No room for laughter

Michelle Heyne and I have an ongoing conversation on the fate of liberal democracy in the United States. She might disagree, but I experience her as getting more agitated about the threat than I am. I have to admit it’s partly the perspective of age. I would like to think it was also my wisdom, but in the end she may be right. 

A couple of nights ago we participated in a Zoom meeting of the Seattle Police Department’s African-American Community Advisory Council. We’ve been to several of their meetings in the last couple of years. I always learn a lot. First from the reports of the county sheriff and the police captains of various districts in Seattle. Second, as I note the climate and process of the meeting. The law enforcement professionals do their best to serve and Victoria Beach, the president of the Council, conducts the meeting so all can be heard and respected. I always come away in hope.

Still, on refection, I’m worried. A Black pastor wanted to know what he and his congregation should have done when a mentally ill man was wandering in the street, the police weren’t responding, and a patrol car officer who just happened by said “there’s really nothing we can do.” The Zoom room was silent. Finally, an officer took a shot at responding to the pastor. He didn’t say it the most direct way because the truth is simply too hard to say or hear these days—but the message was there, “there aren’t enough cops and many of our officers are afraid of what happens if they make a mistake.” There was some talk of social service resources being available. Sort of.

It was just a small corner of the world but the threat to liberal democracy was there.

The “broader perspective” stuff

When Michelle and I have those talks, I often throw in the towel. Not really acknowledging how reasonable her anxiety is but moving to a broader perspective. It’s a wonder she hasn’t exploded into pieces when I start in on the “broader perspective” stuff. My enlarged take on things is to mention how the church has survived and done its work under all sorts of political systems. True of course. I tend to not dwell on how hard that is for the church when the far-right or far-left control the political system. The saints go to the camps and underground. The church gets led by the weakest and most corrupt; in Germany it was the “German Christians” (Deutsche Christen), in China it’s the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and  National Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China. And if you don’t think it can happen in America, you’re not paying attention. And yet, it’s true that God keeps the church going even under the worse conditions.

But…all in all, I’d rather not go that way.

It’s a bit of selfishness and fatalism when I have the thought, “I’ll be dead by then.”

We are not as virtuous as we think we are - David Brooks

This morning I’ve been reading conservative writers of the “I didn’t vote for him variety.” I’ll be getting to PJ O’Rourke next but his logic about voting in 2016 probably strikes a chord with all those I read today.

"I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises,…It's the second-worst thing that can happen to this country, but she's way behind in second place. She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters."

Of course, old lefty that I am, I voted for her with more hope. But I see his point.  Back to David. 

Brooks offers a useful overview of the underpinning logic of our form of government. He goes on to note where we have weakened

“Many of America’s founders were fervent believers in liberal democracy — up to a point. They had a profound respect for individual virtue, but also individual frailty. Samuel Adams said, “Ambitions and lust for power … are predominant passions in the breasts of most men.” Patrick Henry admitted to feelings of dread when he contemplated the “depravity of human nature.” One delegate to the constitutional convention said that the people “lack information and are constantly liable to be misled….So our founders built a system that respected popular opinion and majority rule while trying to build guardrails to check popular passion and prejudice. …. The founders divided power among the branches. They built in a whole series of republican checks, so that demagogues and populist crazes would not sweep over the land.”[i] 

He goes on to the underpinnings of practices and institutions that make liberal democracy work: churches and virtue, leaders educated regarding human virtue and vice, civic groups to engage public service, patriotic ritual to instill a love of country, media to inform and so on. He compares it to farming. “Planting the seeds is like establishing a democracy. But for democracy to function you have to till and fertilize the soil, erect fences, pull up weeds, prune the early growth. The founders knew that democracy is not natural. It takes a lot of cultivation to make democracy work.” He continues, “over the past decades, the institutions that earlier generations thought were essential to molding a democratic citizenry have withered or malfunctioned. Many churches and media outlets have gone partisan. Civics education has receded. Neighborhood organizations have shrunk. Patriotic rituals are out of fashion.” He ends with a prescription, “we need to fortify the institutions that are supposed to teach the democratic skills: how to weigh evidence and commit to truth; how to correct for your own partisan blinders and learn to doubt your own opinions; how to respect people you disagree with; how to avoid catastrophism, conspiracy and apocalyptic thinking; how to avoid supporting demagogues; how to craft complex compromises.”

It's classic David Brooks. Thoughtful, grounded, and a bit depressed. A place where I always end up stuck is where I think he is stuck. Maybe. He frequently states how much he values religious practice especially because of how it undergirds liberal democracy. But as far as I can tell he doesn’t practice.[ii] At least not fully. In a critical mass model like Shape of the Parish he’d be somewhere in the C&E or Vicarious ring. My interest isn’t in judging Brooks but in noting that whatever is going on with him in regard to religious practice may be the same thing that is going on for many people. The difference may be that he sees the problem; or at least I think he does.

In any case, he makes the case that the Christian and Jewish traditions have an understanding of human nature that underlies liberal democracy and that religious groups play a significant role in nurturing healthy democratic life.

“Aren’t we all ridiculous? - PJ O’Rourke

From Christopher Buckley on PJ O’Rourke, “Of all human failings, he found humorlessness the funniest. Back then, the political left was so earnest about saving the world that there was no room for laughter, which denoted a lack of earnestness. Self-deprecating humor, P.J.’s trademark, wasn’t allowed because it could undermine the mission. Saving the world was no laughing matter. One titter and the whole edifice could come crashing down.”[iii]

And from Matt Labash, “He didn’t just laugh at people, he laughed with them. Even when playing the put-down artist, he smiled it, instead of snarled it. This is what he taught me, even if he didn’t try to. He invited people along for the ride. As if he was saying, “Aren’t we all ridiculous?  Let’s not take ourselves too seriously.” And so even if you were the one getting filleted, you didn’t mind so much in P.J.’s skillful hands.  But being trenchant without being angry put him grossly out of step with what’s happening now, when even the funny people have grown deadly serious, as everyone chooses up culture-war sides.”[iv]

Labash quotes from O’Rourke’s 1991’s Parliament of Whores: “We had a choice between Democrats who couldn’t learn from the past and Republicans who couldn’t stop living in it, between Democrats who wanted to tax us to death and Republicans who preferred to have us die in a foreign war. The Democrats planned to fiddle while Rome burned. The Republicans were going to burn Rome, then fiddle.”

In an interview “O'Rourke revealed that his ‘wife is a Catholic, the kids are Catholic,’ and described himself as, therefore, a Catholic fellow-traveller.’ ”[v] So, another soul on the journey who like Brooks seems to hang out in the outer-rings.

I keep thinking about Ed Friedman talking about the need for humor, a lightness of spirit if religious leaders were to function effectively.

Prayer is the alternative to illusion

My mind today was on the work of three vicarious religious people. I think of Victoria, conducting that meeting with patience and compassion, as being of a Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Baptist tradition. David with all his seriousness and insight as a practitioner of Jewish and Christian (with Episcopal influences) communities. And PJ as a Catholic fellow-traveller. What they all share, at least in my mind, is a stance about human nature. I’d put it as a belief in people as being in the divine image and capable of great things and also as being caught in sin and human limitation.

None of them seem to have much tolerance for illusion. So, much of our lives seem driven by the illusion of the fanatics, right and left.  I’d describe the illusion this way: “Things will be perfect after we cleanse things a bit.” I remember thinking that the Cuban revolution was a good thing when it threw out a nasty and corrupt dictatorship. Then they started lining people up against walls.

Prayer is the alternative to illusion. So says Henri Nouwen. Me too. Maybe it’s a bit of Paul Tillich in my head when I think that the alternative to illusion is Ultimate Reality. Which in my catholic soul means prayer, meditation, contemplation, wonder, awe, and adoration.

In Reaching Out,[vi] Nouwen writes, “How do we know that we are not deluding ourselves, that we are not selecting those words that best fit our passions, that we are not just listening to the voice of our own imagination?...Who can determine if [our] feelings and insights are leading [us] in the right direction? …Our God is greater than our own heart and mind, and too easily we are tempted to make our heart’s desires and our mind’s speculations into the will of God.” He goes on to suggest the need for spiritual guidance from others as a way of addressing that tendency toward self-serving illusion. In our tradition the threefold rule of prayer offers another source of needed grounding and balance.

Three thoughts in summary. First, I believe it is true that if we lose this liberal democracy tradition and the autocrats of right and left hold sway, the Holy Catholic Church will go on by God’s grace and serve in witness against all that would deny the image of God in people. Second, liberal democracy, in all its messiness, may be the best we can do in political life to account for the best and worse in human nature. The alternatives are all much more malevolent and fouler. So, it’s worth fighting for. Third, two quotes. “I think most of the time God is laughing with us," Desmond Tutu. And, “Delicate humor is the crowning virtue of the saints,” Evelyn Underhill.

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[i] The Dark Century, David Brooks, NYT

[ii] David Brooks, “I really do feel more Jewish than ever before,” he said in a recent interview. “It felt like more deepening of faith, instead of switching from one thing to another.” He has no plans to leave Judaism, he writes, calling himself “a wandering Jew and a very confused Christian.” His wife said “my husband ‘sits at the crossroads of Christianity and Judaism’ but he says the Nicene Creed, a profession of faith, and he takes communion. ‘I couldn’t have married him if I hadn’t sensed that he had crossed a certain place of surrender to acknowledging who Christ said he was,’ she said.

Despite identifying also as a Jew, Brooks ‘would call himself a Christian,’ she said. ‘But he’s subtle about where he does use that name.’ “He is not a member of a synagogue and observes Jewish holidays in a “less than rigorous way,” saying he practices faith mostly through reading and book discussions.” Is David Brooks a Christian or a Jew? By Sarah Pulliam Bailey, WP

[iii] P.J. O’Rourke and the Death of Conservative Humor, Christopher Buckley, NYT

“He was a fellow of infinite jest. I can scarcely recall, over the 40 years we were friends, P.J. saying anything that wasn’t funny. Of all human failings, he found humorlessness the funniest. Back then, the political left was so earnest about saving the world that there was no room for laughter, which denoted a lack of earnestness. Self-deprecating humor, P.J.’s trademark, wasn’t allowed because it could undermine the mission. Saving the world was no laughing matter. One titter and the whole edifice could come crashing down. Humorlessness has crept in its petty pace to the right, where it is conducted with North Korean-level solemnity by the bellowing myrmidons of MAGAdom. A sense of humor, much less self-awareness, are not traits found in cults of personality. If Tucker Carlson has said anything advertently funny, witty or self-knowing from his bully pulpit, I missed it. Maybe you had to be there.”

[iv] P. J. O'Rourke, 1947-2022: Brilliant writer, beautiful soul by Matt Labash

[v] Shackle, Shamira (January 9, 2012). "The NS Interview – P J O'Rourke". New Statesman. Archived from the original on January 15, 2012.

[vi] For an overview of Nouwen’s three movements of the spiritual life see this PDF

Comments

[Liz Schellingerhoudt]

Thanks for this Robert, especially the reminder of the importance of laughter.