Spielberg, Lincoln and Frederick Douglass

Finally saw Spielberg's LINCOLN this week, and I loved it, but one thing bothered me: A story about the end of black slavery in America largely pushes Black people to the margins. That's somewhat understandable -- the country was run exclusively by white men, so depicting the political machinations of the age is going to be very heavily focused on white men. But it's a movie about the fate of Black Americans in which Black Americans have very little screen time.

I thought of the movie today when reading Frederick Douglass's "What tot he Slave Is the Fourth of July?" speech. Particularly this part:

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. — There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

In other words: It's absurd that human beings should find their very existence and dignity as human beings debated by other humans. The existence of the debate itself, even when there are people on the right side of it, is belittling and dehumanizing.

And that kind of debate is pretty much the entirety of LINCOLN.

I'm not throwing away the baby with the bathwater here, so let me elaborate. There's a scene in LINCOLN when Thaddeus Stevens, played by Tommy Lee Jones, decides to profess a desired state of black equality that is short of what he really believes. He does this because he believes that without that rhetorical hedging, he won't get the 13th Amendment at all -- he wants the whole loaf, but he has to talk about getting half a loaf in order to get any part of the loaf at all. He compromises his ideals in order to achieve his ideals. (It's played with relative subtlety, but I'm glad the movie depicted that.)

Similarly, it was both absurd and insulting to debate the rights and freedom of Black Americans and also absolutely necessary to have that debate so that those rights and freedoms would begin to become manifest.  

I'm not sure there's a way out of that conundrum, then or now, or even what to do with this tension -- except, perhaps, to acknowledge it. Maybe wiser folk than I can offer some insight. 

KellyAnne Conway's family - and ours

If you're reasonably informed, you probably know about the Conway family. Kellyanne is a top advisor to President Trump. Her husband, George, is a Washington lawyer who has emerged as one of the president's vociferous critics. There has been a lot of speculation about their marriage, and I've tried to refrain from spending much energy or many words on the whole topic because, frankly, marriages are weird and the accommodations we make inside a marriage might be incomprehensible outside it. Plus, the soap opera aspect of it 

Their daughter, a teenager, has now joined Twitter -- and joined the fray, as another very harsh critic of Trump. She's gathered a lot of fans along the way, and said (or implied) terrible things to or about both her parents. I'm not going to link to it. If you have to find it, you have to find it.

A lot of people are rooting the whole ugly mess on. I think we should be mourning what's happening to the family. But a lot of people don't.

Maybe it's just Twitter. It's probably just Twitter. The site, as any number of observers have suggested, is filled with "vice signaling." Maybe real people are better than this. I haven't actually seen many real people lately, so it's hard to know.

We need to figure out what are politics are for. Is it just about getting ours and (bleep) everybody else? Or is it to work together, however imperfectly, to try and make the places we live better than they would be if we all just went our own ways?

I prefer the second option. 

The history of humanity is full of stories about how a righteous pursuit can shade into self-righteousness and eventually into bloody zealotry. We're not at the last stage, at least not yet. But a whole lot of us have decided we don't need to be humane to people we think are wrong -- or even to people who are demonstrably wrong. Cruel schadenfreude has become, to a remarkable degree, our national default.

This isn't to say that we can't or won't or shouldn't disagree, or that there aren't some people who deserve upbraiding for self-interested or bigoted beliefs and acts. But I don't think a lack of righteous outrage is our problem right now. We need to bring more humanity to our debates, more treating other people like they are humans with moral worth and real, complex, sometimes noble and sometimes misguided motivations -- because they are. 

Even Kellyanne Conway. Even George Conway, if you think he's the asshole in all of this. 

Coronavirus diary: Control

The biggest cause of anxiety for me during the pandemic and accompanying social upheaval has been to grapple, once again, with how much of my life - and the life of my child - really isn't under my control.

I say once again, because nine years ago at this time I was in bad state. I'd lost my job a year before and was barely scraping together an income freelancing. Then I ended up with a bout of diverticulitis that killed me and necessitated three surgeries that caused incredible pain, and a lengthier-than-expected recovery. The results broke me, physically, and nearly did so mentally. I only got by thanks to the suport of my wife and family.

So I know that things can go awry, despite your best efforts. I know that we don't always get happy endings. This sometimes puts me at odds with my dad, an incorrigible optimist -- and that optimism has served him extremely well -- but I believe that happy endings are as much about luck as anything. You can do the right thing, but stuff (the country you're born in, a random mutation in your DNA, the weather, some other driver's bad decision) will get in the way. The control we think we exercise over our own lives is mostly an illusion that can be shattered in an instant. Or, as seems to currently be the case, over weeks and months that all bleed together.

The disaster that is 2020 has brought that home, once again.

I don't know that I (or we, collectively) are going to get a happy ending. I frequently suspect not. But as I've noted, I'm given to apocalyptic thinking. I worry that I'm going to die soon of COVID. Or if not, I'll live but die someday broke and miserable, unable to provide for my wife or son. Or that my son will live a life on the margins, simply trying to survive in a world beset with financial depression, pandemics and climate change. Worse: I have no idea how to prepare him for that.

I can do what I can do. And I will. But I can't control what ultimately happens.

It's a cliche to resort to the Serenity Prayer during moments like these. (It's also longer and Jesus-ier than what usually gets quoted.)  And it feels selfish, hypocritical to pray right now, when so often I ... don't. "God, I know we don't talk often, but I need something from you." But there is wisdom there, nonetheless:

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
taking, as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it.

There's even more! But this approach is all that gives me peace right now. And maybe a little hope.

We've got to let each other be wrong once in awhile

This bothers me.

SEATTLE — Boeing Co's communications chief Niel Golightly abruptly resigned on Thursday, following an employee's complaint over an article the former U.S. military pilot wrote 33 years ago arguing women should not serve in combat.

"My article was a 29-year-old Cold War navy pilot's misguided contribution to a debate that was live at the time," Golightly said in a statement included in Boeing's announcement.

"My argument was embarrassingly wrong and offensive. The article is not a reflection of who I am; but nonetheless I have decided that in the interest of the company I will step down," Golightly said.

I can't find 1987 polling on the issue, but a February 1991 Gallup poll -- taken about the same time the U.S. was still fighting the first, brief Gulf War -- 56 percent of Americans shared Golightly's position.

That's not dispositive. A lot of people can be for bad things. And the American public's mind has changed since then, for what it's worth: Most favor letting women serve in combat. What's more, Golightly isn't entitled to a plum position at Boeing -- if the PR guy is bringing a company bad PR, well, it's understandable he would step down.

Still, this is worrisome. We have to allow people to change their minds and grow. We have to allow that people might've been wrong about something three decades ago, and not have that be cause for losing a job today. For one thing, there are almost certainly things that you and I are wrong about right now that is going to look really embarrassing three decades from now. Things that will seem obvious then that aren't, maybe, now. Humility dictates that we let people move on from old positions -- if only for the sake of the Golden Rule and hoping we're treated with compassion (or at least fairness) when our own sins are revealed. But there's also a utilitarian, "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" aspect to this. 

There are limits to how much we forgive old trespasses, and I can't offer a bright line that explains why Golightly should be given grace while somebody else shouldn't. But we have to occasionally let people be wrong about some things -- and we really have to let people be wrong 30 years ago -- or the cycles of recrimination will never end.

Can movies help us through the dark times?

Alyssa Rosenberg:

Though I initially treated “Independence Day” and “Armageddon” as pure escapism, I emerged from my re-watches of both with a stiffer spine than I’d expected. These late-’90s hits are fortifying to watch right now, and not just because the good guys triumph or because there’s little else on offer with Hollywood on hiatus and movie theaters closed. These movies are a popcorn affirmation of two ideas that we badly need right now: first, that it’s exciting and revitalizing to tackle a challenge of world-destroying dimensions, and second, that there’s something we can all contribute to that effort.

I read Rosenberg's column one morning after watching Spielberg's LINCOLN, which is a different kindof movie -- but I came away somewhat similarly fortified. This week I've gotten stuck in a spiral of doomscrolling through Twitter, unable to pick up a book or even get much work done, obsessed by the way everything is going bad in this country.

Watching a movie didn't make the country be in less-dire shape. But it let me escape the cycle I was in, if only for a few hours, and that helped my brain reset. Watching LINCOLN was valuable, too, because as tough as things are right now, there have been times in this country that have been more deadly and destructive than what we're living through -- so far, at least. People made it through, and even made things a little better than they were, albeit at a terrible cost. Whatever happens, as long as humans survive, they will try to survive -- because, really, what else is there to do? And as long as we keep trying, things can get better.

Don't get me wrong. There's a ton of shit out there. But I needed a good movie to stiffen my own backbone, to not give into despair.

Tonight, maybe I'll watch THE PAJAMA GAME>

Movie night: LINCOLN

Three quick thoughts about Steven Spielberg's LINCOLN:

* This is Spielberg at his most Frank Capra -- trying to inspire us and teach us and make us love what democracy can be, while acknowledging its tradeoffs and pitfalls (albeit with a Spielbergian sheen). It came out nearly a decade ago, after nearly a full term of Obama's presidency, when perhaps it was a bit easier for many of us to feel those possibilities. Now, though, it can feel like it runs against the spirit of our times. But maybe that's an excellent reason to watch it.

* The movie almost slides into self-parody though, as Daniel Day-Lewis's Lincoln defuses one tense moment after another with a story, a joke or an aphorism. At times it resembles Chauncey Gardner from BEING THERE guiding America through the Civil War. 

* But the soul of the movie belongs, in large part, to Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, a "radical Republican" who believes not just in ending slavery, but in real equality between the races -- and how he must negotiate curbing his instinct to "radicalism" so that he allay the fears of shaky congressmen to pass the 13th Amendment. The debate between ideals and effectiveness in politics is forever with us. TLJ gives the dilemma a human face ... while somehow being very Tommy Lee Jones.

Today's thought of dread

I'm given to apocalyptic thinking, so bear with me. But.

I wonder if the plans we're still trying to make and the arguments we're having aren't entirely irrelevant to reality, that our ticket is already punched -- the flood is coming, and a few of us might be on the ark, but most of us aren't.

I hope not. 

But.