The Cancer of Liberty

Tzvetan Todorov, The Inner Enemies of Democracy

Newshounds my age recall the 20th Century, when democratic ideology stood up to, and ultimately outlasted, a string of autocratic political ideas: imperialism during WWI, fascism during WWII, Communism during the Cold War. But since 1991, when the USSR collapsed, Western democracy has wheeled through multiple enemies, latterly settling on international terrorism, though struggling to identify what “terrorism” means. Though radicalists still stage salutary challenges, we lack serious threats, which evidently bothers some powerful people.

Franco-Bulgarian critic Tzvetan Todorov, who grew up under Communism, knows something about institutional enemies. From Warsaw-pact governments that maintained order by squelching dissent, to rah-rah democracy that catered to citizens’ appetites, he’s experienced a range of modern social orders. While he agrees that democracy trumps its autocratic challengers, he contends the last generation or so has seen a radical shift in Western democracy’s self-figuration. In a world without global enemies, democracies simply invent their own.

American readers will primarily recognize Todorov from his literary criticism. But he’s actually written more social criticism, including revisionist takes on the American frontier myth, and the role of conflicting humanisms in European thought. His work has a strange duality: though packed with dense implications, in that French école normale style, yet written in unaffected language committed laypeople can understand. His writing isn’t easy by any stretch. Yet he unfolds splendidly for curious, resourceful readers.

Todorov perceives the arc of Western thought in terms I’d never previously considered: the conflict between Augustine and Pelagius. Where Augustine believed humans fundamentally aren’t free, and rely on divine grace for redemption, Pelagius rejected such determinism, insisting humans are free to strive after salvation. Ecumenical leaders supported Augustine, and excommunicated Pelagius, temporarily settling that debate; but Renaissance humanism resurrected the controversy. Western philosophy, especially politics and social science, now continues re-fighting that centuries-old battle.

Tzvetan Todorov

Todorov’s own religious inclinations remain unclear in this text; he keeps spiritual themes cagily impersonal. But despite citing religious analogies, he presents a wholly humanist examination of human social structure. He asserts, like Durkheim, that in a secular age, government assumes roles once belonging to God. And as Augustinian determinism or Pelagian liberty condition believers’ relationship to divine authority, today’s modern philosophic debates center on whether ordinary citizens must challenge or submit to human power.

This takes multiple forms. Todorov dedicates his longest discourse for what he terms “political messianism.” If the state is God, and democracies outlast other ideologies (for Todorov, “democracy” and “capitalism” are interchangeable), it follows that democracy offers the proven route to secular salvation. Todorov deplores when the powerful use “free speech” to excuse beating down already-oppressed populations. He also notes the correlation between populism and xenophobia; French paranoia about headscarves looms large in Todorov’s examinations.

Unsurprisingly, in an originally Francophonic book, Todorov addresses French democracy, and EU governance more broadly, in ways Americans aren’t accustomed to hearing from our media. (First published in French in 2012, it debuted in English in 2014. I commend translator Andrew Brown for negotiating concepts with no one-to-one equivalents.) Though he addresses America’s War on Terror, this Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkey saves his greatest disdain for that corporatist toad-eater, Nicolas Sarkozy. His language is frankly bracing.

Readers may recognize one theme Todorov repeatedly addresses without directly naming it: the Western will to martyrdom. When he quotes a Danish editor comparing himself to medieval reformists for mocking Muslims, a systematically marginalized minority, I had an insight. American conservative evangelicals tout their supposed oppression, despite Christianity’s outright majority. Powerful majorities yearn for oppressed status; Todorov writes, “It has to be said that, these days, the figure of the victim exerts an irresistible attraction.”

Reading this directly after the Charlie Hebdo massacre gave Todorov’s message an urgency he couldn’t have anticipated. French law protects certain minorities; shortly after the Charlie Hebdo killings, French authorities arrested a comedian for an anti-Semitic Facebook post. Charlie mocked a powerless, ostracized minority, then cried foul when that minority, defenseless in either government or media, hit back. The subsequent crocodile tears weren’t about free speech; they basically manufactured, or recycled, a new global enemy.

This book carries the shock of recognition. Todorov repeatedly hits informed readers with insights we’ve not suspected, but have lingered unspoken behind public discourse in our time. Spokespeople for democracy’s competing visions offer powerful, but incompatible, narratives of various enemies whose overwhelming, malignant might altogether jeopardizes modern freedom, because fear of totalitarian foes energizes free citizens. But in a world where global enemies offer only symbolic challenges, democracy’s real enemies dwell within our own borders.

Monogamy in a Plural Society

John I. Cline, The Monogamy Mystery: Natural/Unnatural?

Sometimes it feels, in this age of presidential infidelities and quickie celebrity divorces, that monogamy has become another outdated cultural vestige. Public figures, even spiritual leaders and beloved teachers, make and break marriages with manic haste. Yet humans continue longing for meaningful bonds with other humans, bonds we contend should last throughout mortal life or beyond. How do we achieve where so many have failed? How can we reconcile lofty goals with common human frailties?

Bishop John Cline, a Baptist minister from the British Virgin Islands, has wrestled with these issues throughout his career. Unsurprisingly from a Christian clergyman, his considerations come from the Bible and religious tradition; but also biology, sociology, history, and current events. He guides readers through difficult, sometimes contradictory reasoning pathways, ever mindful that, for most people, issues of fidelity, forgiveness, and union aren’t mere academic discussions or philosophical premises. They reflect our dangerous everyday lives.

Cline’s answers might strike many Christians as unorthodox. His examination of changing mores through history, and meanings of key Greek scriptural terms, means many principles my generation grew up hearing repeated constantly, aren’t really biblical. Cline encourages thinking Christians seeking monogamous fidelity to separate legitimate ethical foundations from mere learned customs. This isn’t easy. Cline’s long, sometimes convoluted reasoning, reminiscent of Aristotle, provides a model for serious, intellectually engaged debate between habits and timeless truths.

Quoting science, Cline admits monogamy runs against apparent human nature. Mammals generally aren’t biologically cued for lifelong fidelity. We know from experience, however, that social experiments throwing monogamous bonds overboard haven’t produced happier societies or greater prosperity. Since humans uniquely build societies designed to persist beyond the changing seasons, we have singular responsibilities to build social structures based on trust and loyalty. This often pits our biological drives against what our brains recognize as true.

Bishop John I. Cline

To paraphrase and oversimplify, Bishop Cline encourages readers to perceive marriage as a process, not a state of being; not that we are married, but we pursue our marriage through life’s stages. This means understanding our own identities, rather than grabbing fleeting emotional highs. It also means understanding the real foundations of durable relationships, rather than what romantic comedies and paperback potboilers offer. Real relationships, Cline says, are both subtle and frequently less than obvious.

Too often, people get married for reasons unable to sustain lifelong commitment. Cline lists several “rules of engagement” to help readers ensure they’re getting married for the right reason. Rules include: “Marriage was not designed to make you happy,” “Aspire to achieve the God standard for marriage,” and my personal favorite, “Do not fall ‘in love.’ Understand it!” These rules contradict what we’ve learned in countless Top-40 songs, but they encourage a mindful marriage.

Also, when infidelity happens—as, for many couples, it almost inevitably will—they need concrete plans for getting around it and reconstructing their relationship. Cline isn’t sentimental or misty-eyed about ideal marriages. His pastoral career has involved counseling collapsing relationships, and he’s studied marriages through good times and bad. He’s surveyed parishioners, perhaps not altogether scientifically, and understands our beliefs often don’t match our actions. Therefore, he says it’s necessary to plan for awful eventualities.

Infidelity isn’t easy; Cline admits sometimes separation is best. Even Jesus left infidelity as the exception in his divorce ban. But for couples determined to persevere, he counsels certain traits, like honesty, friendship, and repentance. These attitudes, like monogamy itself, aren’t natural to humans; we generally dissemble, bear grudges, and act defensive. But Cline, like countless theologians and social scientists before himself, calls striving families to aspire to something higher, something truer than their feelings.

I especially appreciate Cline’s concluding remarks dedicated to the young. Christian leaders often inculcate youth with traditions inherited from Western culture, often without firm religious or scientific foundation. Cline, by contrast, uses plain English to evaluate the difference between sex and relationship, between near-term satisfaction and long-term growth, and between real and false respect. We all desire relationships, whether romantic, platonic, or spiritual, and when youth’s feelings run high, guidance in finding relationship is priceless.

Today’s frantic, high-pressure culture encourages ordinary people to take a passive attitude toward their relationships. This often results in early burnout, tragic indiscretions, and painful splits. Bishop Cline’s book, sophisticated but not long, provides tools necessary to resist such passivity. He helps eager singles construct meaningful relationships, busy marrieds sustain what they’ve built, and grieving survivors heal the wounds of betrayal. He doesn’t offer to make tough situations easy. Sometimes, difficulty is its own reward.

Jewel Of Denial

Jude Watson, Loot: How To Steal a Fortune

Young March McQuin doesn’t have friends. He has his dad, world-class cat burglar Alfie McQuin, and the next job. When Alfie tumbles off an Amsterdam rooftop, his dying words to March leave ask more questions than they answer: “Wait a month. Find jewels. Follow the falls to day.” Suddenly March finds himself an orphan with a quest. He doesn’t know, initially, he’s also the quarry in a decade-old diamond heist.

Jude Watson has written wildly successful young adult novels in corporate-owned franchises, particularly The 39 Clues and Star Wars, plus some freestanding dramas under her real name, Judy Blundell. Watson now channels the energy and panache of her franchise fiction into a stand-alone youth mystery. Her story channels the energy of postwar Ealing Studios dramedies into a modern setting aimed at mid-grade readers, and their parents.

March was his father’s apprentice, but even masters make mistakes. Captured by Dutch police, twelve-year-old March, an American citizen, finds himself shipped to an American group home, and forcibly reunited with the sister he’s never met, Julia. Jules. Seems Alfie stole a cursed moonstone necklace ten years ago, which prophesied his twin children’s deaths on their thirteenth birthday. Now they have one month to repay their late father’s debts.

Watson’s preteen target audience will enjoy her spirited, muscular storytelling of industrious kids determined to outwit malicious, predatory adults. Parents will appreciate Watson’s weaving of sly cultural references, little winks to the kind of antihero movie Cold War studios produced staring Michael Caine or David Niven. Kids won’t get the allusions, certainly. But like all good young adult writers, Watson tells a ripping yarn that only grown-ups will truly understand.

Escaping the group home, the McQuins find themselves the brains of a preteen James-Younger Gang. They have until next full moon to reunite the seven cursed moonstones, separated by Alfie’s hippie fence. Aided by an undersized hacker and a streetwise thug, March and Jude begin a trek spanning from Manhattan to Frisco to Barcelona. Success means independence and wealth. Failure means death by falling from a great height.

Whatever action our heroes take, something awful turns up. The McQuins occupy a world of David Mamet-ish intricate deceit. Jules and March occupy a world driven by honor and retribution, not honesty and justice. Every adult they meet works some angle, usually unsavory, and slaps dollar values on everything, even kids. The McQuins must outthink, outmaneuver, and outlast opponents who’ve had ten years to plan every move.

I’ll concede, my middle-aged, dad-like side initially reared its ugly head. Building a story around children who steal remorselessly, and pitting them against adults of uniform villainy, seemed to convey a questionable moral. Child psychologists debate whether youth can really understand dramatic irony. Grown-ups have savvied antiheroes, from Bogey to Jason Bourne, but we know how to admire without emulating. Are such characters really age-appropriate?

But I realized, kids are more sophisticated than adults admit. I admired Han Solo, but never mimicked him. The heist movies Watson references arose from a time of remarkable economic inequality, when unscrupulous people had so thoroughly stolen wealth, dignity, and power from the commonweal, that übermenschen could only restore balance by stealing everything back. In a cynical, individualistic age, the McQuin Gang represents restorative justice and resistance to power.

They also represent family. Alfie McQuin, whose disembodied presence persists with March posthumously, was certainly a scoundrel and thief. He also prepared for his children’s future, taught March a lucrative skill, and showed unconditional love. (Combining elements of The Lavender Hill Mob and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Alfie begs a performance by the late Alec Guinness.) In a world of ambiguous loyalties and moral compromise, the McQuin Gang becomes a counter-cultural family.

Thus, I realized late, the McQuin Gang isn’t about its crimes. It’s about unity. When life becomes so unavoidably hostile that guile becomes the only worthwhile weapon, and when distrust becomes so rife that what trust you purchase incrementally becomes precious, you need to have faith in somebody. Confronted by Machiavellian adults who no longer believe the system they’ve created, our youthful heroes discover the power of unbridled unity.

Watson’s McQuin Twins discover society isn’t about laws, as family isn’t about blood. When failing decency reduces everybody, even children, to dollar signs, four youths, abandoned by “polite” society, collaborate to reclaim their common humanity. If that means skirting the law, humiliating corrupt adults, and besting thieves at their own game, well, why not? We make life from opportunities we’re given. And the McQuin Gang wins.

State of the State of the Union

Say what you will about President Obama, he’s a damned good speaker. Of course he is. As a politician, it’s his job to speak eloquently about whatever presses on America’s collective consciousness. When he talks about stimulating American industry, he certainly earned that rare bipartisan standing O. When he said “If you want the job done right, hire a vet,” even I wanted to hire a combat veteran.

Watching his State of the Union Speech on MSNBC last night, though, I found myself getting cheesed off. Not by the President, whose speech was almost wholly anticipated, considering he pre-leaked all his talking points. No, I got cheesed with MSNBC itself, which ran a scrolling chyron across the bottom of the screen. It began with a single question: “Do you agree with what President Obama is saying right now?

The chyron switched periodically between asking that question, and various methods of calculating the answer. A red-versus-blue bar gave aggregate numbers (unsurprisingly, given MSNBC’s leftist audience, the agree bar seldom dipped below 85 percent). A cartesian graph calculated the actual number continuously, not only representing agreement levels minute for minute, but disaggregating responses by party affiliation.

This caused the coverage of a legitimate news event, on a purported news network, to resemble a teenager live-tweeting a concert. While President Obama desperately appealed to viewers’ better angels and tried to invest a deeply divided Congress with his agenda, and John Boehner tried not to make obvious faces at the President’s shoulder, MSNBC preferred to distract viewers by selling their own opinions back to them as news.

Even Senators Bob Menendez and Elizabeth Warren weren't immune from the chyron

Arguably, the numbers did have interesting implications. Sometimes Republican, Democratic, and Independent respondents tracked close together, while sometimes they spread further apart. Somewhere around the 27-minute mark, the three lines came almost exactly together, and tracked together for nearly two minutes. Then, though the numbers spaced themselves out again, they never reclaimed the wide divides of the first ten minutes.

Ed Schultz, whose longtime show has attracted blue-collar union voters to MSNBC, a network otherwise dominated by policy professionals and scholarly wonks, pioneered this technique. He commences his show with some question, usually so lopsided that any casual viewer can predict his leftist audience’s response. Presumably he does so hoping his audience feels involved when he reads the final tally at the end of the show.

But what works on a nightly prime-time talk show doesn’t necessarily translate into a major event. Viewers who tune in for a significant news moment like a Presidential speech generally would like to pay attention to the President. We cannot do so with a constantly moving chyron across the bottom third of the screen. Despite the myth of multitasking, most human beings cannot divide their attention that way, so we understand less of both together than either alone.

Every major cable news network maintains chyrons during their news. Both Fox and CNN maintain a scrolling headline ticker across the bottom of their screens, along with boxes featuring rolling weather reports, stock tickers, and “stay tuned” sluglines, which repeat 24/7. MSNBC usually stops their chyron during their top prime-time ratings winners, but retains it during their lower-rated daylight programming.

The running tally helpfully told legislators when their base wanted them to applaud

This produces a bizarre contradiction on networks supposedly dedicated to disseminating facts: (1) enough happens worth your limited attention that we can fill an entire broadcast day, and (2) nothing is particularly worth paying attention to. These networks seemingly cannot decide whether to take themselves, and anything they say, seriously. Dedicated newshounds get frustrated trying to process constant contradictory input. One wonders why anybody keeps trying.

Somebody could argue that such devices serve their purpose. Many cable news viewers leave their preferred network running as background noise, or catch glimpses in restaurants, airport lounges, and other public spaces. Many public TVs run with the sound off, making the chyron the only part of the screen image audiences really get. And savvy viewers can separate meaningful from meaningless content. We can imagine somebody saying that.

But jamming a chyron into the State of the Union says the networks believe even this, the hallmark moment of American democracy, isn’t really worth your whole attention. It encourages unthinkingly goofy behavior: “The majority of people who agree with me think Obama said something worthwhile! I’ll think that too!” It subordinates content to technological format. It rewards smartphone-level short attention spans.

MSNBC must, certainly, do whatever pays the bills. But in this context, they’ve created a hulking gap between their featured content and their stated principles. Next time MSNBC’s celebrity anchors rend their garments, complaining that American voters have supported some unsavory candidate or agenda, here’s hoping they remember, and rue, this moment.

Seriously. On that network, does anybody doubt the real answer to that question?

Evil Storytellers From Finland

Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, The Rabbit Back Literature Society

Children's author Laura White has become Rabbit Back, Finland's most famous recluse, a veritable Far Northern Greta Garbo. Every member of her renowned Literature Society has become famous for nigh-magical writing, but she hasn't accepted any new members in thirty years. When mousy schoolteacher Ella Milana catches Laura's eye, that precedent changes. Then Laura disappears. Curious, headstrong Ella finds herself an orphan among Laura’s disciples, and resolves to discover the Literature Society’s carefully buried secrets.

Jääskeläinen's publishers have slapped the "fantasy" label on this, apparently his first novel translated into English. But that's a marketing contrivance. His storytelling approach more resembles the bastard offspring of Shirley Jackson and Jorge Luis Borges. Between his languorous pace, nonlinear timeline, and intense character focus, Jääskeläinen creates what Franco-Romanian critic Tzvetan Todorov called “the fantastic”—that liminal space between dreams and waking, where reality doesn’t constrain possibility, and human illusions of control break down.

Ella gets adopted into Laura White’s Rabbit Back Literature Society shortly after her father’s death. But before Ella’s tutelage begins, Laura literally vanishes on a wisp of snow, leaving Ella orphaned a second time. (Jääskeläinen’s symbolism is pervasive, and often unsubtle.) Ella coaxes Literature Society members to divulge their stories, a process they call “spilling.” Slowly, they spill one secret even they’ve mostly forgotten: they previously had another member, a boy genius who died young.

Much of Jääskeläinen’s novel deals with how Laura White turned young disciples into genuine writers. Since Laura vanishes before Ella’s real training begins, Ella must become her own teacher, assembling her apprenticeship piecemeal from other Literature Society members. This proves taxing, since members have essentially stopped talking to one another.She uncovers less a Platonic artistic ideal than a band of intellectually profound, emotionally stunted man-children, bound together by a cerebral form of Stockholm Syndrome.

Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen

Laura White (or Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen?) evidently doesn't believe in writers "creating" narratives. Rather than invention, Laura sees art as a process of stripping away learned pretenses. Writers are fundamentally antisocial, because they trade in truth, divorced altogether from sentiment. Literature Society members mine each other for stories, a process Jääskeläinen tacitly likens to cannibalism. Artists wring truth from themselves and one another, slowly, painfully, with all the grace and prettiness of a back-alley appendectomy.

Members of the Rabbit Back Literature Society are all talked out. They’ve only created globe-spanning art by consuming each other’s stories, and they find themselves so depleted, they’ve retreated into near-complete isolation. Ella provides fresh meat, not only a source of her own stories, but new questions that force members to retell old stories in new ways. Vampire-like, they start consuming Ella, but she has only one overwhelming quest, to find the enigmatic boy genius.

Most of this book consists of characters telling one another stories. Ella teases out confessions buried so deeply within her new colleagues, even they’ve forgotten the unvarnished truth. Picking facts from the prettified narratives they’ve created to excuse themselves, to themselves, proves grimly difficult. In return, Ella’s colleagues demand stories from her, stories that require her to examine herself in ways she’s never previously attempted. Ella learns the easiest person to lie to is herself.

Words create reality. That’s Jääskeläinen’s thesis throughout this book. Literature Society members create transcendent art from words, which others receive, and are transformed. But they keep words away from other areas. They’ve so thoroughly erased the boy genius’s name from shared memory that he’s essentially vanished from history. But reality needs stories, so when Literature Society members stop telling new ones (nearly all have lapsed into undeclared retirement), local library books, virus-like, start rearranging themselves.

Ella, a literature scholar who started creative writing only late (like Jääskeläinen), discovers a vein of terrible abuse beneath her sometime literary heroes. These authors create art only by damaging themselves, and one another. After catching one mistreating another with apparent sadistic glee, Ella realizes: "Maybe that's what happened when people became writers and knew each other so well that there was no need to speak anymore. Authentic communication was quickly replaced by written drama."

This is a difficult book, populated with sharp-toothed antiheroes, frequently digressing into long, talky detours, with a cynical, almost demonic view of human creativity. It’s also dreamlike, thoughtful, and humane, with frequent flashes of unexpected humor. It straddles the line between popular novel and Platonic dialogue, driven less by events than Jääskeläinen’s rich, ever-evolving ideas. It demands readers as committed and thoughtful as itself. Not everyone will like it. But it offers plenty to love.