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Sunday
As we prepare for Memorial Day, I turn to World War I poet Wilfred Owen, the greatest of all anti-war poets, who often found himself grappling with the apparent absence of God. My own belief is that God is big enough to take whatever challenges and complaints we throw His/Her way. Of prime importance is finding language to pose our questions and vent our frustrations. No question feels more pressing than why we suffer.
In “Soldier’s Dream,” Owen counterposes “kind Jesus” with the vengeful god of the Old Testament, along with war-like archangel Michael. Jesus may be the prince of peace but somehow His imagined intervention gets superseded by other forces:
I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears; And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts; And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts; And rusted every bayonet with His tears.
And there were no more bombs, of ours or Theirs, Not even an old flint-lock, not even a pikel. But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael; And when I woke he’d seen to our repairs.
In “The Parable of the Old Man and His Son,” it is not God who is at fault but the humans who ignore His/Her saving invention. The final couplet inverts the story of Abraham and Isaac in a startling and bitter way, indicating that we have turned out backs on God:
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went, And took the fire with him, and a knife. And as they sojourned both of them together, Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father, Behold the preparations, fire and iron, But where the lamb for this burnt-offering? Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps, and builded parapets and trenches there, And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son. When lo! an angel called him out of heaven, Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, Neither do anything to him. Behold, A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns; Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son, And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
In “Le Christianisme,” the church specifically comes under attack for its failure to prevent warfare and console its victims. A statue of Christ, along with Owen’s Christian faith, has been buried by the rubble of a bombed church. Meanwhile, by packing up the other statues of saints to save them from such destruction, the church has removed them from the people who need them most.
In other words, it’s not only the saints who are “well out of hearing of our trouble” but the church itself. Meanwhile, it’s only a matter of time before war desecrates the one statue that remains standing. The Virgin Mary, wearing a war helmet bestowed upon her by a British soldier, may smile down on us, but she is slated for imminent destruction.
So the church Christ was hit and buried Under its rubbish and its rubble. In cellars, packed-up saints long serried, Well out of hearing of our trouble.
One Virgin still immaculate Smiles on for war to flatter her. She’s halo’d with an old tin hat, But a piece of hell will batter her.
I’m not entirely sure what Owen means by “smiles on for war to flatter her.” Maybe it’s a belief that Mary—along with Christianity and the church—will remain pure and transcendent, whatever flawed humans do. If that’s the message, the poet essentially says, “Just you wait.”
Owen, who early in his life aspired to be a bishop, would go on to distance himself from the religious-patriotic jingoism preached from Church of England altars. At one point he may have agreed with the belief, “God is on our side and wants you to fight,” but after three years in the trenches he would write to his mother, “I have murdered my false creed. If a true one exists, I shall find it. If not, adieu to the still falser creeds that hold the hearts of nearly all my fellow men.”
This is the kind of questioning that God wants from us because it opens us to the awful (as in awe inspiring) mysteries of creation. False creeds and narrow orthodoxies close us down whereas the poetry of Owen captures us in our full humanity. This humanity includes our questioning.
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Friday
Book lovers often have favorite novels that they consume like comfort food, reading them for their familiarity and remembered pleasure. The novels of Haruki Murakami function this way for me, especially Kafka on the Shore, The Windup Bird Chronicle, and 1Q84, which I’m rereading at the moment. At a time when 1984 is increasingly becoming a primer for understanding the Trump presidency, it’s interesting to see the Japanese author engage with Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece. The “Q” stands for questioning, as in questioning reality.
We see the two books set in dialogue when one of Murakami’s characters observes,
George Orwell introduced the dictator Big Brother in his novel 1984, as I’m sure you know. The book was an allegorical treatment of Stalinism, of course. And ever since then, the term ‘Big Brother’ has functioned as a social icon. That was Orwell’s great accomplishment. But now, in the real year 1984, Big Brother is all too famous, and all too obvious. If Big Brother were to appear before us now, we’d point to him and say, ‘Watch out! He’s Big Brother!’ There’s no longer any place for a Big Brother in this real world of ours. Instead, these so-called Little People have come on the scene. Interesting verbal contrast, don’t you think?’
“The Little People,” the strangest part of this magical realist novel, are Snow White-type dwarfs who usher forth at night out of people’s mouths to weave an ethereal construction called an air chrysalis. Connected as they are with a secretive cult whose leader engages in child abuse, they appear to represent society’s dark side.
The contrast between a big man dictator and the Little People is worth exploring since each can be seen as a conduit of this darkness. Donald Trump came to power channeling America’s racism and sexism, which he both articulates and embodies. In like manner, Murakami’s Little People appear connected with a latent violence present in Japanese society. In their case, they take over, well, little people.
Murakami appears to be saying—somewhat prematurely, perhaps—that the age of strong men dictators like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Mao is over but that the same kinds of forces are alive and well in modern democratic states. The difference is that these forces possess individuals rather than leaders, assuming in the process a bewildering variety of forms. In our world, a possessed little person might bully a Spanish speaker in a grocery store or call a child of color the n-word on the playground. More seriously, a seemingly random individual may stab a woman in a hijab or kneel on a suspect’s neck until he dies or grab someone off the street and send him to a Salvadoran concentration camp. In actions which don’t appear to be coordinated, little people become “lone wolf killers” and shoot up a Black church or Unitarian church or mosque or synagogue or shopping mall filled with people of color.
At present we are seeing Trump officials gleefully violating protocols and laws as they arrest authors of editorials and judges and mayors and members of Congress, all with the approbation of rightwing commentators and GOP politicians. Again, it’s not as if they are being told to do this by a single individual (although in certain instances this might be the case). Rather, it is as though the same spirit runs through all of them, which is how cults work.
Murakami explores cult behavior in his novel. His cults, it so happens, are originally leftwing rather than rightwing, reactions against the capitalism that arose in Japan from the ashes of World War II. Sakigake, the most significant of these cults, at first seems relatively benign. It is composed of a group of university protesters who, disillusioned with society, move to the country, buy cheap land, and set up a commune specializing in organic fruits and vegetables. In so doing, they disavow their previous association with a Maoist cult that has turned violent. While they appear clean, however, they become increasingly secretive, building a strong shield against investigating eyes.
They draw the attention of the protagonists in the novel when stories of assaulted and raped children start emerging. By the time we get to this point in the book, we have already encountered multiple instances of battered wives in other venues, and Murikami’s thematic point begins to emerge. It as though he’s telling us that, under a veneer of sophisticated businessmen in finely tailored suits—the Japanese economy in the 1980s was the wonder of the world—lurks the threat of horrific violence.
What caught my eye this time through the novel was how the cult is reminiscent of MAGA. There is a charismatic leader who operates outside the law and who “can exert his influence on people directly.” An investigator reports, “People idolize him. His very presence, you might say, functions like a doctrinal core. It’s close in origin to primitive religion.”
Just as Trump’s GOP appears to have no core convictions (other than, perhaps, tax cuts for the wealthy and white supremacy), so too does the cult. The investigator explains this to protagonist Aomame:
“This religion’s substance is its lack of substance. In McLuhanesque terms, the medium is the message.”
“In other words, the package itself is the contents. Is that it?”
“Exactly. The characteristics of the package determine the nature of the contents, not the other way around.
The effect of the cult also resembles the impact of MAGA on many of its followers. We see this in the evolution of its brainwashed children:
[A]ccording to the teachers who had those kids in their classes, most of them—boys and girls alike—appear to have some kind of emotional problems. They show up normal in first grade, just bright, outgoing children, but year by year they grow less talkative, their faces lose any hint of expression. Eventually they become utterly apathetic and stop coming to school.
Aomame, who herself was raised in a cult, contrasts herself with one of the leader’s rape victims:
My own will made it possible for me to escape back then. But when you’re as seriously wounded as this girl, it may not be possible to bring yourself back. You might never be able to return your heart to its normal condition again.
And elsewhere:
The body is not the only target of rape. Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.
This won’t be my last essay on 1Q84 since there are still aspects of the Little People and their air chrysalis that I don’t quite get. But Murakami’s account of the operation of cults is only too familiar in present day America.
Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at rrbates1951@gmail.com. I’ll subscribe you via Mailchimp for the weekly or email you directly for the daily (your choice). Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone.
Thursday
How is it that diversity, equity and inclusion are now spat out as epithets by large swatches of the population and that “woke” has become an insult? In the words of that old hymn, set to music by Bach and alluding to Jesus’s parable about the sleeping bridesmaids, now more than ever we need to wake up:
“Sleepers, wake!” A voice astounds us, the shout of rampart-guards surrounds us: “Awake, Jerusalem, arise!” Midnight’s peace their cry has broken, Their urgent summons clearly spoken: “The time has come, O maidens wise! Rise up, and give us light…
Diagnosing our condition with pinpoint accuracy is Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Revelation,” which my faculty reading group discussed last week. Although it was written in 1964, it very much captures the class and race resentment that roils our current moment.
In its amazing ending, however, it also lays out the promise that is America—which is to say, DEI. In O’Connor’s Catholic telling, that promise comes as a moment of grace in a fallen world. Sanctimonious pride gives way to a humility that accepts people of all races and classes.
The story begins in a doctor’s office and is mediated through the mind of Mrs. Turpin. While smugly satisfied with her privileged place in the social hierarchy, Mrs. Turpin is beset with class and race insecurity. This can be seen in the way she obsessively categorizes people:
Sometimes at night when she couldn’t go to sleep, Mrs. Turpin would occupy herself with the question of who she would have chosen to be if she couldn’t have been herself. If Jesus had said to her before he made her, “There’s only two places available for you. You can either be a nigger or white-trash,” what would she have said? “Please, Jesus, please,” she would have said, “just let me wait until there’s another place available,” and he would have said, “No, you have to go right now and I have only those two places so make up your mind.” She would have wiggled and squirmed and begged and pleaded but it would have been no use and finally she would have said, “All right, make me a nigger then—but that don’t mean a trashy one.” And he would have made her a neat clean respectable Negro woman, herself but black.
The categorizing gets even elaborate as the sleepless night continues on:
Sometimes Mrs. Turpin occupied herself at night naming the classes of people. On the bottom of the heap were most colored people, not the kind she would have been if she had been one, but most of them; then next to them—not above, just away from—were the white-trash; then above them were the homeowners, and above them the home-and-land owners, to which she and Claud belonged. Above she and Claud were people with a lot of money and much bigger houses and much more land. But here the complexity of it would begin to bear in on her, for some of the people with a lot money were common and ought to be below she and Claud and some of the people who had good blood had lost their money and had to rent and then there were colored people who owned their homes and land as well. There was a colored dentist in town who had two red Lincolns and a swimming pool and a farm with registered white face cattle on it.
This reflecting ends with the horrific vision of all difference elided, as it was for the Jewish community in the Holocaust, where it didn’t matter whether you were rich or poor:
Usually by the time she had fallen asleep all the classes of people were moiling and roiling around in her head, and she would dream they were all crammed in together in a box car, being ridden off to be put in a gas oven.
A more positive DEI vision will conclude the story.
We watch the class dynamic play out in the doctor’s office through the interchanges between the patients. Being of the home-and-land class, Mrs. Turpin feels that she can take the high road and patronizingly looks down on the others. At one point she all but echoes the Pharisee in Jesus’s parable who thanks God “that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m certainly not like that tax collector!” Here’s Mrs. Turpin:
“If it’s one thing I am,” Mrs. Turpin said with feeling, “it’s grateful. When I think who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got, a little of everything, and a good disposition besides, I just feel like shouting, ‘Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is! It could have been different!” For one thing, somebody else could have got Claud. At the thought of this, she was flooded with gratitude and a terrible pang of joy ran through her. “Oh thank you, Jesus, Jesus, thank you!” she cried aloud.
While there’s one other woman of her standing in the office, there’s a third—”not white-trash but common,” in Mrs. Turpin’s assessment—who senses that she is being judged and strikes back. When Mrs. Turpin talks about hosing down their confinement-raised hogs and providing water and rides for their African American workers, she receives the following response:
“One thang I know,” the white-trash woman said. “Two thangs I ain’t going to do: love no niggers or scoot down no hog with no hose.” And she let out a bark of contempt.
To which response Mrs. Turpin exchanges a knowing glance with the other woman of her class:
The look that Mrs. Turpin and the pleasant lady exchanged indicated they both understood that you had to have certain things before you could know certain things.
This being the segregated south, there are no African Americans present in the office—they show up later in the story—but there is a girl who is back home after attending Wellesley College. Think of her as the northern liberal—an elitist “libtard,” as MAGA Trumpists like to say—in the story. So repulsed is she at Mrs. Turpin’s air of smug superiority that she can’t stand her anymore but flings a textbook at her head and goes for her throat:
The girl raised her head. Her gaze locked with Mrs. Turpin’s. “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog,” she whispered. Her voice was low but clear. Her eyes burned for a moment as if she saw with pleasure that her message had struck its target.
At first Mrs. Turpin believes that she can dismiss the college student because she’s obviously a lunatic. Her words strike home, however, because, despite all Mrs. Turpin’s apparent self-assurance, her identity is actually quite fragile. We see her uncertainty when, after leaving the office, she turns to her African American workers for reassurance, even though at some level she knows they will tell her (if they know what’s good for them) what she wants to hear. When one’s sense of oneself is based on putting others down, especially in a country with a founding document that asserts that all have an equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, there is bound to be a crisis of identity.
One sees this same kind of instability in the characters in Faulkner’s novels, where everything seems to depend on rigid race lines that are actually quite porous. I suspect if one really gets down to it today, status anxiety is the major factor driving a significant portion of the electorate. This goes a long way towards explaining why we chose a white supremacist male over a highly qualified black woman in the 2024 election.
The story ends with a different vision, however, as Mrs. Turpin looks at the sunset and imagines a rapture-like event:
A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from die earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.
“Even their virtues”—the white middle class values that endow Mrs. Turpin with her sense of superiority—have burned away in this moment of truth. The Declaration of Independence and the Christian vision that all are equal in the eyes of God come together.
Will someone who has defined herself according to this system of social stratification change her behavior, whatever momentary vision she has? It’s sobering to realize that more white women voted for Donald Trump than for Kamala Harris. The only consolation that O’Connor offers us is that somewhere, deep in these ingrained beliefs, there’s uncertainty. And while that uncertainty can lead to the fear that fascism feeds on, it can also break through to DEI revelation. Not everyone stays stuck in the old tribal patterns.
Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at rrbates1951@gmail.com. I’ll subscribe you via Mailchimp for the weekly or email you directly for the daily (your choice). Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone.
Wednesday
“How should I live my life?”, a line that one expects from Mary Oliver, shows up in a poem by Marie Howe, the recipient of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In these tempestuous times, any number of the political blogs I read are careful to add the caution, “Don’t forget to engage in self-care.” Given the danger of burnout and exhaustion, “The Maples” provides important advice.
Essentially the poet advocates communing with nature to calm the mind. This is hardly novel, as anyone who practices meditation will tell you. The key lies in how the poem helps bring the reader to the desired state. If, at the beginning of the poem, the speaker is worried enough to be asking existential questions, the maples behind the house respond to her distress like a parent ministering to a crying child: “They said, shhh shhh shhh…” And in the momentary quiet that such reassurance brings, nature steps to the fore.
The Maples By Marie Howe
I asked the stand of maples behind the house, How should I live my life?
They said, shhh shhh shhh…
How should I live, I asked, and the leaves seemed to ripple and gleam.
A bird called from a branch in its own tongue, And from a branch, across the yard, another bird answered.
A squirrel scrambled up a trunk then along the length of a branch.
Stand still, I thought, See how long you can bear that.
Try to stand still, if only for a few moments, drinking light breathing
Find some greenery, stand still, listen and look, drink in the light, and breathe. For as long as you can bear it.
Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at rrbates1951@gmail.com. I’ll subscribe you via Mailchimp for the weekly or email you directly for the daily (your choice). Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone.
Tuesday
“In times like these, it will not be the politicians or the priests that save us, it will be the poets and the painters,” writes John Pavlovitz in a recent Substack essay that is well worth reading.
In this particular essay, he’s speaking about Bruce Springsteen, who lit into Donald Trump during his recent tour. I’ll get to Springsteen in a moment. But let’s look first at Pavlovitz’s essay, which notes how the Trump administration is more or less systematically attacking the arts:
There’s a reason Trump and his Administration are trying to financially cripple PBS and NPR, why they have infiltrated the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, why they’ve declared war on our libraries and museums, why they’re slashing funding for art, music, and theatre programs to young people:
Fascists are terrified of artists.
“Creativity,” Pavlovitz goes on to say
has always been one of the most powerful weapons against authoritarianism, against injustice, against dehumanization. Art is wild and unruly. It defies political proclamation, it does not respect authority, and it refuses subjugation.
Once released into the world, it cannot be contained or legislated away.
For evidence, Pavlovitz points to the various rights movements, which took off in the 1960s and 1970s, resulting in humanitarian advances that Trumpism is currently trying to reverse:
From the sustaining songs of Black people kidnapped and forced to build the scaffolding of this nation hundreds of years ago, to the clarion calls for justice in the ‘60s folk movement, to the Black Arts Movement, to the Chicano Mural Movement, to the LGBTQ+ Arts movements in the face of the AIDS crisis, to the Hip Hop movements, to Black Lives Matter, to this present Resistance movement—the hands and voices and bodies of artists have confronted injustice, awakened the souls of humanity, and fortified the fighters.
I’ve written about such artists—those who give voice to the previously voiceless—dozens if not hundreds of times in this blog over the past 16 years. While the artists do not necessarily talk about politics, their works by their very existence are political. If this was not clear before Trump launched into his assault on diversity, equity and inclusion, it’s clear now.
And because of Trump’s wholesale attacks on difference, all of today’s artists need to push back. As Pavlovitz asserts, “We need the plays and the songs and the murals and prophetic words that help us imagine a place better than this one. We need beauty and melody and drama and dissonance.”
Springsteen is doing his part, sometimes directly, sometimes through his art. His recent tour included the following indictment:
In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.
And later in the session:
In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.
In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.
They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that has led to a more just and plural society.
They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands.
They are removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.
A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea for what it means to be deeply American.
The America l’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and regardless of its faults is a great country with a great people. So we’ll survive this moment. Now, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, “In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.” Let’s pray.
While endorsing such comments, Pavlovitz is more interested in Springsteen as a poet singer than as polemicist. “Land of Hope and Dreams,” he says, “paints a word picture of the journey to a place where equity and justice, and liberty are reached, where our destinies are tethered together”:
This train carries saints and sinners This train carries losers and winners This train carries whores and gamblers This train carries lost souls I said, this train, dreams will not be thwarted This train, faith will be rewarded This train, hear the steel wheels singin’ This train, bells of freedom ringin’
Another Substack blogger, the incomparable Greg Olear, has chosen another Springsteen song to make a similar point. “Badlands” may have been written in 1978 but it applies equally well today. (Olear includes a link to the song in his essay). About the opening stanza, Olear writes, “If there is a better metaphor for our collective emotional state, four months into the Trump Redux, I have yet to encounter it”:
Light’s out tonight Trouble in the heartland Got a head-on collision Smashin’ in my guts, man Caught in a crossfire That I don’t understand
The next stanza, Olear says, brings to mind the worn-out oppositional tactics of the Democratic leadership:
But there’s one thing I know for sure, girl I don’t give a damn For the same old played out scenes I don’t give a damn for just the in-betweens Honey, I want the heart, I want the soul I want control right now
And then the terror that many are currently feeling:
To talk about a dream, try to make it real You wake up in the night With a fear so real You spend your life waiting For a moment that just don’t come Well don’t waste your time waiting
Springsteen follows up this description of our condition with a call to action. And while action may result in a broken heart of disappointment, we must undertake it nevertheless:
Badlands, you gotta live it everyday Let the broken hearts stand As the price you’ve gotta pay Keep pushin’ ’til it’s understood These badlands start treating us good
Those at the bottom of the social scale are the ones who are most straight on the facts:
Workin’ in the field You get your back burned Workin’ ‘neath the wheels You get your facts learned Baby, I got my facts Learned real good right now You better get it straight, darlin’
And what are these facts that we need to get straight? An insatiable hunger to possess and control is a driving force. Springsteen makes a subtle point here since the speaker’s longing for control can get out of hand. In America’s rags to riches story, too often the newly enriched seek to oppress those whose status they once shared:
Poor man wanna be rich Rich man wanna be king And a king ain’t satisfied ‘Til he rules everything
I wanna go out tonight I wanna find out what I got
What then follows, Olear says, is “the exact energy I’ve tried all these years to summon with my ‘We shall prevail!’ sign-off. This—this right here—is the Apostles’ Creed of the capital-R Resistance”:
Well, I believe in the love that you gave me I believe in the faith that could save me I believe in the hope And I pray that some day It may raise me above these badlands.
And then, following a repeat of the refrain—”Let the broken hearts stand/ As the price you’ve gotta pay”—comes the finale. Olear says the song culminates in “a moment of pure, visceral defiance”:
For the ones who had a notion A notion deep inside That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive I wanna find one face That ain’t looking through me I wanna find one place I wanna spit in the face of these badlands.
Pavlovitz notes that one of Springsteen’s earliest heroes was Woody Guthrie, whose inspiring depression-era songs helped usher in the great social welfare programs and income redistribution that have made our lives immeasurably better. Guthrie himself had to battle with “America First,” the MAGA of his day, and had etched on his guitar the words, THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS.
As we face the biggest fascist threat since the 1930s, if not in our history, Pavlovitz all but prays,
May we stay connected to our muses, to our humanity, and one another.
May we in America arrive at that glorious place one day, and may the artists lead the way.
Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at rrbates1951@gmail.com. I’ll subscribe you via Mailchimp for the weekly or email you directly for the daily (your choice). Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone.
Monday
Because of the increasing threat of fascism in America, some top scholars have packed up their bags and taken up university positions abroad. As an MSNBC article reports,
Yale professors Marci Shore, Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley have made their careers studying authoritarianism across the globe. Now, they’re sharing their concerns about the rise of fascism in the U.S., where they say the situation has become so dire that they have decided to leave the country and their posts at the prestigious university to teach in Canada, warning that America is facing a “democratic emergency.”
Although some critics have argued that the three should have stayed at home to fight—and although the Cavafy poem that I share today counsels against leaving one’s own country—I’m of the opinion that one should do whatever it takes to resist Trumpism. Grabbing headlines by relocating abroad is one way to dramatize the danger. Staying in America to participate in demonstrations and talk to neighbors is another response.
In the first stanza, “The City” captures the discouragement many of us are feeling at the moment. We have invested lifetimes of energy and love in this country, only to see destroyers tear it apart in a matter of months. No wonder that so many fantasize about leaving:
You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore, find another city better than this one. Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong and my heart lies buried as though it were something dead. How long can I let my mind molder in this place? Wherever I turn, wherever I happen to look, I see the black ruins of my life, here, where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”
Years ago I felt this way about America. Raised as I was in the segregated south and then, when I reached college, witnessing the horrors of the Vietnam War, it’s understandable why I looked for alternatives elsewhere. I became enchanted with Eastern European cinema, which suggested that there were places in the world that took art seriously and that cared about everyone, not just the rich. The result was a Fulbright year in Slovenia (then part of Yugoslavia), which had been experimenting with what they called “market socialism.”
While I fell in love with Slovenia and have returned many times since, what I also discovered is that there is no perfect country, that every nation has flaws as well as virtues. Also, I learned that I had both America’s flaws and virtues within me, both its arrogance and its optimism, its naiveté and its energy. I learned that my soul was so American that only the threat of imprisonment or death would ever cause me to leave this country permanently. And, who knows, even that might not be enough. Of course, that’s assuming that leaving would even be possible.
In the end, living abroad for a year is what I needed to fall back in love with America.
Upon returning, I sought to take advantage of my new knowledge. I shifted in how I saw myself, how I related to others, how I operated politically. I became more tolerant of gradual change, less discouraged by setbacks. Only if we are open to such introspection, Cavafy tells us in his second stanza, will we avoid disillusion and bitterness.
Actually, he puts it negatively: if we fantasize that everything will be better in a new country and upon another shore, we are sure to be disappointed. If we don’t internally change, we will simply replicate the same life we were living previously:
You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore. This city will always pursue you. You will walk the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods, will turn gray in these same houses. You will always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere: there is no ship for you, there is no road. As you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner, you’ve destroyed it everywhere else in the world.
So, while I wish Snyder the best and will continue to read his indispensable writings on tyranny, he would do well to heed Cavafy’s cautions.
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Sunday
In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus, knowing that those who love him will soon be bereft, gives them vital instruction. After delivering a discouraging message–“Where I am going, you cannot come”–he follows up with “a new commandment” intended to help them through the hard times–“that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Because my mind has been on the Pre-Raphaelite poets recently–I’ve been rereading A.S. Byatt’s Possession for the first time in 40 years—the ending of Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market comes to mind when I read Jesus’s words. Lizzy has heroically come to her sister’s rescue, sacrificing herself in a Christ-like manner to save Laura from goblin addiction and emptiness. The poem’s epilogue informs us that, years later, Laura recalls this great love for their children. The passage melts my heart every time I read it:
Days, weeks, months, years Afterwards, when both were wives With children of their own; Their mother-hearts beset with fears, Their lives bound up in tender lives; Laura would call the little ones And tell them of her early prime, Those pleasant days long gone Of not-returning time: Would talk about the haunted glen, The wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men, Their fruits like honey to the throat But poison in the blood; (Men sell not such in any town): Would tell them how her sister stood In deadly peril to do her good, And win the fiery antidote: Then joining hands to little hands Would bid them cling together, “For there is no friend like a sister In calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, To fetch one if one goes astray, To lift one if one totters down, To strengthen whilst one stands.”
Or as John puts it (15:13), “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Nozdrev, the flamboyant conman in Gogol’s Dead Souls
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Friday
Watching Donald Trump “negotiate” a tariff trade deal with China brings to mind my favorite character in Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls. I first compared Trump to Nozdrev in 2017 and then again in 2023, although the comparison evolved so that I came to see Trump less as a Nozdrev and more as a Chichikov, another Gogol conman but one far more noxious. Or rather, I saw Trump evolving from a Nozdrev to a Chichikov.
Like Trump, Chichikov eventually wrangles a government position that gives him opportunities for endless grift. The comparison ends there, however, as Trump has risen to a position beyond Chichikov’s wildest imaginings, one from where he is doing incalculable damage.
In my earlier post, when Trump was bilking real estate clients but operating at a fairly modest level, I cited a judge who had found Trump guilty of fraud. The judge observed,
In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies. That is a fantasy world, not the real world.
The stakes are now higher but the craziness continues on. In his dealings with China, Trump at one point threatened 74% tariffs, then raised the figure to 145%, then reduced it to 80%, and now has brought it down to 30%, all without the Xi government doing much of anything. A CNN article noted that all of this have given the impression “that Trump was negotiating with himself,” while Georgetown political scientist Abraham Newman describes the situation as an “omnishambles” in which America “has just blinked.” For China, Newman writes,
the negotiations have revealed the weakness of America’s threats. Given that the U.S. was unable to maintain higher tariffs for more than a month, how credible is the proposed snap-back? In many ways, the bargaining dynamics mirror those between the U.S. government and bond markets a month ago. Repeatedly escalating to extremes and then backing down only further reveal U.S. pressure points. The initial round of negotiations thus has undermined much of the leverage that we have for future rounds.
Here an excerpt from my earlier post, revised to cover recent developments:
Gogol’s novel owes its name to a con played by one Chichikov, who is seeking to buy “dead souls”—which is to say, serfs who have died but who are still on the landowner’s tax rolls. Once he has acquired enough dead souls, he will take out a loan against them and pocket the money. While Chichikov is thoroughly unlikable, the same cannot be said of another conman, Nozdrev, who is so transparent (unlike Chichikov) that one can only gape in wonder. When I wrote my posts on Chichikov and Nozdrev back in 2017, I was trying to figure out which kind of con man Trump was, the vicious Chichikov or the relatively harmless Nozdrev. At the time, I associated Trump with the latter.
That’s because Nosdrev is mercurial and “a lover of fast living.” At one moment he seems to be your friend, at the next he is quarreling with you. Overall, he is “loquacious, dissipated, high-spirited, over-showy.”
Like Trump, Nosdrev must be constantly in the public eye, and, like Trump, he thrives on conflict. Chaos appears to energize him:
Never at any time could he remain at home for more than a single day, for his keen scent could range over scores and scores of verses, and detect any fair which promised balls and crowds. Consequently in a trice he would be there—quarreling, and creating disturbances over the gaming-table…
Nozdrez, it turns out, has the same regard for the truth that Trump has:
Moreover, the man lied without reason. For instance, he would begin telling a story to the effect that he possessed a blue-coated or a red-coated horse; until, in the end, his listeners would be forced to leave him with the remark, “You are giving us some fine stuff, old fellow!”
Had social media existed in Nozdrev’s time, one could imagine him wielding it as effectively as Trump:
Also, men like Nozdrev have a passion for insulting their neighbors without the least excuse afforded…The more he became friendly with a man, the sooner would he insult him, and be ready to spread calumnies as to his reputation. Yet all the while he would consider himself the insulted one’s friend, and, should he meet him again, would greet him in the most amicable style possible, and say, “You rascal, why have you given up coming to see me.” Thus, taken all round, Nozdrev was a person of many aspects and numerous potentialities.
Also like Trump, Nozdrev promotes everything he’s connected with, refusing to let facts stand in his way. Here’s only one instance from the many where he makes extravagant claims while refusing to yield to rational assessment:
The tour began with a view of the stables, where the party saw two mares (the one a grey, and the other a roan) and a colt; which latter animal, though far from showy, Nozdrev declared to have cost him ten thousand rubles. “You NEVER paid ten thousand rubles for the brute!” exclaimed the brother-in-law. “He isn’t worth even a thousand.” “By God, I DID pay ten thousand!” asserted Nozdrev. “You can swear that as much as you like,” retorted the other. “Will you bet that I did not?” asked Nozdrev, but the brother-in-law declined the offer.
Nozdrev trying to make deals is like Trump selling “Trump steaks” that have someone else’s sticker on them. Both men are so transparently fraudulent that sometimes you just want to sit back and enjoy the show, as the media did with Trump in 2016. Here is Nozdrev trying to sell some worthless dogs and then a worthless barrel organ to Chichikov:
“Then buy a few dogs,” said Nozdrev. “I can sell you a couple of hides a-quiver, ears well pricked, coats like quills, ribs barrel-shaped, and paws so tucked up as scarcely to graze the ground when they run.” “Of what use would those dogs be to me? I am not a sportsman.” “But I WANT you to have the dogs. Listen. If you won’t have the dogs, then buy my barrel-organ. ‘Tis a splendid instrument. As a man of honour I can tell you that, when new, it cost me fifteen hundred rubles. Well, you shall have it for nine hundred.” “Come, come! What should I want with a barrel-organ? I am not a German, to go hauling it about the roads and begging for coppers.” “But this is quite a different kind of organ from the one which Germans take about with them. You see, it is a REAL organ. Look at it for yourself. It is made of the best wood. I will take you to have another view of it.” And seizing Chichikov by the hand, Nozdrev drew him towards the other room, where, in spite of the fact that Chichikov, with his feet planted firmly on the floor, assured his host, again and again, that he knew exactly what the organ was like, he was forced once more to hear how Marlborough went to the war. “Then, since you don’t care to give me any money for it,” persisted Nozdrev, “listen to the following proposal. I will give you the barrel-organ and all the dead souls which I possess, and in return you shall give me your britchka, and another three hundred rubles into the bargain.”
For Nozdrev, deal making is a form of play. He is a bad dealmaker, as apparently Trump is as well, but one can’t help but admire his enthusiasm.
Chichikov, by contrast, is cold-blooded and calculating. When he figures that one can make a fortune by working in customs, he first figures out the lay of the land before cashing in. As I read Gogol’s account, I imagine Trump regretting, after his defeat in 2020, that he didn’t take more advantage of his money-making opportunities. He has been using his second term to to make up for that, figuring out new ways to accept bribes.
Chichikov, it should be noted, is more subtle: he first establishes himself as an exemplary employee before moving on to corruption. Trump, by contrast, is like Nozdrev in that he doesn’t even try to hide his grift:
But now he decided that, come what might, into the Customs he must make his way. And that way he made, and then applied himself to his new duties with a zeal born of the fact that he realized that fortune had specially marked him out for a Customs officer. Indeed, such activity, perspicuity, and ubiquity as his had never been seen or thought of.
Having established his credibility, Chichikov then makes the job pay off in a big way:
It happened that previously there had been formed a well-found association for smuggling on regular, carefully prepared lines, and that this daring scheme seemed to promise profit to the extent of some millions of money: yet, though he had long had knowledge of it, Chichikov had said to the association’s emissaries, when sent to buy him over, “The time is not yet.” But now that he had got all the reins into his hands, he sent word of the fact to the gang, and with it the remark, “The time is NOW.” Nor was he wrong in his calculations, for, within the space of a year, he had acquired what he could not have made during twenty years of non-fraudulent service.
For Trump, the time was NOW from the moment he was reelected, when billionaires paid huge amounts to finance his inauguration.
In the novel, Chichikov grows rich whereas Nozdrev bankrupts himself–just as Trump would be bankrupt were it not for a wealthy father, Russian gangsters and Arab sheiks looking for ways to launder money, and now anyone with money seeking favors (including Qatar, with its gift of a $250,000,000 jet.)
When I wrote about Gogol’s two conmen in 2017, I reflected that it made sense why rightwing voters would go for the flamboyant liar over the Chichikov-like politicians that he ran against. If many of Trump supporters despised the Paul Ryans and the Mitch McConnells almost as much as they did the Hillary Clintons, it’s because, like Chichikov, they carefully take the measure of every person in the system, add up their strengths and weaknesses, and act accordingly. If such types are assuring you that you will keep your healthcare in the very act of taking it away, I noted, why not just vote in Trump to blow everything up?
And because I didn’t know what to expect from Trump’s first presidency, I asked myself, who would I rather have running things: a blowhard that everyone knows to be a blowhard or a secretive conman who says all the right things but, as a result, is able to fleece us all the more effectively? At least when you get taken in by a Nozdrev or a Trump, I rationalized, we can’t say we weren’t warned.
What I failed to factor in is how a Nozdrev with presidential power would behave. What we have seen is Trump evolving into something far more insidious than Gogol’s light-hearted bungler. Not that Trump was ever as harmless as Nozdrev, as his assault victims will testify, but his second presidency is leading to a level of grift never before witnessed in the presidency, not to mention mass injustice and mass death.
People once laughed at Trump as they laugh at Nozdrev. They’re not laughing now.
Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at rrbates1951@gmail.com. I’ll subscribe you via Mailchimp for the weekly or email you directly for the daily (your choice). Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone.
Thursday
Former diplomat and Tolstoy enthusiast Fletcher Burton has just alerted me to the death of his State Department associate William H. Luers. As ambassador to Czechoslovakia in the early 1980s, Luers was instrumental in America’s support for playwright, dissident, and eventual president Václav Havel. According to Burton, Luers had the brilliant insight to recognize the historical significance of Havel as a writer-statesman.
Like many dissident writers in the Iron Curtain countries, Havel specialized in Theater of the Absurd, which captured the craziness and darkness of life under Soviet rule. I’ve noted recently that the Czech author Franz Kafka—the patron saint of absurdism—captures the way that Trump’s thugs have been disappearing people off the streets, and Havel very much followed in his countryman’s tradition. Absurdist theater is a particularly effective means of expressing dissent because it is allegorical: although it doesn’t directly point at the authoritarian regime (which can lead to prison), audience members learn to read its hidden messages.
Absurdism is also a way of laughing to keep from crying. As Havel said at one point ,
The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance.
To be sure, not directly mentioning the repressive government didn’t aways protect dissident authors, and Havel himself spent some four years in prison.
Burton notes that Luers had the savvy to enroll many of America’s leading writers in support of Havel, thereby helping form a protective screen around him and ultimately playing a small role in the relatively smooth and bloodless Velvet Revolution of 1989. These authors included John Updike, Edward Albee, E.L. Doctorow, Kurt Vonnegut, Allen Ginsberg, and Philip Roth. Although petitions from authors have a mixed history when it comes to impacting history, in this case authors contributed to Havel’s stature, which in turn made him more politically effective.
We really could use a Havel today in America. Among his pronouncements were the following:
— I feel that the dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred. People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence.
–You do not become a ”dissident” just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well and ends with being branded an enemy of society.
–Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them.
–Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.
–If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why it must be suppressed more severely than anything else.
–Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.
There’s also his pronouncement about hope:
The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it’s a dimension of the soul; it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed..
Burton told me that he had a chance to meet Luers this past February. Here’s his account of what happened:
I greeted him, “Good morning, Ambassador. You are a diplomatic legend.” This put a smile on his face.
As we parted, I asked him to name the highlight of his career.
His one-word answer: “Havel!”
Once our State Department had figures such Huers and Burton. If, despite all its faults, America has accomplished much good in the world since 1945, it is largely because of the work of its diplomats. Now, as in so many other areas, Trump and his enablers are in the process of driving such people out.
