Pity the Fools
I went on a cuteass date recently: we went to a bookstore and both chose books we would consider personal “required reading”, then traded them over Vietnamese sandwiches on the High Line.
Barf.
So now, while she is reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (you’re welcome!), I am reading The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm (thank you!!), and it is blowing my mind. For instance:
Love, he says, in every one of its many forms must rest solidly on a foundation of “responsibility, care, respect, [and] knowledge of any other human being, the wish to further his life.”
There’s a lot of love talk flying around right now, the most celebrated of which is the now-retired campaign slogan: Love trumps hate.
Let me begin by saying that I take a lot of issue with this slogan. First of all: HILLARY, MY FRIEND…why did you put your opponent’s name in your slogan? Can’t understand it. Secondly: love doesn’t just *snap snap* trump hate, voila! It can’t. It won’t. Not by itself.
If thirteen years of Catholic school are to be trusted (which…jury’s out), then love is most certainly not going to trump hate just like that.
Now all my Catholics out there are losing their minds going, “But…Jesus!”
Yeah yeah yeah, ultimately Jesus wins, according to the story. But let’s remember that from his birth announcement until his Death, Pt. II, Jesus Christ was fought tooth and nail, threatened and belittled at every single opportunity, and his followers were ostracized and ridiculed even when they sucked at being his followers (shoutout Doubting Thomas and Simon Peter!).
You’re not a Catholic? No problem, try this: (SPOILERS)
Yes, Harry Potter eventually triumphs, but again let’s recall that before the shaggy-haired bloke was even born there was a magical prophecy pitting him against the very incarnation of evil and ultimate destruction. And then for seven books/eight movies/and now a theatrical spinoff, he battles and barely survives the cruel war tactics employed by an ever-growing army of hate devoted to his annihilation.
My point is: neither Jesus Christ nor Harry Potter is a passive love-hero in their respective stories. They do not sit back and wait for love to trump hate. They fight, and they fight hard. Sometimes as dirty as the other side. (Simon Peter chops a soldier’s ear off…Hermione literally bends time and space) They lose their cool. They build militias. And most importantly: they do not ignore the darkness. Instead, they walk right into it.
It’s ugly and it’s hard, it leaves them both with scars and crying out for their fathers.
But what buoys them both — and what will buoy us in the fight against this fascist regime as it sinks its teeth into the flesh of the common American — is definitely love. Our friends and allies must be our source of joy and happiness. We must be each other’s disciples, each other’s patronuses.
And with the fuel of that love in the tank, we will power through the hardest task of all: intentionally extending our love beyond the people who are near and dear to our fighting spirits.
Let me be clear that when I say “love”, I don’t mean kindness. I don’t mean “be nice”. I don’t even mean “respect your differences” or “agree to disagree”. No, fuck that. I’m not talking about a love that looks like Jim and Pam on The Office.
I’m talking about a love that looks like Forrest Gump dragging a legless Lieutenant Dan away from his own suicide attempt. I’m talking about Cindy Lou Who when she entreaties the Grinch to come down to be Holiday Cheermeister.
In his book, The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis would call this thing I’m talking about “pity”. The gritting your teeth and seizing the shirt collar of every person who voted against their own best interests. Who fell for every lie and misdirection. Pity for the people who are so dedicated to making it to the mirage of an impossible oasis that they don’t realize just how close they are to dying of thirst.
But CAVEAT LECTOR: pity alone is not enough. Pity alone allows us to stay perched on our high liberal horses (read: donkeys) and do nothing. It is empty, inert, and unbecoming. For our pity to become useful, it must be supplemented with Fromm’s fundamentals of true love, which bears repeating here in bold:
“responsibility, care, respect, [and] knowledge of any other human being, the wish to further his life.”
The hard and ugly, scarring, crying-out-for-our-fathers work is in feeling responsible for, caring about, respecting, knowing, and wishing to further the life of the people who are fighting against us tooth and nail:
That Guy who comments on your Facebook.
Those Trolls who mock your Twitter.
Your Relative who texts you articles to “bring you to the light”.
These are the people who need our love most. Stuck under the daze of an Imperius Curse, they’re helpless. So it’s up to us to fight for them. Yes: for their freedom.
“But why should I?” you’re wondering, quite reasonably.
Because we are Americans, god damn it. United we stand, divided we fall. It’s time we — the “snowflake”, liberal, left-wing millennials — take up the mantle of repairing our divided nation. I know it sounds awful. I know it will be hard. But let’s grit our teeth and do it. Let’s bitch about it over a beer but then get back out there and save this nation — this entire nation, even and especially the middle parts — from collapse.
They will resist you. They will kick and scream the entire way. They’ll resent your pity, but love them all the same. Because when the mirage dissolves, when the fever breaks, when the dust settles, you — you — must still be standing there to guide them into the Great Hall of Hogwarts for triage. It must be us collecting souls — not the grim reaper peddling more false promises.
Is it fair that we have to emotionally deadlift a bunch of kicking and screaming racists out of the tar pit of this reality into the higher-minded, more harmonious future? Absolutely not.
But you know what else isn’t fair? Being chosen over Neville Longbottom to engage in a life-or-death battle with Voldemort and then ten years later not only are your parents still dead but Neville is also way hotter than you.
Fairness has no place in a fascist state.
But love does.
It is a necessity.
Love will win, but first it must be forged in the furnace of our own will.
It must be sharpened against the whetstone of joy and cuteass dates.
And then, when it is glinting in the sunlight, we charge into battle.
