraska. This truck threatens to become a retread of this divide. Who you believe, may well depend on where you live.

Kevin Kline and the New(ish) Deal

1001 Movies To See Before Your Netflix Subscription Dies, Part 42
Ivan Reitman (director), Dave

William Harrison Mitchell and Dave Kovic live in completely different worlds. Though both occupy Washington, DC, President Mitchell is an angry, dishonest schemer. Humble Dave, by contrast, runs a jobs placement agency in Georgetown, and moonlights as a President Mitchell impersonator. This sideline draws official attention, because the White House needs a body double to protect Mitchell’s extramarital affairs.

Czech-born Canadian director Ivan Reitman spent the 1980s directing “Little Guy Makes Good” movies like Stripes and Ghostbusters. The 1990s, however, shifted his outlook—this movie dropped just four months into Bill Clinton’s presidency. Though Clinton superficially looked like an Ivan Reitman character come to life, his infidelities were already widely rumored, and he had a notorious off-camera temper. Reitman latched onto this duality and ran.

Dave (Kevin Kline), a natural ham with a big heart, thinks his top-level assignment is a one-night stand. However, President Mitchell (also Kline) suffers a catastrophic stroke mid-coitus with a junior White House staffer. So Chief of Staff Bob Alexander (Frank Langella) contracts Dave as the President’s stand-in, to avoid scandal. Alexander successfully corralled Mitchell’s ambitions and anger for years, so he figures a schmendrick like Dave will be easy.

White House officials take Dave on official photo ops, letting his winning smile and telegenic charm smooth passage of party-line bills. Dave is, at first, happy to let Alexander run the actual presidency. However, Alexander’s ham-fisted budget cuts soon jeopardize a project close to Dave’s heart. Turns out, Dave actually believes the optimistic message behind which President Mitchell got elected; he has no patience with Washington’s official cynicism.

So Dave does what comes naturally to him: he enlists the camera’s aide. While Bob Alexander writes policy in a locked room (and President Mitchell lies comatose in an unlisted clinic), Dave conducts Cabinet-level log-rolling sessions on primetime network news. With all American watching, Dave soon swings White House policy to match the official rhetoric. Alexander, long the power behind the throne, finds himself out in the cold.

This movie’s comments about President Clinton’s personal life, some of which seem almost prescient, could easily overshadow its comments about his policies. Clinton secured the Democratic nomination, in 1992, partly by promising to deepen and extend President Reagan’s draconian cuts to America’s social safety net. Given Clinton’s “Man From Hope” oratory, it’s easy to forget he promised “the end of welfare as we know it” during his longshot primary campaign.

Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver in Ivan Reitman's Dave

Nobody seems more surprised by Dave’s sifting priorities than First Lady Ellen Mitchell (Sigourney Weaver). Though the Mitchells maintained a unified front for the camera, Bill’s infidelities, and his willingness to compromise his principles, long since drove Ellen away. They remain married because it serves their shared ambitions: he wants power, she wants to do actual good in the world. Ellen, unaware of Bill’s stroke, suspects Dave is a chameleon.

The brewing conflict between Dave and Alexander soon reaches boiling point. Alexander has blackmail data enough to see Dave arrested, but Dave has the nation’s sympathies. Trapped in a cycle of mutually assured destruction, we only wonder which will unseat the other first. Chronic liar Alexander has the ability to destroy Dave simply by telling the truth; pathologically honest Dave finds himself keeping secrets almost as well as Alexander.

Reitman heightens his political realism by incorporating real-life figures from 1990s politics. Politicians like Tip O’Neill, Tom Harkin, and Paul Simon (not that one), provide unscripted commentary on Dave’s New Deal-esque policies. Meanwhile, outside commentators like Jay Leno and the entire McLaughlin Group provide the media response. These make it clear that Dave’s candid politics would face stark criticism in real Washington.

There’s also a critical subtext to this movie: it’s easy to sympathize with Dave. He’s uncontrived, loves children and puppies, and fights for his beliefs. But he didn’t get elected President; Bill Mitchell did, with his moral compromises and smoke-filled rooms. We like Dave, but Reitman asks us: would we vote for him? Considering what candidates we Americans habitually support, Reitman’s answer is implicit, but painfully obvious.

We Americans love bellyaching about how politicians’ rhetoric doesn’t match their actions. But we do nothing about it. Ivan Reitman throws that back on us. Dave Kovic actually accomplishes the promises we Americans claim to approve, but accomplishes them under Bill Mitchell’s name. American politics, Reitman implies, requires professionals with Jekyll-and-Hyde personalities. As long as that’s what we vote for, that’s what we’ll get.

Yet the final scene suggests we aren’t doomed. We could change; Reitman encourages us to do so.

Denial, and the Comorbidities of Politics

I won’t waste time debunking the bullshit claim that COVID-19 deaths have been inflated, and only six percent of reported deaths are authentic. Smarter critics than me have already done this. I’m more interested in what this denialism says about Americans collectively, that so many people willingly reshare this message. Why are we so reluctant to accept that this disease even exists, much less do anything about it?

Marxist critic Slavoj Žižek compares the global COVID-19 crisis to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ celebrated Five Stages of Dying. He postulates on ways we’ve passed through Denial, through Anger and Bargaining, and into Depression. How, he wonders, will society behave when we reach the Acceptance stage? But Žižek apparently overlooks one important point: the stages aren’t sequential. We can slide backward, as the Six Percenters prove we’ve backslid into Denial.

Change is hard. Changing our ways hurts, because our habits are instantiated on our brains, and changing our ways forces us to rewire our bodies, just as exercise rewires our muscles. That's why demanding people do the right thing simply because it’s right, does no good. Because people will continue doing what they do as long as they can, desperate to avoid the pain which change inevitably brings.

In life, as in dying and grief, we work desperately to avoid pain. We keep events as simple and mechanical as possible, letting ourselves think as little as necessary. But COVID-19 rejects that. America currently has a 9/11-level mortality event every two days, and our refusal to act hasn’t made it go away, just kicked the issue down the road. We’re like a patient deferring a cancer diagnosis, refusing to change the ways that made us sick.

I don’t make the cancer comparison lightly. I currently have three friends facing cancer treatment, and have witnessed, at different levels, the pain and indignity which cancer therapies force on patients. Cancer therapies are painful, degrading, and costly, but the cost of doing nothing is mortality. That’s what we’re facing collectively right now: fixing our problems will hurt, probably a lot, but avoidance will cause massive suffering and death.

Like COVID-19, cancer patients suffer comorbidities that hasten death. Looking around, it’s clear America suffers pervasive comorbidities. Racism, like cancer, turns certain parts of our bodies against one another. Likewise climate change, where our shared body, the earth, is developing a fever strong enough to broil out the infectious agent. Like chemotherapy, our various comorbidities are trying to kill us just enough to destroy the infection, and save the body.

President Trump and Dr. Fauci obviously differ on how to face the problem.

That’s why we need systemic change. Like the infected body, we cannot expect one organ to heal itself in isolation, and have it make any difference. We can’t ask individuals to not be racist, while official policies keep disadvantaged populations down. We can’t ask people to think environmentally, while our economy lives and dies based on selling and consuming hydrocarbons. Our entire body is diseased together, and needs systemic treatment.

Because change hurts. Exercise is painful, like education, like chemotherapy. And as individuals avoid cancer diagnosis, or even a prostate or gynecological exam, we collectively have deferred future social pain by avoiding facing our suffering right now. Climate change and racism and pandemic are rampant, but doing anything about them is painful, and always will be. Like an oncologist, we need to force the change, even when it hurts.

Systemic change, though, requires a functional system. Our system is dominated by two parties which effectively avoid problems for literally decades. The Democrats shun meaningful reforms for fear of causing offense, while Republicans tell their emotionally rabid base anything they want to hear. Our elected officials, fearful of losing power, are unwilling to face the near-term pain necessary to prevent the cancer spreading and killing us later.

We’ve heard the words “Constitutional Crisis” ballyhooed so much during the current administration that they’ve become banal. But the collision of racism, state violence, plague, and global warming shows us that our current Constitution, devised for a much smaller nation, just can’t address the problems we have now. We’ve lost the plot because our system no longer works, as we see demonstrated in the streets of Kenosha today.

Our administration’s response to COVID-19 has literally been to deny there’s a problem. That denial, like a patient’s refusal to accept mortality, make is more likely that we’ll die sooner. That’s compounded by our collective denial that the problem runs deeper than one administration. We need to fix the system, before it kills us all.