Redemption. Atonement. Acknowledgement of one’s errors. Transformation. Making Amends.
These concepts are familiar in the framework of storytelling.
They are also a big part of scripture both in the old and new testaments.
But when it comes to politics, it seems there’s little space for redemption.
There is little appetite for forgiveness.
In the absence, and sometimes even in the presence of a full 180 degree shift, there is a reluctance to recognize transformation as genuine.
The path of the Never Trumper
I will admit, I’m reluctant to recognize and affirm that many “Never Trumpers” may have turned a corner.
Some of them did things so odious in their prior service to the GOP. Their current affiliation with “anti-MAGA” is not enough to overcome my distaste for their past.
For me, far too many are merely opportunists. They got cut out of the GOP cash machine under Donald Trump and they want to maintain their station.
That’s where I put people like Rick Wilson and George Conway.
Wilson, for instance, made the infamous Jeremiah Wright ad for John McCain among other hit pieces. He was a blunt instrument used to exploit people’s racism and resentment. Now he’s making a living on the cable news/talk and podcast circuit. Gleefully taking money from the people he fought against for so many years.
Conway was a more ordinary GOP functionary, representing Paula Jones in her lawsuit against Bill Clinton. Now he’s a Democratic candidate for US House in New York. He’s seeking to replace retiring member Jerry Nadler.
I have a hard time believing their transformation is genuine.
And while I’ll accept their current push to defeat MAGA or whatever comes once MAGA is played out, I have no illusions that they are permanent allies. Rather, they are allies for the moment. Like Russia was to the Axis, then the western Allies in WWII.
To me, they are opportunists trying to stay relevant in a world where the sand is shifting.
That doesn’t feel like atonement.
Seeking Redemption
But there are some who are actively seeking a way to atone. A way forward after a lifetime spent in the grip of a coercive frame that ordered their lives.
A friend on Facebook pointed me to a post by a former rightwing evangelical.
The post, “I was wrong about Barack Obama” and its follow up, “The cave writes back” are a look inside the mind of someone who is reckoning with the frame they ordered their life around and how that frame colored their perceptions.
It is an effort to understand and take responsibility for the knee jerk reaction the writer felt in response to Obama’s candidacy and then Presidency. It examines, and in many ways, dismantles the structure that upheld the frames that he ordered his life around.
The writer describes a journey.
I’ve come to hate that the word. Journey is used in this cliched almost meaningless way these days. But I don’t really know what else to call it so journey it is.
This is the path of someone who chose to critically examine why he reacted to the things he experienced.
There’s one area that really caught my eye.
The writer is describing some comments to his first post, and talking about the problem of “individualizing” charges of racism:
“The charge of individual racism, as rhetorically satisfying as it apparently was for some readers, protects the larger machinery by making the whole thing a matter of individual confession rather than broader structural examination. You fix a character flaw by fixing the individual. You fix a formation by examining the institution that produced it.”
Here, the writer is not trying to absolve himself from the implicit racism that he admits to. He is pointing out that putting that racism wholly on the individual gives a pass to the institutions that helped make that racism a part of his individuality and reinforced it.
Individual vs. Structures
This is part of what I’ve been struggling with that I didn’t know how to articulate.
It is easy to look at the rank-and-file MAGA faithful and see flawed, racist, and angry individuals.
It is much harder to look beyond them at the institutions that helped shape these flawed individuals; the churches, the social clubs, the friend groups. Its harder to dismantle the manipulative frames institutions have sold so the individuals can begin to re-order their lives around a frame that is less about control and indoctrination.
Even just saying those words sounds paternalistic and counter to the whole idea I’m trying to flesh out here.
Because I’m not talking about “re-educating” MAGA. Rather, I’m talking about attacking the rhetorical structures of mass indoctrination in support of those seeking redemption.
How to poke these structures with enough holes that those who have the capacity to observe these flaws can gain the strength to start critically questioning their own frames.
We all have a frame. It is how we order our lives and our thoughts.
And every frame needs to be carefully and thoroughly questioned from time to time…just to keep us honest.
And even though I know I try to do that, I don’t know how honest I’m being with myself.
How can I expect someone who is being ACTIVELY INDOCTRINATED to do something that I will not?
Living in my contradiction
This leaves me to live in my own contradiction. I expect others to do something I am unwilling to do. To examine themselves in a way that I am unwilling to do.
You could say my staunchly anti-racist frame is right, at least not wrong, or go the other way entirely. But you would be making a value judgement based on your own indoctrination.
And while my frame of non-exclusion is the foundation of my anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-phobic stance, this doctrine still must be examined in a way that asks questions. Questions that may be hard, like, “Am I really being anti-phobic or am I engaged in a kind of cosplay that actually harms the very people I hope to support?”
And I think, possibly, it is THAT uncertainty, THAT unease with my own frames that has caused me to largely withdraw from all conversations outside the physical plane.
Because the intellectual and spiritual/philosophical frames I thought I was ordering myself around fell apart under the weight of a physical plane crushing everything I understood to be sacred.
I thought we all lived in all three planes. But I have found that most people live in the physical plane and occasionally graze the others when something on the physical plane pushes them into one.
I had to ask myself if I was really a creature of these more amorphous planes or if I was merely denying the physical plane because I was more comfortable living in my illusion.
Am I really a part of something bigger than me, or just a loose electron passed from atom to atom?
Certainty and Grace
And so maybe it is the certainty that is the enemy. Maybe it is that we need to be less secure in our assumptions and spend more time wondering where we’re getting it wrong.
And that’s what I think Connelly is doing.
And maybe we should give some grace to those who don’t have the luxury to spend that much time in self-examination.
So many people are so deep in survival mode, either by their life circumstances, their lived trauma, or the contradictions they order their lives. Self-examination is a luxury they don’t have.
They may need more exposure to people to begin seeing outside of themselves. But first they need a lifeline so they can step back far enough to even see anything.
Maybe we’re never supposed to know anything. We just try to be and help others try to be and through all of that be the best we can.
I mean, I get the allure of explaining evil by calling people evil.
And I do think there are some people who want to harm others.
But I can’t imagine living in a world where that is most people.
Most people are struggling to survive the circumstances they were born into. Most people are just treading water, trying not to drown.
Surely it can’t be that evil is this organized. Rather, people are so self-involved they are willfully blind to the harm they inflict on others and THAT feels like organized evil.
And I hope my attempts at escapism hasn’t caused me to harm others in a way that others feel is intentional. But I know it probably has harmed someone at some point. And I’m trying to find a way to live with that without turning it into something self-destructive.
Anyway, this is about to go way off the rails so I’ll stop here.
But ask, “Are you really questioning yourself?” or are you so comfortable in your own contradictions that you will not see the similarity between yourself and the people you see as opponents?
We’re all trying to survive. It might be easier if more of us accepted that first, then moved forward from there.