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.