Category: Passages

I visited two cemeteries when I was in St. Louis. One, I knew, was the resting place of several family members, though I could not have made a full and accurate list. The other was a mystery to me during childhood — not far away, but cloaked from the road by a tall embankment and a row of trees. One cemetery was for white folks, it seemed, and one was not. St. Louis, still a deeply segregated city in my childhood, and in many ways still today, was segregated even after death.

At the first large cemetery, with its rolling grassy slopes and mature trees, but fewer than I remembered, I stopped at the office to ask about the location of graves of my grandparents, Marvin and Marjorie Parsons. After just a few minutes, a person came out with papers showing two adjoining plots holding about six graves, and a map guiding me to the location. When I arrived there, there were more people I knew than I had expected. First, Marvin and Marjorie, both born in the 00's more than a century ago. On the same formal low stone was the. name of my great-grandmother, Mary Swank, born in the 1880s. I remember her sitting in a rocking chair in the Parsons kitchen with a wild-haired lapdog named Cha Cha Cha.

Over to the left, the low markers for my aunt Virginia, who I remember fondly and well, and her husband Arturo, who died of cancer not long into their young marriage, and who I did not know. And to the right of the main Parsons stone another for my cousin Michael, who lived only to the age of 14, and whose passing still makes waves for me when I think of it. I remember hard and somber scenes at some of these graves on days of burial.

I'm pretty sure there are other members of the large extended family buried there — my grandparents had about 45 living offspring when they died, and most lived around St. Louis. My cousins could probably help make a list.

The other cemetery, not so far away, turns out to be a large place too, with wide lawns and mature trees, but it's not an active place for burial these days. Much vandalized, it makes for a stark visit. Beautiful stones and broken ones are intermingled, statuettes toppled, markers in the grass as if tossed aside by a giant. One or two of the old style markers with a ceramic disk holding a photo portrait of the lost one, and more marker where that same oval space is present but the portrait has been pried off and discarded. Thin stones almost completely severed from their bases, and thick stones with corners smashed away. Stones made from the fanciest material, stones homemade from cement with letters and numbers etched roughly in before the materials could set. There are names of notable families in the history of the city, such as the educator Vashon and even the family name of the athlete Spinks.

To account for such widespread damage, I picture recurring visits made by racists after dark, looking for something to destroy, people not satisfied with the torments they were able to help inflict when the people there were alive. It's a crude and hateful disrespect, a powerful, relentless poison that must run very deep.

In the first of four wartime Letters to a German Friend, French author Albert Camus explains the difference between two kinds of love one's country. The German friend spoke this way:

The greatness of my country is beyond price. Anything is good that contributes to its greatness. And in a world where everything has lost its meaning, those who, like us young Germans, are lucky enough to find a meaning in the destiny of our nation must sacrifice everything else.

In contrast, 

No, Camus replied, I cannot believe that everything must be subordinated to a single end. There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don't want just any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive.

In the first speech, the nation is the ultimate value, and the person gathers identity from the nation no matter its crimes. Here power is self-serving and is not accountable to any other perspective.

In the second speech, justice is the central value and both the nation and the person gain their identity from the struggle for justice, in spite of the nation's failings. Here power can on the best days be put in the service of justice. A people together must imagine and express the terms of justice they are willing to fight for. They must struggle on behalf of that understanding, holding themselves and the nation accountable to it as best they can.

These two characterizations of love of country seem familiar to us now, eighty years after Camus risked everything in wartime to write and publish these opening sentences of his first Letter.

The people of the United States have traditions not unlike those expressed in the second speech, but I fear that we hardly know where to locate them, how to activate them, how to create hope through them. Maybe we do.

The four Letters to a German Friend are found in the volume Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays.

There being no reason that the people profoundly alienated and abandoned by the regime in place prior to Trump to become active citizens only for the purpose of restoring that regime as fully as possible, and

There being no way to imagine — create the working terms for — a notably better version of that prior regime, different enough for the profoundly alienated to find some hope in the admittedly so far only imagined difference, then

Finding a way to remove Trump and Cohort from office will probably leave untouched a notable portion of the alienation that supported and energized his ascent in the first place.

Don't waste the crisis, they say. Don't work hard to restore a faulty past alone, even if that faulty past seems better than the frightening present. Create the working terms for something better, not better than the frightening present but better than what preceded it. Work hard, yes, but not only in the solitude of one's study but through a widening conversation and affiliation with others.

Over two decades ago, you could easily find articles mocking bloggers, describing them as un-credentialed, word-crazy, undisciplined people writing trivial, untrustworthy postings, usually for a tiny readership. Occasionally journalists would see a virtue in the self-directed voice of a blogger who saw something, preserved it in thoughtful language, and shared this resource for free with anyone who happened by. Occasionally journalists would acknowledge the small topic-focused enclaves some bloggers created together.

I suppose some journalists said to themselves, "My Sunday column reaches thousands and this blogger reaches dozens. No reach means, in the long run, no significance. And most of the bloggers don't keep at it. No staying power, in the long run, means no significance."

There was a lesson in those small enclaves of shared-topic bloggers, though. By affiliating with others, they created not just their individual posts but also a public conversation on their topic. They shared information and ideas. They sometimes refined information and ideas together.

Successful activism requires affiliation — historical episodes make this very clear. Rosa Parks was successful not only because she was fed up, was brave, but also because she was part of a network gathering resources and allies and preparing for public activism.

So the mockery of bloggers back in the day may have been to some degree right. To the degree that the individual writers thought about publishing and building audience but not about affiliation for doing shared work, and to the degree the blogging software didn't seem to include tools that encouraged affiliation, well, to that degree blogging culture created itself on a design without reach and staying power.

The mockery was ugly, mean-spirited, and short-sighted. The urge to think and write and share what we've seen was honorable. The isolation inherent in the model so many bloggers followed put many at a great disadvantage, if we believe, as history teaches us, that public speech and activism without skillful affiliation are doomed, as far as the wider society is concerned, to insignificance. But the missing element might not forever be out of our reach.

At Poster House, a handy-sized Manhattan museum devoted to all manner of posters, ranging easily from and beyond wit, beauty, satire, elegant design, activism, and propaganda. One of the four current exhibits, Fallout: Atoms for War & Peace, is a good example. In one stretch of the exhibit, anti-nuclear weapons posters strike a viewer hard, while across the way a great corporation fills yards of wall space with beautiful images in grandly expressed praise of peaceful and war-ready uses of the atom.

The tension is a huge part of the experience. From various edges and enclaves, artists, citizens, and activists try to shape a message that will have public reach, while across the way bigger, more powerful voices try to preempt the issue with almost utopian promises.

I left my first visit feeling that society is a place of great struggle over message and interpretation, and the players are not equally provided with resources and access to audiences. 

What images, words, and ideas will a society finally settle on for thinking about its problems and its hopes? What mix of reasoned discourse and propaganda will guide us? In the Poster House museum, those questions come brought right up into view.

Let's guess that there are fifty important industries that Trump and his crew are quickly undermining, maybe even destroying here in the United States. One, for example, is higher education. American universities and colleges are a treasure. We know that tens of thousands of people come to the country each year to study, and that many of them pay the highest rate of tuition, making it possible for more American citizens to go to university too. It's a clear example of a valuable industry, the work of many decades and many thousands of creative and hard-working people, and layered with social benefits that are not hard to recognize. And the Trump team would be pleased to undermine and capture this industry, intending to remake it for its own grim, narrow purposes.

If you were concerned about this industry, where would you go to keep up on the news about it? How would you learn about the possibilities for pushback, the places one could pitch in? Is there a single news source that gathers, sorts, and reposts the day's news about higher education?

Looks like The Chronicle of Higher Education is behind a paywall, and Inside Higher Ed offers five free articles a month. As in the past, a person could go searching each day for industry news. Maybe a Google Alert or two would help. But in general, news about a given industry is dispersed or hidden behind paywalls. In a crisis, a person of good will probably can't find the industry's news in a single place or in a couple of places.

There are models for kind of heroic single-person news sites, daily searching, collating, and reposting by a solo investigator on a focused topic. From afar, this model looks valuable to me but also may tend toward burnout. And then there's the question of how a solo researcher's site finds a wide enough audience to be worthwhile and useful.

And let's guess that there are fifty notable American industries at risk right now. Even if there were enough of these solo sites in operation, fifty or more, maybe more than one for each important industry, they'd surely be more powerful if they were affiliated with each other. If they were, then people could say, "Hey, fifty of the most important industries threatened by Trump are covered every day, and you can follow any and all of these industries starting at this home page."

Heroic soloists are great, but I remember when studying episodes of effective activism that small groups that found a way to affiliate with others always, always, always had the best chance of success. So much so that my students and I concluded that without affiliation there was rarely any hope.

Everything said above about fifty industries at risk might also be said for fifty institutions at risk. Various kinds of courts, for example. We could really use an affiliated site focusing our access to this news too. And the core values of the society, maybe another fifty there too.

Trump and crew are obviously a grave problem, but it's also an information problem, an affiliation problem too.

Years ago food bloggers saw the power of affiliation. It can be done. They'd decide to invite posts on a certain day addressing a certain topic, and dozens of people would step up. The publishing on that day was substantial, full of resources and ideas, and gave me hope for the idea of collaboration and affiliation even among people who didn't know each other. One way or another, it can be done. If historical episodes of activism are a clue, it must be done. What other choice is there?

As an English professor, I taught first-year writing courses for decades, but I liked to do a little math with my students each semester too. I'd ask the class, "How much does a credit hour of tuition cost you?" In recent years, if the class members had any doubt, I'd invite them to haul out their cell phones and look it up. They were attending a moderately priced regional campus of the state university system.

Sometimes the math was do-it-in-your-head easy. The year I retired, a credit hour of tuition ran to about $100 for long-time residents of the state. An undergraduate degree was at least 120 credit hours. Let's put aside the cost of books, housing, transportation, interest on student loans, and any student fees for now and say the degree was going to cost nearly everyone in the room $12,000.

The math portion of our semester was over. My next question would be: "So, as a full-time or part-time student, in four, five, six years from now you'll put on those graduation robes and walk across the stage. The President of the university will shake your hand. Friends and family in the auditorium will make their presence heard by all in attendance. On that day, diploma in hand, you'll have a stronger resume. But I ask you, Do you want to walk across that stage with exactly the same brain you have today, in your first weeks of college? Or do you want to be a changed person, with a changed brain, with lots of new things going on in your thinking, resources, skills, body of facts and terms, methods of analyzing, an improved sense of when to question and doubt what you've heard? Are you hoping for a new you?"

Before I asked for their answers, I'd say, "Sure, school is sometimes strange, boring, alien. Not every teacher is as good as the best ones. You have a life, one or more jobs, friends and even family, and some days you'll be tired and you won't feel like studying, writing, or even driving to campus. Nevertheless, on graduation day, do you want the brain you walk in with or a better one that you put in the work to fashion for yourself with the help of good teacher, bodies of knowledge passed down for generations, classmates who dig into serious conversations with you, and the delayed gratification that goes with asking tough questions? What's your answer? What'll it be?"

Nobody in those class sessions ever admitted to wanting to walk across the graduation stage unchanged. Nobody ever said, "I like the narrowness of my life, my knowledge, my experience."

In our country today, there are lots of people, including powerful political leaders, who don't trust young people to answer that kind of question for themselves.

My two favorite reasons for honoring the U. S. Constitution are: 1) the Founders got some things right and 2) they built a method for improving the document into the document: a method for amending the constitution.

I don't have any interest in honoring the Constitution because the Founders were god-like figures who must not be challenged by lowly people living today. The Founders challenged each other endlessly, setting a good example in doing so.

One definition of an American might be a citizen of an amendable republic.

In a few words, Abraham Lincoln crystalized a further trait of that amendable republic. It is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. So let's rephrase the previous paragraph:

An American is a citizen of an amendable government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Lincoln wisely chose to theorize about government in words that can be understood by anyone — such a respectful act on his part. Also hopeful: if we speak to each other in commonly understood words and phrases, we have a chance of holding a productive conversation. Most people like me, professors, no longer bother with writing that way, no longer bother with speaking in public that way either.

Power derives from the people, Lincoln argued: government is, therefore, of the people.

Every politician in the capital of the nation or of a state people believes that they act in the best interests of the people — that they govern for the people. Even if they don't take care to look very closely at the results of their policies and at the needs of the citizenry as a whole.

In a republic, we send off our representatives and don't easily make them stay in touch with our wishes between elections. Some never visit the portions of their districts where the other political party has the most members — many politicians simply write off those folks and their rights to share in governance. Spending time with those people is not productive, a press officer of a member of the Indiana Congressional Delegation said recently. So much for government by the people — when half the country's residents might commonly not be consulted between elections.

Then there's the presidential declarations that have become the common method of governing for Mister Trump. No need to consult the elected members of Congress, just declare a state of emergency and dictate a policy. Surely the more this path is followed, the less a nation has government by the people.

On top of that, the U. S. Constitution has become very difficult to amend.

If an American is a citizen of an amendable government of the people, by the people, and for the people, well, then in current circumstances we can speculate that Americans have lost the most central few traits of their nature, their identity, their civic practice. If so, then we might speculate that Americans as we like to think of them no longer exist.

Because the America from which they drew that identity is gone.

Sometime after the war, Albert Camus was invited to speak at a conference about religion. He mentioned that during those terrible years it would have been very good to hear the Pope condemn the Nazis. Any respected voice at a time like that would have at least been of some solace, if nothing else. Then, he said, I learned later that the Pope had spoken against the Nazis — this was in his Vatican Encyclicals, Camus was told. The official pronouncements of the Roman Catholic Church, written in Latin. Ah, I see, said Camus, insider talk, unheard by most of those struggling across Europe. That won't due, suggested Camus. Times so urgent require speech so plain and emphatic that every person, of any background and training, will plainly understand.

Most op-eds, social media posts, editorials, blog posts, tv/radio talk spots, and podcasts skip this part in bold type immediately below — any way of carrying out this essential (if you want a hope of success, that is) organizing task:

Click here if you want to receive messages about how to stay involved.

Not informed (vital though that is) but involved. 

Because most political messages skip this step, countless opportunities are lost for organizing people around a cause, for strengthening voices in solidarity, and so forth. If memory serves me, one thing the long-lost Obama 2008 campaign website did was help people stay involved. Not just informed, involved.

We Americans tend to think that voting and maybe the occasional public event fulfills our civic duty. The powerful love that theory of citizenship and all the hundreds of days of silence from us and peace for them that it involves. 

I notice at the end of Timothy Snyder's Substack posts you usually see resource links on the topics of resistance and making positive solutions. That's heading in the right direction.

Not just informed, involved.