Essays

Here are some of my essays from around the internet:

The Very Least We Could Do is Name the Maywood, IL Post Office After John Prine (Current Affairs, April 15, 2020)

I think you can split great public figures into three groups: the prophets, the mystics, and the sages.

The prophets have visions of the future. They’re the Martin Luther Kings and Michelle Alexanders and Wendell Berrys of the world—they condemn the present order and lead us toward somewhere new.

The mystics have a connection to the otherworldly—to the realm of the mysterious. They’re the William Blakes and John Coltranes and Stevie Nickses of the world, who try to bring you with them to—or, at the very least, bring you messages from—some spiritual plane.

The sages are different. They have no special access to the future, like the prophets do — or to another realm, like the mystics do. They aren’t trying to take you anywhere — neither to the promised land nor the other world.

Rather, sages are just really, really good at living here and now. They’re who we turn to for practical wisdom. And their wisdom is hard earned — it comes not from a prophetic insight nor a mystical trance, but rather from the sustained, ordinary work of putting in the years living and learning, listening and paying attention. Like cast iron skillets, sages only get better with age. And like the plant they share a name with, they have healing powers.

Some might say that the sage’s craft is the cultivation of wisdom, but I think that’s only a part of what sages have perfected. I think it’s more right to say that the sage’s craft is friendship. And friends, as the English philosopher Michael Oakeshott put best, “are not concerned with what might be made of one another, but only with the enjoyment of one another; and the condition of this enjoyment is a ready acceptance of what is and the absence of any desire to change or to improve.” 

If you’re looking for a movement leader, you want to find yourself a prophet. If you’re looking to shake up your old ways, you want to find yourself a mystic. But if you’re looking for a good friend — that’s when you want to find yourself a sage. 

And in being good friends to us, sages teach us how to be good friends ourselves. In not judging us, they teach us how not to judge; in accepting us as we are, they teach us how to accept others as they are. The sage’s wisdom is not just for you — it’s advice for how you can be friendlier, in the deepest sense of the word, to others. 

I share this all to say: I think the world could use a few more great sages, because the world could use a lot more good friends. 

For a first-class example of what I’m talking about, look no further than the life of the preeminent sage of American folk rock—the beloved songwriter John Prine, who died last week at the age of 73. 

Decade of Disappointment, Decade of Hope (Current Affairs, January 6, 2020)

But this is not the only story of the decade. This level of civic despair is felt mostly by those still invested in the hopes of 10 years ago. The people most deflated right now are those who held on the longest to the old saviors—those who thought progress was inevitable, because that is what they were told.

Fortunately, there was a countercurrent present in the 2010s—it was present right from the beginning and it grew each year. It was a countercurrent of Americans who peeled off from the faithful, who started looking skeptically at the would-be saviors, and who lived by a different King quote: “Progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability.”  It was a countercurrent of citizens who gave up on the old hope—and in doing so, freed themselves to take up new kinds of action. 

Remembering the ‘Democratic’ in the Democratic Party (The Falls Church News-Press, September 13, 2018)

Here’s a proposal for what one of those fundamental principles could be: The Democratic Party should be the party of democracy. After decades of right-wing rule, we have forgotten how powerful an idea “democracy” can be. Today, democracy is understood in its shallow form: to many, it just means that the people can vote in elections for their government. But there is a deeper, more inspiring conception of democracy—one that its namesake party would be wise to revive.

Deep democracy begins with a faith in the creative power of ordinary citizens — a presumption that all of us, not just a select few, can participate in the co-creation of our nation. From this faith comes the pursuit of a government and economy that are not only for all people, but of and by all people, as well. To be a deep democrat is to believe that when we open up power to more people in more ways — when people have a say in the forces that govern their lives — we flourish as a nation. It is to define freedom not as freedom from government (as libertarians define it), but rather as Martin Luther King defined it: as “participation in power.”

What then should a Democratic Party interested in being deeply democratic stand for? First, the party should stand for strengthening people to fully participate in the American project. Participation requires economic security, so Democrats should fight for nothing less than full income, health, and housing security for every American. Participation also requires education, so Democrats should fight to ensure that every American child — and every American adult interested in mid-life reinvention, for that matter — has access to high quality public schools, regardless of zip code. And in addition to strengthening individuals, we must also strengthen community institutions, like the labor unions, tenants unions, civic groups, and national service programs that help Americans come together to pursue shared projects.

Second, the party should stand for opening up our government and our economy to the participation of more people in more ways. We should fight for policies that foster an open economy, like: a broader distribution of capital so that more people can start businesses; an antitrust system that breaks up entrenched monopolies; support for diverse economic forms, like worker cooperatives; and muscular conservation regimes that protect our natural environment from being exhausted by any given generation. We should also fight for an open government, through policies such as: public funding for campaigns, so that big donors stop drowning out the people; automatic voter registration, so that paperwork does not stop citizens from having their vote counted; and increased public revenue, so that our democracy is adequately funded.

Finally, the party should stand for gender and racial justice, so that our democratic promise includes every American. Some Americans long for a past era when we were allegedly more unified. But we should know now that that shallow unity masked the deeper disunity of racial and gender injustice. The path to sustainable unity — a prerequisite of a vibrant democratic nation — is through the hard work of breaking down the barriers that split Americans into first- and second-class citizens.

Martin Luther King Jr. and today’s road to Jericho (America Magazine, April 2, 2018)

But when we say we do not want to live in this time—when we pretend to live in the past or wait to live in the future—we are acting more like the priest than like the Samaritan. When we want to escape from our times into irony or nostalgia or self-satisfaction or resentment we are doing so because we, like the priest in the parable, are afraid.

That April night, 50 years ago, King called on the crowd to stand, like the good Samaritan, with greater determination—to remember that the important question is not “If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to me?” but rather “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” He reminded them that they had a blessed opportunity “to make America a better nation”— not necessarily great again but rather “what it ought to be.”

How to Heal the Left-Liberal Divide (Current Affairs and The Guardian, October 2017)

In sum, an ideal Democratic Party would arbitrate internal divides through a flurry of vigorous issue campaigns and primary challenges during ordinary time and then, during general election time and critical Congressional votes, rapidly unify to win.

This would move our conflicts — over which candidates are worthy of trust, over what voters actually want, and over the reality of certain larger forces — away from the never-ending shadow-boxing ring and toward resolution in the court of public opinion. Primaries, for example, will help resolve the strategy divide, surfacing whether “pragmatism” or “idealism” wins in general elections, as candidates of different persuasions win primaries and test their pragmatist/idealist orientation in general elections. Issue campaigns, meanwhile, will surface the extent to which the party has been corrupted by nefarious structural forces. One need not endlessly discuss whether this or that politician is a “neoliberal shill” if you can resolve the question by launching issue campaigns that dramatize these larger forces at play and see whether said politician supports the campaign. If they do, they may be worthy of more trust. If they do not, they may be worthy of a primary challenge.

What Motivates Millennials? (Falls Church News-Press, February 2, 2017)

When confronted with this challenge, party strategists tend to employ two misguided strategies. Their first strategy is to deploy what I call “civic engagement finger-wagging”: criticizing young people’s disengagement by appealing to platitudes about the almost-religious importance of voting (like “people died so that you could vote” or “It doesn’t matter who you vote for: just vote!”).

This strategy is ineffective, because people do not vote because they care about voting: They vote because they care about the deeper projects for which their votes stand. To be invested in voting, you have to be invested in a direction in which you want the country to move. To be invested in a direction in which your country could move, you have to be invested in your country. If we do not connect young people to their country — by engaging them in the public life of their own neighborhoods and towns — and if we do not empower young people to imagine themselves as being able to lead their country in a fresh direction — by respecting their ideas and fostering their initiatives — then young people will never become invested in voting.

A second misguided strategy that politicians use to motivate Millennials is to highlight political issues in which Millennials, they perceive, have a self-interest. They think they will win over Millennials by, say, talking about the national debt (“you know, you’re going to have to pay for this one day!”) or narrowly focusing on, say, student loans or legalizing pot.

This is also ineffective, because it appeals to young people as self-centered consumers rather than as moral-centered citizens. Our consumer preferences might motivate us to buy one toothbrush over another, but they will not motivate us to participate in something as beautifully irrational as casting our lone ballot in with millions of others. To vote, we need to first become part of something bigger than ourselves, a process which requires politicians to appeal, in Lincoln’s words, to “the better angels of our nature.”

The first thing we do is nudge the lawyers (Aeon, January 26, 2016, adapted from an essay in the Harvard Law Record)

In early 1969, Ralph Nader placed an ad in the Harvard Crimsoncalling on law students to apply to work with him to investigate various federal agencies. The group of young lawyers would become known as ‘Nader’s Raiders’: an iconic posse aiming to shake up Washington in the name of ‘the public interest’ (an old phrase they would come to repopularise). The next summer, thousands of students from prominent law schools, including a third of Harvard Law School’s student body, applied for 200 positions. They wanted to be, as Nader explained to Life magazine, a ‘new generation of lawyers’ who would be a civic-minded counterforce to a system where ‘all the lawyers are on the corporation’s side’.

Four decades later, the millennial generation of lawyers, by the numbers, looks less like the new generation of public-interest lawyers that Nader was rallying and more like the generation of corporate lawyers he was aiming to counterbalance. At the top five ranked law schools in the United States, only 9 per cent of the class of 2014 pursued public-interest work after graduation. Only 15 per cent of Yale Law School’s class of 2016 spent their 2L summer working for justice-centred organisations. For every Harvard Law School graduate of 2014 who pursued work designed – as the school’s mission statement impels – ‘to contribute to the advancement of justice’, five graduates joined corporate-interest firms. In fact, the 1960s’ public-interest fervour has faded so much that more students from the top five ranked law schools went to work for Nader himself in 1970 than took up postgraduate employment with any public-interest organisation in 2014.

The Soul of Facebook Venting: Empowered Alternatives to Ranting Online (Front Porch Republic, May 18, 2015)

I know I am not alone in experiencing the Facebook venting cycle:

1. First, a glowing screen that you are reading or watching projects some news that upsets you. Perhaps it was news from a cable channel that is engineered to ceaselessly produce anecdotes designed to upset you. Perhaps it was news from a comedy show whose most popular bit is to aggregate upsetting quotes from those cable channels. Perhaps it was news from a viral media website who curates clips from those comedy shows about that cable channel’s quotes about those upsetting anecdotes. Whatever the source, the process begins with a glowing screen making you upset (with, of course, the source raking in the advertising revenue).

2. Next, a tension builds inside of you. You cannot stand the thought of living in the same world where that news occurred or being part of the same human community as the person who committed the upsetting act. You feel like you need to do something about it all. You sometimes even feel as if you cannot continue your daily work or see your friends or care for your family until this tension is resolved.

3. Finally, you release the tension by posting a link and rant to the ever-present release valve that is your Facebook status update box. Some rants are long-winded, but even short bursts – like “This is horrible!” “I can’t believe this is happening in 2015!” or “Kids these days!” – do the trick: you have “raised awareness,” you have declared your opposition to the upsetting news, your conscience is cleared, the cycle is over and you may continue with your day.
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Perhaps Bottum’s interpretation of our spiritually “anxious age” explains that deep tension that builds up when the news upsets us. Perhaps we see in those upsetting anecdotes a post-Protestant demon — social sin peeking out from behind the social order. Perhaps the tension that must be vented is our uncertainty in the presence of such sin: Am I going to be tricked by this evil or am I going to be aware enough to see it at work? Am I going to become part of it or am I going to reject it? Am I on its side of the great divide or am I on the side of the redeemed?

Facebook venting resolves this uncertainty. By pasting a link to a news story and properly identifying the social evil at work – “This is racism!” “This is bigotry!” “This is evil!” – you stand at the digital altar and testify to your awareness of social sin. By ranting against the news story, you validate that you have rejected this sin, broadcasting that you belong among the redeemed. When you click submit, your uncertainty about your moral goodness is temporarily washed away: you can proceed with confidence that you are one of the elect.

Beyond Josh Lyman Politics: How the West Wing Miseducated My Political Generation (Front Porch Republic, January 15, 2015)

What would a better political education look like? 
 
First, it would de-emphasize the role that political wheeling and dealing, snarky debate, encyclopedic literacy of formal political processes, and even inspirational speeches – skills which our political establishment has in excess – play in political change and emphasize the role that community-mindedness and visionary reform – scarce resources inside the Beltway – play in it.

Second, it would draw focus away from the internal dramas of Washington insiders and towards the politics that occurs outside of the halls of national power: the state initiatives, the small-town ideas, the business innovations, the community projects, and the local protests happening in neighborhoods across America. If you insist on focusing on Washington, why not feature the public interest groups who work tirelessly everyday not to maintain their administration’s power but rather to push for actual game-changing reforms?
Finally, it would see democracy as more than national elections and the choices of the national administrations they produce. Consequently, it would see citizens as more than dollars and votes, pushing the dial back towards a membership democracy from our management democracy. It would equip community innovators to create institutions that discourage the practice of centrally-minded, furious, spectatorial politics and encourage the practice of community-minded, routine, empowered politics.

Two shows point in this new direction. From the progressive tradition, David Simon’s The Wire is the anti-West Wing: there’s no eloquent speeches, there’s hardly any moment resembling debate, and any temporary insularity is immediately broken by the chaotic and sprawling reality of the modern city. Viewers learn about the other end of the policy digestion system: the practical institutions that administer public laws and programs. Nobody ‘wins,’ because ‘the game’ of inner-city Baltimore isn’t winnable. Yet, we have a lot to learn from some of players’ temporary civic victories, such as Major Howard “Bunny” Colvin’s progressive experiment to test the effects of drug legalization in one area of his Western District. Such tiny, progressive community innovations, by people working where the rubber hits the road in urban life, have snowballed into some of our greatest national achievements but are hardly mentioned on shows like The West Wing.

From the conservative tradition, Peter Berg’s Friday Night Lights is also a stark contrast to The West Wing, but for different reasons. Whereas The West Wing’s characters endlessly one-up each other to prove their superior intelligence, the neighbors of FNL’s Dillon, Texas have little respect for Gilbert and Sullivan references and Ivy League degrees. Rather, characters proved their worth by how much they could give back to their community: by how big a fundraiser they could throw, by how many boys they could shepherd into manhood, by how many athletic booster meetings they could attend, by how long they could consistently preserve local values and traditions. Despite being a show about literally winning football games, its deeper message betrayed its surface-level competitive spirit: when a character valued being right and winning interpersonal skirmishes – as every West Wing character does almost every episode – they often faltered, whereas characters who valued being good and preserving interpersonal ties found success. Friday Night Lights taught what is perhaps the most important – and the most overlooked by West Wing-style politics – principle of making political change: before we are activists, we are neighbors; before we can change a community, we must be a member of it.

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