No one is here for your White Guilt

Publication of The 1619 Project in the New York Times Magazine August 18 edition has generated a flurry of both praise and criticism. 1619 is the year the first African slaves (technically indentured servants, but without contracts securing their release they were indeed slaves) were brought to the North American continent. The project content is generated by prominent black writers – journalists, essayists, poets. Project head and multiple-award-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones describes the objective of the project as “placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”

Fans of the project call it revolutionary, and critics call it propaganda. Newt Gingrich tweeted, “The NY Times 1619 Project should make its slogan ‘All the Propaganda we want to brainwash you with’ .it [sic] is a repudiation of the original NY Times motto.”

From what I’ve been able to look up, a few elements of the historical content of The 1619 Project publication might be debatable, but most of its history is solid. This places it squarely in the company of almost every other historical analysis upon which we rely to understand the American experiment. Certainly more reasonable than the “African worker” spin a recently published textbook from McGraw-Hill put on the slave trade. (In fairness, McGraw-Hill apologized and replaced this edition … but one wonders how no one in the public review process found it at least misleading.)

So why the controversy?

A large portion of White America is very uncomfortable with the idea of Black America taking control of its own historical narrative.

Blaming the whole phenomenon on racism isn’t wrong, but quitting there without diving into more nuance is a conversation-stopper. Once you call someone a racist, the conversation then becomes about whether that person identifies themselves as a racist, and there’s no conversational path forward available to either side. To quote a song from Avenue Q: “Everyone’s a little bit racist.” If we can start there, maybe we can be less sensitive when someone points out our own racism, and more empathetic when we need to point it out in others. We can’t participate in a discussion on race effectively when we’re in attack or defense mode.

Why the tendency to default to one or the other?

The information and perspectives shared in The 1619 Project aren’t simply new information. New information that contradicts what we already believe may be difficult to process, and often we outright dismiss it, but such information doesn’t have to provoke such a visceral reaction. The points of view in The 1619 Project cut deeper though: they force us to re-evaluate what we believe about our tribe.

Tribal identity is deep. So deep that often when what we believe about ourselves contradicts what our tribe believes … we alter our perception of ourselves. Confronting such a deeply held tribal identity touches off feelings many people may not even be aware they have. They can feel attacked by facts.

When confronted with unexpected, unpleasant feelings we may look to their catalyst to place blame. In her book Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, author Arlie Russell Hochschild comments on how self-identified conservatives in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana resent liberals telling them how they should feel about things like racism, the environment, and religion. These people very much understood these issues and their own self-interest, but liberal perspectives were in conflict with what Hochschild called this community’s “deep story” – a story about faithful, hardworking people who had been neglected, abused, and then forgotten by both corporate interests and the federal government. Liberals wanted to “line jump” – that is, to put the interests of minorities ahead of conservatives who had also worked hard and been left behind.

The feeling these people most associated with liberal viewpoints? Guilt. They’re not here for it.

Current conservative narrative is gleefully hostile to the idea of feelings. Well, liberal feelings anyway. “F*ck Your Feelings” t-shirts areproudly worn by (and sold by) attendees at Trump rallies. Online conservatives love to “own the libs” by calling them overly-sensitive “snowflakes” (a term co-opted from writer Chuck Palahniuk and ironically misaligned with his original intent). Conservative memes constantly call for a return to a time when people weren’t so easily offended.

But …

Conservatives have plenty of feelings, too. Movies like Black Panther and the female remake of Ghostbusters elicit anguished cries of “Social Justice Warrior” and “this ruins the stories of my childhood” as though any single film could eradicate our vast trove of entertainment dedicated to and featuring almost exclusively white men. I’m pretty sure you can still watch the original Ghostbusters as often as you like and will not be forced to watch Kate McKinnon.

A soup commercial (or any advertisements) featuring same-sex or interracial couples somehow “forces diversity down our throats” and “demands a boycott” simply by not ignoring groups of people who actually exist and buy things.

And try saying “Happy Holidays” to someone with an axe to grind and no regard to whether or not you actually celebrate Christmas. They’ll have some feelings.

The conservative echo chamber convinces itself liberal ideas are all about sissified feelings and conservative ideas are all about strong principles. (The liberal echo chamber of course has its own set of problems stereotyping its opposition.) Perhaps that is why they assume the liberal “fixation” with race and the historical and current impacts of slavery must be feelings-driven.

And what could that feeling be?
Why, the snowflakiest of all snowflake feelings: White Guilt.

Ever hear the old saying that we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes? It’s largely true, not least because once we achieve the success we seek, we may feel little motivation to learn more. However, artists and entrepreneurs with longevity and lasting cultural impact are never satisfied their latest production is the best they can do.

But, if we have a tribal bent to our nature, we drop the “learning from mistakes” ball when it comes to our tribe. After all, if “We’re number one!” (and what is the definition of that ranking if not our own tribal biases?) … where else do we have to go? And why would we need to? The tribe doesn’t make mistakes; the tribe has a deep story.

Many conservatives now complain that liberals hate the United States, their evidence being liberals’ willingness to call out our past and current sins. (Not that liberal always get it right; the eugenics movement in the early part of the last century was driven by liberals of the time.) Even weary moderates will complain how liberals constantly taint our proud national accomplishments by bringing up the negatives of the past.

People are OK with talking about slavery during Black History Month, but as Leonard Pitts recently tweeted: “slavery is also part of White History. The slaves didn’t exactly sell and buy themselves.” (Don’t let anyone distract from this by trotting out how Africans captured other Africans to sell; not the point and they know it.) Ask some people to consider the lasting impacts of slavery, and they’ll want to know why they should feel guilty when neither they nor their family owned slaves.

The short answer is: you shouldn’t; no one is trying to make you feel guilty.

Guilt is a terrible motivator. Guilt creates feelings of powerlessness, but to effect change we need to feel powerful. Guilt creates resentment of the person who “makes” us feel guilty (even when we’ve wronged them), and obstructs our access to empathy. Guilt leads to shame, and shame shuts us down.

No one wants to “make” us feel White Guilt, because our guilt – whether we fight or embrace it – is not just benignly useless: it moves the conversation backwards.

And this may be a good time to remind ourselves no one “makes” us feel anything. Not that initial pangs of guilt are voluntary or chosen, but our reaction to them is under our control. Defensiveness is surrender to guilt because it implies our responses are limited to guilt or nothing. Defensiveness is a position of weakness. Empathy however is strength found in vulnerability. Choosing empathy commits us to connecting without committing us to agreeing. As Dylan Marron, host of the podcast Conversations with People who Hate Me, says: “Empathy is not endorsement.”

Guilt will not move us forward. Feel free not to feel it. Feel free not to insist on it.

Progress does not require it.

Like all nations, the United States has a history of moments both proud and shameful. The shameful does not eradicate the good any more than the good eradicates the shameful. While we excel at celebrating the good, we often do so to the detriment of acknowledging the shameful. Both are parts of our true story.

History is written not just by the winners, but by the winning tribe. And the tribe has a vested interest in portraying itself as the eternal hero of its own story. But the United States has grown so large and diverse that the tension within the tribe is pulling it apart at the seams. The losing tribes also have stories, and over time have won back their voices, so naturally they too wish to be the heroes of their stories.

Unfortunately, we are not skilled at entertaining two such stories at once. We can’t comfortably balance the ideas of our tribe being the hero of our own story, and the villain of another tribe’s story.

Yet that is what each of us are.

The unpleasant truth of American history is that much of what makes us great was built on the grounds of slaughtered natives and the backs of enslaved people. This is an apolitical statement, yet our current culture divides our responses to these truths into politically polarized camps.

While “moving past” the past seems reasonable to the winning tribe, the losing tribes are still living with the consequences. They still live in the repercussions of the past, such as being stuck on reservations (whether official created or achieved through ghettoization) without the clean water they were promised – be they on a Navajo reservation or in Flint.

“Moving past” the past implies that forgiving and forgetting puts us all on equal footing. But as entrenched as we are in celebrating our past glories as the wellspring of our present greatness, we remain willfully blind to how our past sins establish the quicksand of our present ills.

Imagine, if you will, a race run up two escalators a dozen stories tall. A racer from each tribe is headed the same direction, but one escalator is moving upward and the other is moving downward. At every floor, the runner on the upward-bound escalator could flip a switch so the downward-bound escalator stops moving or reverses direction, but chooses to wait until the seventh story to stop it, and the tenth to reverse it. Is there any point at which such a race actually becomes fair? How much harder will the second runner have worked to reach the top of the escalator? Would the victory be satisfying – or deserved?

In case you hadn’t noticed, the ratios of seven and ten floors out of twelve are roughly equivalent to ratios of the passage of time during the last four hundred years from 1619 to 1870 (when black men were given the right to vote) and  1619 to 1965 (passage of the Voting Rights Act effectively ending the Jim Crow era).

Now imagine an entire tribe or two forced onto the down escalator by the tribe on the up escalator, and the prize for the race is dominance over half the continent. Imagine the more the “Downs” struggle, the more advantage the “Ups” have. Imagine that race takes 400 years to run; generations live and die.

Once the race is over everyone might appear equal because we’re all standing at the top of the escalator, but the economic, physical, and psychic toll of fighting their way up the first seven stories over 300 years has not left the Downs in anywhere near as good a condition as the Ups. The Ups had a century to settle in and get comfortable and start calling the shots and making the rules at the top of the escalator before the Downs ever reached equal footing.

The descendants of the Ups continue a proud tradition of celebrating their victory, but eventually, once the downs recover a little and catch their breaths and start telling their story, start reminding the Ups of the injustice and horror of the whole scenario, how can anyone think the results of the race are just?

What sets things right?

Not guilt. We’ve covered that. Guilt is the business of making your story into my story.

What sets things right is listening to the stories of what happened to people struggling upward against unfair odds while we did not have the same forces working against us.

What sets things right is trying to understand, without becoming defensive, what was lost, why it was lost, and how our tribe contributed to that loss.  

What sets things right is figuring out how we can all really have equality here at the top of the escalator … not because we were directly responsible for the terrible conditions of a race established centuries ago, but because we are decent, thoughtful human beings who understand the effects of the race are not over.

The United States will never be its best, unified, just tribe until all our struggles become part of all our stories, and all our victories lift all of us together.

No one is here for our white guilt.

But are we really here for truth and justice the American Way?

Yes, a republic actually IS a democracy…

Remember when the United States thought it was a good idea to promote democracy?

We didn’t all agree on what were the best forms or methods, but overall democracy wasn’t very controversial.

So what’s with this nonsense I’ve been seeing all over social media about a republic not being a democracy?

Seems to me it’s a relatively recent (and incorrect) distinction used mainly by the right to distract from a larger point when a Democrat (or someone else on what passes for the left) makes democracy part of their argument.

First of all, the claim that a republic is not a democracy is a failure of civics education. Democracy comes in a lot of flavors. Most of them are representative democracies as opposed to direct democracies. A republic is a form of representative democracy.

Then there’s this idea that a “democracy” can take your stuff while a “republic” is limited in its ability to do so. No. Just … no.

The nonsense is correct that the United States is a constitutional republic, but it’s the constitutional part that protects your rights, not the republic part. A republic can have a constitution that favors individual rights, corporate rights, state rights, or practically no rights. Depending upon the content of a constitution, so can most other forms of democracy. We’re lucky that in the United States, individual rights (are supposed to) come out on top. That’s not guaranteed by every constitutional republic.

Not sure that’s true?

Well, let’s look at history. Before Rome was an empire, it was a republic with a senate. The Roman senate could take whatever the heck it wanted from most people, because that particular republic was very picky about who got to be a citizen and hold the accompanying rights. It avoided direct democracy specifically to repress individual rights.

Something more recent perhaps? The United States has always been a republic, and for the first hundred years or so it was just fine with slavery. In the nonsense example the democracy took just your bicycle; as long as the represenative body agrees on it, a republic can take a lot more than that …

Still worried that in a “democracy” the majority can take your bicycle? Well under our constitution, they can’t even win an election. That’s by design. Our bicameral Congress (not to mention its pale reflection the Electoral College) was designed to protect the interest of states, not individuals. That means it doesn’t take nearly the majority of citizens to take your bicycle; it only takes 357 people (two thirds of Congress) who – because they are disproportionately representative – may actually be enacting the will of the minority who have religious objections to your brand of bicycle.

One might think they constitution holds them back, but they can pass an amendment about your bike if they need to. They did it once and took everyone’s alcohol. We rely on their good sense (and need to drink) to hold them back.

Except it doesn’t always hold them back, because they pass laws like “eminent domain” that let them seize your land because it serves the “public interest” … and such interest may just be the one rich guy who wants to put in another unnecessary strip mall. One guy is a pretty serious minority. Sure they reimburse you, but that’s not by your choice, is it? And now where you gonna park that bike, bro?

So if the message of this nonsense is 80% misleading (10% partial credit for constitutional republic), what’s the point?

Easy. It’s meant to associate “taking your stuff” with Democrats and “keeping your stuff” with Republicans. Because yes, we are that gullible to make those associations based on nothing more than them sounding alike; advertisers have known this for decades.

Be smarter. And get another 20% partial credit by recognizing one of the most important ways to protect our particular constitutional republic is by understanding what it is.

How Loyalty Ruins Everything

When I drive alone, I think too much. Train’s “Drops of Jupiter” – though an inoffensive song – doesn’t warrant anywhere near the amount of mental energy I spent on it some weeks ago when, with three hours of drive time yet ahead of me, it popped up on the radio. Specifically I fixated on the following snippet of lyrics:

Your best friend always sticking up for you
Even when I know you’re wrong

Is that the kind of friend most of us really want? Enablers?

I suspect I’m not the easiest person in the world to convince I’m wrong, but I value friends and colleagues who are willing to do so. In the heat of the moment I may not seem grateful, but I respect people who respect me enough to offer constructive correction. And if I respect you, I’m willing to do the same: “Hey, maybe don’t squirt that lighter-fluid onto already-burning coals. That’s a nice shirt and you’d hate to have it cut off you.”

Shortly afterward on that same radio (eventually I always return to NPR) I heard story after story – political, social, cultural – influenced by misplaced (or maybe mismanaged?) loyalties of varying degrees.

So mulling all that over I slipped into my mental Carried Bradshaw voice and asked myself:

“In a world divided over seemingly every issue, does loyalty ruin everything?”

WHAT KIND OF LOYALTY IS BAD?

I’m not talking about the kind of loyalty one has to a spouse – though I’d argue that is more properly classified as fidelity. No, the kind of loyalty I’m talking about is more like team loyalty that’s turned the corner into bad sportsmanship: the kind that excuses our bad behavior while disproportionately focusing on, exaggerating, and sometimes even inventing their every flaw. Think DeflateGate, post-championship rioting (win or lose), and the doxing of writer Justine Gubar just for pointing out such behavior. Apply that same mindset to a political party, an economic ideology, a religion, or a nation and the real-world consequences are bad for everyone on all sides. Loyalty, embraced too quickly and applied too lazily, quickly degenerates into a fetish – not the sexual kind of course, but the kind that says the groups and ideas with which we identify are beyond criticism and the ones with which others identify are irredeemable.

LOYALTY SNAPS THE NEEDLE OFF OUR MORAL COMPASS

Let’s wade gently into examples of mismanaged loyalty with a topic everyone agrees on: the 2016 presidential election.

OK, obviously we don’t all agree on it. But this isn’t a partisan take. Just to prove it, even though I unapologetically lean toward liberal, we’ll start with some critique of the Hillary Clinton fandom.

Before Trump was the nominee, I knew many Democrats who were quite critical of Clinton, to the point where they were considering voting for the Republican. However, once Trump became the nominee, many of those same Democrats metamorphosed into Clinton zealots, eager to testify she was the most qualified person to run for any office in the history of the world. Meanwhile Clinton’s public persona metamorphosed weekly at the whim of her campaign advisors – one of the very traits new supporters had claimed made them uneasy before the Republican nomination was clinched.

On the other hand, many other people who saw the election as a contest of the lesser of two evils claimed to “hold their noses” and settle for Donald Trump. Yes, he (like Clinton) always had an enthusiastic base, but they weren’t enough to put him over the top; the nose-holders got him elected. Except, once he was elected, they seemed to forget there was any stench to begin with. Rather than hold him accountable for actions which would have been inexcusable to them under a president from a different party, they said not to take his promises, threats, and tweets literally. So if all those were meaningless … why was it again they voted for him?

And I have a really strong suspicion that had the election gone the other way, Hillary’s own party wouldn’t have been holding her feet to the fire either.

Regardless of whether a candidate or winner is our first choice, we should have the same basic moral expectations. For the most part, we’re more concerned with winning, then become indignant that the “other” side can’t see our choices the same way we do.

LOYALTY CREATES DOUBLE STANDARDS WHICH UNDERMINE OUR CAUSES AND INSTITUTIONS

Beyond candidate loyalty, there’s often an even stronger party loyalty – which these days seems to involve (depending on whom you ask) the parties of libtards and deplorables.

Party loyalty has the same tendency to overlook its own sins and focus on the other side’s often identical sins. For example, both sides complain about a petty and biased media, but eat it up when their preferred media outlet turns molehills into mountains. Melania rebuffing Donald’s attempts to hold hands doesn’t deserve any more attention than do Michelle Obama’s bare arms (and didn’t we drop that indignation in a hot minute given the current First Lady’s naked modeling past?).

Unfortunately there are also far more serious examples. Mitch McConnell looked positively giddy when he said he would fill Supreme Court vacancies in the last year of Trump’s term … when we all remember his claim to the “tradition” of exactly the opposite during Obama’s last term. Is it a principle or not? We all know the answer.

Of course this might not have been a problem had the Democrats not gone “nuclear” on Senate filibuster rules for everything but Supreme Court nominees … creating an opening for Republicans to later remove the remaining restriction. What should be a decision made on good governing principles is alternately hailed or maligned by both parties depending on who happens to be making SCOTUS picks.

 As a left-of-center guy, much of my post-election disappointment has been elicited by the left, who seems to be employing the very language and tactics they claimed to despise when they held the reins of power. Neither party has clean hands, and both seem to think it’s OK to play dirty because the other team does. How a party achieves its goals matters. Republicans and Democrats are both increasingly identified with and represented by the extreme ends of their parties, to the point that both have trouble seeing the other side as a group of three-dimensional human beings.

All of this alienates observers by exposing the lack of integrity behind our positions.

If we think everyone on the other side unfairly stereotypes us, all the while painting them with the other side of the same broad brush (but we’re justified in doing it) … rubber, glue, something something…

LOYALTY CREATES DIVISIONS WHERE THEY DON’T NEED TO BE

Can you think of an idea that’s non-partisan? I’ll wait…

From claiming Michelle Obama’s healthy-eating initiative was an assault on individual rights (should she have been pro-unhealthy eating?) to the SJW takedown of Samurai Jack (no, the robot-samurai wasn’t an offensive gay stereotype … because it was robot), we can’t seem to look at anything through a non-partisan lens. Liberals are quick to point out conservatives’ resistance to data and facts (yes, the global temperature is rising and farmers whose yield depends upon an understanding of climate know this), yet ignore or gloss over data and facts inconvenient to their cause (Obama has his own disturbing record on abusing the rights of journalists).

When a libtard says something, a MAGAT must disagree, and vice-versa. Acknowledgement or (God forbid!) compromise is an act of treason.

This immediate leap toward polarization prevents us from considering ideas and policies that would be perfectly acceptable … had they only come from our side. And since we don’t have to consider each other’s actual ideas, we’re free to fill that space with nonsense like “Democrats all want open borders to undermine capitalism” and “Republicans all want to turn America into the Christian Taliban.” It doesn’t help that the most prominent members of each party loudly reinforce these ideas … or that we don’t effectively address the fringe elements of our parties who DO believe these things.

We may disagree with each other, but we disagree far more with the straw men and caricatures we’ve created of each other.

LOYALTY VALUES IDEOLOGY ABOVE REAL HUMAN CONSEQUENCES

In The Handmaid’s Tale, one otherwise despicable character sagely notes: “Better never means better for everyone… It always means worse, for some.” Even when we have no doubt we are on the “right” side of an argument, we’d be wise to remember that.

Somehow, though, many of us manage to cling to the ideology of capitalism as though “the market” is inherently moral and the cure for all social ills. Conversely, some of us advocate socialism as though it’s never been an abject failure anywhere. Arguably capitalism has raised more of the global population out of poverty than any other economic system, but it has also put many people into poverty. “Globalization” has been going on for decades, but for most of that time it almost exclusively favored the United States so we didn’t stress about it; it’s only become a dirty word in some circles since jobs and markets started flowing in the other direction.

And most people talk about both “isms” – particularly the one they’re opposed to – as though they are unadulterated, monolithic sets of ideas when both have a large number of variants we ignore to support our arguments.

Realistically, the United States is a primarily capitalist system with a significant battery of socialist programs. Many of these programs, such as public schools, Medicare, and even the military (as a citizen you’re still protected by it even if you don’t pay taxes) are integral (if sometimes contentious) institutions which most of us might like to see improved, but very few would outright eliminate. They elevate the general welfare of the nation in a way that capitalism alone could not. And without capitalism, they would not be sustainable. The construction of federal highways was decried as a socialist program, but it revolutionized life and business for everyone, capitalists most of all.

Defense of an ideology generally needs to assume the best in human nature to make its case, and assume the worst to discredit opposing ideologies. If we won’t admit our version of “better” also always means “worse for some,” we can’t begin to manage the social consequences that erode human dignity and well-being. Jonas Salk had every “right” to better himself by privatizing the manufacture and sale of the polio vaccine, but he realized sometimes decency should trump profit (though they are hardly mutually exclusive under less dire circumstances) and turned his research over to the government for distribution. He could afford to be decent because capitalism had already provided him basic comforts. Compare that to recent scandals around the dramatically increased costs of insulin and malaria treatments.

“Wait!” one might say, “aren’t you just advocating voluntarism?” Nope. Because nothing has stopped us from trying it and so far it’s not exactly a craze. I assume the worst about human nature for all “isms.”

LOYALTY TEMPTS US TO EXCUSE THE INEXCUSABLE

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” – Samuel Johnson

You can love the United States of America and still call out its flaws. The whole “love it or leave it” mentality isn’t patriotism – it’s nationalism, and a juvenile one at that. I would argue you can’t actually be patriotic by being an enabler or denier. Just like a parent shirks their duty if they neglect to correct their children, citizens – especially citizens in a government by, for, and of the people – shirk their duty when they refuse to call the United States to accountability.

A good parent teaches consequences. A wise grandparent sees how events of the past still echo in the present. Both know simply sweeping histories of abuse, addiction, and trauma under the rug only serves to perpetuate the problems as new, exciting forms of dysfunction which become increasingly difficult to identify and treat. Declaring “well, he doesn’t beat you any more” as the end of the problem addresses nothing and complicates everything.

Bad parents, though – they want to make sure the family appears bright and shiny to the outside world, and even work to maintain the illusion internal to the family. They inflict retaliation to silence truth-tellers who claim otherwise. Conversely, they reward those who feed the illusion.

Giving into our nationalistic tendencies make us bad parents of our Republic.

Let’s jump ahead from the 2016 election to the present day at the US/Mexican border, specifically the condition of undocumented children kept in crowded, unsanitary detention centers. This situation is a flashpoint of finger-pointing and dismissal along party lines, while both parties claim to have a monopoly on the soul of America.

As Democrats point out the horrible conditions, many Republicans respond with: “Obama detained children; why didn’t you care then?” For the moment, I’m willing to concede any arguments that child detention under the Obama administration was far less prevalent and done under a different set of effective policies. As a matter of fact, it only makes my case stronger if the Obama administration was just as culpable.

To such Republicans I would ask, “If this was just as bad under Obama, why weren’t you concerned about it then either?”

To such Democrats I would ask, “Were you paying attention to undocumented children when Obama was president?”

And to both (and to myself!)  I would ask: “How much of your perspective on this is colored by partisan politics and media?”

CASA workers will tell you the mistreatment of children crossing the border is not a new situation under Trump. Whether the increase in scale is due to a surge at the border or a change in policy (and isn’t it really both?) how we treat children trapped in terrible circumstances shouldn’t be a partisan issue.

When children end up in our custody, regardless of how they got there, we should care about their well-being. How we treat the vulnerable under our care is not just about what we feel they deserve, or a reflection on our views on immigration, it is a statement on whether we actually value human life and dignity. It’s not worse when the “other side” does it, and it’s not excusable when “our side” does it. Even if we believe suffering is an effective deterrent, inflicting trauma on children is not ok.

It is entirely possible to allocate the resources to humanely process asylum seekers (and if this was happening anywhere else in the world we’d be calling it a refugee crisis) without throwing the borders wide open and/or shutting them entirely. Yet we can’t seem to do it because we can’t stop arguing over caricatures of each other that insist these are the only alternatives. I mean, we can move entire armies across oceans and not balk at the cost and logistics … we could manage not to further traumatize kids.

The human cost of partisanship – of loyalty to the wrong things – is being paid by children.

SHOULD WE BE LOYAL AT ALL?

Seriously – should we?

Yes – we should be loyal to principles. Specifically, principles as separate from political parties and economic ideologies. The platforms – and perhaps more importantly the real-world practices – of both the Democratic and Republican parties have shifted significantly over the last several decades. For all practical purposes, conservative and liberal don’t mean what they did fifty years ago. These shifts have been politically driven, and have left many members of both parties disenfranchised.

How can we demonstrate loyalty in a healthy manner?

Be critical of your own party or community first. That’s the party or community you can actually affect. Criticism is not the same as in-fighting. The first promotes growth, while the second is concerned with dominance. Also, first does not mean only, but no one will listen to you criticize their speck until you’ve taken care of that plank you’ve been sporting.

But won’t that just give our enemies the advantage?

Stop looking at the opposition as the enemy. Enemies are humans we give ourselves permission to de-humanize. When we try to convince ourselves (or others) all Democrats or Republicans are of a single abhorrent stripe, we aren’t being loyal, we’re being willfully ignorant – and maybe more importantly we’re making ourselves vulnerable to be exploited by the worst members of our own side. Those people who want you to believe all Democrats are anarchist Antifa communists? And those people trying to convince you all Republicans are tiki-torch wielding plutocrat fascists? Those people are the ones we really need to be worrying about. Those types of people can be very persuasive, because they know how to play to our confirmation bias. Don’t confuse charisma with character. People who tell us what we want to hear get elected, but they don’t actually care about our welfare. Maybe that’s why character and political success seem like such strange bedfellows.

And for Pete’s sake, quit equating Democrat with Antifa and Republican with White Nationalist (or whatever extremist factions you use to short-hand your opposition). Yes the media has convinced us they are somehow related because by some definitions they fall into the same end of the left-right spectrum, but Antifa thinks liberals are weak-ass pansies and actual White Nationalists would just as soon spit on a classical conservative as look at them. Sure they show up at Democratic and Republican events, and they are too easily tolerated, but based on protests I’ve been to I can tell you most of the troublemakers aren’t there for the main event – they’re there for the trouble.

AND FINALLY THE END

We started with a pop culture reference, and we’re going to end with another. Two actually.

I reflected on this piece and thought it was way too long and didn’t have anything original or urgent to say. Then yesterday I ran across a post on Facebook that claimed the same Democrats who loved to laugh at Alec Baldwin’s Trump impersonation on SNL were also the people who doxxed and sent death threats to Li’l AOC and her family for their political satire and-don’t-you-see-who-we’re-dealing-with?!

Oy. Doesn’t that just encapsulate the whole problem of loyalty-turned-toxic?

Some points:

  • Death threats are always wrong. Normal people of any political stripe think so.
  • Death threats are not exclusive to the left or the right. Ask Actual AOC, or Tomi Lahren, or any woman who has been online, how common rape and death threats actually are. Assholes and dangerous people are everywhere and people of good will, regardless of whether we agree with their politics, always oppose them.
  • If you think the Actual AOC threats come from typical Republicans but the threats to Li’l AOC are only propaganda or Russian bots, or vice versa … you know better. Stop it.

Just. Stop.

Death threats are an extreme example, but the basic problem saturates all levels of political discourse.

Our worst enemies are the people telling us what we want to hear in order to divide us for the purpose of exploiting us. People who value partisan loyalty over truth and principle will fall for it every time. The truth is our country, our parties, and our institutions have been all over the map politically and morally.

Every human institution contains corruption, and if a corrupt institution is to be saved it must be by members of that church, party, union, profession, or nation who are willing to police themselves. We can’t just blame or dismiss the bad actors and the weak or ignorant members, because the leaders and intellectuals of an institution are adept at self-justification and no less prone to responding to emotion before reason – though they are probably far less likely to recognize that! Good cops and teachers must police bad cops and teachers. Good clergy must police bad clergy. Non-violent party members must police violent party members. It’s not comfortable and not common, but if we don’t … we’re not good.

Fidelity, integrity, compassion … these all require more conviction, honor, and humanity than mere loyalty. Terrible people can still be the most loyal.

Let us turn our most critical eye toward the thing we love, or we may never see clearly whether it is swimming or drowning.

The Real War on Christmas Began December 26th

Yesterday, December 26th, I went out into the world to take advantage of some sales on discounted wrapping paper. Yeah the crowds suck, but the quality stuff is expensive so I’m not paying full price. In every store, Christmas was already being dismantled and put on clearance in favor of the next retail season (presumably Valentine’s Day but who can keep up with all the holidays churned out by greeting card companies?).

You know what I didn’t see, or hear on the news? Anybody protesting the War on Christmas.

“But wait!” you may object, “That’s because Christmas is over.”

Ah, not so. The Twelve Days of Christmas is not just a song about epically impractical gifts. The Christmas season – or Christmastide – as defined on the church calendar starts on December 25th (you can slide into the evening of the 24th) and ends with Epiphany on January 6th.

And that’s how I know the War On Christmas is, to paraphrase the beloved Colonel  Sherman Potter of M*A*S*H, nothing but a steaming basket of mule muffins.

All that talk about people being “forced” to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas while we do our frenzied shopping? We shouldn’t be wanting them to wish us merry anything. The roughly four weeks before Christmas comprise the season of Advent. It’s supposed to be a period of reflection and anticipation. It’s dark, people. Not cheery. Essentially it’s a time to focus on how rotten the world is and why we all need Jesus. Observing Advent makes the celebration on Christmas (and the following eleven days) more meaningful than “Whew! Thank God that rush is over!”

Sincerity is definitely a holiday sentiment, and is there anything less sincere than being offended by something you haven’t taken the time to understand? If a Good Christian™ understands the traditions of their faith and is greeted by a cashier with “Merry Christmas” before December 25th, shouldn’t they be asking why retail is waging a War On Advent?! Are you a Good Christian™ or not?! C’mon folks … if your argument is that liberals are trying to do away with tradition, shouldn’t you know what the tradition actually is? And maybe stop to consider how Jesus taught us to treat our (real or perceived) enemies. He told the disciples that when people rejected them, they should leave town … not sue to put a living nativity in the town square.  

It seems those forces who want to implement a sort of tribalist Christian Sharia prioritizing compliance over grace are the ones who’ve really sold out. Christmas is bigger business than ever, despite the fact that some public spaces which are inhabited by people of many (or no) faiths don’t pander to it. Christmas isn’t going anywhere. Yet somehow they manage to drum up new offenses. The Starbucks cup is green! Someone said “Happy Holidays” to be inclusive! The candy cane is a J for Jesus – so there! (Actually it’s a shepherd’s crook and turning it upside-down is an accident of geometry that doesn’t change that; it’s like standing on your head under the mistletoe and expecting a kiss: you can call it a pucker…)

And here’s the kicker. Lots and lots of people are offended by these things because they are told they should be, and would never have given them a second thought on their own; green cups, happy holidays (a contraction of “holy days” don’tcha know!), and candy canes are all pleasant things.

Just because someone says they’re speaking for Jesus, doesn’t mean they are. If they’re yelling or insulting people while they insist on Merry Christmas … do the math. The War on Christmas – the faith-based, traditional-church-calendar, love-and-peace, twelve-day, keep-it-in-your-heart-all-year-long Christmas – is being waged by people profaning and exploiting Jesus’s name for profit.

Too many people believe that all conservatives are shrieking fundamentalists trying to cram Christmas down our throats and all liberals are godless, Muslim communists trying to scrub every cross and manger from the landscape, and react to those media-driven stereotypes rather than the evidence of practically every person they encounter in the real world. Seriously – when’s the last time you ran into an extremist of either ilk? Not just somebody who is different from you, but somebody who insists you have to be like them. You know why it feels like there are so many? Because that’s what ends up in the news and on Facebook. I’ve been to many protests, and most people on both sides have been peaceful, if fervent. (Not the damn Nazis. Never defend the damn Nazis.) Bad actors are usually a fringe element … but they’re a newsworthy fringe element.

Don’t give the crazies  and the craziness-pushers power. Don’t buy into the manufactured controversy. And for all that’s holy don’t respond to “Happy Holidays” with a “Merry Christmas” that’s in the same tone as a “&%$# you.” Especially when it’s still &%$#ing Advent. That’s about as un-Christmas-like as it gets.

Here’s a thought. If Christmas is really that important to us, maybe we should keep it going not just in our hearts but also in our deeds all year long. Set aside the 25th of every month (or a day of your choice; I’m not the boss of you) to give to someone in need. And if we’re up for a challenge, we could pick someone we don’t like very much … because Jesus.

Christmas Day isn’t the finale . It’s the overture.

Hi There!

On and off I write a Christian devotional blog. It’s intended to be inclusive and non-partisan (both politically and theologically) so I’m intentional about maintaining a pretty specific tone over there. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t post anything I don’t stand behind … but I also don’t post everything I think. And not everything I think is about Jesus, so not everything I want to write about belongs there.

This blog is going to be something different. Not a companion or an alternative, but a place where my less … let’s say “pastoral” … voice speaks out. I’m not a fan of blind partisanship, so it’s not going to be a haven for those of partisan mindsets. I’m also not a fan of wishy-washy relativism, so there’s not going to be much “we just need to meet in the middle.”

So what kind of things can you expect? Very soon I’m going to write about the War on Christmas … as waged by Christians. I’m going to write about how loyalty ruins everything. And about how both liberals and conservatives are too damn eager to believe every bad thing they hear about the other side.

I expect some views may seem controversial, but controversy-for-its-own-sake will never be the intent.

I hope this effort gets you (and me) thinking and talking about things in a different way.

Thanks for reading!

Joe