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Split Screen

Split Screen

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Last night was perhaps best summed up by my daughter Suzanne, who sent around this text early in the evening: “Christmas in Washington: Cookies in the oven, Congress on TV.” I imagine this was the case throughout the nation, where holiday activities met with political goings-on.

And in fact, there were decisions to be made. Does one trim the tree while watching members of Congress cast votes for article 1 and article 2?  How about addressing Christmas cars? Would that be a suitable accompaniment for watching the president be impeached? And does one keep the recorded carols playing, or turn them down out of respect?

I settled for a smidge of online shopping and a good conversation with Celia, who thinks there ought to be an upper age limit set for holding political office, just as there is a lower one. It’s an understandable sentiment given what was unfolding before us.

Civility

Civility

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Maybe it’s something you learn as an editor, that if you’re going to take the thoughts and feelings of someone who took the time to write them down on a page, and cover these words with red ink, you’d better do it politely. But I think it’s more fundamental, a lesson we learn as children, to treat others kindly and with compassion, as we would like to be treated. You can argue diametrically opposed opinions, but if you do it with kindness and tact, you’ll get much further.

I’m hardly the first person to note that civility has disappeared from public discourse. But let me add my voice to the chorus of those bemoaning its absence. Yes, we may hail from different sides of the political aisle, may not see eye-to-eye on much of anything. But can we at least address each other respectfully?

“Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart,” said Kentucky statesman Henry Clay in another century. I’m hoping we make civility a 21st-century value, too.

(Speaking of Henry Clay, this is the old Henry Clay High School in Lexington, Kentucky, my alma mater.) 

Morning After

Morning After

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On the morning after Congress announced the beginning of impeachment proceedings against the 45th president of the United States, I picked the newspaper up off the driveway as I usually do, knowing, before I opened it, how much there would be inside to read.

I had been glued to the television the night before, uncharacteristically watching news instead of a British soap opera, and yet I had to have more of it this morning. This is the way things are now — that after two and a half years of craziness, there will be even more.

Sometimes I think that we’ve all become addicted to craziness, that we won’t know what to do if we ever again have a bland status quo.

But then again, I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that for a while.

(A blurry Washington, D.C., seen from above and afar. Looks a little like an Impressionist painting, doesn’t it?)

Embracing the Puritans?

Embracing the Puritans?

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I’m finishing up Marilynne Robinson’s book What Are We Doing Here? Throughout her career, Robinson has been fascinated by erasures and omissions, and in an essay titled “Our Public Conversation: How America Talks About Itself,” she asks us to rethink our Puritan heritage, its spirit of reformation, its genius for education and institution building.

Puritans get a bad rap, Robinson says, in so many words. Some of their greatest achievements have been forgotten, including a code called the Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641) that anticipates the Bill of Rights. The abolition movement flowered in colleges founded by Puritans. There is much to appreciate about them. But they are not hip.

This latter point is my own opinion, and an extrapolation, but I make it because Robinson opens her essay by mentioning an article about herself in which she is described as “bioengineered to personify unhipness.”

She laughs off the characterization — figuring that it’s because she’s in her 70s, a Calvinist and lives in Iowa — but she takes seriously the fact that Americans are inclined to “find their way to some sheltering consensus that will tell them what to wear, what to eat, what to read, how to vote, what to think.”

Anyone watching the Democratic debates last week would be hard pressed to disagree with her.

(Picture of the Westminster Assembly by John Rogers Herbert, courtesy Wikipedia)

“Green Book” and More

“Green Book” and More

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Over the weekend, as Virginia’s governor struggled for his political survival, I went to see a movie about race relations in 1962. It was difficult to watch “Green Book” and not understand the intense reactions to Gov. Northam’s yearbook page, which contains a photograph he’s now denying depicted him, with one person in a KKK hood and another in black face.

Northam has been a good governor so far, a rare Democratic moderate willing to work across the aisle. He’s gotten excellent reviews from people of all races. Which is why we should not drive the man from office for this affront. We should judge him by the totality of his actions and not by one unfortunate offense, something which, if it occurred at all, would not have carried the same weight then that it does today.

What I took from “Green Book” was not just the necessity for change but also the need for forgiveness, for learning to see the world from another’s perspective. Both men — the African-American pianist and the Italian-American driver — came to see the hollowness and futility of their positions. Both men changed.

What’s happened now is that we have hardened into such rigid postures that we can’t change; we can’t see the world from other perspectives. There are certain boxes that, once ticked, result in total elimination.

If we keep this up, it will drive even the last good people from the pursuit of public office. We are reaping what we have sown.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

From a Distance

From a Distance

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As the country grows ever more politicized, reading the newspaper becomes an ever more fraught occupation.

I could dive right into op-eds supporting my views, and I often do, but today I didn’t want the echo chamber. I wanted what we don’t have, proof of wise heads.

So instead, I looked deep inside the front section. There was an article on how Congo has controlled Ebola: a sorely needed good-news story. Of all the nations in the world, Congo is the best at tracking the disease. One seldom hears that any African nation is “best at” at anything, so this was doubly good.

Then there was a bizarre piece on strife and lawsuits in the Buzz Aldrin family. His children think he’s losing it, so they have seized assets. He’s suing to have them back.

Buzz Aldrin, the article reminds us, is the second man to walk on the moon. He once described it as having a “magnificent desolation.”

Thanks to this phrase, I’m lifted beyond the Supreme Court decisions and retirements and the upcoming meeting with Putin. I’m looking at the blue marble. In my head, words to the song “From a Distance”:

From a distance the world looks blue and green
And the snow capped mountains white
From a distance the ocean meets the stream
And the eagle takes to flight
From a distance there is harmony
And it echoes through the land
It’s the voice of hope
It’s the voice of peace
It’s the voice of every man…

Many Questions, No Answers

Many Questions, No Answers

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It’s a Monday that doesn’t feel like a Monday, and I’ve been reading about the Parkland shooting, listening to the young voices, learning about the cracks that Nicholas Cruz slipped through.

That we starve social services of the funds they need to help the mentally ill is a given. That our nation is awash in guns is another given. And then there are the deeper causes, the values we no longer hold dear, the center that no longer holds.

How to bind these wounds? How to mend these broken hearts? Especially when solutions are labeled liberal or conservative, and when those labels prevent us from talking honestly about what has happened and what can be done.

How to come together for the common good?

I fear we’ve forgotten how.

Comey Walk

Comey Walk

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There is the quiet walk: no earphones, mind open to bird song and insect chirp.

There is the musical walk: with Brahms or Bach or Simon and Garfunkel.

And then there is the Comey walk. That’s what I’ve been taking the last few days. It’s a subset of the all-news walk, and it consists of the following: what will he say, what did he say, and now, what will happen because of what he said.

This is not the most restful soundtrack for an early-morning stroll. But it’s an itch that must be scratched. As soon as I returned home this morning I picked up the newspaper. Now I’m reading about what Comey said. At least I’m consistent.

Internal Dialogue

Internal Dialogue

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As national events heat up and the news changes by the minute, I’m tuning my headset to news stations as I hoof it.  It’s not the calm strolls I usually crave, but it makes for some brisk walks and some fascinating internal dialogue.

“How could he?” “Will they really?” “Oh yeah?” “We’ll see about that.”

These conversations take place only in my head, but they are stimulating in their own way.

Walking and talking: It’s the way it is now.

The Righteous Mind

The Righteous Mind

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In The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt uses moral psychology to explain political polarization. One of his major points is that when we make decisions we may think conscious reasoning is in charge, but actually it’s just a puny human rider sitting atop a large, strong elephant (the automatic and intuitive part of our brains). The elephant almost always wins.

What does this have to do with politics? Actually it has to do with everything, but Haidt applies it to politics in this book by pointing out that we’re often unaware of the motivations that underlie our political choices and the narratives that bind us.

Published in 2012, this book long precedes the current political paralysis — but as I read it I had many aha moments. More than Hillbilly Elegy or any newspaper or magazine article, it explains how we ended up with the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

It’s difficult to summarize the nuances of Haidt’s argument in one post, but here’s one of the passages I found most useful.:”If you are trying to change an organization or a society and you do not
consider the effects of your changes on moral capital, you’re asking for
trouble. This, I believe, is the fundamental blind spot of the left. It
explains why liberal reforms so often backfire … It is the reason I believe
that liberalism—which has done so much to bring about freedom and equal
opportunity—is not sufficient as a governing philosophy. It tends to overreach,
change too many things too quickly, and reduce the stock of moral capital
inadvertently.”


What to do now? Most of all, try to understand ourselves and each other. And, of course, read. On my nightstand now: The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt’s first book.