Politics

Book Review: Unwind by Neal Shusterman

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An interesting—and impressive–form of sci-fi is the book that takes a ridiculous premise and runs with it. In Unwind, the USA fought a civil war between pro-life and pro-choice armies. To end the war, they made an agreement that life begins at conception, but that from age 13 to 18, a person could be “unwound.” These “unwinds” lives “continue” because doctors use their body parts to replace those of people who need (or simply want) a replacement.

Once you swallow this starting point, he tells a powerful story of the consequences for three unwinds: one a screwup whose parents can’t deal with him anymore, another a “tithing” from his religious family, and the third a ward of the state subject to budget cuts.

While the details seem ridiculous, they highlight how politics around such decisions can turn children into instruments. Victory in the ideological battle trumps what is actually best for the people they affect.

The author doesn’t make any commentary on abortion policies, but I found the book an expression of frustration with the politics around abortion. In a recent discussion, my wife wondered what would happen if we took all the resources that we have poured into lobbying for changes in abortion law and instead poured them into maternal care? What if we provided support to parents without strings? How many women would choose to keep their children? How many children would face a better life? Could we bring down our tragically high maternal and infant mortality rates?

This was a well-written and entertaining YA sci-fi read. It did not directly ask many of the questions in this post, but it inspired those questions. This is the sci-fi I love.

Liberal Tears

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Liberal tears mug

I’m not embarrassed to admit I cry.

I cried on the day Donald Trump was elected. At the time I was working in downtown Austin. I didn’t have much to do (I rarely did. It wasn’t exactly fulfilling or demanding work), which was fortunate, because I was having a hard time feeling anything but depressed. A protest had begun not far from my building. They were marching north up Congress Avenue toward the Texas Capitol. When they were close, I left my office and walked the few blocks to watch them pass. I didn’t join, but I empathized far more with them than with the winners of that election.

I cried because Donald Trump had hurt a lot of people to get to the White House. He’d insulted and bullied his way to the top. He stoked fear and rage over imaginary foes. He placed himself – a cowardly, unfaithful, narcissistic, perpetual liar – as some sort of savior of hard-working, honest, God-fearing America.

My grandfathers fought in World War II and the Korean War. One was in the Navy. His boat was torpedoed and sunk in the Pacific. The other was in the Marines. He flew bombing runs over North Korea and miraculously survived a plane crash when a wingmate’s plane exploded. After nearly giving their lives for their country, each came home to serve their families and communities. With my grandmothers, they taught their children, my parents, to be some of the best people I will ever know.

Those men, and their wives, sacrificed for and preserved institutions that I fervently believe in – a representative democratic government, religion, and family. I believe in those institutions because I believe that they are the best means of preserving all that mankind has accomplished and passing it on to the next generation. I grew up conservative, believing that conserving these institutions was a great cause. I saw liberals as a threat – they were part of a movement that wanted to burn it all down. Perhaps their intentions were good – I certainly understood that things were broken – but without the framework these institutions had provided, things were bound to fall apart. A movement couldn’t replace an institution.

I voted accordingly in 2008 and 2012. I saw John McCain and Mitt Romney as a bulwark against some of the more radical ideas Obama campaigned on. I did start seeing some of the warning signs in 2012. As a politically-curious law student, I thought I’d like to get involved in Romney’s campaign. As I listened to his primary messaging, however, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I don’t remember what exactly he said, but I knew I didn’t want to associate myself that closely with it.

2016 changed everything. I happened to be in the room when a family member watched Trump’s announcement speech. He parroted ideas that my conservative education at home, church, and at BYU had taught me were little more than lies. I told myself at the time that no one would take this seriously.

I was wrong and it hurt. It still hurts. Trump harnessed and created a movement. A movement that, as I see it, is antithetical to nearly everything I was taught. I was taught to be kind. I was taught to be honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and do good to all men. I couldn’t reconcile those teachings with Trump’s movement. It mystified me, and still does, how people with the same upbringing as me, who were taught the same articles of faith, could embrace that movement, or at least tolerate it.

The next 4 years were a trial in many ways. No need to repeat them here. Then, we experienced January 6. There certainly has been some conspiracy theory mongering and exaggerated rhetoric around that day. But it also was certainly not a “tourist trip.” It was a dangerous and embarrassing day for our country. It was the day that lay bare for all the world to see that Trump’s movement had one endpoint (intentional or not) – burning down our institutions.

I want January 6 to be the low point of American democracy and American Christianity. I had some hope on January 7 that enough other people felt the same way that we could turn the corner. A lot of those hopes have been dashed in the last year.

I still don’t get it. In conversations over the last couple years it’s been implied, if not expressly said, that I am the problem, that my questions are a threat to other’s faith, that my efforts to seek compassion are a pathway for evil influences. I’ve been called worse than the devil.

I’m tempted to disengage, to just shut up. In many ways I have. I post on Facebook far less often. This blog has been quieter.

I know I don’t have all the answers. I am just as susceptible to the pull of the Algorithmic Narrative as everyone else. But I’d like to think that my questions and thoughts add something to the conversation.

I still believe in the promise of America – the idea that a diverse community of people can cooperatively govern themselves. I still believe in the promise of Christianity – that the children of God can, through faith in Christ, build a beloved community that cares for everyone. I still believe that I can and must teach these values to my children. But I feel far less optimistic about the survival of these institutions than before.

I’m not shutting up. Not completely. And I’m not entirely sure what the point of this post is. I suppose it’s simply a way to process some of my feelings and a hope that it may help those who read it process their feelings.

I don’t really think of myself as a liberal. I’d lean toward calling myself an institutionalist. But if you need anything to fill your cup of tears, I’ll lend them.

Thomas Jefferson

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The New York City Council voted to remove a statue of Thomas Jefferson from the city council chambers. I feel ambivalent about it, but thought I might work out some thoughts in a post.

Art is a symbol. Symbols have power because they enable us to capture ideas and communicate them to others. Art in particular has power because it conveys information and emotion – a great deal of it. It compels us to feel and think. Good art compels us to feel and think different feelings and thoughts, leading to introspection and conversation, allowing us to learn about each other and ourselves. This is one reason I find “preachy art” so annoying. If the only conversation it promotes is, “I agree” or “I disagree,” then it has failed its purpose as art; it’s become propoganda (which has its place, but that’s a topic for another post).

By this criteria, it seems that the statue of Thomas Jefferson at issue is probably good art. It inspires feelings of patriotism and pride in some. It reminds some of Jefferson’s words that “all men are created equal.” Its creator crafted it to celebrate Jefferson’s efforts to establish religious freedom. For others, it reminds them of the blatant hypocrisy of so many of the founding fathers; that despite their rhetoric about freedom and equality, most of them owned slaves. It reminds some that for the majority of the time our constitutional government has existed, the rhetoric of freedom has coincided with unequal treatment – lawful and unlawful – of immigrants, Jews, Catholics, Irish, Black people, Native people, Hispanics, and more.

It is valuable for each of us to share what we see in art such as this. I think public art should reflect the ideals of the community as a whole. There will always be some people who are offended by a work of art. It seems every installation of public art draws protest. There will always be people who love art that offends the majority. These are public debates in which everyone deserves a voice. But eventually a decision has to be made and in our system of government, the majority should be making that decision.

Fortunately, because art is open to interpretation, the story we tell about art is just as important as the art itself. The statue of Thomas Jefferson is either a tribute to religious freedom or a symbol of white supremacy, depending on who tells the story. Its removal can be a story of iconoclasm and fear taking over our society or it can be a story of our continuing effort to better ourselves as a people and as a nation. We control the story we tell ourselves and each other. The stories that are told the most powerfully, the stories that inspire hope, the stories that advocate for good can win, but only if we tell them. If we spend our time repeating – out of fear – the stories the degrade and detract, then fear wins. This doesn’t require we never change what art we place in public spaces! But I think it is valuable to see if you can try to craft an inspiring story about whatever art is placed there, even if you preferred a different choice.

Perhaps we could avoid all this debate by getting rid of all the statues. My ancestors – both Mormon and, further back, Protestant – rejected the use of most art in public spaces. While I think they went too far – visiting Italy showed me how statues can be an expression of beauty and assist in worship – I have sympathy for their reasoning.

One of the early purveyors of the anti-art attitudes was Savonarola, a monk who preached in Renaissance Florence. Savonarola sought to rid the city of sin by burning all the vanities – priceless works of art and academia that Savonarola considered evidence of and encouragement to sin. Savonarola saw this art, particularly those pieces inspired by ancient Greeks and Romans, as corrupting and distracting from the work of God. He inspired gangs of young men to go around the city gathering these vanities to be burned in a public bonfire. His preaching was apparently persuasive and infectious. Few people were willing to publicly speak out or defy these efforts, including vaunted intellectuals and artists who were contemporaries of and mentors to Michelangelo.

The burning of the vanities was a tragedy, but we can recognize that Savonarola’s criticisms have a source. The Catholic Church of his time had lost its way, focused on maintaining the power of Rome and the clergy, rather than bringing Christ to the people and the people to Christ. His efforts, along with many other reformers, did push the Church to reevaluate it’s mission and how it was achieving it. Unfortunately, it acted too slowly and too late to prevent schism.

Regardless, Savonarola’s mission failed. Destroying statues didn’t fix the hearts of people. Art can inspire and educate, but it is an expression of our ideas, not the wellspring. Stamping out offensive art may hide our sins, but it does not erase them.

We can see today’s Savonarolas as extremists and seek to “excommunicate” them, denying not just the expression of their claims, but also the substance. I fear that this will lead to further division. Instead, I think this is an opportunity to refocus our country and our ideals. We are not a nation of men, but of laws. We are not Thomas Jefferson’s country, but the country of the Declaration of Independence. He may have penned the words, but he was no god nor saint.

If we believe in our ideals, we need to recognize the ways we fall short of them. Too many people are left out of the prosperity of the nation. It is harder to be a mother, an immigrant, a Black person, a gay person. We may have passed the Civil Rights Act decades ago, but rooting racism and other bigotry out of our culture and institutions is an ongoing work. You can’t expect to overcome the culture and attitudes of centuries in only one generation.

Let’s not pull down all the statues and let’s certainly not destroy them. It would do far more to place tributes to the enslaved and colonized around (and perhaps above) the enslavers and colonizers. We would not be here without any of them, flawed as every single one of them were. We can pay tribute to all our ancestors, both by birth and by ideals. The greatest tribute to them, though, will go far beyond statues.

The greatest tribute will be continuing to put their ideas about equality into practice and perfecting the techniques and government they gave us. The founding fathers were not reactionaries seeking to preserve the old. They were revolutionaries looking to create something new and better than what came before. We should do the same, seeking to recognize the flaws in the institutions created by these flawed men and improve on them. That will honor them and benefit us far more than any statue.

A couple articles I found while writing this:

Thomas Jefferson Was More Than a Man of His Times – The Atlantic

Opinion | The Debate Over a Jefferson Statue Is Missing Some Surprising History – The New York Times (nytimes.com)