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Linda Button| Longreads | July 4, 2023 | 15 minutes (3,167 words)
Momo
She filled our lives with good food,
chutzpah, laughter, and love.
Enh. I could sense Momo looking over my shoulder as I typed, her head wrapped in a bright coral scarf. I was relieved she had put on weight since death. The final month her skin had hung on her, a size too big. She was back to her firm, long-legged self, her dark eyes bright with interest.
“Enh?!” I said.
I like where you’re going, but the words aren’t right.
This was what we had always done for each other—poked and questioned and haggled over art. Still, I felt the pressure of the deadline. “Your husband needs this in four days. I‘ve got to get the ball rolling.”
Momo shrugged. You’re the writer.
What did she know? Inside I harbored a delicious fantasy that my words would cause the audience—Momo’s friends and sisters, her husband, Marty, and their daughter—to ooooh at how I had captured her gusto on a tombstone.
For most of my career I have written ad copy. The work suits me. Constraints. The single page of paper. Brevity. Choose as few words as possible. Let the visuals tell the story. Conjure emotion in compressed space and time. Here, then, was the perfect writing assignment for me. A three- by two-foot billboard. Thirty words, max. My business partner’s epitaph.
But unlike advertising, lofted into the airwaves to evaporate, this project would be carved into granite for eternity. I yearned to create a gravestone that would sing through the ages, that would capture the joie de vivre that was my partner. One year later, Momo’s death still had me reeling. I had worked with her for two decades. I loved her. I considered Marty, her husband of only a few years, a latecomer to the Momo party. Now, for this assignment, he was also the client. He had final say, after all: When it comes to customs of death, spouses top all others. According to Jewish tradition, the time had come to inscribe the grave marker. A literal deadline.
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Marty had procrastinated for months. So, at the request of friends, I was pitching in. The final words were due by the end of the week. Could I deliver genius in five days?
Momo was right. The copy was “enh.” I emailed the lines to Marty anyway—She filled our lives with good food, chutzpah, laughter, and love—and hoped he would embrace it.
Momo and I had run an ad agency together. She was a seize-the-day daughter of Holocaust survivors; I was bred from stoic Yankee stock. When our agency dwindled to two, we embraced our differences and renamed the business Tooth and Nail. She, the smile. Me, driving home the point. We spread out giant sheets of paper on her dining room floor for brainstorms, plotted campaigns on her sofa, pilfered images off the internet, fought, competed, stepped over each other’s words, slashed ideas, fretted over stubborn, uninspired clients, and laughed about our men.
In the early days, on train rides home from New York to Boston, Momo would find a table for four and unfurl her coat onto the adjoining seat so no one would join us, while I tucked my backpack around my shoes, not wanting to take an inch more than I had paid for. The coastline scrolled by. She counseled me on my imploding marriage; I marveled over her athletic dating. “Who should I choose?” she asked. “The heart surgeon who’s analytical, or the brain expert who’s all heart?”
“Which one brings you joy?” I knew enough to ask that question. Momo chased pleasure, splurging on business class and nice hotels. She spent far more energy on my happiness than I did. She gifted me photographs of tulips exploding in red and orange, a painting of a woman treading a gray ocean, her nose barely above the surface, as if Momo saw beauty in me but also my struggles. She extended a life raft. She cooked homemade matzoh ball soup steaming with ginger and fennel, she listened deeply, as the best therapists do. I left our conversations feeling both filled and emptied, cleansed and heard.
Finally, she chose Marty, the psychiatrist who strummed classical guitar and wrote her love letters from his neglected house near the shore.
Then, the mammogram revealed a 2.2-centimeter lump. Cue the mastectomies, chemo and radiation, wigs and thinning eyebrows. Momo rejected that as her entire story. For seven years after her diagnosis, Momo made even cancer an adventure. She wrote a blog.
Am I upset over the possibility of losing a breast? Not really. I’ve had a terrific pair for 48 years. My girls have given me and many boys great pleasure.
She treated loss as a punch line, no topic too intimate.
On Monday I took a shower and quickly realized that I won’t be scheduling any bikini waxes in the near future.
In advertising we start with the audience and consider how we want to make them feel. Who would trudge the slope to visit Momo’s gravesite each year? Her loyal circle of friends, surely. Her three older sisters, each a variation of Momo: artistic, smart, empathetic. And, of course, her 13-year-old daughter and round-shouldered Marty, his AirPods filled with classical guitar. I imagined her quiet, sarcastic daughter cresting the hill and I wanted to reward her with a smile, to feel the warmth, sechel, and humor of her mom embracing her.
Amazingly, when I look back, I did not follow my own best practices. I did no research on tombstones, threw out no wide net. I suffered from tunnel vision—exactly what I warn young writers never to do—and got stuck on a single idea. Had I bothered, I would have discovered a wide field of possibilities; it turns out that epitaphs trace the arc of history with tales of society, legacies, and stories of power and love.
From traditional Jewish blessings . . .
“May her soul be bound in the binding of life.”
and Japanese poetry . . .
Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
. . . to good old sardonic American.
Here lies Butch, we planted him raw,
he was quick on the trigger, but slow on the draw.
We could have honored Momo’s philosophy, She was bubbles in the champagne of life, or captured her perseverance: Grit and Grace, or something risqué, pulled from her own blog. “I won’t be scheduling any bikini waxes in the near future.”
I could have offered Marty an array of choices, mocked up what the stone would look like, handed him a scotch, and nudged him in the right direction. Instead, I worried and clung to one idea. Grief stuffed me into a small, hardened box.
I was thinking of something more inspiring.
Marty’s response waited for me the next morning. In advertising, where writing is a team sport, my ego had long ago shrunk to a chickpea. Still. Ouch. He sent examples of quotes he considered inspiring.
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” —Dr. Seuss
“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” —Abraham Lincoln
“The pain passes. The beauty remains.” —Renoir
My stomach curdled with disappointment. I hated when clients reached for clichés. Also, I was pretty sure Old Abe never said that. Momo leaned across and squinted at the text. She turned to me with a look between constipation and impatience: What do these dead white guys have to do with a hot, middle-aged diva?
“Right?!” I nodded even though I got where Marty was coming from. When a star collapses and sucks up light and life you need big mother constellations like Abe Lincoln and Dr. Seuss on your side. Marty was crazy in love with Momo. He proposed in her throes of dying and adopted her daughter. Not so crazy.
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But he wasn’t there when Momo first brought her daughter home from China, the same year I gave birth to my youngest child. He hadn’t watched our kids grow up to be best friends. He wasn’t with us, looking down on giant sheets of paper, pulling ideas from the air, creating a company while taking turns with after-school pickup. Where was he when we got The History Channel clients snockered on vodka at a creative presentation on Russian tzars, or when Momo snored through a conference call, and we claimed it was a leaf blower?
My hand hovered over the keyboard. Momo was still making that face. I marshaled my diplomacy and shot a note back to Marty.
The Renoir quote is lovely—haven’t heard it before. How about this:
Momo
She filled our lives with chutzpah, laughter, and love.
“The pain passes. The beauty remains.” —Renoir
Marty didn’t respond. The day ticked by.
In her last month I had wheeled Momo around the block, past her front yard where a gardener friend had fashioned a river of smooth stones. Momo did not admire the curving white through her lawn, or the blaze of yellow leaves outside her windows. She curled inward with pain. Now that it was my turn to lavish her with support and comfort, I had no words. I spoke to her as if to a child. “Isn’t that tree beautiful!”
“Take me home,” she said.
Her office had been turned into a sickroom, a large bed and TV at one end. Her sisters had arrived from Israel, Dominica, and Maine and tightened around her. They filled the kitchen with music, took turns dressing her, served up platters of hummus and opinions. They, and her other friends, somehow understood the rituals of grief, care, and mitzvah. Their religion was seeped in loss and optimism. They practiced simple, concrete gestures. But I didn’t even know what to do with my hands. I felt useless, as if I had gone from insider to outsider. I’ve been here all along, I wanted to say to them. Momo and I, we helped each other. She offered me refuge from my unraveling marriage. I gave her purpose.
The night she passed, I left my phone in the living room. When I woke, messages from her friends and sisters spilled down my screen. Voice mails. Texts. “Come to the hospital!” “Hurry!” I had slept while my friend died.
Another day, nothing.
“He hates it,” I said.
Oh, you know Marty. Momo waved her hand. He’s a BFD at the hospital. He’s probably curing ADHD and seasonal depression.
“After years of pounding me on deadlines, you’re giving him a pass?”
He’s a genius, they need more time.
Ouch, I thought. Double whammy.
The morning of the deadline, my email dinged.
This is what I woke up with at 4 AM:
Mother, wife, negotiator, artist, cook, adventurer.
Forever bold, stylish, and brave.
“The pain passes. The beauty remains.” —Renoir
Thoughts? Marty.
Lists. The final refuge of the desperate, the last gasp of clients when they’d run out of ideas or lacked imagination. Marty had reduced Momo to a string of nouns, adjectives, and commas, as if that defined her. Plus, Wife was the second word?
Momo beamed. Stylish. Adventurer! Marty’s so good with words, isn’t he?
That’s what love does, I muttered to myself. It infuses mediocre writing with sentiment. “He left off sister. Friend!”
Momo frowned. Gotta include them. Maybe we need an extra tall slab. Fit everything in.
I pounded a response on the keyboard.
Oh, those 4am thoughts!
I would add friend, sister, businesswoman . . . and the list gets long. Maybe focus on how she made us feel? xoxo
How did Momo make me feel? She had taught me that moments live in the flickering gold light of a beech tree and a bowl of warm soup. That loss waits for all of us, so we’d better wring happiness from every second. Death had robbed me of my witness, my confidant, the most honest friend I ever had. She never lied to me about my situation. Or herself. How many lovers have you had? I had asked her when I started dating again. She looked off to the corner of the restaurant, counting. “Sixty? Eighty? I had fun.” Would I ever squeeze so much out of life? She left nothing on the table.
What did I give her? My doggedness. My drive. My craving for partnership, as if I was born incomplete. I gave her my standing in the industry. My fierce competitiveness. My soundless, grateful love.
I went to make coffee. Marty’s response waited in my inbox.
It doesn’t work to say how she made us feel. We need to convey who she was. Funny, I left off sister and friend as her middle sister thought that it would be unnecessary, but it’s a key part of who Momo was. I was hoping that negotiator and artist would cover who she was as a businessperson.
Off to the eye doctor.
Ah, he was pulling in Momo’s sisters. A classic zone defense move by the client. I poured contempt onto the page.
New glasses? Hope you’re seeing more clearly now. Give me a call . . .
What do you think, Momo? I looked around the room and discovered her missing. Marty never responded either. But a tombstone deadline does not melt away like some canceled ad campaign.
The morning of the unveiling broke crisp and bright, the kind of April day we long for after the gray length of winter. A brightly colored square, rippling in the sunlight, waited for us. Someone had swathed the tombstone in scarves. The wind lifted the corners, flirting and winking, to reveal edges of letters. What was written there? When I had asked Marty the night before at a gathering in their home, he shrugged and said, “Something like in the email.”
Momo had handpicked her site. Even the year before, as we tipped clumps of earth onto her casket, weeping, we admired the location. It faced a protected edge of the graveyard.
Now, a year later, grass had grown over the mound. The trees plumped with buds and sunlight flickered through new green leaves. The rabbi, a short, bearded man, gestured for us to draw close. Marty stood with their daughter, his arm around her. I expected Momo to leap out from behind the stone and join us.
We each read something. I had to borrow a quote that morning, too overwhelmed to think. Words. All my life I have wrestled with, debated, and polished them. But how much had they ever mattered? Momo’s sisters approached the stone and unfastened the tape that secured the scarves. My shoulders tensed and my hand squeezed a damp Kleenex in my pocket. As the coral silks pulled away, the epitaph revealed itself from the bottom up. The words were indistinct, unreadable, and I cursed the stonecutter. Then I pushed the tears from my eyes and read the final, stubborn, unfixable inscription.
Momo
Mother. Wife. Sister. Friend.
Negotiator. Artist. Cook. Adventurer.
Forever Bold, Stylish, and Brave.
“The pain passes. The Beauty remains” —Renoir.
November 4, 1958–October 25, 2013
Every word rang true, but they read like a catalog. Writing, I have realized, reflects the writer, not the subject. The tombstone embodied Marty: conflict-averse, hoping to placate everyone. The list did not add up to Momo. I had yearned for bolder art, and my failure said something about me too. I deferred to Marty instead of seizing the moment and creating art worthy of this woman, if that was even possible.
Loss had yawned over me the past year with daily reminders of my friend. The plants she had bequeathed to me, now gasping for water, hung from my ceiling; my phone became a minefield of photos and buried emails. I would rifle through contracts or sort through our old projects and feel fresh pinpricks of grief. I turned funny tales from our partnership over until they became smooth, comforting stones in my palm.
I had tried to find another business partner. I needed someone else, I knew that, to keep me from spinning tighter into self-criticism, to slow down and let my feelings catch up, to find happiness for myself, as she had taught me. I even met with a consultant who listened carefully over bad hotel coffee and said “You’re lucky if you get one or two partners like that in a lifetime. Don’t try to replace her—go out and seek many people.” So I found designers, producers, and accountants to help me run the business. I began a relationship with a kind man. Each person filled a hole in my life but, like the litany on the tombstone, couldn’t capture what I had lost. Death had rubbed its heel squarely on what vibrated and flourished between us, ending the world Momo lived in, of possibility, her quicksilver wit, the warmth that rose from her, her push to seek out new adventures.
I closed my eyes and imagined going home and calling Momo and telling her about this day, where we sang songs and prayed and grieved both privately and as a chorus. The group murmured on either side of me. The edge of a cold breeze snuck down my collar. I folded my arms and held myself tighter.
Ach!
“Momo?”
What’s with the waterworks? Life is waiting for you down the hill, my dear.
I never visit Momo’s gravesite, nor do I want to. She sits next to me when I labor over a script or edit a commercial, and even now, as I try to craft this memory of her. I did not have the right words to say to her in her final weeks. I could not conjure poetry for her at her service. My words failed me then, they fail me still, and I keep trying. I want to breathe life back into the shining energy that filled my days. I want to make Momo alive for you on this simple piece of paper.
Do words matter? I visit Momo’s blog and linger over her final post, written weeks before she died. The stamp of that last date floats farther away from me, but the words still leave fresh yearning.
Seven years of debilitating treatments, anxious scan results, and the occasional self-diagnosis. It’s a lot to go through to drop a few pounds. Seven very precious years spent with my magnificent husband, my daughter and stellar friends. Seven years going on eight years with nine years in reach and ten years hardly a stretch.
Knowing all that and still, I live like there is no tomorrow.
Linda Button is a storyteller and writer for a large non-profit. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Boston Magazine, PBS, and elsewhere. Her memoir-in-progress, Fight Song, explores mental illness, martial arts and learning to let go, despite love.
Editor: Krista Stevens
Copy Editor: Peter Rubin
Scan of the Month features X-ray computed tomography of everyday items such as game controllers, plants, shavers, minifigs, a Gameboy, an instant camera, sneakers and so on.
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Without much overstatement, one can describe the history of modern political philosophy as the search for a suitable replacement for Christianity. Progress replaces providence, humanitarianism replaces charity, and mind (or reason) replaces God himself. Into the void left behind by Christianity have rushed all sorts of ideologies—that is, comprehensive systems of belief that purport to explain the whole of human thought, action, and purpose.
Americans are well aware of this totalizing tendency among our least favorite ideologies, communism and fascism; however, democracy itself is likewise prone to become just such an ideology. Pepperdine University’s Emily Finley calls this the “ideology of democratism,” and her 2022 book by the same name aims to highlight some of the metaphysical and religious aspects of contemporary democracy. She contends that democracy, or democratism, has become “perhaps the dominant political belief system in modern Western society.” In other words, democracy has become more than a regime type; it has become a secular religion, complete with its own dogmas, practices, clerics, and eschatology.
Democracy has become more than a regime type; it has become a secular religion, complete with its own dogmas, practices, clerics, and eschatology.
Democracy vs. Democratism
The relationship between democracy and democratism can perhaps best be understood in parallel with the relationship between science and scientism—the former being a concrete and practical method whereas the latter is merely a comprehensive (and, one might add, dubious) belief system that goes well beyond the method. Similarly, whereas democracy is the political rule of the people, democratism is, as Finley puts it, “a hypothetical or ideal conception of democracy that is only tenuously connected to the actual, historical desires of real popular majorities.” According to Finley, the prominent characteristics of democratism are (1) the belief that true democracy lies above and beyond the actual wishes of actual people, (2) that an elite legislator or vanguard is necessary to call forth the idealized will of the people, (3) that coercion and propaganda are suitable means of instantiating the popular will, and (4) that all individuals, were they stripped of their historical and contingent particularities, would be little democrats. In short, whereas democracy is the process whereby one ascertains and implements the will of the majority, democratism is an abstract conception of what the people as a whole should ideally will for themselves.
Finley rightly identifies Rousseau as the original prophet of democratism. His notion of “the general will” is the necessary philosophical prerequisite for the present division between the actual wills of the people (plural) and an idealized will of the people (singular). Indeed, Rousseau develops something like a set of procedures for setting aside individual wills in order to comprehend the general will: for example, citizens should not communicate with one another to avoid bias, and they should be “sufficiently informed.” (The parallel between Rousseau’s procedures and John Rawls’s “veil of ignorance” is perhaps too obvious to mention.) If these procedures are followed, all laws will theoretically be simple, equal, generally applicable, and therefore just.
One need not be a skeptic to think this set of circumstances is unlikely to obtain under most conditions. Enter Rousseau’s deus ex machina—a quasi-divine legislator who can ensure the people choose rightly. Rousseau’s legislator will “persuade without convincing”—calling forth from the diverse interests of the people the true general will. Finley sees this divorce between actual and idealized wills as leading inevitably to a divorce between the people and their democratist leaders. Any version of this line of thinking, whether it be Rousseau’s or Rawls’s, will detach politics from individuals’ actual concerns and open space for powerful parties to cloak their own interests in the guise of something universal.
Whereas democracy is the process whereby one ascertains and implements the will of the majority, democratism is an abstract conception of what the people as a whole should ideally will for themselves.
Christian Origins
In one of the most interesting sections of the book, Finley shows how the notion of the “general will” was historically associated with Christian theology and still assumes some of that original framework: after all, discerning a singular, all-encompassing will requires a “God’s eye” view. Whether such an idea still makes sense in the absence of that original framework is an open question. Finley says, “For Rousseau, . . . the general will retains its original theological connotation of wholeness and perfection, but instead of being attributed to an infinite and omniscient God, it becomes a rational and ahistorical ideal. Rousseau and others substitute for the will of God an abstract will of humanity universally accessible through reason.”
In other words, the general will used to be situated in the mind of God, and fully accessible only to him; however, we hubristic moderns seem to think we too are omniscient (perhaps by virtue of our sheer number and our chronological superiority—call it “democratic omniscience”). Rousseau’s general will is certainly a major break from a Christian framework, but it is not nearly so profound as Rousseau’s total redefinition of human nature—a revolution at which Finley only hints. Rousseau plainly admits that his whole system of thought rests atop one fundamental doctrine: the natural goodness of man. If this is true, then perhaps it is Rousseau’s faith in our innate goodness that is the true foundation not only of the general will and democratism, but of political modernity itself. We have yet to fully understand how many social and political revolutions owe their existence to this fundamental shift in anthropology. Even Tocqueville points us in this direction when he notes that “the perfectibility of man” is the deepest dogma of democratic ages.
Nevertheless, there is great value in looking at democracy as an ideology. In fact, Finley helps us understand one curious fact about contemporary politics—namely, the incessant refrain of elites who blame “the people” for subverting, or perverting, true democracy. It is now commonplace to hear our moral and political elites utter—with no sense of irony—that our democracy is threatened by the will of the people (or at least the will of a certain class of people they find morally and politically repugnant). Indeed, between the election of Donald Trump and Brexit, one need not strain too hard to find examples of elites who were positively apoplectic over the result of free democratic choice. Even more recently, American progressives bemoaned the fact that abortion, as a matter of public policy, was returned to the state level (which is to say, would be resolved democratically rather than by judicial fiat).
Time and time again, we hear that democracy (the procedure) threatens to undermine democracy itself (ideological democracy), with the added irony that this typically comes from the mouths of Democrats. These mental contortions are possible because we have imported many other notions into democracy, and we are unable to disambiguate democracy as a procedure from democracy the ideology or belief system. Moreover, in one of the great virtues of the book, Finley helps us realize that we import into democracy a full-blown eschatology—the expectation of a “new age of peace and equality.” Few books have such keen vision of the religious aspects of modern democracy.
Time and time again, we hear that democracy (the procedure) threatens to undermine democracy itself (ideological democracy), with added irony that this typically comes from the mouths of Democrats.
Critiquing Democratists
The subsequent chapters of Finley’s book are a series of investigations into how democratism explains the actions and ideas of various influential thinkers, including Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson, Jacques Maritain, John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, George W. Bush, and the neoconservatives in general. All of these people or groups believed, in some fashion or another, that true democracy was “just around the corner”—simply in need of a good shove. For all democratists, the success or failure of democracy rests on two factors—leadership and education—both of which should “refine” the will of the people and shape it into what it ought to be. Unlike the Founders, who contented themselves with the modest achievement of a system of compromises between interest groups, these various figures were bewitched by what Finley calls the “idyllic imagination”—a dream of a future utopia in which individual interest could be sublimated and transcended.
Some of the figures Finley critiques, such as Woodrow Wilson, won’t come as a surprise to most readers. In Finley’s poignant words, “Wilson believed that he was tasked with nothing less than completing Christ’s work on Calvary. If the world would but heed his counsel, he could help to bestow on humanity ‘the full right to live and realize the purposes that God had meant them to realize.’” While this sort of secularized theology, or civic religion, is not terribly surprising from Wilson, Finley sees the same sort of heresy on the part of Catholic political philosopher Jacques Maritain. Her chapter on Maritain makes it clear that democratism tempts individuals whether they happen to be secular or religious. Finley, who is herself a sincere Catholic, reserves some of her harshest criticisms for Maritain (as one is typically justified in criticizing most fervently those nearest to oneself).
According to Finley, Maritain’s “Christian” or “Personalist” democracy owes more to Rousseau than to the Apostle Paul, and his central social and political ideas—“the brotherhood of men,” “universal community,” “the whole human family,” etc.—emerge from a sentimental humanitarianism rather than genuine Christian charity. Harsh words, but probably justified. Moreover, while Maritain is remembered for his criticism of the atheistic and materialistic underpinnings of Marxism, Finley sees Maritain’s political philosophy as only superficially different from Marx. Here, Finley can speak for herself:
Maritain’s vision of earthly renewal founded in a new brotherhood of humanity resembles Marx’s broad outline of the same idea. Are the differences between the two visions of these major points substantive or merely rhetorical? Maritain articulates a vision of international brotherhood, freedom, and equality that is to be accomplished through major socioeconomic reorganization at the hands of a knowing vanguard, aided by what is nothing other than a secular political faith—the “democratic creed.” . . . Such a focus on the material and political . . . at times spiritualizes the political—a charge Maritain laid on Marxism. Under the auspices of Christian “democracy,” Maritain seems to be a major contributor to a new political ideology not so different from the one he repudiates.
These and similar denunciations can be found on nearly every page of Finley’s book, and they are in equal parts interesting and convincing. She reminds us that democracy, at least in its democratist form, shares many of the same assumptions as communism and fascism, lest we be too enamored of our own preferred political presuppositions. She is not the first to make these claims; they are a version of Eric Voegelin’s idea of political gnosticism. However, Finley’s contributions are still valuable: one cannot be told too often that even democracy is not immune to delusional utopianism.
On the topic of delusional utopianism, much more could be said about Finley’s other chapters on “deliberative democratism” (featuring Rawls and Habermas) and “war democratism” (featuring George W. Bush and neoconservatism), but some things are better left for the reader to explore themselves. Individuals of every political persuasion will be challenged by Finley’s account, and, best of all, one cannot level the charge of partisanship against Finley, for some of her harshest criticisms are reserved for Republicans, like President Bush, who took up the democratist mantle of Wilson. Democratism, whether right or left, represents a profound departure from the Founders.
If one is to criticize Finley’s book, one could begin by suggesting perhaps that it is not merely democracy, but progress, that is modernity’s reigning ideology. In truth, democracy worships at the altar of progress, which is why the democratists wait in expectation of a future blessed estate (rather than look backward to a rosy past). Perhaps not Rousseau, but Francis Bacon, is the principal founder of modernity. However, the truth is that modernity is probably a marriage of Bacon and Rousseau—a sentimental naturalism wedded to techno-utopianism. Maybe this nightmarish combination is what really constitutes Finley’s “democratism.”
Democracy is valuable to the extent that it is placed in its proper position and context—that it is bounded and balanced by other elements.
Democracy, like many good things, is destroyed if it is elevated above all else. Democracy is valuable to the extent that it is placed in its proper position and context—bounded and balanced by other elements. As Edmund Burke wisely noted, one does not obtain liberty, equality, and self-government by merely letting go of the reins; these things require a complex system of incentives, punishments, and checks and balances that parallel the complexities of human nature. Our Founders understood this far better than do the democratists.
Finley’s book ultimately demonstrates how we have been bewitched by a simplistic and false notion of human nature that is prone to delusional optimism, and she makes a compelling case for returning to the wise foundations of our country. Overall, Finley’s critique of democratism is a service to our understanding of modern politics and a cautionary tale against making democracy into a comprehensive worldview. I recommend to you The Ideology of Democratism, even if I maintain that the book should have been called The Religion of Democracy because that better encapsulates the sacred, if not sacrosanct, nature of democracy in contemporary society. In the final analysis, Finley shows us that democracy is ineradicably religious; the question that remains is whether religion can bolster democracy without being swallowed up by it.
The Lattice Day Bed is a minimalist daybed made of grey quarry stone designed by Mexico-based designer Andrés Monnier. The original design features a stainless steel and marble base, while variations can also include white marble, travertine, volcanic rock, basalt, or granite rock.
“Is our human existence an interconnected reverie?” Such is the provocative question posed by the designer, an invitation to contemplate our roles within our perceived reality. The theory underscores the vast tapestry of human consciousness, where each individual weaves their unique interpretation of existence.
The daybed serves as both a physical representation of Monnier’s interpretation of dreams, while also functioning as the very conduit to actualize said dreams. He believes that the collective dream-state might not merely be an idle illusion, but a platform for transformative energy.
America’s museums are at a crossroads. Will they be sites of civic education, centered on Americans’ shared history and principles? Or rallying points of advocacy, aiming to replace those principles with divisive identity politics?
Museums aren’t the only institutions facing such challenges. Our ultimate trajectory as a nation will be shaped by the outcomes of a multitude of disputes. Those skeptical of some of America’s principles have gained influence in government and in higher and lower education, the military, the family, and throughout our civic associations. But museums and historic sites deserve special attention right now: they have not been overrun yet, which presents us with both an opportunity and an urgent need.
How we preserve and tell the American story at sites like Mount Vernon, Monticello, Montpelier, and Colonial Williamsburg will help decide whether Americans will remain a self-governing people, since forming such a people is one of the main purposes of museums. Civic education promotes responsibility and gratitude, while advocacy that rejects the ideas of the American Founding tends to encourage a revolutionary impulse and feelings of resentment for past errors. Museums can provide occasions to unite around our inheritance and republican principles. Considering the importance of America’s history reminds and prompts us to assume our obligation to ensure America’s perpetuation.
How we preserve and tell the American story at sites like Mount Vernon, Monticello, Montpelier, and Colonial Williamsburg will help decide whether Americans will remain a self-governing people, since forming such a people is one of the main purposes of museums.
The State of Affairs
George Washington’s Mount Vernon (run by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association) is an excellent example of how a museum can function as a site for civic education. When visitors go through the mansion, an entire museum, and education center detailing Washington’s accomplishments, they leave with an appreciation for the remarkable character of America’s general. The interactive exhibits put young people in Washington’s shoes, which invites them to be deliberative citizens who consider political questions and reach their own conclusions. Mount Vernon tells the American story fairly and objectively, rightly incorporating the chapter on slavery, while giving Washington his due and strictly adhering to historical standards.
James Madison’s Montpelier (operated by The Montpelier Foundation), on the other hand, discourages civic deliberation by pushing a political narrative on visitors. The site omits pertinent facts and, in crucial instances, Madison’s own words. Some exhibits sweepingly condemn the Founders and Madison for having owned slaves, without adequately addressing their myriad contributions to our nation. While Madison is discussed during a portion of the house tour and through a brief video in the visitor’s center, no exhibits cover the deeds of the man commonly referred to as the Father of the Constitution, and of the Bill of Rights, which Madison introduced in the first federal Congress. The sole exhibit on the Constitution paints it as pro-slavery. The one for children is a dispiriting display on race and slavery, housing a book that prompts children to imagine themselves as aggressors, whipping someone until he is bloodied.
Mount Vernon tells the American story fairly and objectively, rightly incorporating the chapter on slavery, while giving Washington his due and strictly adhering to historical standards.
Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg are mixed bags. Monticello lacks exhibits focused on Thomas Jefferson’s political accomplishments; he was president, vice president, secretary of state, governor, drafter of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, and founder of the University of Virginia. Most discouraging is the absence of a proper examination of the Declaration of Independence, America’s “rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression,” as Lincoln put it. In turn, Colonial Williamsburg is losing its own story: what the American Revolutionaries did there and what makes the town unique. But, even though these sites omit crucial historical details about the founding, they still offer some good content and are not beyond saving.
Montpelier, the National Trust for Historic Preservation (the organization that owns Montpelier and 26 other sites), and Monticello are all seeking new leadership. Who is selected will tell us much, and determine much, about their trajectory and that of the museum industry.
Republican Aims
Mount Vernon and Montpelier represent fundamental disagreements over the purpose of education and the character of our nation. Civic education centered on republican principles promotes unity, deliberation, responsibility, and gratitude. But far-left ideology requires advocacy, as it asserts that society is composed of power structures in need of dismantling. Reframing history is one step that activists take in pursuing a false sense of equity and justice.
This push for historical reeducation is reflected in the language used by national museum associations. For example, the American Alliance of Museums, which boasts 35,000 members (individuals and organizations), contends that teaching history is not sufficient. Instead, museums should “champion an anti-racist movement” to create a “more just and equitable world.” James French, who maneuvered to become chairman of the Montpelier board last year (and has since left the post while still serving on the board), has also commented that “museums such as Montpelier are dominated by people who look like Madison.” French believes that this must change, and that “[t]he change in the power structure then allows us to affect how public history is presented. And public history is really important.”
French is correct about one thing: public history is really important. Civic education doesn’t just happen in the classroom or cease upon graduation from high school. Museums and historic sites are unique places where multiple generations of Americans, who went to different schools and grew up in various parts of the country, can come together to rediscover their commonalities, the principles and history that formed the American character. Presidential homes, aside from being museums that house relics, can offer our children the reflective and reverential experience of standing in the same room where Abraham Lincoln considered the Emancipation Proclamation or James Madison envisioned the structure and potential of the Constitution.
Museums assume, both for the country and the individual, a special trust of preservation and civic encouragement. That encouragement need not involve glossing over the failings of our past. We distort our history both when we whitewash it and when we overemphasize our shortcomings. Whitewashing is its own kind of propaganda, discouraging deliberation—and so it is inconsistent with the civic virtues needed to sustain a free society. But solely focusing on flaws demoralizes our children, forming them into citizens deprived of the gratitude for and proper pride in accomplishment.
The false promises of victimhood and resentment have never made anyone gracious, honorable, or happy. We want our children to navigate this world with spirited strength and the resolve of being able to contribute to a purpose greater than themselves: to an experiment that depends on their character.
That is the promise of the American Founding. When our children, as Lincoln explained, look
through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.
We assume our civic responsibility when we realize that the Declaration’s maxim of human equality invites our participation, that America is a continuous, rather than a stagnant, story of hope. We have certainly had our setbacks and committed our sins, and that is part of the story. But our contributions to the cause of human freedom are significant, and America’s overall trajectory, despite its ebbs and flows, has been toward a greater realization of our principles.
As storytellers of our history, museums bear unique responsibility in fostering citizens capable of deliberation and self-government.
That progression was renewed by Lincoln and his generation of soldiers, and it was originally made possible by the Founders who first declared our national purpose and creed: the idea that “all men are created equal.” The hope of America is not simply in those principles, but in the American people themselves. There is hope in the fact that we are asked to join in the experiment in self-government, to prove to ourselves, and to the world, that we are worthy of preserving it and perhaps even further perfecting it. But our institutions must cultivate these virtues, and as storytellers of our history, museums bear unique responsibility in fostering citizens capable of deliberation and self-government.
Historic sites like Mount Vernon, Monticello, Montpelier, and Colonial Williamsburg are places that connect America, from Pennsylvania to Virginia. The Miracle of Philadelphia—the Constitution—has its symbolic birthplace in Virginia, and largely through the mind of James Madison. The primary purpose of the document he imagined is to protect and form a nation of citizens capable of self-government, “to ensure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.” That is the shared aim of our historic sites.
In this time of immense political discord, we must choose whether to defend the birthplaces of our national character, so that they may remain in the hearts of our children. We are worthy of fulfilling Madison’s vision for this nation and are capable of the demands of self-government.
After graduating from college, Stephanie Foo created a podcast called Get Me On This American Life. In an effort to make this dream come true, she borrowed radio equipment and hitchhiked to the world’s largest pornography conference in Texas to find stories. She interned, then became a producer of the radio show Snap Judgement. In 2014, Foo landed her dream job at This American Life—where she remained as a producer for five years and, in the process, won an Emmy. She was a 2019–2020 Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism and has published essays in the New York Times and New York Magazine.
In February 2022, Foo released her memoir, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma (Ballantine Books). It’s the story of her real self, a woman functioning with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), a condition that can develop over the years following prolonged abuse. Foo’s memoir told the story of childhood trauma, parental abandonment, and the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. Finding limited resources to help her, Foo set out to heal herself and map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.
We met via Zoom, where we spoke about the paperback release of her book (now a New York Times bestseller), how writing for the page is different from writing for the ear, why childhood trauma is often excused by traditionalists, and what she would tell her younger self if she had the chance.
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The Rumpus: What about journalism appealed to you?
Stephanie Foo: Journalism brought me out of my box, forced me to talk to others. I could have these social interactions that are scripted in a safe way. Everybody knew what their role was. I appreciate it made me a more curious, open person. Brought logic to the chaos. I could bring order to other people’s stories even if I couldn’t bring order to my own. It was satisfying and fun and made it easy to completely throw myself into it and dissociate from other things like trauma.
Rumpus: So after years of telling other people’s stories on This American Life and elsewhere, why did you decide to tell your own?
Foo: Every time I was able to showcase somebody’s story, one that represented a larger group of people, there was always a great response from our audience. I found myself as a potential representative of a larger group, which had no representative. There wasn’t a first-person story about Complex Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, so I thought, “I know how to do this.”
Rumpus: Writing is different from radio, of course, but exactly how different?
Foo: Writing a book is so much more relaxed than making a podcast or a radio show. There’s so much more time to consider the topic, do research, and go over many drafts to shape it into what I think is ultimately my voice rather than chaotically panic and put something out every week.
Rumpus: I read your powerful New York Times Mother’s Day piece. How have you evolved as a writer?
Foo: I think I was always a writer. However, I just didn’t let myself think of myself as one because I hadn’t published much since college. Even though radio producing is just writing—it’s the exact same thing except you read it out loud—I shouldn’t have needed the validation of the book or the New York Times article. It certainly helped, since I don’t have an MFA or anything. I didn’t know if my writing, after so many years of being written for the ear, translated to the page anymore.
When I was writing for radio, especially at This American Life, it wasn’t really my voice. It was my voice through the lens of an entire room of between three and ten people shaping my voice into the ideal of what it could be. But this book was mine, which was both intimidating and fun and freeing.
Rumpus: What kind of book did you set out to write?
Foo: I read a lot of memoirs and science-y books written by clinicians and experts, which I found to be lacking because they didn’t show the healing process. Meanwhile, a lot of trauma memoirs are just descriptions of all the horrible experiences that have happened for like 290 pages, and then in the last thirty, the person gets better. Everything is okay. I thought, “No, I’m sure that journey was a lot more arduous.” I wanted to learn from their journey. It was the same in the clinician books, as well, a long exploration of all the negative effects of C-PTSD on people’s brains and then a very small section in the back about what would actually heal.
My goal was to write a book that would be a resource, to show you’re not alone in what you’re going through, to normalize a lot of the feelings. I provided the basic science and psychology behind complex PTSD, so people can know what they’re up against. I hoped to educate them and provide a lot of the resources I found helpful. I aspired to show it is very much possible to get better. This book would be a roadmap for other people who didn’t know where they might go. I wanted the book to provide hope because I didn’t have it when I was diagnosed. Sometimes trauma memoirs can be so difficult to read, and if there is hope, it’s just a little at the end.
My desire was for the book to come from an optimistic place because having C-PTSD is painful enough. I didn’t want to make the process of reading the book agonizing throughout the whole thing. It was very important to me that only the first fifty pages detailed my abuse.
I wanted it to be the book I wished I’d had when I was first diagnosed, which I feel would have made my healing journey so much shorter.
Rumpus: Why do you think your healing would have been briefer if you had a book like yours when you were diagnosed with C-PTSD?
Foo: I would have felt so much less shame and despair. Mental illness is so pathologized. It’s so isolating. C-PTSD is not in the DSM, and it’s a relatively new diagnosis. I think there is societal prejudice around PTSD. The history of PTSD has been focused on soldiers, men at war. I think there’s a lot of sexism, a sort of racism within. That, and an underappreciation for childhood trauma and its lifelong effects. It’s been normalized. Judith Herman writes a lot about the lasting trauma in people who have experienced sexual assault. This is not to shit on survivors of war, which is very real and terrible, but trauma is much wider. I feel like it’s taken society a long time to catch up to that understanding.
Rumpus: Was it healing to write the book, and was it difficult to write the traumatic scenes?
Foo: Different authors have different processes. For some, writing heals. It was important for me to have the healing come before the writing in order to locate that optimism. There was a lot of casual writing that happened during the healing process, but I didn’t take the organization and the real writing seriously until I felt like I had gone through a year and a half of a very intensive healing journey. And I felt like I was in a really good place, so this made the writing easier. I was able to have a lot of empathy and generosity toward myself at those times instead of feeling the self-loathing I’d felt earlier.
The first fifty pages were the most difficult to write, and I wrote those many, many times. I just had to practice a lot of self-care. Those were tough to relive. I think my dissociation protected me. Dissociation helped me to force out what I could, then go play video games for the rest of the afternoon.
Rumpus: Did your feelings about your parents change over the course of writing the book?
Foo: I don’t know. It hasn’t brought forgiveness, if that’s what you’re wondering. It hasn’t made me less disappointed or angry. I think the healing process, if anything, made me angrier at them because it made me realize what I deserved as a child. Learning to treat myself with kindness has taught me that what I received was criminal and unacceptable. So yeah, I don’t think it’s made me forgive them. I hold them accountable for what they have done.
However, their cultural context was important—they had a lot of their own unresolved and untreated trauma—but instead of making me less angry at them, writing the book made me angrier at some of the societal forces that contributed to my parents’ situation. I’m just sharing and spreading that rage around.
It’s also made me angrier at our health care system in the United States and how it really doesn’t serve. It’s made for white, privileged, educated people. There is just such a distinct lack of culturally responsive care. People like my parents could have gotten the help that they needed if that care was more accessible.
Rumpus: What has been the response from people who have read this book?
Foo: It’s overwhelmingly positive. The book has received over 11,000 five-star Goodreads reviews. I receive a dozen messages a day, for the past year, from people saying, “You’ve changed my life, you saved my life, you’re giving me hope, you make me feel less alone. . . .” It’s exactly what I set out to do with the memoir. The fact that it worked is a great relief and a great honor. I feel very proud, and I hope this opens the door for more narratives like mine. A lot of people have told me my book has inspired them to write. I hope to see those books joining mine out in the world.
Rumpus: How does it feel that therapists and educators have started using your book as a tool?
Foo: It’s so affirming! It’s wonderful to know I’ve had this impact because I have so many complaints against therapists, not therapists in general, but against some of the ways therapists practice and the mental health care system. I just want it to be easier for those who come after me.
Rumpus: Did you feel pressure about representing the Asian American community?
Foo: Yes. I was charting new territory by writing about domestic violence and child abuse in the Asian American community. It’s sort of hinted at but excused in The Joy Luck Club, but the story is always Asian American parents can be difficult, but you must be grateful to them because they have provided so much. I was writing something edgy and dangerous, saying, “Actually, I’m not grateful. This wasn’t unacceptable. This was abuse.” We need to talk about abuse.
Rumpus: Is it strange that trauma has also driven you to become the writer you are?
Foo: Sometimes I feel I have this success because of my PTSD. It informed my drive. Literally, I wouldn’t have written this book if I didn’t have PTSD. I would trade not having so much success for being happier. I would rather have been loved than not have had to write this book.
Rumpus: About healing, how would you describe your current state?
Foo: I am healing. I have done a lot of healing. I wouldn’t say I’m done, but it’s much better than it was before.
Rumpus: What would you recommend to someone who is in a survival mode or being abused?
Foo: I think what I would tell my younger self is this: “You need to know you deserve love. You deserve better. And go chase that love. Run as fast as you can away from those who aren’t going to give it to you. Run as fast as you can toward anyone who knows you deserve love, even though it’s scary and you’re going to be skeptical of them. Run toward the love.”
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Author photo by Bryan Derballa
Is a 15-week limit on abortion an acceptable compromise?
A recent opinion piece by George F. Will, “Ambivalent about abortion, the American middle begins to find its voice” in the Washington Post made the startling claim that the overturning of Roe v. Wade (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 2022) has resulted in “a partial healing of the nation’s civic culture.” One might think exactly the reverse. The Dobbs decision energized voters, especially women and young people, resulting in numerous Republican electoral defeats across the country. However, Will argues that the return of abortion policy to the states gives voters the opportunity of choosing moderate restrictions on abortion. Since most Americans support early abortion while opposing late-gestation abortion, Will thinks that a 15-week ban on abortion would be an acceptable compromise.
Why 15 weeks? Two reasons can be given. Almost all abortions in the US—93%—occur within the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. For this reason, making abortion illegal after 15 weeks would not, it would seem, impose serious burdens on most people seeking abortions.
Another reason is that several European countries limit abortion on request to the first trimester, leading some US lawmakers to suggest that a 15-week ban would bring our abortion law in line with theirs. This is disingenuous, to say the least. While elective abortion is limited in some European countries, it is not banned afterwards, but is allowed on other grounds, including economic or social reasons, or a threat to the woman’s physical or mental health. Moreover, in most European countries, patients do not have to pay for abortion; it is covered under universal health coverage. The fact is that the trend in Europe has not been to limit abortion, but to expand access to it. Countries in Europe “… have removed bans, increased abortion’s legality and taken steps to ensure laws and policies on abortion are guided by public health evidence and clinical best practices.”
Were states to guarantee access to abortion prior to 15 weeks, a 15-week ban might be acceptable. However, even before Dobbs, many women in the US lacked access to abortion, due to a dearth of providers, especially in rural areas. They often had to travel many miles to find an abortion clinic, which meant that they had to arrange childcare if they have other children or take time off work. Delay is also caused by the need to raise money for an abortion, which is not paid for by Medicaid in most states, except in cases of rape, incest, or a life-threatening condition. To be sure, even if there were none of these roadblocks, some women would still not be able to have early abortions because they do not know that they are pregnant, due to youth, being menopausal, chronic obesity, or a lack of pregnancy symptoms. Any time limits will pose hardships for some people. But if access to early abortions were guaranteed, a compromise on a 15-week limit might be worth it.
I suspect that time-limit advocates are not particularly interested in making sure that women who have abortions get them early in pregnancy. They want to place roadblocks in the way of getting abortions, full stop. That these roadblocks increase the numbers of late abortions is of little concern to them, however much they wring their hands over late abortions. Abortion can be reduced by reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies, something that has been shown to be achieved by access to contraceptives and science-based sex education in the schools. Remember when pro-lifers emphasized those methods? Me neither.
“Some US lawmakers suggest that a 15-week ban would bring our abortion law in line with European countries. This is disingenuous, to say the least.”
My second concern is with abortions sought after 15 weeks. The reason for a late abortion may be that the woman has a medical condition that has not developed, or has not been detected, until later in pregnancy. In such cases, the pregnancy is almost always a wanted pregnancy, and the decision to terminate imposes a tragic choice.
It may be responded that all states allow abortions to be performed when this is necessary to save the pregnant woman’s life, and many allow for abortions to protect her from a serious health risk. The problem is that these exceptions conflict with standard medical care, especially in the case of miscarriage. Once the woman has begun to miscarry, the failure to remove the fetus is likely to cause her sepsis, which can be life-threatening. However, in states with restrictive abortion laws, doctors cannot perform an immediate abortion, which is the standard of care in such situations. They have to wait until her death is imminent and, in some states, they cannot remove the fetus until its heart stops.
Ireland’s restrictive abortion law was repealed after a woman who was denied an abortion during a miscarriage died from septicemia. To the best of my knowledge, no woman in the US has died as a result of restrictive abortion laws, but some have come close. An OB-GYN in San Antonio had to wait until the fetal heartbeat stopped to treat a miscarrying patient who developed a dangerous womb infection. The delay caused complications which required her to have surgery, lose multiple liters of blood, and be put on a breathing machine. Texas law essentially requires doctors to commit malpractice.
Conservatives often portray those in the pro-choice camp as advocating abortion until the day of delivery, for trivial reasons. This is deeply unfair. If they want us to compromise on time limits, they should be willing to guarantee access to abortion before 15 weeks. They should be willing to compromise on pregnancy prevention through contraception and sex education. And they should agree to drop all restrictions on late-term abortions that make legislators, rather than doctors, in charge of deciding what is appropriate medical care for their patients.
Featured image: Gayatri Malhotra via Unsplash (public domain)
Editor’s note: This year is the second time that Americans celebrate Juneteenth as a national holiday. At Public Discourse this week, we offer essays that look back on Juneteenth’s history, and look ahead to consider its place in America’s self-understanding.
Juneteenth, now a national holiday, is an opportunity for us to engage in a conversation on freedom and the American Project in a way that we have rarely, if ever, done as a national community. This might come as a surprise to many—after all, we commemorate and celebrate the Fourth of July every year with barbecues and fireworks, and this is certainly a great freedom celebration. But July Fourth can bring up mixed emotions for some of us—and I am not at all alone among African Americans who feel torn on this date.
Framing the Fourth
We are proud to be American, and do not long to live anywhere else. My father and grandfather were both in the military for much of their lives—my father having had the honor of serving on Air Force One and Air Force Two for years before retiring at the rank of Chief Master Sergeant. But we also remember, in some ways are haunted by, the fact that at that first July Fourth, and for far too many after that, we could not exercise the freedom being celebrated all around us.
This has created some ambivalence about how to think about and commemorate the Fourth. Consider, for example, our tentative groping as parents for the best way to observe this day in our home. It was another July Fourth holiday and our children were still young, perhaps six and nine years old. I am a scholar doing historical work on race, so it is an occupational hazard for me to think deeply and carefully about such commemorations. What is the essence of the July Fourth celebration? Where were we, as African Americans, in the memory and memorialization of this world historical event? Yes, we had read of Crispus Attucks, Phillis Wheatley, and others who advocated, bled, and died for this new America—but the liberty secured for so many did not extend to our ancestors—not at that time.
And so, on that day years ago, sitting around the table, about to partake of our special July Fourth meal, we first read aloud from parts of Frederick Douglass’s speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” It is an intense text, powerful and bittersweet, as Douglass recounts the glories of the revolution while at the same time mourning the fact that the vast majority of Black Americans were still in chains. My oldest daughter, eyes wide as she listened, asked in a pleading voice: “But we can still have a happy Fourth of July, right?” I was torn, trying to determine how best to thread the needle between celebration and remembrance of a difficult past.
I ended up assuring her that yes, indeed, we could and would have a happy Fourth of July. The preliminary reading was to bring to our remembrance the path we have come through in this country, to remember and respect the work it has taken to bring us to where we are today.
Juneteenth, coming as it does just weeks before July Fourth, provides a perfect opportunity for us—both individually and collectively—to engage in a season of contemplating and celebrating the complexities and nuances, highs and lows, of this American experiment that has at its core the achievement of freedom.
My daughter’s question: “But we can still have a happy Fourth of July, right?” rings in my ears across the years. I think, in retrospect, I could have framed the day more fruitfully if I had introduced it as a remembrance—one that is part of a larger conversation on freedom that begins each year with the commemoration of Juneteenth a few weeks earlier, and culminates on July Fourth.
Juneteenth, coming as it does just weeks before July Fourth, provides a perfect opportunity for us—both individually and collectively—to engage in a season of contemplating and celebrating the complexities and nuances, highs and lows, of this American experiment that has at its core the achievement of freedom. This dialectical pairing of the two holidays is important, I would go so far as to say necessary, for a people who have yet to develop a vocabulary and practice for discussing its complicated relationship with the past—a past that includes just as much slavery, racism, and injustice as it does freedom and the pursuit of happiness.
An Annual Conversation
The annual conversation I envision taking place between Juneteenth and July Fourth should include a healthy representation of Black voices from the past who can help us to narrate and pass on our national story of freedom-seeking across the centuries. Central to this conversation are the extraordinary ideas contained in the Declaration:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
This beginning of the republic held great promise, but the vast majority of Africans in America did not yet benefit from the promises of 1776, despite the fact that many of us had supported the Revolution with both the pen and the sword.
One of these, Phillis Wheatley, was kidnapped from Africa when she was about seven years old and was a poetic genius who supported the Revolution from the home of her owners in Boston. In her letters she compared white Americans to the Egyptians who held the people of Israel in bondage. She wrote: “in every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance; and . . . that . . . same Principle lives in us.” She even penned a letter and poem of support addressed to George Washington when he was commander in chief of the Continental Army, cheering him and others on to win independence from Britain. (Washington received her letter and poem, was impressed with her, and responded in kind by letter. See the exchange here.)
Nearly one hundred year later, Frederick Douglass made his famous speech concerning the Fourth of July when he was invited by white Americans to deliver a celebratory speech commemorating the holiday in 1852. He had escaped a brutal slave owner fourteen years earlier, the wounds on his back scarred over, still visible. He brought the incongruity of the invitation to their awareness, saying:
This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day?
Almost a decade later, the issue of slavery finally came to a head with the Civil War and was followed by emancipation with the Union’s victory. Firsthand accounts from formerly enslaved people in Texas on that original Juneteenth help to bring alive the excitement, anticipation, and dynamism of this moment. Tempie Cummins explains how the newly freed resisted the slave owners who ignored the news of emancipation:
When freedom was declared, master wouldn’ tell them, but mother she hear him tellin’ missus that the slaves was free but they didn’t know it and he’s not going tell ’em till he makes another crop or two. When mother hear that she say she slip out the chimney corner and crack her heels together four times and shouts, ‘I’s free, I’s free.’ Then she runs to the field, against master’s will and told all the other slaves and they quit work.
Felix Haywood has one of the most vibrant and philosophical reflections on how he experienced this new freedom and what it meant to him. He had worked as a sheep herder and cowpuncher and was about ninety-two years old when he was interviewed. When he was asked how they knew that freedom had finally come he responded: “How did we know it! Hallelujah broke out—. . . ” He then burst into song and went on to share the feeling of exhilaration that pervaded the community:
Everybody went wild. We all felt like heroes and nobody had made us that way but ourselves. We was free. Just like that, we was free . . . right off colored folks started on the move. They seemed to want to get closer to freedom, so they’d know what it was—like it was a place or a city. . . .
Haywood’s image of freedom as a “place or a city” evokes larger questions and conversations about what freedom ultimately is, and how we’ll know it once we’ve attained it. Indeed, as his narrative continues, he hints at the power these questions exercised over the newly emancipated. At first, he and others assumed that they would now be rich, even richer than the whites who had owned them because they were the ones who really knew how to do the work. But then he notes: “We soon found out that freedom could make folks proud but it didn’t make ’em rich.” Haywood’s reflections here highlight the many complex dimensions of freedom—the physical dimension being just the first step toward the development of political, moral, and intellectual resources and virtues that allow us to flourish.
New National Tradition
Haywood’s reflections on the expectations and realities of freedom evoke the many times when we long for something great, but it turns out to be more compelling in the imagination than in reality. Hard work often follows once we have achieved our long-anticipated goal. This brings us to the current state of our national conversation on freedom. I think it no coincidence that the decision to make Juneteenth a national holiday followed right on the heels of Black protest that swept across the country in 2020. After much striving and protest that has reshaped the national conversation on race, what will we do now that Juneteenth has achieved the status of being a national holiday?
While the national observance is still new and nationwide traditions have yet to be formed, now is the time to initiate, to carefully cultivate, a new kind of conversation on freedom poised between the promises of the Declaration and the fitful realization of those promises across the centuries.
If we are not careful, Juneteenth may simply become something that makes African Americans “proud without making us rich,” to paraphrase Felix Haywood. Our pride in recognizing and celebrating Juneteenth may rest there without going any further. We may be left “feeling good” without coming any closer to being “rich” in the deepest sense of that word. But what we desire is the kind of richness that allows us all to live fuller lives—whatever our race or ethnicity—as we seek to better exercise and enjoy the freedoms we have fought for.
There is also the danger that Juneteenth will become a holiday observed by a small segment of the population while being largely ignored by the majority of Americans. I sincerely hope this will not be the case. While the national observance is still new and nationwide traditions have yet to be formed, now is the time to initiate, to carefully cultivate, a new kind of conversation on freedom poised between the promises of the Declaration (celebrated on the Fourth) and the fitful realization of those promises across the centuries (which emerged more fully on June 19, 1865)—and that continue to unfold in new ways today. My hope is that these weeks between Juneteenth and July Fourth will become an extended time of conversation, celebration, and contemplation of our long road to freedom.
“There came a point in my life … where I realized that almost every narrative, whatever it came from, that dealt with an African country was pretty much a rewriting of ‘Heart of Darkness.’”
The post A Forensic Level of Honesty: Aminatta Forna and Nicole Rizzuto appeared first on Public Books.
Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, has threatened to reconsider his state’s relationship with the College Board.
Republicans don’t seem to care that Ronald Reagan once starred in a film that featured a prominent drag scene or that Rudy Giuliani did a skit in drag with Donald Trump.
Suddenly, they’re trying to ban or restrict drag performances in at least 15 states, with bills so broadly worded that advocates warn they could be used not only to prosecute drag performers, but also transgender people who dare to simply exist in public.
These bans are part of a cynical campaign to demonize the LGBTQ+ community. MAGA politicians are stoking fear over imaginary dangers to distract from how their policies only help themselves and their wealthy donors.
In the first half of 2023 alone, Republicans across the nation introduced a record number of bills to strip away freedoms and civil rights from LGBTQ+ Americans, largely targeting transgender and gender-nonconforming people.
By banning gender affirming care for minors, GOP lawmakers are effectively practicing medicine without a license — overruling the guidance of doctors, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. And they’re lying about what gender affirming care even is.
Genital surgery, for instance, is rarely, if ever, done under the age of 18. It’s not even all that common for adults. Politicians like Ron DeSantis are lying about it to scare people.
And the Republican presidential frontrunner has made it clear that trans people have no place in his vision of America.
MAGA lawmakers and pundits falsely claim trans people and drag performers are a danger to children and the public at large, when there is no evidence at all to support that. None. Trans people are in fact four times more likely to be the victims of violent crime.
These scare tactics are dangerous. Recent analysis found a 70% increase in hate crimes against LGBTQ+ Americans between 2020 and 2021, as the surge of these bills began. And that’s only counting hate crimes that get reported. 2020 and 2021 each set a new record for the number of trans people murdered in America.
The cruelest irony is that these Republican bills pretending to protect children actually put some of the most vulnerable children at greater risk. LGBTQ+ kids are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide, especially transgender children. Gender-affirming care reduces that risk. That is why it is life-saving.
Don’t Say Gay laws strip away potentially life-saving support. A teacher discussing sexual orientation and gender identity won’t turn a straight kid gay. But it will make an LGBTQ+ student 23% less likely to attempt suicide.
The tragic truth is that Don’t Say Gay Laws and health care bans will cause more young lives to be needlessly lost.
If Republicans really cared about protecting kids, they’d focus on gun violence, now the leading cause of death for American children. If they were really worried about children undergoing life-altering medical procedures, they wouldn’t pass abortion bans that force teens to give birth or risk back-alley procedures.
What the GOP’s vendetta against the LGBTQ+ community really is, is a classic authoritarian tactic to vilify already marginalized people. They’re trying to stoke so much paranoia and hatred that we don’t notice how they are consolidating power and wealth into the hands of a ruling few.
We need to see this attack on LGBTQ+ Americans for what it is: a threat to all of our human rights.
FreshRSS 