Beyond the Antics

I’m afraid that I’m becoming accustomed to Trump’s antics. His weekend Presidential tweets were the unsubstantiated accusations of Obama’s wiretapping mixed in with comments on the current TV ratings of The Apprentice. I’m not really shocked by this behavior anymore and I suppose it is better for my adrenal system not to be in continual flight or fight mode. But I feel a real danger in becoming inured to his consistently irrational behavior. On the other hand, perhaps not reacting to his truly bizarre personality will allow me to focus more on matters of content. It’s confusing and I’m already tired of it and it’s only been two months.

On Monday, it was the reinstatement of the slightly revised version of the travel ban. It may be more legal than its predecessor, but it still seems morally wrong and tactically misguided. While I believe in regulating our border to care for our nation, arbitrary closings like this violate the very freedoms that we say we are trying to protect. Rather than protecting us from danger, this executive order adds to the culture of fear and international radicalization that makes terrorism look more attractive to some.

This ban is a symbolic action to rally the faithful through fear and blame. These are such powerful forces in us all, whatever our political persuasion. From this place, the problem can appear to be the other people who are not like me. But we already live in a pluralistic country. This is what we have long touted to the world as our strength – the creativity and energy that happens when different people come together. This diversity is not just something we must tolerate, it has been what has driven the economic and political success of America.

I continue to believe that this tendency to ‘other’ the opposition is one of our biggest challenges. How can we listen beyond our opinion and still stand for inclusion and justice?

Generally In Favor of Good Things

1.
The glorious beginnings
of our American dream
are indivisible from
the horrors of slavery
and genocide. Current
proud intentions toward
liberty and justice all
gloss over a universal
desperation to remain
blind to the chains
that still bind us
to our true and
unaccounted origins.

2.
I’m certainly not
like those others.
I am not all the things
I don’t want
to imagine I am. I am
kind and generous.
No one is more kind
and generous than me.
Really. I don’t defend
arbitrary definitions nor
condone the walls
constructed to protect
my privilege—restricting
access to the chosen
few while dismissing
others to their previous
fate (which, honestly,
is not my problem,
is it?)

3.
I like the calm benefits
of my previously arranged
position. I like to think well
of myself and am generally
in favor of good things.

Without Justification

This morning,
rather than diagnosing
and recommending,
in pragmatic prose,
a way through
the current crisis,
I sip tea and
practice being
irresponsible.

The dark masters
gather and grumble
at my indolence,
but I courageously resist
their muttered insults and
seductions.

I have grown old
and weary in
steadfast pursuit of
their fickle approval;
as if freedom could
happen at some other
time.

Every action balances
dungeon and delight:
the endless quest for
self-earned grace or
some rougher and
sweeter enterprise
depending only
on the air that
has already been
given.

This morning again
I practice resistance to
the ancient gods of Self
accomplishment and vow
to disappear into this
one life without
justification.

Discrete Incarnation

Everything is
the full expression
of its own explanation—
complete in this
flashing particularity.

Just this
specific
revelation.

Don’t dream of
some other heaven
or otherwise
let yourself be
distracted from the
holiness at hand.

Where is God? Where
is God? Here. Here.
Here.

Only when the mind
exhausts itself can
the soul receive This.

All avenues of pursuit
close and hope
for something else
dies. Then the embryo
of the true self is
born at last into
what it has always been.

Discrete incarnation.

Misery, Bubbles and Bastions

In an article entitled “Our Miserable 21^st Century” which appeared in the monthly magazine Commentary, Nicholas N. Eberstadt wrote:

On the morning of November 9, 2016, America’s elite—its talking and deciding classes—woke up to a country they did not know. To most privileged and well-educated Americans, especially those living in its bicoastal bastions, the election of Donald Trump had been a thing almost impossible even to imagine. What sort of country would go and elect someone like Trump as president? Certainly not one they were familiar with, or understood anything about.

Whatever else it may or may not have accomplished, the 2016 election was a sort of shock therapy for Americans living within what Charles Murray famously termed “the bubble” (the protective barrier of prosperity and self-selected associations that increasingly shield our best and brightest from contact with the rest of their society). The very fact of Trump’s election served as a truth broadcast about a reality that could no longer be denied: Things out there in America are a whole lot different from what you thought. 

First of all, let’s take a moment to appreciate this wonderful piece of writing—vivid, musical and engaging—a beginning that disturbs, engages and invites you in. My experience in reading feels akin to appreciating the beauty of Billy Holiday’s voice as she sings of a sadness of life and love. Human beings have this wonderful capacity to use of art and awareness to shape and share what is difficult to bear.

I came to Eberstadt’s article through a feature on National Public Radio and then Ross Douthat’s Op Ed piece in the New York Times. Douthat does a skillful job (please appreciate the writing which both disturbs and educates) summarizing some of Eberstadt’s main points:

[This] crisis is apparent in the data that Eberstadt and many others have collected, showing wage stagnation in an era of unprecedented wealth, a culture of male worklessness in which older men take disability and young men live with their parents and play video games, an epidemic of opioid abuse, a historically low birthrate, a withdrawal from marriage and civic engagement and religious practice, a decline in life expectancy and a rise in suicide, and so on through a depressing litany.

I recommend both these articles as part of your daily dose of reality from outside ‘the bubble.’ (Here I give away my strong suspicion that most of the people who come to read what I write are residents of the ‘bicostal bastions’ with a few outliers spread throughout mostly urban areas across the country.)

But I don’t totally agree with either writer. (And neither should you.)

Eberstadt’s first paragraph, while engaging, seems to make the misleading assumption that the educated elite are somehow uniquely subject to living in a bubble.

We all—regardless of our class, race, status or position—live in a bubble. This is not a problem we can solve, but rather a condition that we can work with. An essential political and civic action for us all should be to consciously expose ourselves to information and relationships that both disquiet and enrich us.

Over these past few months, I have come to increasingly appreciate companions of the mind—thinkers and writers who I may never meet, but who help me better understand the forces and realities that I have not yet noticed.

So please meet my new friends in seeing more clearly: Nicholas N. Eberstadt, and Ross Douthat.