A Fallen World
The barring of selected press organizations from White House briefings is, in the literal sense of the term, un-American. But I don’t expect you to care about that. I’m trying hard not to care myself.
It’s early on a Saturday morning. Our son is still asleep, my wife is at the store. It’s raining, but the sky is bright. I’m in the garage smoking my pipe and trying to stay out of this. Trying to plan a day in the woods.
As a young man I sought the counsel of an older man of like mind. He was a controversial politician and there are times when I think he saved my life. Over and over, we talked about how angry I was, how I felt restrained from changing things for the better. The frustration of watching my fellows play parts in an order whose end was clear for all to see. The sheer and utter powerlessness that rose up in me. There’s no use in my describing it when The Boss already said it better: Your eyes go blind, and your blood runs cold; sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode.
From weakness, power. The corrosive energy of good intentions thwarted. And the repetition of that cycle until all that’s left is a consuming anger that feels righteous but has in fact come loose from its moral founding: So much has happened that we are at a loss to even explain our grievances.
You know what finally did it? The thing that kept me from the sure end of that path?
“Gribley,” he said. “It’s always been a fallen world.”
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The Administration is blatantly violating the American ethos. How can they do that? Why aren’t their supporters speaking out against something so dangerous? Are they stupid? Don’t they know about the sanctity of a free press, enshrined in the Constitution?
Of course they know. They’re doing it on purpose.
Even my most liberal friends wrestle with this. The folks who should be most ready to villainize an ultra-conservative movement give the Administration the benefit of craziness, of racism, of phobias. And those things are certainly present, but to assign the regime’s character to such causes is to ignore arc of history: There are always convincing disguises for the basic human thirst for power.
And that thirst must be disguised. To bare it would be to forsake it. So those who thirst the most have developed isms: racism, fascism, communism, capitalism. Words like these are lightning rods, attracting violent displays of energy while the forces that innervate them move freely above us, shapeless and invisible in the clouds.
The truth, if you’ll permit me an assertion so tired and simple, is that each of us carries the capacity for unbelievable evil. Some fall to it, some don’t, and the distinctions between them are a mystery.
But there’s a third category: Those who embrace it. The Hitlers, the Dahmers, the Pinochets and Husseins. They become the apex predators in their environments because, for whatever reason, no one else is willing to go as far as they are. These people reach their positions of power not in spite of their craziness, their incompetence, or their lack of virtue, but because of those traits.
Everything this Administration does is — and everything the People do in supporting it — is done on purpose. You don’t become an apex predator by accident.
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It’s horrible. It’s a terrifying and egregious reality, and we all want to escape it. After all, you’re reading the blog of a man who has laid his sword and shield down by the riverside and picked up his fishing rod. But this is not a descent into some new dark age. This is a return to normal.
In all of history, the past few hundred years have been an aberration of liberty. Since the Magna Carta, the freedom of the West has been the glaring exception to the rule under which most people have lived from the dawn of time. As Americans, we stand under the aging roof of the Enlightenment, wondering how it got so dark outside.
It has always been a fallen world.
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The rain has stopped, and the longer I spend writing this, the less time I have for the woods. My son is awake, and every day I have to raise him. A little at a time. Yesterday we went shopping together, a father-son adventure in capitalism, in which I bought him toys and ice cream and bought myself some new fishing gear, all on my credit card. The Adult Police that live in my head rattled their zipties and batons, but we’re still keeping this protest peaceful.
Do what you can, but recognize that nothing can stop what’s coming. To suggest otherwise is to say that a little freedom of the press would have stopped Stalin; a vibrant dialogue might convince Kim Jong-un; an impassioned plea would have given Ted Bundy pause. I’m sure Bundy did hear pleas. And screams and begging. And he went on, invigorated.
You’ve got to find something deeper.
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One last thing. The man who taught me this, the one who saved me from whatever violent end I might have come to had I not learned that anger is just fear reframed?
Last time I saw him he was on the town square, waving a Trump sign.
