An Observation

As you may know if you have been one of the handful of people who read this little backwater blog, I make a concerted, sometimes, but not always, unpleasant, effort to read news sources from outside my "bubble."  This means going a bit further than reading George Will, Ross Douthat, and Brett Stephens in the Post and the Times, but I do try to steer away from Breitbart, InfoWars or other such sewer holes of propaganda.  I'm going to draw upon a fairly regular and disciplined experience spanning a couple years now with reading Conservative and Libertarian sources to talk about something that probably appears to be a far-right idea, but which is a crucial influence even on those of a more centrist persuasion.
The thing that I see happening among even the most reasonable of those who are a bit to the right of me is something I will call grievance.  I'm leaving off the modifier (white) that often gets attached to it in a lot of liberal/left writings, because I don't think it's unique to racial issues.  Here is the phenomenon as I see it: conservative people feel as though the culture war is going badly for them. On many social issues they find themselves well outside the majority opinions, even if the issue in question is not one they feel particularly emotional about, they still feel marginalized. I am not going to argue about the validity or even the reality of this feeling. I'm going to approach it, as I would any other sort of grieving process, after all grievance and grief are related.  The feeling is what is important, even though, I know, that sounds very liberal snowflake-ish. The feeling is important because it drives behavior and attitudes that, when they coalesce, can create a circumstance that dramatically effects our political life together.
Donald Trump seized on the depth and breadth of grievance in his campaign, talking about "American carnage," and bellowing about "Making America Great Again," the key word in that phrase being "Again." I have deep skepticism about our political life and process, but even on my gloomiest day, I would not describe life in this country as "carnage," nor would I suggest that America is not already great in many categories, but millions of people chose to believe Trump, despite voluminous evidence that he was a fraud.
Why?
Because grievance makes you do strange things, just like grief does.  The sense that you, and your values, are on the edge of the mainstream is both an alienating and an invigorating experience.  There is nothing quite like the feeling of righteous indignation to get people to do things that aren't particularly great ideas.  Trump's most shrewd and dangerous move, throughout these past three years has been to vilify the press and the "elite," by which he indicts the intellectuals of the academic community and anyone else with enough wealth and fame to be a problem for him. He was able to do this because, quite frankly, the press and the "elite" can be pretty obnoxious a lot of the time.  It doesn't take too many stories about a college kid getting "oppressed" by his lib-tard professor because he wouldn't use gender neutral pronouns to really make the blood boil.  And honestly Political Correctness (capitalization intended) has gone too far at times.
The thing is though, for a lie to work, it has to have just enough truth in it.  For Trump to be able to convince people that immigration is a huge problem, we do have to have millions of undocumented people living and working here.  For him to convince us that they are "criminals and rapists" it does help that MS-13 is a real and savage threat.  For him to convince us that trade wars and violating the standards of international decorum are just getting tough, China and Iran do really have to be pretty bad actors.  For him to convince people whose primary sympathy is with Fox News particular slant that the New York Times and the Washington Post are "fake news," those outlets do have to disagree fairly frequently with Sean Hannity, which honestly you would have to do if you were anything like objective and neutral.  But honesty seems to have taken the gas pipe lately, not a day goes by that I don't read at least one opinion or factual account of how dangerous the current assault on the First Amendment (the freedom of the press part, but also free speech in general) could ultimately become to our practice of democracy.
So here's my plea, and I know it doesn't seem fair, but we "liberal snowflakes" need to stop giving the grievance crowd so much ammo.  We need to stop crucifying people for small missteps because we become like the boy who cried wolf. We have been wailing about small time offenders so long no one really paid any attention to us when the wolf actually showed up.  Remember Gary Hart? Whose presidential bid got derailed because a picture of him with a pretty blond on his lap (who wasn't his wife, but who did not really seem to be his mistress either) showed up and tarred him as philanderer.  What about John Edwards? Mark Sanford (Appalachian trail/Argentinian mistress governor of South Carolina) remember these guys? Did they do bad stuff? Yep.  Did they pay a price for it? Yep. But did we over do it? Yep, we definitely did.  People got so tired of it that eventually even nearly 20 credible accusations of sexual assault and at least two cases of paying hush money to women with whom he had had affairs... well it would appear the moral majority just plumb ran out of moral outrage.
If we want to be able to hold the real villains accountable we need to have some perspective about who they are.  If we want Harvey Weinstein gone forever, we probably shouldn't come down quite so hard on Garrison Keillor and Al Franken.  Paradoxically, giving grace to the merely flawed is probably the best way to avoid falling into the clutches of the truly evil.  Like the old saw says, the perfect is often the enemy of the good.  So if we stay on the rampage against anyone who dares challenge our politically correct hegemony, we're going to create more and more grievance out there in 'Murica.  If we do that, things could get worse. That's the thing with the sorts of people the Brits call "Prigs," eventually everyone gets tired of them.

Values

We watched the Jimmy Stewart classic It's a Wonderful Life over the weekend.  I hadn't actually watched the old Capra Christmas classic for quite some time, but like all really good art even a "timeless classic" like Wonderful Life, can live and breathe.  The thing that got me thinking this time around was the villain, Mr. Potter, a rich, greedy old man with dreams of complete hegemony over the town of Bedford Falls.  He is parsimonious, mean and power-hungry, pretty much the perfect foil to Stewart's George Bailey. Bailey throughout his life gives of himself, puts his own interests on the back burner for the sake of others and generally stands as a moral barrier to Potter.
In the post war optimism of 1946 Potter was an obvious, absurdly two dimensional villain.  No one in Roosevelt's America would have seen him as a good leader or even a decent human being. Early in the movie he engages in bellicose rants about how the little bank run by Bailey's father and later by Bailey himself, would too often give loans out too easily, how they were not profitable, about how they were giving money away to people who didn't deserve it.  In 2018, I realized that not only have we changed our opinion about whether Mr. Potter is a villain, we have elected him to high offices, and no, I'm not just talking about Trump.  He is every politician who preys upon selfishness and fear of someone, "getting one over on the taxpayer."  He is the fear of migrant workers and the warning about socialists leading us into becoming Venezuela.  Granted, I was not alive in 1946, and so I only know about Roosevelt's America from books and movies, but I want to believe in an America that holds George Bailey as a paradigm not Mr. Potter.
This morning I was watching ESPN as I drank my coffee, and one of those tear-jerking commercials for the V-Foundation came on.  The V-Foundation is named for Jim Valvano, a basketball coach at North Carolina State who battled and died of cancer.  If you haven't heard or seen his acceptance of the Arthur Ashe award do yourself a favor and watch:

That's Jimmy V.  He's a George Bailey and he has, even after losing his battle against cancer, continued to fight it through his foundation for cancer research.  But what struck me this morning is how utterly horrible it is that people have to beg for charity in order to fund cancer research.  Cancer research should be a thing that we, as a society, should devote ourselves to with our whole heart and mind and soul, regardless of whether or not it is profitable. It is, like other health care activities, a moral obligation for people who aspire to care for others.  Whether you define that as a religious commitment or not, it is the kind of thing we need to accomplish as a species if we ever hope to move beyond our limitations as mere animals.
See also, the pictures that came to us over the weekend of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers with children in diapers, fleeing from tear gas grenades fired by us at the southern border.  Welcoming those who are in need of asylum from the brutality and poverty of their former home is not just a "nice" thing to do, it's probably not an "easy" thing to do, but it is the moral thing to do, and no amount of equivocation or rhetorical gymnastics will ever make what is happening at our southern border anything but a repudiation of the better angels of our nation. Certain utilitarian arguments for doing the right thing do exist, we need immigration in order to remain vital, because we're not making enough babies, and we are not creating a work force that will do the very necessary jobs in our society, but even if there was no profit in it, taking in those barefoot and homeless babies and their desperate mothers would be the right thing to do.
Don't ever forget what the right thing to do is, and never forget that it is often not the same thing as the profitable thing to do.  Millions of Americans love Jimmy Stewart, and It's a Wonderful Life, not just because it's a touching Christmas movie, but because it presents for us a vision that one man, making choices for the greater good rather than out of his own selfishness, can really make a difference.  Sometimes Mr. Potter seems inevitable, and George Bailey can be driven to wonder if it's all worth it, maybe even to the point where he's ready to give it all up.  I feel like, as a nation, we may be at one of those "bridge" moments.  Maybe the drastic challenges of immigration, climate change, globalization, and even cancer and other diseases, are just our stupid guardian angels jumping into the river daring us to save them.

Giving of Thanks

There was a time when all I cared about on Thanksgiving was eating.  I wanted things a certain way, the way my Mom made them.  I wanted it to be a day where things were just so.  And I could get cranky about things not being just so. This was before I actually started getting involved in the work of preparing a meal.  Over the past several years I have found that I actually like that part.  There is some selfish motivation in wanting to be the cook, I can do things the way I want, but I also find it rather rewarding to make things that people enjoy.  This year, I'm going industrial scale. 
Our church congregation is hosting the moving homeless shelter program in our county. Normally we do one week, this week we picked up a second because they were having trouble finding a host for Thanksgiving week.  Tomorrow my family and another couple from the congregation will prepare four turkeys, a ham, thirty pounds of mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and a bunch of pies for the over 40 people experiencing homelessness that are in the Safe Nights program.  I'm excited, but a little anxious.
You might think I'm bragging about how great this is, but I will confess something, I wish I didn't have to do it. I volunteered, and I am glad I did, I don't want pats on the back for it either.  I like cooking and I also kind of like the challenge of feeding so many people.  That's not what I'm talking about, I wish there weren't 40 plus people living in my church basement right now who need me to feed them Thanksgiving dinner.  Jesus said, "You will always have the poor with you," but he wasn't challenging us to entrench that as a reality, he was actually rebuking a disciple who was being disingenuous about his concern for the poor (John 12: 8).
There are people downstairs who have jobs, there are parents with little kids, there are people of all ages, races and conditions.  There are some people who fit the stereotype of homeless people, borderline personalities and outright mental illness, people who spend the summer months living in the woods and in hidden spots among the suburban and exurban landscape of Charles County.  There are people who you might never know were living in a shelter program.
I wish I could control the harshness of our world that puts people in such a situation the same way I control the cooking of a turkey or three.  I wish I could convince everyone in our society that this sort of shelter triage is not really a good long term solution and that we need to do better, but I don't have that kind of control over something as big and complicated as our collective psyche.
It might be the rather peculiar nature of my vocation, but I find that I increasingly gravitate to doing things that show results.  I like mowing grass and fixing things, I like cooking meals. Maybe it's the contrast that these things have with my main job, where results are not always plainly visible. I know that in the work of ministry the desire to have too much control is toxic.  One has to trust in a power that is beyond your own to do the work of vocational ministry, but you also have to learn to trust the people you serve.  It's not just you and God, there are other people involved too.  That's why it's often so messy.  Over-functioning is a symptom of trying to control too much and not letting others pull along side you.
I am thankful over this past fortnight that my congregation and a few other congregations have pulled this line together.  Whatever else I might feel about what I'm going to do tomorrow, I do not feel alone in it.  We, the collective we, all of us have a lot of very hard work to do to solve the cultural and social heart problem that is represented downstairs.  As for me, I guess I'm just going to try to feed them some turkey, that's what I can do for now.

Age of Wisdom

People start writing at different ages, Mary Shelley was 20, F. Scott Fitzgerald was 23, Thoreau was 31, Salinger 32, Henry Miller 43, Tolkien 45, there is not really a right time to become a writer, at least if you're a writer of fiction, poetry or something along those lines.  However, if you would like to tell the world how they ought to live, my humble suggestion is that you wait until the pimples have mostly gone away.  The writer of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Joshua Harris, has recently come out to say that perhaps the book about Christian sexual ethics for young people, which he wrote when he was at the ripe old age of 21, has perhaps done some significant harm.
I was fortunate to have grown up in a mostly mainline Christian tradition that only occasionally dipped its toes into the sort of evangelical madness that gave us "purity" culture.  I think I had heard of the book, but by the time I actually got around to awkwardly saying "wassup" to dating, I was not really that interested in purity of any sort.  As I read the reactions from folks around the interweb to Mr. Harris' much belated apology for whatever harm he might have done to a generation of Christian youth by inflicting them with guilt, shame and loads of tacit patriarchy.  I am sort of wondering why anyone would listen to a 21 year old person about something like marriage.
When I was 21 I could barely maintain a functional relationship with myself, let alone another person, let alone provide guidance to someone else to do such a thing.  It is egomania on the border of being a sociopath for a 21 year old to try and give out any sort of relationship advice.  Write a story about your friends doing stupid things, or make up a morality tale about a zombie, but don't write something that might just be grabbed up by a bunch of fearful adults who want to keep the kids from getting too frisky.
That said, I can't really blame Mr. Harris very much.  He was, after all, 21 years old and as such a verifiable idiot.  I know, I sound old and cranky, but 21 years, unless you have lived an extraordinarily full life, is simply not old enough to approach any sort of wisdom.  You might be smart, you might be bordering on capability, but wisdom has, at most, waved at you from across the street.  What is disturbing is how fully and almost violently his work was inflicted upon a generation of youth.  In some quarters it still goes on and I can't adequately express, as the father of a 13 and 14 year old, how creepy it is to me to hear about fathers and daughters going to "purity balls" where the girls promise their fathers they will remain virgins until marriage.
And it is not that I'm some libertine either, I absolutely believe that our culture has trivialized sexuality to a dangerous extent.  It's just that purity culture, as it did and to some extent does still exist, gets the emphasis so painfully wrong.  Teach kids to value themselves and think about things like what love really is, don't try to shame and scare them.  Sexuality, fear and shame combine in toxic ways and that toxic stuff can poison relationships.
Apparently it did so to a great number of people, most of whom are accepting Mr. Harris' heartfelt apology and applauding his decision to not publish I Kissed Dating Goodbye any longer.  But in the articles and comments I have read are a great many stories about lives and relationships that were rather roundly ruined at a crucial juncture.  As the parent of teenagers, watching them take their first steps into the world of human relationship is terrifying, I just pray that at 44 I will have the wisdom not to let my fear get the best of me, and if I do get the fear, I will not inflict it upon them.

A Sigh of Relief

As much as I would have liked the nation to rise up and totally repudiate the politics of hatred and fear that have gripped us for the past two years, I did not expect it, and it did not happen.  What did happen was precisely what the political talking heads predicted: Democrats took the House of Representatives and made gains in Governor's and down ticket elections.  Republicans held the Senate in a very favorable electoral scenario where many of the seats up for grabs were in "deep red" areas.
He who must not be named spent the last week before the election howling about brown people invading from the south and various other dog-whistle fear tactics, but as far as I can see he barely moved the needle.  The thing that I guess makes me feel sort of better about our government this morning than I have in a few years is that yesterday was peaceful (first and foremost), but also that it was predictable.  I'm just getting weary of the chaos, maybe it's my age, but I just can't take the constant outrage and frenzy that comes with he who must not be named.
I'm tired of him, and I think the election gives a glimmer of hope that I'm not alone.  The House of Representatives is the thing that we needed to take the lid off of his boiling kettle of bellicosity.  I'm under no illusion that the Democrats who will take control of one of our legislative assemblies will suddenly be able to get much accomplished, but I at least have the sense that they will be able to do something besides wring their hands and faint on the sidelines.
Various hopeful commentators this morning are outlining what I think would be a fine strategy for the next two years, and it boils down to this: give he who must not be named the chance to deliver on some of the things he claims to want and has promised his base.  Introduce an immigration reform bill that solidifies the status of dreamers, but also which addresses some of the gaping holes in our system.  Introduce legislation that REALLY helps the working class, not just for pretend like the GOP.  INFRASTRUCTURE, not fancy tech-y stuff either, guys (and gals) with hardhat stuff.  This is all stuff that he who must not be named, demagogue that he is, would have a hard time saying no to, because it's stuff that I think, if he has any integrity in him at all, he actually does want.  The Senate might hem and haw, but honestly at this point they don't have the spine to stand up to he who must not be named.
I think that smart people should be able to figure out how to use he who must not be named the same way he has figured out how to use his base.  It would seem to me that with just this one lever of power to pull those we elected yesterday could maybe make a big difference in some really important ways over the next two years, but it's going to mean learning some lessons.  That is probably why I'm actually (sort of) relieved that it wasn't a "blue tsunami" or something that delivered the Democrats everything they always wanted, then they would have no impetus to learn from anything and probably might try to talk Hillary into running again.  As it is, they're going to have to get smart and work at this thing to show the country that they really are an alternative to he who must not be named and his Peter Pettigrew, Turtleman.
The cynical part of me is ready for gridlock and stalemate, but I've gotten kind of used to that.  At the very least, we have pumped the brakes on our descent into madness, it remains to be seen whether we can get meaningful control over the vehicle.

Choice

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind killer.

Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

When fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

-Frank Herbert, The Bene Gesserit litany against fear

I have shared this before, but I find I need to be reminded of it myself rather often.  It comes from a fictional universe complete with a fictional religion, yet it rings with a certain truth that could very well be Hebrew, Christian, Islamic or Buddhist.  Perhaps it is a sort of synthesis of wisdom that Herbert was free to express as a maker of worlds, but it is true, fear is the mind killer.

The liturgical process of the Bene Gesserit reminds me of the many instances that Jesus confronted the fear that his disciples had. His approach was not to avoid their fear, or even his own, but to come at it head on, and to encourage them to do the same. This process is found often in the writings of the mystics as they confront the "dark nights of the soul," and such things. The idea that our fears can be avoided is the path to a very bad place.

Notice that the invocation: "I must not fear," is quickly revealed to be a futile attempt.  The path then is not avoidance of fear, but rather the facing of fear, allowing it to happen and then observing its passage, noting what it really was, and the effect that it had. The end result is learning, and growth.

It seems we are being sold an awful lot of fear these days, on the eve of an election it seems particularly vitriolic.  I am trying to see what it is I can learn from the passing of fear, because it will pass, as surely as the day turns into night, but there will be more to come.  I would like it if I could help people see the nothing that lies in the wake of their fears, but alas, we cannot live other people's struggles for them.  For instance, I cannot bring myself to be afraid of the Honduran Caravan of refugees.  To me those poor people are victims of poverty and violence who, should they make it to our borders, should be received with grace and proper documentation.  But many people appear to fear differently than me, yet I cannot learn much from their fear, because I face something rather different.

What I fear is the loss of democracy that could come from the fear of others. In essence, I fear the toxic effect that fear has on those who allow fear to be a killer of the mind, who will not face it, let it pass and see the nothing in its wake.  Ben Franklin is often quoted or paraphrased, "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security probably deserve neither."  As with many of Franklin's sayings, there is a slightly apocryphal feel to this one, but since I started with a fictional religious incantation, I guess I can keep rolling that way. It calls us to look at what courage really is, courage is not lack of fear, it is the willingness to face it.  We all must deal with the balance of whether to be open to others, or whether to try and seek the greatest possible insulation from others. It may be true that the safest of all possible worlds would be the one where liberty and justice for all is not just confined to our ideas and ideals, but is always a practical guideline. 

Fear will always work against both liberty and justice.  Beware those who sell you fear and even those who try and give it away, they are not trustworthy. 

You cannot really expect to be free from fear, but you have a choice on how to deal with it.  I commend the Bene Gesserit methodology, let it come, let it go, look at the nothingness that is left and consider what that tells you about yourself.