[To celebrate
another 4th of July, this week’s series has AmericanStudied
different cultural contexts for this very American holiday. Leading up to this
special weekend post on critical patriotism!]
On necessary
pessimism, and how to push beyond it.
More than once
(honestly, probably more than a dozen times) over the last year and a half,
I’ve said some variation on “It’s getting hard out here for an optimist.” As of
the late March moment in which I’m writing this post, the worst president in
American history has an above
40% approval rating, meaning it’s likely that tens of millions of my fellow
Americans not only don’t denounce the hourly heinous horrors perpetrated by
this man and his administration, but in fact express at least some measure of
support for him and them. Whatever we make of the
2016 election and how and why this unqualified immature buffoon won the
electorial vote to become the 45th President, the fact of the matter
is that more than a year into his term, far far far too many Americans approve
of a man who has governed even more outrageously than he campaigned. Even critical
optimism can be difficult to maintain in the face of such facts, and in
truth, I’ve found myself feeling more pessimistic about America over the last
year and a bit than at any prior point in my life. That seems to be an
inevitable and necessary response to much of our daily reality.
But when I’m in
those moments, I like to remind myself of one of my favorite sentences from one
of my favorite sections of one of my favorite novels: “The only thing is:
it has never been easy.” The whole point of critical patriotism, as I initially
articulated my version of it in this
piece for ‘Merica Magazine (based
on a Patriot’s Day blog post) and as I argued for it at length in my
fourth book, is that it’s a celebration of the nation in the face of—indeed,
through engagement with—the most dark and difficult histories and stories,
precisely the kinds of moments that make such patriotism far from easy. That
aforementioned novel, Leslie
Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977),
is one of the dozen exemplary works I examine at length in that fourth book,
texts that themselves model both the engagement with dark histories and culminating
sections and perspectives of critical optimism and patriotism. To put it
bluntly, if characters like Silko’s Tayo—and writers like Silko herself—can find
their way to critical optimism (or, as I called it in the book’s initial title,
hard-won
hope) after all that they experience and understand, then a privileged and blessed
white male professor like myself has literally no excuse for not finding ways
to do so as well.
It goes beyond
books, of course. Countless times in the last year and a half, for example, I’ve
thought about Ida
B. Wells, facing the lynching of her friends, the communal destruction of
her newspaper office, and direct threats on her life if she continued her work,
and choosing to publish her first anti-lynching book in precisely that darkest
moment. I’m not for a second comparing myself to Wells, to be clear—just highlighting
one of the most courageous and inspiring moments of critical patriotism in the
face of darkness I’ve ever encountered. “When the going gets tough, the tough
get going” is one of those highly over-used and clichéd phrases, but it
nonetheless does capture a fundamental truth that Wells and her many fellow exemplary
critical
patriots from across
American history illustrate. In tough times like these, pessimism is
perhaps inevitable and necessary but also easy—and the only thing it, it has
never been easy. Time to get back to work!
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
No comments:
Post a Comment