Grasping at truth: Three examples of good writing about difficult topics

One thing about quarantine: It has given me time to think about how I practice the craft of writing.

I'm lucky: I've been able to make a living at writing -- both reporting and opinion writing. For most of the last decade or more, I've had a regular outlet (newspaper syndication, PhillyMag, and The Week) to express my opinions before large audiences. I don't take it for granted.

But I always know I could do better. And I sometimes suspect I'm doing a two-dimensional version of something that might better contribute to the public conversation if I could somehow express it in three dimensions.

I want to point to three pieces of writing done in recent years that I take as a model -- not just for writing, but for thinking, and maybe even doing this job in a way I consider to be moral.

And here are the lessons I've learned from them:


• Our job as writers is to grasp at truth. But sometimes truth is elusive. We should acknowledge that.

I've returned time and again to a piece my friend and colleague Damon Linker wrote during the Bret Kavanaugh appointment debate. It was about the impossibility of knowing what had happened between him and Christine Blasey Ford, despite all the certainty surrounding both the claims of assault and innocence.

He wrote:

Neither side can claim, so far, to know what did and didn't happen, what Kavannaugh did or didn't do, more than three decades ago. The evidence warrants further investigation. Without such an investigation, the evidence can be combined with prior assumptions about Kavanaugh's character to justify a belief in his guilt or innocence. But this is a mere belief, rooted in the conflicting assumptions of very different ideological communities, not knowledge.

The only responsible thing to do in such a situation — as opposed to the politically expedient thing to do — is either to suspend judgment or render it with suitable humility and skepticism. In my own case, I am tentatively inclined to believe Ford, but I'd greatly prefer to see some independent verification of at least some aspects of her story. Until such confirmation comes to light, I will withhold final judgment.

 I'm not always sure that readers reward this kind of humility. But I'm glad this kind of writing exists.

• When truth is difficult to discover, acknowledge the tradeoffs, then try to look forward.

I think that's what Will Bunch did with his recent column on grappling with the sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden.

If I were advising Biden? In a perfect world, before the coronavirus travel restrictions, I’d tell him to go to Seneca Falls or some other appropriate setting (because the basement thing just isn’t cutting it) and give a major address on women’s rights on the 100th anniversary of female suffrage in America. And while I’d have him repeat his denial of any assault on Reade, I’d also ask him to go much deeper in acknowledging that this is a woman who seems to be in pain — and that he is truly sorry about that. Like most successful and stubborn politicians, Biden hates to apologize. But he should apologize, in the strongest possible terms, to any woman who feels wronged by him in the past, including Anita Hill. He needs to ask for absolution so he can focus on what really matters now, the future.

Here’s the deal: I am a feminist. And — based on what we know today — going into the voting booth and choosing between Biden and his uncomfortable past versus Trump’s open misogyny and his string of sexual assault allegations is a no-brainer for me or anyone else who proudly wears that label. But we also need to hold Biden accountable to do better for women, because I believe he can. We can’t go back to 1993, either to find out what really happened or undo any mistakes of the past. But we can go forward in 2021. Joe Biden owes that to all women. We all do.

This takes the reality -- barring some bombshell revelation, Biden will be the nominee -- and tries to push forward from that reality in a productive way, instead of fantasizing that either the allegation or the candidate will go away.

• Be willing to stand apart from the crowd.

George Packer took a lot of heat for praising the late Christopher Hitchens a few months back. This is understandable. When Hitchens was wrong, he was disastrously wrong -- take his support for the Iraq War, for example. And he was, you know, a jerk. But Packer saw that Hitchens had virtues as well. And he discussed those virtues at length in a speech reprinted earlier this year in The Atlantic.

Politicians and activists are representatives. Writers are individuals whose job is to find language that can cross the unfathomable gap separating us from one another. They don’t write as anyone beyond themselves. But today, writers have every incentive to do their work as easily identifiable, fully paid-up members of a community. Belonging is numerically codified by social media, with its likes, retweets, friends, and followers. Writers learn to avoid expressing thoughts or associating with undesirables that might be controversial with the group and hurt their numbers. In the most successful cases, the cultivation of followers becomes an end in itself and takes the place of actual writing.

As for the notion of standing on your own, it’s no longer considered honorable or desirable. It makes you suspect, if not ridiculous. If you haven’t got a community behind you, vouching for you, cheering you on, mobbing your adversaries and slaying them, then who are you? A mere detached sliver of a writing self, always vulnerable to being punished for your independence by one group or another, or, even worse, ignored.

The challenge here is difficult to accept. I don't think I do a consistent job of it, but I try.

I'm now a middle-aged man. I've had a career that is older than some of the youngsers I've worked with in recent years. I'm so lucky that I've managed to stick it out despite the disasters that have repeatedly visited my industry. But there is still so much better that I can do. I can still learn more. And so I must try to do so.