Team Normal

Who is the arbiter of mental health?

—Governor Bill Lee

I’m standing now, but I can sit, whatever. I want to be fully compliant. So whatever they want me to do, I’ll do.

—Nicholas Roske

We’re good.

—Tucker Carlson

All forms of media will tank if I'm not there because without me, their ratings are going down the tubes.

—Public Servant 45

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You go down there looking for justice and that’s what you find, just us.

—Richard Pryor

There’s a thing I do that frightens me. More than once, I’ve been behind the wheel of a moving vehicle at, say, a four-way stop, and I’ve gotten so distracted that anyone watching can see that I’ve screwed up. I’ve missed my cue and demonstrated a deficiency of focus. Sometimes it’s involved pedestrians. I’ve recovered myself and avoided mishaps, but these incidents are nevertheless a part of my life. Here’s the part that frightens me.

More than a time or two, I’ve been so alarmed and ashamed over my own visible and verifiable, vehicular error that I put the pedal to the metal a little to hasten my escape from the situation. Y’all ever notice somebody doing that? An audible, visible acceleration clearly borne of shame? I have. It’s hard to watch. I’ve been that guy. It’s a humiliating feeling which, if I’m not careful, can have me driving into a tree.

What’s going on in a moment like this? I’m trying to escape a form of pain. I feel stupid, and I’m trying to flee the scene of my own felt stupidity.

Who’s making me feel stupid? *deep breath* Nobody. There’s nobody to blame really apart from my hurried, distracted, reactive self. But my goodness, I’d sure like to blame someone. An awful lot of my life, if I’m not careful, can get spent anxiously (but also strategically) avoiding any realization that might involve shame or humiliation. My reactive self can’t handle it. Good news: My responsive and responsible self can. I’m responsible: I’m. Able. To. Respond.

I’m grateful to have more than one person in my life who helps me to feel and access my own moral power, to hold space, and to get curious and creative over my conflicts, my own stupefied moments. At my best, I lean into and respond to tension instead of ignoring or repressing it. Parker Palmer has a dramatic word for what conflict avoidance costs us: "If the end of tension is what you want, fascism is the thing for you." I think he’s right. Fascism cuts the beautiful world down to the size of our own fear.

I’m not a fascist. But I have an inner fascist I have to contend with. I feel it at intersections. Fascists are often debilitatingly uncomfortable with one idea intersecting with another, with the fact of relationship. Turns out there’s no escape from relationship. That’s bad news for bullies. They feel bullied by the fact of it. Every fact is a function of relationship. Best to lean into it and stop bullying and feeling bullied.

Yesterday offered a tense moment in American history. I have a sinking feeling that it’s already slipped beneath the bandwidth of many and that “the takeaway” news product will be his long pauses and his resemblance to William Shatner. I’m speaking of Judge J. Michael Luttig’s sworn testimony before the January 6th committee concerning “the clear and present danger” posed by Public Servant 45 “and his supporters”:

To this very day, the former president and his allies and supporters pledge that if the former president or his anointed successor as the Republican Party presidential candidate were to lose [in 2024], that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election, but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020…I don’t speak those words lightly. I would have never spoken those words ever in my life, except that that’s what the former president and his allies are telling us.

And today, at the Opryland Hotel, Public Servant 45 and his allies kept telling us what they’re telling us. He did not exercise his right to remain silent. He followed the blueprint Judge Luttig described by doubling down, heaping contempt on Mike Pence, and floating pardons for the January 6 defendants in the event that he manages to assume command of the United States Military again.

Here in Nashville, “the former president and his allies” who are indeed a clear and present danger to national security, include family, friends(?), former students, pastors, my governor, both my United States Senators, and most of my state legislature. Trying to maintain meaningful relationships with people who also pose an active threat to themselves and others is a delicate business. I write about it here.

I don’t imagine anyone wants to feel unsafe, untrustworthy, stupefied, or bamboozled. But here we are. They’re telling us what they’re telling us.

Similarly, I don’t want to feel on edge as I contemplate my responsibilities. To neither live in fear nor dwell in enmity is, I think, the healing game.

To speak of these matters at all is to risk being perceived as a problem, as “political,” and as being opposed to someone. This is where "pro" and "anti" rhetoric is like an unclean spirit corrupting discourse. I can be "pro" someone and also argue that they shouldn't be left alone with a child or a gun. I can also want Senator Marsha Blackburn to resign without being "anti" her. There are so many ways to be for people. See how easy this is?

To not have been feckless in the face of threat is also part of the good work to be done. To play human, as Daniel Berrigan puts it, when others are playing God. That’s the challenge at our various intersections as incoming data (often unflattering) dawns on us. There are so many ways to stand down and stand up and stand down again. So many ways to circle back and reconsider the positions we’ve taken.

I’m grateful to hear tell of Mike Pence’s move from publicly partnering with a confirmed sexual assailant (“locker room talk”) to declining to betray his oath and his baptism (“rubber room stuff”) at a key moment. He bucked a trend. Abusive men who lock arms with other abusive men to protect abusive men are very slow to unlock arms with abusive men (even when their wives offer ultimatums). But our desire for baseline moral seriousness sometimes outpaces our desire to face facts. I hope Mr. Pence and those who’ve enabled his abuse won’t do themselves the disservice of forgetting where they’ve taken us and what they owe themselves now. There are worse things than not holding public office. Maybe hell is never circling back.

I know feelingly the urge to not circle back (at more than one kind of intersection). But our souls really are in play. I pray and wish for myself and everyone reading this and everyone in relationship with everyone reading this the courage to speak up where and when we can at this time of circling back. Howard Thurman reminds us of the stakes. Listen:

The penalty of deception is to become a deception, with all sense of moral discrimination vitiated. A man who lies habitually becomes a lie, and it is increasingly impossible for him to know when he is lying and when he is not. In other words, the moral mercury of life is reduced to zero.

These words come self-administered:

Circle back. Don’t live in or abide or normalize, out of mistaken politeness, someone else’s lies. Know your own moral power. Decline fear. Live in hope.

Good luck, everybody.