If We Lose Control of the Question, the Answer Really Doesn't Matter

This is Terry Jones. He made the news recently by proposing that an appropriate way to mark the anniversary of the terrorist acts of 9/11/01 would be to pile up a bunch of Korans and set fire to them. If they were completely consumed (holo- refers to "completely") he would have conducted a holocaust. I don't know the man, but I suspect that would please him.

This is Don Browning, a candidate for Congress. I had never heard of him before either. I found this campaign poster on one of the pages I went to to try to find out who Terry Jones is. I'd love to know why he wanted his campaign for Congress to be associated with Koran-burning.

The Reverend Dr. Jones supports his proposed holocaust by saying that "it will send a message." No question about that, I guess. It will send a message. I wonder if he thinks he can control what message will be sent and to whom and how they will respond.

In this post, I want to try to suggest how serious a threat this is. The Gainesville, Florida Fire Department has refused to grant the church a permit to burn. I don't think that matters very much. The National Association of Evangelicals, unquestionably a conservative religious organization (although not as conservative as they used to be) has condemned the Koran-burning plan. I don't think that matters very much. Billy Graham condemns the proposed torching. I don't think it matters very much. Naturally, the whole liberal end of the spectrum condemns it. I don't think that matters at all.

Here's why I think it's serious: the answer we give will determine the question that has been asked. Let me say that again. The precise meaning of the question will be determined over time all over the world by people who are looking at the answers. I'll tell you frankly, I don't think the United States can afford to get this one wrong. It hasn't been that long since we rounded up all the Americans of Japanese descent we could find and put them in concentration camps because they were Japanese. It's crucial that the Japanese don't rule East Asia, you see, because they are racist.

I haven't read Franz Fanon's book The Wretched of the Earth for a long time. I haven't even thought about it for a long time. Until recently. It was from Fanon that I learned how Algeria became independent from France. I'm going to tell the story the way I remember it. I am quite certain that this account is correct in the main.

Until the early 1960's Algeria was a part of France. Algerians liked being part of France. To make this plausible, we have to remember that the genius of French politics is that being "French" is a matter of culture and language. not race and geography. You can look like anything you like (provided you aren't veiling your face) if you're "really French." Many of the Algerian elites were "really French" and they liked it. The question really was, "Are Algerians in general--not just the Francophile elites--French?" The official answer was, of course, "Yes."

Beginning in the mid-1950s a group of Algenian separatists decided that their goal of an independent Algeria could never be achieved so long as Algerians in general were content (not rioting) with the current situation; they decided that the masses would be content so long as France observed all the formal affirmations. I don't know if any French politicians really referred to "our little brown Algerian brothers," but you get the idea. I'm going to use a nasty racist term in a couple of paragraphs. You can start getting ready for it now, if it takes you a while to get ready, or you can stop reading now if you don't want to read it.

The separatists (terrorists)lauched a series of attacks on everything French. Very much like the 9/11 terrorists, they aimed at commerce (New York), defense (Virginia) and the White House (D.C.) There weren't very many Algerian terrorists and they didn't represent the majority opinion in Algeria, but they did manage to change the question.

The French response was indiscriminate and violent. A lot of people were arrested, many were jailed, quite a few were tortured (Jack Bauer, are you getting this?). The French were answering the question, "Can we restore law and order?" But the question their actions raised was a different one entirely. It was this: "Are Algerians wogs?" Are they "natives," are they "locals," are they "hajis, are they "not us?"

Only the terrorists were asking that question before the wholly disproportionate French retaliation and now it was posed for all Algerians. "Are we really French" was shoved aside and "Are we really just wogs" was substituted. It isn't a question with a good answer. The only way to prevent the answer is to prevent the question. If the question "Are Algerians wogs" is going to be asked, the answer is going to be "Yes, they are." What the French military did in Algeria took away from the French government the control they had exercised over what the question is to be. If the French treat everyone who "looks Algerian" like a wog, then Algerians are not "really French" and never were. There is something about being arrested for "driving while Algerian" that stings for a long time. (Gov. Brewer of Arizona, are you listening?)

I have no idea what ought to happen to the Reverend Dr. Terry Jones. Should he be picketed by hordes of outraged Baptists? Should northern tourists plan to avoid Gainesville, even during the football season? Should groups of Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and Muslims attend the church services arm in arm and chanting peaceful slogans? Probably not. I'm not much of a tactician, but those don't look hopeful to me.

Whatever it is we do, it needs to declare an unending enmity toward terrorists and a warm embrace of Islam. Whatever we do, the question has be be, "Are American Muslims, "us?" and the answer has to be "Yes." This answer from the government will not be sufficient. The answer from the major religious organizations will not be sufficient. "America"--that's a term I don't use very often--needs to embrace Muslim Americans. If we do not, we will lose control of the question the way the French government did. If we follow Pastor Jones's case, the question will be "Are Muslims wogs?" and I say here what I said above, that all answers to that question are disastrous. The only hope is to prevent the question from being asked. And the only way to do that is to insist on a better question. It can be phrased in any of a dozen ways and they would all work. My favorite is, "Are Muslims 'us'?"

Someone is going to object, "Well, not ALL Muslims are us." Fine. However we treat Protestants because of the crimes committed by their radicals, however we treat Jews because of the crimes committed by their radicals, however we treat Catholics because of the crimes committeed by their radicals, (and so on) will be acceptable to me. The question, "Are Protestants really 'us'?" has probably not been asked even once since 1630. Maybe in Mary Land back in the old days.

Just remember this. If the question goes bad, the answer will be attributed to us all.

The Star-spangled Banner

I've just spent some time with "The Star-spangled Banner." I don't really have anything new to say about it, but I want to say it anyway. This is the kind of post that has, in times past, induced friends to say, "You need something to do." But, honestly, this is what I like doing.

Some historical background helps a good deal, as this piece by Isaac Asimov shows. And I know I'm jumping ahead a little. The bombardment of Fort McHenry didn't occur until the night of September 13--14 and as I write this, it's still August.

It's in iambic pentameter. I didn't know that. It occurred to me to check when I noticed that "dawn's early light" from stanza one and "morning's first beam" from stanza three had the same stresses.

The experience of trying to find out what "the Banner" says is as good an argument as I have found for teaching the diagramming of sentences. There really isn't any other way to tell what it means. For instance, "twilight's last gleaming," "through the night," and "morning's first beam" identify the three relevant sightings. The first two are actual, the third only potential. It is the third one that provides the dramatic tension in the song. Those three together say, "We saw the flag last night at sundown and then again by the light of the explosions in the night. I wonder whether we will see it again at dawn."

The flag is "spangled" with stars in the sense that they mark the blue background as brightly as if they gleamed as metal would gleam. A spang, in Middle English, is a buckle or a clasp; spangel is a diminutive. So, "a little buckle." The stars, being cloth, do not gleam, of course, but they are as prominent, in "the morning's first beams" as if they really did gleam.

There is a roaring ambiguity in the fourth stanza. How are we to understand "when" in the phrase "conquer we must when our cause (it) is just?" Does it mean that our cause is just and therefore we will conquer? Does it mean that on those occasions when our cause is just, we will conquer--but not on other occasions, when our cause is not just? A plain reading favors the second interpretation. The occasion on which it was written favors the first.

I don't know what Francis Scott Key's own religious framework was, but I'd guess he was a Deist, as most of the Framers were. I notice, for instance, that of the three references to God, one uses the word "God" (In God is our trust), one uses "Heaven" (the heav'n-rescued land) and one "Power" (that made and preserved us a nation). It sounds like Jefferson's "the laws of nature and of nature's God" to me. Not that it matters. Maybe Key was just being poetic.

And finally, a summary of the account the poem gives, at one point per stanza. Stanza one: (In the morning) Can you see the flag? Stanza two: Yes, there it is. Stanza three: But the bad guys are gone. Stanza four: May we praise the Power that has delivered us!

Willing to hear

I said something to my father that I wish, now, I had not said. I said a lot of things to my father I wish I had not said, but I am thinking of one in particular now. I think I said, "Pul-eeese." Or maybe I just rolled my eyes. Or maybe I just complained to other family members. I don't remember clearly just what I did, but I remember like it was this morning, how I felt. I felt incredulity and embarrassment and disdain.

Dad had Alzheimer's disease when he died. He had been living a life of mental impairment for years before that. And a life of emotional empairment even before his good mind began to go bad. I mention that because when Dad said something that struck me as odd or silly, or even childish, there were several ways to explain it. But however you explain it, there is still a person under whatever explanation you come up with. I remembered that sometimes, but on this occasion, I did not.

As Dad got older and less capable, he spent more time watching daytime soap operas. I've never had much appreciation for soaps and I didn't understand why he was wasting his time on them. The idea that he had more time than he knew what to do with and was just burning up some of it never occurred to me. Dad must have felt a little self-conscious about it too because one day, he offered an explanation. "Some of these shows," he said, "have a deep philosophy." I think I would have had trouble with that statement no matter how he made it, but in this sentence, he pronounced philosophy, "Phee-los-o-pheee." It is something he did with words sometimes, giving them what he imagined to be their "original" or "correct" pronunciations. I think when he got it right, it sounded "cultured" to him and he liked that.

I dismissed his statement as silliness and I let him know, one way or another, that I had dismissed it. I wish I hadn't.

I'm currently in the middle of an essay on the movie, The Joneses. I like it a great deal better than anyone I've talked to about it and better than anyone I've read about it. I'm seeing connections now that I missed entirely the first few times. KC, the supervisor of the stealth marketing unit is unhappy with Steve Jones's (David Duchovny) sales and challenges him, "The question is, 'How far are you willing to go to get what you want?'" Steve Jones is willing to go quite far indeed. He blows up the whole marketing unit so he can have a chance at a "real" (not pretend) relationship with his fellow actor "Kate Jones," (Demi Moore). I don't think that's what KC had in mind. And now, hearing it again and hearing her admonish Steve about "how far he is willing to go" just seems really funny to me.

I'm seeing events that occur in my own life as "just like that interaction in The Joneses, you know, the one where he..." Yesterday at the office, I heard a conversation in which the topic pivoted from one meaning to another in just the way it does in a scene from The Joneses. Steve and Kate Jones have had a good evening together, in role, and now that they are home, are in a situation that always produces a wonderful on-screen erotic kiss. And as Steve leans into it, Kate says, "This part (what you are about to do) is "pretend." Steve says, "Is it?" Kate responds, "It has to be." You'll notice that "It has to be" is not a response to "Is it?" Each person has a reality in mind, his authentic, hers instrumental, and each insists that that one be taken as more basic.

It's not an uncommon dilemma at all. In fact, I teach a course that relies on that mechanism to a significant extent. But being sensitized to it by a particular scene in a particular movie seems odd to me as I stand back and look at it.

Is that different from what my father was doing? Yes. It is. But it isn't as different as I would like. The great difference, the one I have been relying on over these years, is that Dad thought the "phee-los-o-phee" was in the show and he was discovering it. I don't think that is true. What I think is that the philosophical cast of mind is one you can bring with you to the watching of any kind of show at all. Or a narrative cast of mind; or a theological one; or an existential one. About those experiences, I say, "I am watching the show by means of the categories that mean the most to me. I'm not talking about what is IN the show."

And on those grounds, I expect what I see to be accepted not as "what is there," but only as "what I see." I expect my kids, for instance, to say, "Yup, that's how Dad sees movies. If it doesn't remind him of Jesus, it reminds him of Moses." They know they can ask me to talk about the movie using the concepts or narrative conventions they have in mind if they want to. They know I don't have to use my own. But they know I will use my own if there is no reason not to.

I think that maintains a crucial difference between where I think my dad was and where my kids think their dad is. But, as I said above, it is not as much difference as I once thought. I think my kids, in granting me "that's the way he watches movies" are willing to hear ME. They are willing to grant the reality, to me, of what I see and how I think. They are, usually, not willing to see that themselves nor willing to agree with whatever conclusions I might have drawn. But that I have done what I have done is OK with them. They are willing to hear it.

And that's really what I wish I had done with my own father. If I had treated the philosophical positions or presuppositions of, say, Days of Our Lives, as really there, I could have invited him into a conversation. I think he would have liked that. And if I had treated them as positions or presuppositions Dad had illegitimately projected onto the show--they weren't really there--I could still have invited him into the conversation and he would still have liked it. I was so fearful of Dad's delusions or disdainful of his pretentions that I really wasn't willing to push past them and make the contact I could have made. And that's what I mean, mostly, by "willing to hear."

I really wasn't. And now, at about the age Dad was when this event happened, I wish I had been.

Reconsidering Poverty (It isn't fun)

The determination of what does and what does not become a matter of governmental action is, therefore, the supreme instrument of power.

So said Richard Neustadt in one of the most powerfully formative sentences of my professional life.

There is very little sentiment in the wider population for tackling the extensive problems faced by poor and poorly educated black Americans. What is needed is a dramatic mobilization of the black community to demand justice on a wide front — think employment, education and the criminal justice system — while establishing a new set of norms, higher standards, for struggling blacks to live by.

So said Bob Herbert from his editorial page perch in the New York Times this morning (8/21/10)

I want to introduce you to Ruby K. Payne, author of A Framework for Understanding Poverty, 4th Edition. I’ve been a teacher for a long time and I am here to tell you that it is hard to “see” poverty. Also, it isn't any fun to see it. And after you learn to see it, it is even harder to want to do anything about it. If you add “recategorizing it” to my two emphases of “seeing it” and “wanting to do something about it,” you have Dr. Payne’s contribution to the discussion. We’ll pick up Neustadt and Herbert as we go along.

Here’s Dr. Payne’s account of how students speak. None of this connects with my experience as a teacher, a fact to which we will return. Let’s distinguish the different “registers” of language. Every language in the world, according to Martin Joos, has five registers. The same five. Of those, we will be concerned with two: the “formal” and the “casual.” The formal “register” is characterized by “the standard sentence syntax and word choice of work and school. Has complete sentences and specific word choice.” The casual “register” is, like, “language between friends and is characterized by a 400—800-word vocabulary. Word choice general and not specific. Conversation dependent upon non-verbal assists. Sentence syntax often incomplete.”

Do you see where this is going? I come to the word “register” from a music background. I know what it means to play notes in the upper register and the lower register. The idea that one of these registers is, in some way, “better” is ridiculous. And that is why Dr. Payne uses the word “register” to distinguish how middle class kids talk in school from how lower class kids talk. And, speaking now from more than ten years as a professor at an urban university, a university where many of the incoming students are the first in their families to attend college at all, that also distinguishes the way my middle class students write essays from the way my lower class kids write essays.

Now, as I pointed out above, it is hard to “see” poverty and, as a rule, I don’t manage to see it in the classes I teach. I see students who, from all appearances, wasted their K-12 educational years. I see students who are the products and victims of ignorant or apathetic or overburdened teachers. Why, in God’s name, didn’t someone teach these kids how to write a sentence!?! I see students who say “y’know” when the question of the moment is whether they know; they “refer” to things I am trying to get them to specify. Those are what I see. I don’t see poverty. I don’t even see the inappropriate use of “the casual register.”

And if I did, it would blunt significantly the disapproval I feel about these students’ performance. And the satisfaction I take in the writing of the students who “take the trouble to do it correctly.” I want to deal with “good papers” and “bad papers” and I want to praise the former and condemn the latter. The whole notion of language “registers” gets in the road of that desire.

That’s what it looks like as a moral problem and in this formulation, I am the one who is doing it wrong. I deny the notion of “register.” I deny the implications of different student “registers” because I am so eager to condemn the bad papers and praise the good ones.

But is this really political psychology? Of course. Let me defer to the redoubtable Joe Allman, the chair of my dissertation committee at the University of Oregon. Just before I went into “the room” to defend my dissertation, Joe characterized it as “two parts competent and one part brilliant.” I was anxious. It was the day before a make or break defense of my last three years of work. I asked, “What is the brilliant part?” He said, “The way you’ve devised to call all of “this”—he gestured to his copy of the dissertation on his desk—‘political science’...brilliant!”

Let’s look at Bob Herbert’s formulation. Some people, “poor and poorly educated black Americans” are “facing problems.” It’s a shame, but there it is. The “wider population,” that’s us, has the resources to deal with this problem, but not the will. There is “very little sentiment” for tackling these problems. Herbert argues that “the black community,” widely believed to have insufficient resources for dealing with “poor and poorly educated black Americans” should address this problem because they do have the will. Or Herbert thinks they should have the will. And on what basis? Justice. The black community should demand “justice” on a wide front—employment, education and the criminal justice system. It didn’t take very long to get that political, did it? And, you’ll notice that by the introduction of “justice,” we are also back to “moral” as well.

Now let’s pick up Richard Neustadt in closing. I have all these students who can’t write. For me, it isn’t really a racial question. The middle class black students I get are fine. The poor students I get, regardless of their race, are not fine. They are truly awful essayists and I have to read the essays. It's rubbing salt in the wound—and my doctor says I should be cutting down on salt. Neustadt’s question is, “What are the alternatives?” And, more potently, "who controls our notions of what the alternatives are?"

There are the ones I come naturally to. I don’t approve of being stuck with these alternatives, as you’ve noticed, but they are completely authentic. I take the students as they come. I take the papers as they come. I spend on the papers the time “real professors” can’t afford to spend to convey to the students that someone actually cares and they are doing this well and that poorly. I identify good behavior and reward it and identify bad behavior and punish it...I mean I allow the natural consequences to follow. I am not part of “the wider population” who does not have the will to confront this. I am one dedicated professional fighting the fight against sloth and indifference. Those are the alternatives.

For Herbert, the alternatives are different. The problem is there. The “wider population” has no taste for dealing with it, although its effects effect them both directly and indirectly. The alternative is for the black community to rise up in holy wrath and demand justice. Those are the alternatives. The problem continues to get worse because of white indifference or the problem begins to be addressed because of black vigilance.

This puts Herbert, with whom I agree wholeheartedly in principle, and me in direct opposition. Neustadt is calling the balls and strikes. Into this dispute comes Ruby Payne, who says that “the casual register” is the first language of poor kids. It isn’t wrong any more than notes above middle C are wrong. But it isn’t adequate for the lives the children aspire to lead, either, nor the lives we want to have available to them. Someone needs to teach them the formal register and to do it not because it is “right” but because they will have need of it.

Way to go, Ruby.

Good News for President Obama

Here it is. The independent voters are jumping off the Obamamobile in groups. The Republicans are much more cohesive in their political desires than the Democrats are for the general election in November. The economy will still be puttering along at its pathetic no growth/inadequate growth pace and there is nothing the federal government can do about it between now and November 2.

Nothing good yet? Stay with me.

The Republicans will substantially increase their votes in the House, joining the Blue Dog Democrats in opposing so much as a hallway conversation about liberal political ideas. The Democrats will keep their majority in the Senate, but see it reduced. The President's days as Legislator-in-Chief are over until January 2013, when he will return to his legislative program after a resounding victory in the 2012 election.

Here's the short form. When President Obama looked at his legislative majorities and the number of campaign promises that required successful legislative action, he identified his presidency as a legislative presidency and disappeared from public view. I'm guessing that his political advisers warned him what would happen if he did that and that he said that the policy gains would be worth the political costs "in the long run." The very phrase "in the long run" sounds like blasphemy to political strategists for whom "the long run" means more than one news cycle.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Matt Bai wrote two really good pieces in the New York Times yesterday. I put them together here because Bai talks about the cause (Whatever happened to the President?) and Stolberg about an odd effect (President Obama is a Muslim).

Bai's point is really clear. Americans, especially in hard times, like their presidents available. They want Dr. Phil. Actually running the country can wait until we are less anxious and more prosperous. We don't want the President holding long sessions with recalcitrant Congressmen. We want him hitting the state fairs and telling us it's Morning in America. At the next election we will punish him for a "do-nothing Congress" and the failure of nearly all his campaign promises, but right now we want comfort and inspiration from our Barometer-in-Chief and if we don't get it, we will think bad thoughts about him. So there.

What bad thoughts will we think? Stolberg cites polls that show that the percent of people who think Obama is a Muslim has risen from 11% at his inauguration to 18% today. Less than a majority of Democratic voters--Democratic voters--now think Obama is Christian. And for those of you who want to point out that the Constitution forbids a religious test for office, let me tell you that candidates are punished for being less than prominently Christian. One quarter of the population believes that President Obama was born outside the U. S.--they are, in the current term, "birthers,"--so that he has to use a fake Social Security number.

So Bai argues that the President did what he had to do to meet his legislative obligations and take advantage of his fleeting Congressional majorities. He went to Capitol Hill, in other words, went in at the service entrance, and has not been seen since. With his availability occluded, people are doubting whatever else concerns them. What if the President is really a Muslim?

It's nuts, I know, but it is the way American voters work and it has been that way for a long time.

So, finally, the good news. The decisions the Obama administration made that have removed him from public view are all going to change. With Republicans prominent in Congress and perhaps controlling one house, the President will have no choice but to reappear as President. He will be everywhere once again. No state fair will be too small; no voting bloc too insignificant. Photo ops will once again dominate the President's schedule as they did when he was merely a candidate. "I'm back!" he will say. He might even try to sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger when he does it. MUCH better than Dr. Phil.

America's Good Cop/Bad Cop Routine

I've been calling Ross Douthat the "new" conservative columnist for the New York Times for a while now. Maybe it is time to start calling him the "other" (not David Brooks) conservative columnist. I always read his columns. I almost always enjoy them. I usually disagree with them, but even when I disagree, I think of them as essentially harmless.

Not this one.

Douthat is writing about the controversy that the proposal to built a new mosque in lower Manhattan has caused. To see the whole piece, so you can judge for yourselves, click here. I want to look at two aspects of the column (cyberappended here). The first is his admirable use of structure to support his argument. The second is the argument itself, which I find truly objectionable.

Douthat argues that there are "two Americas." The first, "constitutional" America is very high minded.

An America where allegiance to the Constitution trumps ethnic differences, language barriers and religious divides. An America where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims.

The second, "cultural" America is a little more forthright about its expectations.

But there’s another America as well, one that understands itself as a distinctive culture, rather than just a set of political propositions. This America speaks English, not Spanish or Chinese or Arabic. It looks back to a particular religious heritage: Protestantism originally, and then a Judeo-Christian consensus that accommodated Jews and Catholics as well. It draws its social norms from the mores of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora — and it expects new arrivals to assimilate themselves to these norms, and quickly.

Douthat himself prefers the cultural America--you can tell by the line, "a distinctive culture, not just a set of political propositions--but his point is the America "works" because of the interaction of the two cultures. That's why I called it a "good cop/bad cop" act. The two cops have the same goal in mind and they agree that by alternating the tactics, the suspect can be made to confess to the good cop something he would withhold from the bad cop.

Structure

Let's look at the effect of structure first. Douthat never has to make the point that the people opposed to the proposed mosque are bad guys: that they are "extreme," or are xenophobes, or that they are exacerbating the cultures wars that have so benefited the Republican party for the last several decades. All he has to do is invent two groups--constitutional America and cultural America--and put them on the same level, which he does, and argue that neither is right because it is the interaction of the two that makes America, America.

It is a wonderful strategy because it is nearly invisible. In fact, if my luck of the last several years holds, a number of my political friends will write to me arguing that Douthat's strategy is not "invisible," but is one I invented myself. That it is not, in other words, really "there" at all. No better compliment to invisibility could be invented.

If there are "two Americas," they are both good. The words will not be taken any other way. And if the interaction of the two Americas is what works, then they are both necessary.

Is Douthat's Argument Bad?

I've already said it is a well made argument, so if we're talking style, the answer is no, it is not a bad argument. But I want now to talk effect and for that, I think the answer has to be yes. It is a really bad argument. Why?

Let's consider some examples. Let's talk about gender style. The curriculum and the teachers represent "constitutional America." They teach that gender styles do and should cover a wide range of appearances and behaviors. The guys on the playground at recess, the Gender Behavior Posse, are the "cultural America." They find the sissies and beat the crap out of them.

And that's what makes America great! We teach toleration of diversity but we punish the practice of diversity and we come out just right. Everyone knows that little boys have the right to be effeminate and that they will pay the appropriate penalty if they do, so they learn to be conventionally masculine and all is well. Woohoo! We teach racial equality and allow the happenstances of poor schooling, high crime, and low medical care to have their natural effect. The two forces together, the "constitutional" and the "cultural" work together to produce the "balance" in racial outcomes we have today.

I could go on, obviously, from topic to topic. Douthat has invented a social, sexual, racial, migrant "boys will be boys" standard and called it "culture." As if people who approach these questions from a cultural standpoint all approach it in the same way. Of course, they do not. And then, he creates "culture" as the real world counterbalance to high-flown constitutional ideals and calls the outcome, "the success that is America."

It's a nice piece, for sure, and there are no fingerprints on it at all.

Mars and Venus 2, grieving

I want to write today about grieving. I've done some, myself, and have read a good deal about it since then. I look at the trajectory of my life and realize I'm probably not going to get any smarter about this, so if I'm going to write about it, this is the time.

In my middle sixties, I experienced my first real grieving. My wife, Marilyn, died very quickly from a metastasized cancer. The first month was bad the way being sea-sick is bad. There hardly seems to be a “you” at all separate from the nausea and the disorientation. After that, the real grieving started. I grieved for the loss of Marilyn and I began to cope with being alone.

It's that process, coping with being alone, that I want to think about today. By "alone," I don't mean "without friends." I had wonderful friends; they cared for me wisely and well. I mean "without an intimate of my heart;" for me, that meant "without a wife." That's just me. I'm not knocking other arrangements.

I celebrated Marilyn's life and our life together and grieved my loss of her all at the same time. But grieving is a process; you never really get done with it. You can, with clear focus and hard work, move it from the center of your life to the periphery and that is what I have done.

It took a while to understand how I, personally, needed to work on it and a little while longer to actually get the work done. The beginning of the good part of this process was my hearing an interview on NPR. One of the co-authors of a book on grieving, Terry Martin or Kenneth Doka, was being interviewed. The book, it turned out, was Men Don't Cry, Women Do: Transcending Gender Stereotypes of Grief. The point he was making when I tuned in was that there are two distinct styles of grieving: the instrumental and the intuitive Then he went on to make the point that hit me hardest. He said that the intuitive mode of grieving is "the gold standard in the mental health business." We're going to consider the two modes, below, (If you want to assess your own style, I've cyber-appended the survey here.) but I want first to say why this second point hit me so hard.

It meant that if I came naturally to my own mode of grieving, the instrumental mode, and went for help to someone in "the mental health business," I would have two difficulties to deal with instead of one. I would still have the slow heavy toxicity of my emptiness eating away at me. AND I would have the additional difficulty that I was grieving the wrong way! And in learning to grieve "the right way," I would be forsaking all my natural strengths and trying to learn a dependence on emotion of which I had always been wary and at which I had always failed. And the two problems, the grieving and the failure to grieve "properly," would mix together making the mixture more baffling and the outcome harder to bear. That’s why the point meant so much to me.

The intuitive mode of grieving was, in fact, the presupposition of all the self-help books I had found or that had been recommended to me. Now, suddenly, it wasn't a trouble of grieving, but a trouble of grieving "in that way." It was like learning that I wasn't allergic to "food," only to cheese. It was clear to me that I was going to need some help and that the help I needed was to clarify the implications of the instrumental mode and to get on with the job of working it.

What are the two modes like? The intuitive mode accepts the feelings of loss as the crucible where the important work will be done. The feelings of sadness and loss are accepted and processed, are made compatible with other emotional commitments. The instrumental mode regards feelings of loss as something to be grasped, to be comprehended. Understanding what is going on and deciding what is to be done based on that understanding is the task to be accomplished.

The most important lesson of the whole "Mars and Venus" genre is that there are, in fact, two cultures. If you don't know there are two cultures, you will certainly think your friend, whoever it is, is doing "it" wrong. "It" presumes that there is one good way and observation tells you that your friend is not following that way. If there are two ways and if they both work, then you need to know what your friend is trying to do before you can judge whether he or she is doing it well. That makes a lot of difference.

And it's true about grieving, too. If there is only one right way to grieve, you are certainly doing "it" wrong because the process is taxing and the outcome unsatisfactory. But if there is more than one way, the first thing to do is to look at who you are; mostly, at who you have been. When it comes time to evaluate yourself, do yourself the favor of evaluating your progress in the mode that will work best for you.

This is just as helpful if you happen to be married to someone whose style of grieving is different from yours. Many intuitive wives have accused their instrumental husbands of "not really caring" about the loss of a parent or a child or a job. Many instrumental husbands have accused their intuitive wives of "wallowing" in their feelings rather than "doing something” about the situation. But whatever your own style, your job as a loving husband or a loving wife is to help your spouse grieve in the way that works best. If it means listening, fine. If it means taking long walks, fine. If it means getting out of the road or doing a couple of extra chores to make some time available, fine.

This is really why I like Mars and Venus. Once you get out of the notion that your spouse is really trying to do something—grieving, in this case—the same way you are, the implications for actually providing some help are much clearer.

Loving your husband doesn't mean making sure he is confronting his feelings honestly. If he grieves in the instrumental mode, it might mean helping him grapple with the ideas, if you know how to help him do that, and encouraging him to act on the basis of his decisions. Loving your wife doesn’t mean making sure she isn’t hiding from “the real world” in her recurrent attention to the feelings that matter so much to her. If she grieves in the intuitive mode, it might mean honoring the power of those feelings, if you know how to do that, and granting that grieving in her own way will make her whole in the end.

Petty Coercion -3 Faith

This is the third and last trip to Marilynne Robinson's essay, "The Tyranny of Petty Coercion." (See the hyperlink to the full chapter in Petty Coercion 1) In 1 I followed her argument that "private courage" (my term) is so much more expensive than "public courage" because public courage is socially defined and valued. Private courage has to be defined and applied by the individual himself and each situation is different. In 2 I went back to look at politics and the courage demanded by a commitment to truth.

This time she wants to look at religious faith as an offense against comme il faut. I'm using the French expression both because she used it and because I had to look it up and also because it seems more nebulous and upsetting in French. Comme il faut can mean either "it is not necessary" or "it is not proper." In the present context, it means "People like us really don't do that."
"...do things like that" refers to Robinson's being a Christian. I'm going to take a little time with what that means because I like very much the way she puts it.

I have an attachment to the Scriptures, and to the theology, music, and art Christianity has inspired. My most inward thoughts and ponderings are formed by the narratives and traditions of Christianity. I expect them to engage me on my deathbed.

For me, there is a lot to like in that way of saying what "Christian" means for her. I like the three parts: "attached to the Scriptures,"formed by the narratives and traditions," and "engage me on my deathbed."
Robinson is a liberal, mainline Protestant. She does not "wear my religion on my sleeve." (Note that there are many Christians who think that "wearing my religion on my sleeve" is what courage requires of Christians.)

In any case, being a Christian in the way Robinson is turns out to be an offense against comme il faut. She does things she ought not do and neglects to do things she should do and the guarantors of "what one does" get on her about it.

Over the years many a good soul has let me know by one means or another that this living out of the religious/ethical/aesthetic/intellectual tradition that is so essentially compelling to me is not, shall we say, "cool." There are little jokes about being born again. There are little lectures about religion as a cheap cure for existential anxiety.

These little nudges wear on her. They are petty, rather than radical. But they happen over and over and nothing she says seems to slow them down. And they are so particularly irksome because they levy against her charges that her friends know do not belong to her; and also because the positions her friends are attacking are so much more vulnerable than the positions she actually holds.

That brings us to the question of what courage would require of any of us who are in roughly the situation Marilynne Robinson is occupying. Is it best simply to put up with the nudging and smile? Is it best to correct the parts that are just wrong and smile about the others? Would it be smart to join her friends in beating on the fundamentalists and then strenuously object when they turn to the kind of faith stance that means a lot to her personally?

It's not so hard to know what would be hard to do, but it is hard to know what it would be good to do. "Turning the other cheek" sounds like a good idea in some circumstances, but here you are "the religious person" and turning the other cheek is also turning the cheeks of everyone else in that category. It's hard to know just how Jesus would have felt about turning someone else's cheek.

Petty Coercion -2 Truth

Not too long ago, Jim Carrey starred in a movie called, "Liar, Liar." He fell under a horrid enchantment, the effect of which was that he couldn't "tell a lie" for 24 hours. During the time of his enchantment, he said some really awful things that were called "truth" and that were supposed to conform to the comedy format. I didn't think they were funny, even though I recognized that a lot of people would, because they were embarrassing and I just don't happen to find embarrassment funny. My bad. But I didn't think they should be called "truth" either, because I distinguish between truth and candor. By candor, I mean expressing however you happen to feel at the time. By truth, I mean being careful not to mislead people when it is important that they know what you mean.

This post concerns the second of Marilynne Robinson's emphases in her essay, "Petty Coercion," (there is a hyperlink to the full chapter in the previous post, but no citation: it is from her book, The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought.) Having dealt with public courage and private courage at the beginning of the essay, she goes next to truth.

Let us say that the sort of courage I wish to consider can be defined as loyalty to truth. I am not entering any epistemological thicket here. The kind of truth that interests me is the type sometimes represented in the statement, "The house is on fire."

She does have a more political statement in mind. It is this.

"...the disparity between rich and poor in this county exceeds any previously known in American history (putting aside the marked economic disparity between plantation owners and slaves) is to say something falsifiable--that is, for practical purposes, verifiable, and in any case, arguable.

The people I read, Paul Krugman, for example, ordinarily say "the worst...since the decade before the Great Depression," but let's leave that aside. It isn't Robinson's concern anyway. This is her concern:"But such statements are now routinely called "Bush bashing." In other words, something that is true--"arguable" is the lowest of the standards she cites--is set aside because it is a slur cast by a hostile subgroup. If she were not as articulate as she is, would say, "Bashing, schmashing. Is it true or not?"

I think she's right. The Republican party during the Bush administration presided over the continuation of the polarization between rich and poor. I'm not saying they caused it because it was going on before they got there. I will say they furthered it and they justified public policies that exacerbated it. So it's "true" using Robinson's standard.

It is the setting aside as a partisan slur that really irks her. If they said, "Yes, the people with the lowest incomes have indeed suffered under our economic policies, but there is a larger logic to it," I would understand. I wouldn't like it, but I would understand. If they said, "In the long run, the public treasure we heap on those who have acquired private treasures will, in the long run, provide the jobs that will help to close the equality gap," I would understand. What they did, in fact, accuse the Democrats of was "playing the class card," or, sometimes, "urging class warfare." The logic of this defense is what Robinson says it is, "Don't ask whether it is true or false, ask only what the intention behind it is."

Doesn't that just irk you? A Congressman gets caught blatantly breaking the law. The person who points it out is accused of having a "political motivation." The accusation is "politically motivated," they say; they don't ask whether it is true and they don't care. It is that attitude that focuses a clear light on what Robinson means by "truth." She cares, in this instance, whether the Congressman did or did not violate the law.

This is a question that has some deep emotional roots for me. I think I can tell this story briefly. I was raised in a culture where blacks were casually derogated. There weren't any actual black people in the little town where I grew up, but "They" were available in jokes and political comments and cultural presuppositions. "That's mighty white of you," is, for instance, a compliment that belonged within the cultural complex I am describing.

So naturally, when I became liberal, I rejected it all and the racial part of the rejection was the position that black people are just white people with unusual amounts of melanin. "Skin color" was the only allowable criterion. All others, even differences that everyone could see for himself, were said not to be true and the people who said that there were other differences were, simply, racists.

Then, one Sunday, I was reading an article in the New York Times Magazine. The black owner of a men's clothing store in Harlem was telling the reporter that the clothes they sold were actually designed for blacks. The reporter didn't understand what he meant. "Well," the owner said, he seemed to me to be feeling for the right words for this ignoramus, "you might have noticed that a lot of black people have rounder butts than white people. We design clothes that take that into account and they fit better." I was humiliated. My face burned. I wanted to look around to see if anyone could have seen me running smack into the wall the reporter ran into.

I had seen a lot of black bodies by then and I knew how characteristic that rounded butt was. I knew how much effort I had put into "not noticing," or, when necessary, "denying" it. Because noticing this particular truth is "racist" and I was not prepared at all to deal with this question on the basis of whether it was true. I was busy being liberal and I wanted to see all the truth I could see without being racist and without giving up my moral superiority to the people who said forthrightly what we could all see. I didn't have the courage to see what was there to see.

There are two sides to this virtue. I may be courageous in continuing to argue for the truth even when people don't like it and when I may be subject to retaliation for doing it. This is not, except in the rare "whistleblower" case, a matter of public courage. It is more often private. That means it is a kind of courage that people will have to define for themselves, all over again in each new situation. It is costly. I have to be willing to be a "Bush basher" or a "class warrior" even if I am sure I am not.

The other side is the passive side. On this side, I might be someone associated with the Bush administration or a pro-Bush Republican, and when a social critic brings up the economic equality crisis, I say, "That's a point that is worth attending to." It is easy to dismiss the critic as a Basher, but I don't.
There's a beautiful example of this in the amazing movie, Invictus. President Mandela is out on an early morning walk with two black guys who have been his public protection for a long time. They stop to see a newspaper headline, which says, "He can win an election, but can he govern a country?" One of the guards protests, "Not even one day on the job and already they're after you." Mandela responds, "It's a legitimate question."

Petty Coercion -1 Courage

I hope this will be the first of several posts dealing with Marilynne Robinson's essay, "Petty Coercion." I have been stalled for several days now because it is an essay that has touched me powerfully and on quite a number of sides. The posts I have written (none sent) have been really long. So let me try just one part: Courage.

I have two ideas here. The first is that courage is always good. That's true in an easy sense, but also in a hard sense. The easy sense is that "courage" is positively connoted and if you don't like any particular manifestations of it, you just call it something else. Stubborn, pigheaded, insensitive, imprudent, etc.

The hard sense is that courage itself is always good. Courage on behalf of a bad cause is unfortunate, but that is because the cause is bad. The courage itself is still good. From a social standpoint, it is a good thing that, say, an anti-abortion activist with a gun lacks the courage to assassinate a doctor who provides abortions. But in celebrating the outcome (the doctor lives) I do not celebrate the cowardliness of the man with the gun. I don't think cowardliness should be celebrated.

That brings up to the lip of some statements you never hear. You could say, to pick notoriously caricatured examples, that Hitler showed courage in launching the Holocaust, that Stalin showed courage in killing off his top generals, and that Mussolini showed courage in attacking Ethiopia. No one says those things because the causes are so awful, but if we follow the line I am following here, in separating the internal attribute (courage) from the external action (genocide), it is a reasonable thing to say. It is not different in the least from saying that Martin Luther King Jr. showed courage in leading civil rights marches right into the teeth of segregationist rage.

Just don't say it in public. Or if you do, don't make a reference to this post.

The second point distinguishes "public courage," which is socially defined and socially supported, from "private courage," which is not. Marilynne Robinson's example of the first is the courage of a firefighter. It must be really really hard to go into a burning building, knowing that you might never come out. But it is not confusing. In a general way, everyone knows what "the courage of the firefighter" looks like and everyone knows it is good. The individual firefighter does not need to define the meaning of courage from one emergency to the next. This kind of courage is easy on the individual because the implications are clear.

Private courage is hard. From a formal standpoint, I want to take the time to say that it is hard for all the same considerations that make public courage easy. There is no generally accepted definition of private courage. If you are committed to acting courageously, you will need to define in each new situation, what "courage" is and whether, in this instance, it should be superseded by some other virtue, say, "tolerance" or "generosity." I want to distinguish as well between active courage and passive courage--although those might not be the best terms. By the first, I intend continuing in an action, although uncertainty or cowardice counsel you to quit. By the second, I intend continuing to hold a position although the context in which you live is hostile to that position and people will see to it that you pay the price for holding it. The first might be called persistence; the second endurance.

To keep our focus, with Robinson, on "petty" coercion, we need to remember that major hostilities are not being enacted. This is not martyrdom. No one is getting fired or beaten or excommunicated. You might get brushed in a hallway, or lumped unfairly into a category of people to which the lumpers know you do not belong, or derided as someone who takes seriously what everyone knows is just a joke. Those are "petty."

That's as far as I can go today. I'm in favor of distinguishing personal courage from the cause it supports. I'm in favor of courage. I'm in favor of good causes and opposed to bad causes. I recognize that not everyone agrees with me about what is good and what is bad. I'm OK with that.