Incarnation Pianity

Two New York Times opinion columns in early October triggered an outburst of optimism during this chaotic election season.

The first, on October 9, by midwestern novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson, was titled “Don’t Give Up On America.”  Robinson, who calls herself a “liberal, loyal to the country in ways that make me a pragmatist,” is willing to acknowledge the “many flaws” of the previous Democratic administration while also denouncing the contemptible behavior of the current Republican one.

She hoped that we could “find our way back to equilibrium” by “restoring a sense of the dignity, even the beauty, of individual ethical behavior, of self-restraint, of courtesy in all things.” Doing this, she said, “might help us to like one another, even trust one another, both necessary to a functioning democracy.”

The following day the Times ran a column by the more conservative Russ Douthat assuring readers that “there will be no Trump coup” should the Donald lose the election.  Douthat tried to calm liberal Democratic fear of an authoritarian take-over by pointing out that successful authoritarian leaders control the military and the media in their countries and that Trump controls neither.

 “Our weak, ranting, infected-by-Covid chief executive is not plotting a coup,” he wrote, “because a term like ‘plotting’ implies capabilities he conspicuously lacks.”

These two Times opinion writers, one liberal and the other more conservative, are really (in a normal world) moderates who shoot arrows at those on both the Left and Right sides of the political wall separating the parties.  This wall used to be just a fence with gates that opened.

Can we “find our way back to equilibrium” as Robinson hoped? Can we liberals calm our fears enough to put our remaining energy into getting out the vote instead of writing about a possible Trump coup?

Can we Democrats restore even just a small sense of dignity to our political conversations and display a modicum of respect for democratic behavior instead of gloating in the wake of a Biden victory next month?

Perhaps we can, but only if we first secure that victory by removing Trump and his enablers in the Senate, people like McConnell, Graham, and Grassley who now hold power, and electing a Democratic majority to that body.

And in that event, Democrats also need to avoid the overconfidence and hubris (pride) that Douthat says led to Democratic defeat in 2016.

We can only improve America, a better slogan than “making America great again” by solving problems like the spread of Covid-19 and its accompanying economic recession instead of politicizing these problems.

That course of action might even help create the equilibrium that Robinson seeks; it would certainly be more rational. One might even wonder if problem-solving on the eve of an election might secure President Trump a few more votes.  Wouldn’t this be politically wiser than just proclaiming that the virus is disappearing when it clearly is not?

            Not too long ago, it was common to hear people tell their anxious friends to “just chill.”  The national mood could change after a Democratic victory in November, but only if we can all—Republicans and Democrats alike—“just chill” enough to allow that to happen.

In previous columns I have said that I am not an opponent of capitalism itself, but only of unregulated or uncontrolled capitalism, the sort that puts money ahead of ALL else and makes everything a commodity, including human values.

That is self-defeating capitalism, the kind that is weakening and could destroy our democracy, and one would think economists would deplore this.

Some of us have heard the story of the article in the New York Sun newspaper by Francis P. Church, one of its editors, in 1897 entitled “Is There is a Santa Claus?”

The article was a response to a letter from a young girl, Virginia O’Hanlon, who asked her father if Santa Claus existed.  He told her to write to the Sun and trust that “if you see it in the Sun, its so.” 

Church wrote a column that telling her that Santa Claus was real and that her friends who denied the existence of Santa were “affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see.”

Church then wrote these famous words: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest joy.”

As a high school student, I learned that racism or, as we called it then, racial discrimination, was a bad thing, in the eyes of God, our church, and all fair-minded people.  It was described as considering ourselves superior to Negroes or black people and denying them equality with us. 

As I grew older, I also learned that the list of people we were not to discriminate against included women (if we were men), those of other faiths, and foreign emigrants. Today’s list is longer, including LGBTQ, “people of color,” those in poverty, the disabled, and others deemed “different” from normal, healthy, white-skinned Americans, especially males. But in 1961 when I entered high school, racism was a term used to describe white people’s attitudes toward American Negroes. We were told to ignore skin color when judging people.