Gut: conscience or touchy-feely?
I want to explain my reactions to the words of Trump and
Hillary about abortion at the third debate. Let me get at it crabwise, off to
the side, scrabbling toward an unaccustomed angle, not too hopeful about being
heard.
Scrabbling to the side: I got a Master’s in education after
college, planning to teach. I didn’t use the degree for decades, but I got one,
investing perhaps 600 to 1,000 hours in it. In that time, I learned a single
significant lesson, but I think it was probably worthwhile. The lesson: there
is often some relationship between what a teacher teaches, and what a student learns,
but the relationship is fragile and uncertain; and what matters is only – only!
– only! – what the student learns. I remember watching a student once, while I
was talking about the way Shakespeare moves us from one level of human
experience to another, and realizing that this poor kid was struggling with a
deep embarrassment. She found herself sexually attracted to a guy with white
hair, and had no idea what to do about it. I don’t think she heard a thing I
said about Shakespeare. What we say, and what people hear: the relationship is
fragile and tenuous at best, and often simply nonexistent.
Trump and Hillary talked about abortion. What did people
hear? I suspect that anyone who tries to answer that question has about once
chance in 7,000 of getting it right. But let me try. Here’s gut level response:
is this conscience or silly emotion? You can speculate; I have to decide.
Trump first. He said things that are from my side of the
debate, I guess. He’s gonna try to reverse RvW, blah blah. And I was disgusted.
Why?
I have taken bloody photos of dead babies. When you see
people out on the streets with horrific red displays, some of those photos
might be mine. But most of the time, I am in no way pleased about the way my
photos are used. I know what the photo-flashers are trying to say. But I also
know a lot about what people hear, and the two are very far apart. The photos
come in the middle of a package, and what photo-flasher says and does to frame
the photo is not unimportant. It’s absolutely critical. And usually, the
caption for the photo is a total disaster. “Caption”: I don’t mean the words written
at the bottom, I mean the words and expressions and actions that accompany the photo.
The first reaction of many people to the bloody photos is, “You
are calling my sister a murderer. She’s not. Don’t say that about her, or I’ll
punch your goddam face.” (Sister, mother, cousin, close friend, self … ) If the
photo-flasher doesn’t deal with that perception right away, communication
ceases. What follows is mutual contempt, mutual indignation, mutual anger,
maybe some scatology and blasphemy – at best, two simultaneous monologues. No communication.
Zero.
And what does the photo-flasher say? Oftentimes, something
about hell or something. And they laugh and joke with each other. The flashers
demand that the viewers feel a feeling that the flashers obviously don’t feel. Maybe
they did feel something at one time, but not now. They aren’t broken-hearted,
grieving, horrified. They’re talking politics. In fact, they are often talking
rightwing politics, oftentimes demanding that the viewer support someone that
the viewer knows is a brutal son of a bitch. Feel MY horror, they say (without
any real horror), and forget about YOUR horror, because YOUR horror (about
racism, about misogyny, about dead whales …) is STUPID. That conversation
fails.
I took some of those photos. And I think it was appropriate
to use them to explain why I went to jail for blocking access to abortion clinics.
But if the photo-flasher wants a vote or something, the photo is not
appropriate; the flasher’s flimsy response is totally out of synch with the
gore. The flasher’s message is incoherent.
And that was my reaction to Trump’s words. I’m sorry he
spoke for us. He’s a liar, and so when he says things that resemble what I want
to say, my words are mangled to mush. “Protect babies like a loving and gentle
person, and build a wall to keep out the rapist Mexicans and the raghead
terrorists.” Who can accept that message? No one. So the first part of the
message is lost. It’s transparently a salesman’s pitch: whatever you want, in
your wildest dreams, I’ll give you, but vote for me now, because this offer can
last forever. What a crock! And in that crock, mixed with the hatred, is my
message.
O God. Dear Lord. Now what?
I don’t know anything good about Trump. I admit freely that
this is a confession of failure on my part. I am supposed to see the good in
him, and embrace it, and watch for opportunities to fan it into flame. I’m
supposed to pray that the good in him will grow. But I can’t; I don’t know what
I’m talking about when I try to see what’s good in him, what should be
encouraged. I want to see him crushed, so we can see what good arises from the
pain. In my life, to the best of my recollection, he’s the second person I didn’t
know how to pray for. This is my failure. I can do the catch-all stuff: dear
Lord, we’re all in need of your mercy, including me, including him. But beyond
that, I’m empty.
I know with tranquil certainty, like a line of fire across
my heart, that Mary (from Nazareth, that one) prays for Trump. And she’s got
good things to say, and sees what needs to be fanned into flame. I am ashamed
that I don’t. But I don’t.
If I had to give the eulogy at his funeral, what would I say?
“Just gimme the shovel, man; let’s get this over with.”
Yeah, yeah. I heard him go all pro-life. I didn’t trust it,
not for a single happy split second.
Hillary
Every pro-lifer in the country who heard her at last night’s
debate noticed that she talked about protecting children and family life, and then
defended Roe v Wade. I don’t have to check on whether every pro-lifer heard it;
every single one did. Reactions range: what a liar, that’s demonic, sputter
sputter, how can she, gotta stop her, sputter some more.
How can she? Look, if you’re still in the sputter-sputter
stage, I can’t help you much. But if you are in a place where you can hear
anything, I can answer that question, with confidence. (Crabwise again.)
Years ago, I was arrested in Baltimore, blocking a door. There
was a cop there who was completely out of control. He was looking for an excuse
to beat the hell out of one of us. Why? Same question, almost, and definitely
the same answer. His perception was, we were condemning someone he knew and
loved. Maybe his wife, maybe his girlfriend, maybe his daughter, maybe just
someone in a movie: I don’t know who. But he was ready to kill to protect
someone he loved. He was ready to kill US to protect someone he loved from our
words.
Good for him. Loyalty is a good thing. Untangling the
complexities when a dear friend is doing something destructive is tough. But
that’s actually just a detail. It’s an important detail, but a detail, attached
to something bigger. Loyalty is a good thing.
I don’t know whether Hillary ever had an abortion herself.
She would have to be nuts to tell the story now, if she did have an abortion.
Friends would defend her fiercely, but millions of people would come down on
her with fiery condemnations the likes of which you haven’t ever seen (except
at the last time pro-lifers were talking about her). But she knows thousands
and thousands of people who have had abortions.
So do you, unless you’ve been a hermit for the past 40
years. If you don’t know their stories, it’s not because the stories aren’t
there to tell; it’s because they don’t trust you. They know your reaction, or
think they know it (and are probably right); and they don’t want to deal with
it.
How can she talk about defending children, and not see that abortion
kills children? That’s totally illogical.
Loyalty isn’t logical. It’s precious; it’s beautiful; it can
be strengthened with clear thought. But it isn’t logical. So she’s got some
kind of wall in her mind somewhere that draws a line between the born and the
unborn. It’s not a logical wall, and you can’t reach it by arguing. That wall
is built of love. Maybe it’s misguided love. Skip the maybe. But that wall is
built of love, for friends from high school, and college, and law school, and
every job and campaign she’s ever been in. That wall is completely covered with
faces of beloved friends.
I believe every word she says about how she wants to defend
children. I believe it. I believe she will indeed fight with everything she’s
got to defend children. But she’s got this wall in her mind, separating the
children she sees and understands from … from what? From something else. In a
sense, it’s just a tiny detail: those kids over there are ours too. Oh, right,
of course.
And when she sees it, there are few people on earth who will
fight harder to protect children.
But to get to the other side of that wall, she needs to go
with people she trusts. The wall was built with love, but getting over it and
through it will be painful, a journey of scorching wrenching remorse.
Did you ever go to a Project Rachel presentation without
weeping? CS Lewis: Edmund and the dragonskin. Purgatorio.
If you don’t know how Hillary can talk about defending
children, and then defend RvW, please shut up and go away. You don’t know
diddly-squat, and you’re in the way. The question that matters isn’t how that
wall got there; it’s how to get over or under or through it.
I’d like to get through that wall with her. Before God, I
think I could take the pain, and keep going. But I don’t think I’m the right
person: I’m a guy with a big mouth.
So: back to the skin-deep surface. There was a debate. We
gotta decide how to vote. I’ve made up my mind, and what I heard last night
didn’t wobble-bobble my decision even slightly.