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High School Girls and Global Events

Sitting in a coffee shop, I have a gaggle of Catholic high-school girls to one side. Different uniforms but still recognizable. Would other young girls consent to wear matching plaid kilt skirts, white blouses, white school-initialed ankle socks, oxford, or saddle shoes? Energetic, loud, giggling, but not obnoxious about it, my neighbors don’t so much as glance over their shoulders at the TV screen replaying the first Israel airstrikes on Gaza. Meanwhile, though the sound’s off, but I can’t look away from the same scenes on another screen I face. Could this be one of those flashpoint moments when the whole world changes? History can sneak up on us. Seem predictable, transparent as glass in hindsight. Why didn’t we see it coming? Because we’re prone to deny/downplay right up to the shocking moment(s) when the glass shatters, and jagged edges start to draw blood.

Time, Perspective, and Unveiled Stories

We each carry our histories with us, and I was once just such a girl, though in a different uniform. These days, I’m freshly attuned through a storytelling project a friend and I put together with 8th grade/13-year-olds she teaches at a Catholic girls’ school. We have complementary perspectives. She’s profoundly Catholic, schooled by gentle and supportive nuns, while I’m a “recovering Catholic,” who came through grade and high schools under two orders of nuns who seemed to take as given their direct lines to God. But later, a more reasonable set of nuns helped “redeem” my college years and instilled admiration for the church’s going-toward-the-light “social gospel” work. My friend and I consulted to develop about a dozen weekly story prompts focused on helping the girls navigate, “get their minds around,” high school, social media, recent history, the world. We partnered with the girls, who shared story snippets one-on-one, then each told her partner’s story, first-person, to the full class. Our theory was that momentarily “becoming” a classmate could help reduce “mean girl” impulses and build understanding, empathy, respect, community. The girls, game and willing, consistently impressed. Questions bubbled: how much besides the uniforms has changed? What kinds of adults might the girls become and what kind of world will we pass on? Possibilities for human error are endless. Yet, looking at those bright and mostly interested faces, I found many reasons to smile and hope.

Uniforms, Identity and Shaping Lives

Private schools each become their own small worlds. Uniforms unify insiders and separate/differentiate them from outsiders. In my family, we segued from my older sister’s and my boxy forest-green jumpers to my younger sister’s shapeless plaid skirts and blazers. Both paired with saddle shoes I still react against. A historic theory claims a link between unsettled times and shorter skirts. Among our girls, some wear skirts knee length, others hike them higher than our nuns would have accepted. And that could sometimes unpredictably prompt ripping out of hems, regardless of wearer’s embarrassment and loss of sense of agency. But today and at this school, it’s a non-issue. The girls seem much freer in their bodies too, not required to stay in their seats all the time, allowed to chat a bit, not so constrained by “keep your legs crossed” rules. Except for scholarship students, they’re mostly children of privilege, with parents who can afford pricey tuition. Not surprising, with little to fight against, that they appear generally compliant, essentially “mainstream,” yet still so thoughtful at a very young age. The school programs in community service to encourage active participation and growth into women of substance, active in their communities. Will they continue? Will they lean into more questioning? Perhaps even toward a bit of rebellion?

The Evolution of Adolescence

Ideas on adolescence and how to handle those weathering it morph as well. Christianity early designated 7 years as the “age of reason,” the capacity to tell right from wrong. In the Middle Ages, kids from that age up could be executed for a variety of crimes we wouldn’t consider that serious today. My high school’s anthem proclaimed: “Worldliness buffets the stronghold of truth. Be Alma Mater defender of youth.” This seems to echo in present-day agenda that strives to “protect” and “shelter” certain young people—from themselves and their urges and hormones, from uncomfortable historic facts, from sex and “woke” diversity education, from books somebody’s decided deserve banning. But somehow, that protection stops short of finding ways to prevent the physical and emotional trauma of threatened and actual school shootings. And I and my cohorts didn’t have to cope with the immediate, jagged, intrusive, edgy kaleidoscope of social media and the sleazy undertow of bullying, body shaming, grooming. In class discussion, the girls expressed growing interest in boys and reported online exchanges. Sadly, some boys feel empowered to request nude photos. And if that doesn’t work, headlines report AI fake nudes, with real girls’ faces imposed. Not something, as far as I know, my age group ever had to cope with. The girls have watched the film The Social Dilemma, so they’re informed. And they’re still only 13!

Unveiling Edges: Social Media Challenges

The openness of class discussions kept surprising me. We were more talked at, not encouraged to question, to have opinions. A nun once told me I needed to learn to obey more. I only nodded, but knowing myself to be very shy and quiet, figured I’d do better learning to obey at least a bit less. That world felt as if it would last forever, but as we told the girls, ideas move and shift. And the façade was already shaky. Billy Joel foreshadowed some of the downside in his smarmy Only the Good Die Young. “Catholic girls start much too late….Why shouldn’t I be the one?” And the satirist Tom Lehrer may also have felt a chink, lampooning the silliness in Vatican Rag. “The man in the confessional will tell you if your sin’s original.” We’d borrowed the record from the girls next door and my dad, as purist and traditionalist as any nun, made us return it as soon as he heard the words. But too late, with waves of transformation already sweeping in. Starting in 1962, the Vatican II church council began tectonic shifts—vernacular mass in local language, altar facing the congregation, nuns coming out of habit. Priest-altar boy scandals didn’t come to light till later and even now are not fully resolved. Though I did have to go through basic “Safe Environments” certification to work with young girls.

Learning from Past to Present

So, how young is too young to start thinking of serious matters? If each generation has its own tale to discover, live, tell, then trying to force replay of an earlier time is counterproductive, pointless and ill prepares young people to live their own times. And, in delaying introduction of reality to kids, do we also risk infantilizing adults who yearn to go back to more “innocent” times? Recent experience has amply demonstrated chronological age doesn’t automatically equal maturity, ability to cope with frustration, willingness to find effective compromise. (Alex Abad-Santos. People forgot how to act in public. Vox. Aug. 21, 2023). Besides January 6, we hear of folks pitching tantrums on airplanes, throwing stuff (cell phones, bras, underwear) at performers during concerts, talking on phones during movies. (Tina Reid. Public freakouts, burnout, and bullying are all here to stay. Axios. Sep 1, 2023). So, who qualifies as “responsible parties?” When all the big issues feel overwhelming and insoluble? When so-called “leaders” often seem to shy away from even trying? Thinking of Israel-Gaza and Ukraine, I recall an earlier example of what in those Cold War days was called “brinkmanship.” How far can we/they take it? During the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962?), I have a sense memory of walking down a darkened hallway feeling end-of-the-world dread. In the words of Pete Seegar, “When will we [they?] ever learn?”

The Power of Dialogue in the Classroom

Research proves human brains don’t fully mature till the mid-20s. So, our girls are at a delicate, formative, age, yet eager to learn about the world and themselves, in the midst of uncertain times. We calibrated in the story project, striving to balance sampling of knowledge/information/context with support for growing sense of self. I witnessed the process at work in those open discussions curated by skilled and inspired teachers like my friend and a NYC public school teacher I’ve read about. When a student asked if she was “Team Israel or Team Palestinian,” the teacher, herself Jewish, responded that she was “Team Humanity,” and that “she thought both the Hamas terror attacks in Israel and Israel’s ongoing bombing of Gaza are horrific.” (Faith Karimi. A student asked a NYC teacher which side she’s on in the Israel-Hamas war. Here’s what she said. CNN. Oct. 27, 2023). Amen.

Young Activists: Inspiring Change

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, young activists, many only a bit older than our girls, refuse to be infantilized. Not prepared to wait, they grab hold of their own stories and challenge their elders on critical issues like climate change, even take them to court. Portuguese kids sued 32 governments in the European Court of Human Rights for failing to protect them from the climate crisis. In the US, a judge sided with young environmentalists who sued state agencies for violating their “right to a clean and healthful environment by permitting fossil fuel development without considering its effect on the environment.” (NPR, Associated Press. August 14, 2023; William Brangham. Young Activists in Montana win landmark climate change lawsuit against state. PBS. August 15, 2023). And high-school students of color in a low-income Baltimore neighborhood continue a decade-long environmental justice campaign focused on air quality and small particulates that embed in lungs. They’ve already stopped a giant waste incinerator project and now take on the bigger challenge of stopping a big coal storage/transit station. (B.A. Parker, et al. Student activists are pushing back against big polluters — and winning. NPR. Oct. 4, 2023).

Reflections on the Story Project

On the last day of the storytelling project, we asked the girls to tell us about their perspective on the experience. Most said they liked it. In an earlier time, I might have suspected they meant to please, to tell us what we wanted to hear. But I’d had the chance to sit in on those class discussions. So, I trusted in the accuracy of their reporting. And they told us they appreciated the chance to share, to listen, to learn about classmates. One found “public speaking” easier when she could act as someone else. One wished the project would keep going.

Empathy in Action: Navigating a Complex World

Very gratifying and it strikes me we’re probably asking a lot of the girls only just across the threshold of adolescence. Of course, they’ll focus on immediate, short-term, matters: boyfriends or hopes for them and in another 3 years, driver’s licenses, rite of passage to independence. But two years later, they can they register to vote at age 18. And they’ll will grasp the significance, women in this country having only got the vote around 1920. Going forward, I hope our story project might contribute to the girls’ growing understanding that as humans and social animals, we need each other. But we won’t always get along and that can sometimes degenerate to the extremes of war, too often without an exit strategy. The important thing is to keep talking, listening, sharing stories. A leader of the International Red Cross, speaking to NPR a negotiating Israel-Hamas hostage release, said we don’t have to like each other, we don’t have to agree, but we talk. And I hope our girls might continue to apply their narrative skills to help us “address [our]selves more empathetically to the fears, anxieties, and needs….which no society [and the world] can safely ignore.”(Karen Armstrong. The Battle for God. Knopf. C2000). Amen.

The Ebb and Flow of the Sexes War

Considering the state of our nation, I think about what used to be called the “War of the Sexes.” By the 1950s, former Rosie the Riveter, needed during WWII, had been relegated back to the kitchen, bedroom, nursery. Then came the 1960s women’s movement, with books like Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, imagining a larger place in the world, which kind of happened, until the Roe overturn reminded us it couldn’t be that simple. Before, it was said younger women, lacking direct experience, took for granted, didn’t appreciate, the sacrifices previous generations made, especially around “reproductive rights,” which at present seems like an oxymoron.  Not only were women “of childbearing age” young of course, but they, along with the rest of us, didn’t really “get” that in this country big issues are never settled once and for all.

Billie Jean vs. Bobby: Circus of Gender

In search of shifting generational zeitgeists, I find the circus-like, pop culture, of the Billie Jean King-Bobby Riggs “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match (1973).  A PhD thesis (Andrew S. Jorgenson. James Thurber’s Little Man and the Battle of the Sexes: The Humor of Gender and Conflict. Brigham Young University. 2006) argued that, rather than hating women, the New Yorker humorist and cartoonist saw what Simone de Beauvoir called “the second sex” as the more powerful half of couples. Really?! And why was the actual divide treated as laughable, when whatever power women possessed back then was unofficial and covert?  Women only got the vote in this country about a hundred years ago. Until the late 1970s, we couldn’t obtain credit cards or bank accounts on our own. 

Historical Constraints on Women

Remember this particular “war” can’t ever be abstract. It invades, takes hostage, very personal, very intimate, women’s bodies and lives. Though “[v]irtually all states…. allow an abortion when necessary to save the life of the pregnant person….the laws don’t explain just how close to death the person must be before the abortion can be performed.” (Most state abortion bans have limited exceptions—but it’s hard to understand what they mean. The Conversation. January 26, 2024).  Turns out some states dusted off old laws, while others drafted new ones, both having little basis in medical realities. And so, we see and hear chilling reports of women forced to carrying to term fetuses with no chance of survival, of attempts to indict women who’ve suffered miscarriages. And compounding these traumas are deep legal, physical/health, emotional and economic wounds to women and their families. And OB/GYN doctors must choose between providing appropriate levels of care and risking legal consequences, losing their licenses, and wrecking of their careers. Many make wrenching decisions to leave their patients and states. The closest equivalent for men is war and resulting PTSD, which also plays out in and across bodies.  Katherine Ann Porter wrote, in Pale Horse Pale Rider, that “old men send young men out to die.” Numerous documentaries show “wounded warriors” who’ve come back emotionally and mentally wrecked, suffering “moral injury” from what they’ve seen and done.

Descartes to Stardust: Mind-Body Split

Moral Experiments on Reproductive Rights

Not really a surprise then that the country has become an outlier on reproductive rights. We’re prone to “moral experiments.” Think Prohibition, which Americans widely tried to ignore and get around, leading to an erosion of confidence in law and allowing the Mafia to solidify its criminal reach. This initiative again puts us out of step with the rest of the world and even with many of our own citizens. Catholic Ireland voted to legalize choice, while many largely Catholic countries in Latin America are gradually moving in that direction. Given the opportunity, citizens in several US states have voted against extreme bans enacted by their legislatures. Not surprising either, given our truncated history of rights, that women are subject to backlash and backsliding. Patriarchy remains the default, operating on autopilot. Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me (2020) was released prior to striking down of Roe. But even then, she stressed that the basis of the original ruling was women’s right to privacy rather than equal rights, which current events yet again prove women do not have. So, our status as full citizens has always existed on shaky ground.

Unresolved Endings, Fluid Frontiers: Portelli

Alessandro Portelli linked American literature and national character. “Deliberately weak endings…. in many American literary classics…. [allow] alternative possibilities and multiple choices….” (The Text and the Voice: Writing, Speaking, and Democracy in American Literature. Columbia University Press. c1994). “Eventually the telling must come to an end, but the story goes on.  Narrative and geographical openness may be a message of optimism; it is also a safety valve against tensions that do not dissolve when the book is closed…. America is an open country and because its contradictions stay open, its conflicts unresolved.”  So, racism and sexism persist, along with related questions of who “belongs” and who does not. And given cultural traditions, can women yet be said to fully belong outside the home base?

If, as per Portelli, writing is “a way of controlling time,” what can we say of the ephemeral, confrontational, online communities where we’re still getting our bearings? I note sloppiness, frequent typos and/or missed or misspelled words, even malapropisms (wrong but sound like) tapped out in the rush of frenetic, 24/7 “news” cycles. Print journalism and reporting are no longer present to curate, organize, fact check. And once something’s out there….no taking it back, retracting, correcting.  This further amplifies “America’s fluid frontiers, its composite, mobile, egalitarian democracy, the degree to which it seems, more than any other nation, to live in the present…. improvisational, digressive, expansive, fluid…?”  And again, the “…missing endings weave together a sense of emptiness and a sense of expansion, of possibility and chaos—the deeper opposition that lies at the heart of the American dream—the opposition between endless optimism and ultimate desperation.”

Verbal Wars: Lakoff and Johnson

Trauma on the National Stage

But what if we could step back and view the current standoff as traumatic all around? “Trauma hurts, it can fill us with reflexive fear, anxiety, depression, and shame. It can cause us to fly off the handle; to reflexively retreat and disappear [dissociate?], to harm others or ourselves.”  (Resmaa Menakem. My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies.  Central Recovery Press. c2017).  And what of children born from such fraught, coercive, reluctant, ambivalent, circumstances? “…if the fetus’ mom experiences trauma….her baby may begin life outside the womb with less of a sense of safety, resilience and coherence.” 

Hope: Healing and Dialogue 

Menakem continues: “[O]ne of the best things each of us can do, not only for ourselves, but also for our children and grandchildren, [for society, country]—is to….heal our trauma.” Not sure what that might look like at the national level, but we’d surely need to start by getting better at talking to each other. I find encouraging signs, like a conversation with my hairdresser. She identifies as conservative, but she’s a woman too, and believes we need to talk more about these issues, maybe through committees made up solely of women. And on NPR, I heard a presentation among state governors from different parties on finding ways, even when we disagree, to try to listen more and treat each other better.

Introduction: The Hologram of Fading Democracy

This is an existential moment; we retell ourselves identity and origin stories while democracy may be evaporating before our eyes. The idea switches on and off like a fading hologram that looks real but has lost its energy while we hardly noticed. The US, the world’s oldest modern democracy, has now fallen to 26th on the Economist’s Economic Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. (David Meyers. US remains a “flawed democracy” in annual rankings. Fulcrum: Leveraging Our Differences. February 14, 2022). Our lowest score since the index began in 2006, and along with extreme polarization and events like January 6, we have issues with “the electoral process, government functionality, political participation, political culture and civil liberties.”

The Power of Stories

Stories are powerful. National decline is a recurrent theme. I’m reminded of an old TV public service announcement: an egg sizzles in a frying pan, with the voiceover “This is your brain on drugs.” Not sure how effective the message was in its day. But nowadays, online conspiracy and the Big Lie that someone must be to blame have become like digital frying pans, sautéing true believers in the oil of fake news and alternate realities. A recent NY Times “Daily” newsletter discussed The Idea of American Decay (Lauren Jackson. Published Jan. 7, 2022. Updated April 18, 2022). The web cuts both ways. “For decades, academics have warned that partisan gridlock, politicized courts and unfettered lobbying were like dangerous substances—if taken in excess, America’s democratic systems were at risk of collapse.” For just a moment, I felt pleased that my personal instincts and insights lined up with experts’, but then distress and discomfort set in. “…what happens when the idea itself gets mainlined?”.…When a majority of the American public rewrites the story they tell themselves about their country’s standing in the world?” Note another drug culture reference as the country continues to suffer the deadly opioid crisis.

Nostalgia for the Past: The 1950s Dilemma

The flip side of decline narratives is nostalgia for “the good old days,” which often seem to closely resemble the 1950s. I am not among them; I grew up in that era and found it stifling. But the US seemed to be on top of the world, rolling in prosperity and power. A Time magazine cover story proclaimed, “The American Century.” George Lakoff summarized the preferred foreign policy position of “the best and most powerful country in the world,” the global policemen, able to justify “using our military power…” [and covert, undercover, operations], in our “national interest.” (Don’t Think of an Elephant. Chelsea Green Publishing. C2000, 2004). And the rest of the world just had to go along for the ride. What was good for the US had to be good for everybody else? Right?

Learning from History: Weimar Republic Lessons

But, like it or not, those times are now in our rearview mirror. Soren Kierkegaard famously said, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” Of course, that applies to history as well. And stories do not repeat, except in sci fi time-travel. Perhaps that explains the current popularity of “superheroes save the universe” movies and American “might makes right” gun culture. In real life though, we’re on a one-way street, without certainties or guarantees. And only we can save ourselves, if we pay attention. There are lessons to learn and echoes and warnings and parallels. As well as mistakes to avoid, though we may stumble into them anyway, anyway, human memories being short.

Cautionary Tales of Failed States

And history throws up cautionary tales. The term “failed states” refers to governments that disintegrate to the point they can’t carry out basic functions. Before getting there, they may struggle as “fragile states,” which appear to function, though they’ve lost legitimacy in citizens’ eyes and fail to buffer them from societal and economic shocks. For a long time, we assumed such narratives only apply in the “3rd World”—Latin America, Africa, Sri Lanka recently. But I find a headline: How Democracy Dies in the 21st Century. (Brian Klaas. July 21, 2022). “… the United States has proclaimed itself a ‘shining city upon a hill,’ a beacon of democracy that can lead broken nations out of their despotic darkness. That overconfidence has been instilled into [our] citizens, leading…to the mistaken, naive belief that [other] countries…have something to learn from the U.S. rather than also having wisdom to teach us.”

The Shattered Montage of Reality

I’m fascinated by the many ways we humans can misstep. My husband and I used to talk about whether we, as a species, are smart enough and have the will to try to make things better. We never arrived at a satisfying answer. And that has me thinking about what we can learn from German experience, a time of many missteps. After losing WWI and the Kaiser’s abdication, the country devolved into the democratic Weimar Republic. Shaky from the beginning, it limped along until it descended into the “dark side,” the savage, murderous night of the Nazi era. Hard to pick out the worst of that toxic regime. Instead, I regret all that it wrecked, all that we’ve missed out on. The short 14 Weimar years (1918 to 1933) witnessed a dazzling efflorescence of creativity that still resonates a century later. The Bauhaus modeled workshop training of architects, industrial designers, artists, artisans/crafts people. The literary and cultural critic Walter Benjamin originated theories of art, literature, technology and society, media and film still important today. Bertholt Brecht revolutionized expressionist theater. The UFA film studios produced classics like the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920), Metropolis (1927), The Blue Angel (1930), before being harnessed to the Nazi state propaganda machine. 

Cult of War and Violence

Meanwhile, the public and political sectors were shaky, in ways that look scarily familiar today. The preface to The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Edited by Anton Kaes, Martin Jay and Edward Dimendberg. University of California Press. 1994), described that time and its own discordant narratives. “What appeared to some…as the birth of modernity and the dawn of a modern technological age, seemed to others the epitome of alienation and decadence.” And this with a traumatized populace, “still in shock from the loss of a four-year war and a nearly fifty-year-old imperial identity.” And it happened in the context of “celebration of violence, yearning for charismatic leadership, and communal fantasies of male bonding.” And with paramilitary bands like the “Freikorps” (typically war vets) roaming the streets in support of rightwing political causes, carrying out assassinations, serving as foot soldiers in political coups. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, et al. haven’t gone quite that far yet, but they’ve come close. Humans operate with a limited playbook, and we copy, borrow, steal as needed, often consciously unaware of earlier models.

Germany’s Democracy: A Brief Attempt

Benjamin described how German perceptions of reality morphed into a kind of shattered montage that seems to foreshadow the information overload (too much to take in) of the digital age, “….emerg[ing] around the end of the war, when it became clear to the avant-garde [artists] that reality could no longer be mastered. The only means we have left, for gaining time and keeping a cool head, is above all to let reality have its say—in its own right, disordered and anarchic if necessary… [creating] montages from bits of fabric, tram tickets, shards of glass, buttons matches—and by this means, they said: You cannot cope with reality anymore. You cannot deal with these odds and ends of rubbish any better than you can with troop transports, influenza, or Reichsbank notes.” (Garlanded Entrance: On the ‘Sound Nerves’ Exhibition. 1929.)

This also intersected with the growing cult of war and violence, which Benjamin recognized in Theories of German Fascism (First published 1930). “…The ‘eternal’ war that they talk about so much here, as well as the most recent one—is said to be the highest manifestation of the German nation….” But “Until Germany has broken through the entanglement of …such beliefs…it cannot hope for a future….If this corrective effort fails, millions of human bodies will indeed inevitably be chopped to pieces and chewed up….” And so, it came to be. Benjamin, a German Jew, had no illusions about the threat to him and his work. Stopped at the Spanish border in his attempt to escape occupied France, he committed suicide in 1940.

So, Germany’s first try at democracy never had a chance to take root. It had arrived quickly, without preparation for civic practice. In The German Decision (first published 1931), Heinrich Mann wrote how, “In one historical moment, after the defeat in the war, it appeared as a possible way out, compared to the disaster of the monarchy and the threat of bolshevism [communism]—only a way out, not a goal, much less a passionate experience….simply set itself up…saw foreign democracies resting securely on majorities and took this arrangement to be inviolable….did not even allow the suspicion to arise that they could be defeated, plundered, and deprived of their rights despite the ballot….”

Lessons from T.S. Eliot: The Hollow Men

Admittedly, Germany is an extreme example. But isn’t that the point with cautionary tales? They’re supposed to remind us of where we don’t want to go, of what we don’t want to become. They can also help us avoid complacency and the “American exceptionalism” assumption that we’re immune. T.S. Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men (1925), reflected pessimism about the post-war world, with the famous line: “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.” So, we could say that Germany experienced the bang and dragged the rest of the world along—twice. The US, on the other hand, has a much longer history and grounding in democracy, though given recent developments, we’ve been letting that slip. And this makes it reasonable to fear that we could risk letting democracy fade away, again like a hologram, there but not quite real any longer.

Facing the Real Threat: Democracy’s Fade

As Klaas wrote in his Atlantic article, “We may not be doomed. But we should be honest: The optimistic assessment from experts who study authoritarianism globally is that the United States will most likely settle into a dysfunctional equilibrium that mirrors a deep democratic breakdown. It’s not yet too late to avoid that. But the longer we wait, the more the cancer of authoritarianism will spread. We don’t have long before it’s inoperable.”

Hopeful Perspective: Choices and Cycles

The prognosis may seem dire and gloomy, but we would do well to remember that trend is not destiny, that loss is not inevitable. And that not even the worst lasts forever. Think of the fall of the Nazis. The pendulum swings and there are cycles of darkness and light. And so, we do still have choices and a little time. And I hope we can find ways to use both wisely and well.

Introduction: Witnessing Disaster Porn

Photos, videos, and stories from Hurricane Ian crowd my phone. Over in Florida, yet it feels like Yogi Berra’s déjà vu all over again. Since Katrina (2005), we float in clouds of voyeuristic disaster-porn, tales of terror and loss illustrated with visuals of wrecked, flattened, splintered or burned-out communities. I recall entrepreneurial types adlibbed disaster tours to New Orleans’ devastated Lower Ninth Ward. Amazing no one came up with a “running for their lives” storm-surge video game, or perhaps by now somebody has, and I missed it. Real life can be so much scarier than any made up zombies. And I wonder about the ethics of turning other folks’ suffering into spectator “sport.” Not possible where I live: we’ve been on both sides, morphing from observer to observed, in a kind of whiplash, depending on storm tracks. Could be us on camera next. Last year, with Ida, it was.

Climate Change Controversy: The Battle of Narratives

Is this climate change in action? Depends on which stories you believe and who’s telling. Scientists who parse the data say yes, probably, with their usual caveats that environmental science can’t control for all variables. Culture warriors politicize without proof, question/scorn the science, insist humans aren’t to blame anyway. Florida Governor DeSantis did blame the “liberal regime media” for wishing Ian would hit more populous Tampa, “because they hate Florida.” Really?! Like sticking pins in a voodoo doll?!

Environmental Impact: From Storms to Earthquakes

From where I sit though, whatever’s happening does seem to have us surrounded. To paraphrase Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade, we have storms, rain, and flooding to the right/east of us (Kentucky, Florida), and wildfires, heat waves and drought to the left/west (California, Arizona, Colorado). And the Mississippi River, along its entire length, is at its lowest level in years. Here in Louisiana, the US Army Corps of Engineers is dredging to prevent saltwater intrusion up from the Gulf of Mexico and into drinking water. And recent research suggests melting glaciers and rising oceans may contribute to earthquake activity.

Manufactured Denial: Unmasking Corporate Influence

A mistake to treat denial and science skepticism as natural phenomena. They’ve been created, marketed, sold. “Documents reveal that ExxonMobil has known since the late 1970s that its products cause global warming. A decade later, the company ignored its own scientists and financed a campaign to deceive shareholders and the public about the realities and risks….” (Union of Concerned Scientists. 2016). And in 1991, the conservative Koch-backed Cato Institute convened a conference titled “Global Environmental Crisis: Science or Politics.” (Geoff Dembicki. From his book The Petroleum Papers excerpted as How Koch Industries, Fake Scientists, and Rush Limbaugh Invented Climate Denial. Vice. October 14, 2022). And now a recent report shows that “half of the 50 largest sources of greenhouse gases in the world were oil and gas fields and production facilities,” and owner-operators underreport their emissions by a factor of three. (Fiona Harvey. Oil and gas greenhouse emissions ‘three times higher’ than producers claim. The Guardian. November 9, 2022).

Vulnerable Regions: Ground Zero and the Canary in the Coal Mine

Florida’s been called “ground zero” for sea-level rise, Louisiana’s been called “the canary in the coal mine.” Both extend out into the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico and regularly in the path of extreme weather. And they’re low lying “water worlds,” with blurred edges where land begins and ends, in which “man” has felt free “…not so much [to] adapt to nature as he has reordered nature to serve his own ends.” (Nelson Manfred Blake. Land Into Water, Water Into Land: A History of Water Management in Florida. University of Florida. c1980, c2010).

Lessons from Environmentalists: A Call for Change

I reach to my bookcase for Frederick Turner’s Rediscovering America: John Muir in His Time and Ours (Sierra Club Books. c1985). The proto environmentalist and Sierra Club founder told a different story situating humanity within nature and helped convince Teddy Roosevelt to start the National Park system. My copy has history; the author’s gift to my husband, inscribed “For Bob Jones, with many thanks and admiration.” He referred to Bob’s work designing and building barrier island restoration projects to protect Louisiana’s disappearing coast, eroded by over a century of deforestation of virgin cypress, and digging of lumbering and then oil field canals and pipeline channels. No complete maps even exist; apparently nobody bothered in the early days. Perhaps they assumed it didn’t matter, would make no difference. I also pull out Mike Tidwell’s Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana’s Cajun Coast(Vintage Departures. c2003), on the human costs to communities of fishers and oilfield laborers, rooted in generations of family, history, and folk culture, as rising waters lapped at and ate away their home places.

Denial and Consequences: Sacrifice Areas

The concept “Sacrifice Area” applies. Wikipedia definition: lands “permanently impaired by heavy environmental alterations….” A 2022 UN report found millions around the world in such areas, “particularly in those used for heavy industry and mining.” In a variation on old colonial mercantile systems, some places and peoples provide (natural resources, raw materials) and absorb impacts of extraction, while central/metro areas and corporations consume and reap most benefits. And when resources and/or economic value play out, used up communities are abandoned with wastes from activities that made them complicit in their own ruin. Today, post-industrial, we struggle to reframe a national identity if our great expansion is over. “[E]nvironmental optimism is hard-wired into [our] character….Even in…[a] tight spot, not many want to hear that the country has finally come to the end of its providential allotment of inexhaustible plenty….” And there’s “a sense that if nature comes up short, that other infinite resource, American know-how, can make up the difference.” (Simon Schama: The American Future: A History. Harper Collins. C2009).

Global Response: COP27 and the Path Ahead

Denial undercuts preparedness. “Your failure to plan does not equal my emergency.” Bob posted that statement above his desk. Imprudent decisions range from homebuyers failing to check on flood hazards or purchase flood insurance to governments and corporations linking their best interests to fossil fuels. As the futurist Ari Wallach noted, “….we carry short-termism on in our daily life at the expense of our future self, and—perhaps most important—the expense of future generations.” (Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs. Harper One. c2022). We’re also prone to “disaster amnesia,” lulled by the calm between storms to fall into wishful thinking that it won’t happen again. After Hurricane Lili (2002), I told Bob, “99% of the time, it’s a great place to live, but there’s that .1%.” Since Hurricane Andrew (1992), over 5 million more people have moved to Florida, a good number into Ian’s path. But, even when lessons strike close to home, people can be slow learners. A post-Ian Wall Street Journal headline read “Home Buyers Flock to Florida Cities Devastated…, with a sharp price run-up.”

Looking Forward: Paradigm Shifts in Global Response

So, we’re in a cliffhanger, but still not ready to make hard decisions. This year’s UN environmental report finds “no credible pathway” for global nations to reach their commitments to Paris Accords’ carbon emissions goals. As for the private sector, ”…. companies are setting goals they don’t know exactly how they can deliver on, [as] the pressures….to [publicly] respond to climate change build.” (Catherine Clifford. Companies are making climate pledges they don’t have the capacity to keep. MSNBC. October 26, 2022). The UN report concluded “…the only way to limit the worst impacts …is a ‘rapid transformation of societies.’ “ (Damian Carrington. Climate Crisis. The Guardian. October 27, 2022).

As I write, world leaders are meeting at the COP27 climate conference in Egypt. Regular review of progress on commitments either creates “a space to manage climate change” in a “zone of peaceful competition, collaboration, and one-upmanship” (Robinson Meyer. The Paris Agreement is Working…For Now. The Atlantic. November 9, 2022) or it’s yet another empty exercise of elites talking to each other. Some of the biggest emitters—China, Japan, India, Australia, Canada—chose not to send top officials this time. And yet there’s finally talk of “damage and loss” reparations—what big-emitter wealthy nations owe to non-emitting poor nations hit by climate-related disasters. There’s even been some discussion of private sector financial contributions, though no clarity on how that might work. (Allyson Chiu, Sarah Kaplan, Siobhan O’Grady, and Michael Birnbaum. COP27 live updates: U.N. chief calls for global climate pact, warning of ‘highway to climate hell’.  Washington Post. November 7, 2022).

Preparedness and Future Generations

Paradigm shifts occur when existing models no longer provide adequate solutions and answers. After over 40 years, climate change remains a “wicked” problem. “…The fate of civilization depended on it…. But it wasn’t a political problem…. Political problems had solutions. And the climate issue had none. Without a solution—an obvious, attainable one—any policy could only fail.” (Nathaniel Rich. Losing Earth: A Recent History. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. c2019). A Guardian documentary titled Climate carnage askswhose job is it to save the planet? Key actors’ non-attendance sends a message, as does the presence of over 600 energy industry lobbyists. Both suggest cozy government-industry-economy relations that make short-sighted choices seem like the only possibilities, even as “…global challenges like climate change, pandemic disease, financial crisis, and tech disruptions are exploding and are on a collision course with fragmented geopolitical structures….” (Wallach).

The Role of Activism

“[C]an we make a better us?” Fitting that Wallach raised the critical question standing on a beach, another in-between water world. And, sand shifting underfoot, he coined the term “Intertidal” to refer to bigger and potentially cataclysmic changes like those currently happening. “…[U]nderlying ideas, narratives, and rules of what it means to be human….[are] called into question.” When “old ways of being and doing no longer work….” and “complex interactions have increased, but trust has fallen to historic lows.” Yet elites, nations, corporations still try to play by old status-quo rules, though their vested interests and conflicts of interest keep getting in the way.

Meanwhile, young people, not content to wait, are going outside official channels and taking matters into their own hands. They understand the stakes, that we’re all in this together, on this small, crowded, and damaged planet. They’re the ones who’ll have to live with what comes next. And that has me thinking about who’s on the inside and who’s left outside. Was it intentional that the venue’s a resort area, with hotels allowed to charge “exorbitant” rates young climate activists often can’t afford? And that the host country is closely tied to Gulf oil states like Saudi Arabia and has an oppressive regime that would violently crack down on and possibly jail demonstrators? There was a lot of outside action at COP26 in Glasgow.

That brings to mind other activists—Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong, the Arab Spring, Iran, etc., etc. And I’m reminded of the old Whack-a-Mole carnival game. Folks rise up in one place and they’re beaten down, some even killed, but then other folks rise up somewhere else. Why do they take the risk? Remember Emma Lazarus’ verse on the base of the Statue of Liberty. People everywhere “yearn to breathe free.” As the economist Alice Rivlin stated, “…average citizens are far more able to engage in civil, constructive dialogue on public policy issues than politicians [and elites, nations, corporations] are,” and with life and the future at stake “they are more willing to hammer out pragmatic compromises.” (Forward to Bringing Citizen Voices to the Table. Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer with Wendy Jacobson. Jossey-Bass. C2013). Perhaps, together, we can take things into our hands and find our way forward.

Introduction: The Enigma of Mar-a-Lago

Following the Mar-a-Lago search and aftermath, I think of Abraham Lincoln. “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” And I recall the current ex-president once bragged that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in NYC and get away with it. Or did he? I recently read that he may not have uttered those words after all, though most folks assume he did because it’s so much in character. But then even the doubts fit too. Keep ‘em guessing.

Trickster Figures: A Historical Trope

While the plot not so much thickens as curdles, I’m reminded of trickster figures in folk tales, who bend the rules and play slippery and often spiteful/malicious pranks. It’s a trope that extends far back in human history. Our species has an innate/baked in need for dramatic tension. And some among us have an inherent need to serve it up. Checking for synonyms, I find swindler, charlatan, fraud, con artist. So, don’t think cute, cuddly, chubby-cheeked and a bit cheeky, Disneyfied imps. Think more Loki in the old Norse Eddas, a shapeshifter, with a grudge against the gods, and plotting to tear and/or burn everything down to get even. After famously reappearing in Richard Wagner’s opera Gotterdammerung (“twilight of the gods”), he’s lately resurfaced, classic bad boy in numerous sci fi books, films, video games. That makes sense: I always thought the January 6 rioters acted as if they featured themselves heroes in a massive video game, even wearing costumes. And, lightly anchored in reality, probably engaged in magical thinking, they somehow expected no real-world consequences.

Fresh Air Insights: The Destructionists

Two days of Fresh Air on NPR radio offer insights. Day 1 (August 21, 2022): The Destructionists is the title of Dana Milbank’s book on what’s happening in the Republican party. Former political reporter and now Washington Post columnist, he took the story back to the 1990s, when no-compromise opposition became standard practice, shunning across-the-aisle dealmaking, casting Democrats as enemies, provoking crises like budget standoffs leading to government shutdowns. It’s a contrarian strategy, a term defined by Wikipedia as literally “being against.” Looks like another trickster synonym. Not that these tactics always work as planned. McConnell’s announced intention to limit President Obama to one term failed. Repeat challenges constrained but did not eliminate the Affordable Care Act (“Obama Care”). And, in hindsight, leadership probably miscalculated in refusing to sanction any official membership on the House Committee investigating the January 6 riot/insurrection.

Diminishing Returns: Searching for a Positive Identity

Some on the right have started to recognize diminishing returns. Joseph Epstein wrote an op-ed for the conservative, Murdoch-owned, Wall Street Journal: Republicans Should Stand for More Than Opposing Democrats. (Aug. 30, 2022). Taking a positive view of motivations, he even used the term “loyal opposition.” Really?! But he apparently understands the contrarian approach can carry seeds of its own defeat. “Democrats are for particulars…among other things, fighting climate change, eliminating student debt, taxing corporations more heavily;….Republicans [are on] the defensive, seeing it as their chief task to block costly Democratic bills and other attempts at radical change. …What, apart from … opposition, does the party stand for that American voters can get behind in the passionate way that wins elections?…The lack of positive policies or programs leaves Republicans open to the old argument that the party stands for little more than the defense of the rich and the maintenance of the status quo. In this scheme…the Democrats stand for progress, they are the party of the people, holding the torch of social justice high, while the Republicans stand for regress, the continual enrichment of the 1%, a deep insensitivity to injustice and suffering.” It’s ironic that this is very close to George Lakoff’s summary of progressive values, which he views as being on the defensive. (Don’t Think of an Elephant. Chelsea Green Publishing. C2004, c2014). So, which party is the victim here?

Dirty Tricks and Political History: A Darker View

Day 2 of Fresh Air (August 22, 2022) offered a darker view focused on “dirty Tricks,” a long, though certainly not honorable, fixture of our political history. Remember Watergate. And some are breaking from the ranks. Tim Miller, a former Republican operative, in his book Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell, offered an insider’s perspective as a self-described [confessed?] “hatchet man,” who “helped create the conditions that enabled the rise of Trump.” This included cooperating/colluding/lending mainstream credibility to extremist folks/sites/outlets he knew spread destructive untruths and hate. Miller spoke about what it meant to “get it,” that the whole point was to win, whatever it took. He interviewed former colleagues he knew well, who privately condemned the ex-president, but still found reasons to support him. Typical profile: arriving in Washington as young conservative idealists in their 20s, they were drawn to the centers of power, and enlisted in the attack regime, probably (I assume) because that’s where the jobs were. My experience as a NYS Senate fellow earlier in my career gives me a smaller-scale sense of the dynamics and attendant impulses/choices/temptations. Interviewees admitted they didn’t believe the “alternate” messages they crafted and pushed, but they rationalized. A common theme seemed to be underlying resentment of liberal’s assumptions of moral superiority. All politics can get very personal too. And it turns out Miller himself is gay and was in the closet most of the time he did that kind of work. So, how many versions of layered reality are we dealing with here?

Consequences and Accountability: Buck Stops Here?

Somerset Maugham said, “You can do anything in this world, if you are prepared to take the consequences.” Harry Truman, president 70 some years ago, put it more succinctly: “The buck stops here.” But does the buck ever stop when you keep spinning reality, because your sense of identity won’t accommodate admitting you could ever lose? And when you’re backed by influencer-apologists who fabricate reasons and excuses? Though far less articulate, this claque falls within the tradition of American oratory—Daniel Webster, Henry Clay (preeminent defender of slavery), Frederick Douglass (former slave). The list is a reminder that our true identity as a nation encompasses many different and often contradictory and even mutually hostile stories. Alessandro Portelli described a “Golden Age of American oratory” in the late 19th century, when speakers became “a chief source of political information, inspiration, and entertainment.” But by “making emotions audible and visible…” oratory also made itself suspect. “[I]n the very act of manipulation and controlling the sources of disorder—the crowd, the heart, the emotions—the orator is contaminated and tainted by them….” (The Text and the Voice: Writing, Speaking, and Democracy in American Literature. Columbia University Press. C1994).

Oratory as Suspect: Manipulating Emotions

When viewed through trickster/contrarian lens, I suspect that much of our current dilemma stems from extrapolating on the kinds of stories we’ve traditionally told ourselves about who we are. As Elvia Wilks noted, “Western literary forms tend to focus on the story of a person against the backdrop of the world.” (Death By Landscape: Essays. Soft Skull. c2022). And Wilks continued, quoting Amitav Ghosh, “relying on such ‘individual moral adventure’ tales banishes the collective…..” That we’re all in this together. And in this time of climate change, etc., such narratives also distract us from real, as opposed to manufactured contrarian/trickster, crises. Meanwhile, banishing “the nonhuman world…to the background” puts us increasingly in “an untenable position—and that future generations will name our era ‘the great derangement’ because of our ‘collective suicide’ as opposed to collective action in response to the urgent threat facing the human species.” And with threats (real or imagined?) of armed civil war are floated, I circle back to Lincoln, who recognized existential risks of internal violence years before the real thing broke out. “At what point then, is the approach of danger to be expected?….It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Trickster Perspectives and Current Paranoia

So, trickster/contrarian perspectives contribute to current free-floating paranoia. What and whom can you believe and trust? And that seems to lead to different versions of “final days.” Along those lines, Jonathan Rauch wrote a piece I find chilling. (Trump’s Second Term Would Look Like This. The Atlantic. August 29, 2022.) “The MAGA movement has been telegraphing its plans in some detail…overt embrace of illiberal foreign leaders;… behavior of Republican elected officials since the 2020 election; Trump allies’ elaborate scheming…to prevent the peaceful transition of power; and Trump’s own actions.” The template, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, much admired on the right, has declared, ‘We should not be afraid to go against the spirit of the age and build an illiberal political and state system.” Rauch concluded, “We can’t say we weren’t warned.” The certified actual president has taken up this theme, with a prime-time speech and on the mid-term campaign trail.

The Unraveling Template: Trump’s Second Term?

Then I find Steve Benen’s article Do Republicans agree with Trump’s demand for a do-over election? (MSNBC. August 29, 2022). Rather than staying focused on 2024, the trickster ex-president remains fixated on the election he still can’t/won’t admit he lost. He wants to rewind and hold the previous vote again or be immediately installed as rightful president. But again, the right not being monolithic, the idea has no credence with serious thinkers like Charles C.W. Cooke, author of The Conservative Manifesto and senior writer for the conservative National Review. “That is not how America works….American politicians do not lose their reelection races only to be reinstalled later on, as might the second place in a race whose winner was disqualified. This idea is otherworldly and obscene.” Not to mention ludicrous, like January 6 and Mar-a-Lago documents justifications.

Hopeful Conversations: Rebuilding a National Story

So, it seems trickster/contrarian narratives have done some damage. And, as per Wilks, “Symbiosis cannot be re-created where it has been lost…An ecosystem that has lost crucial elements has already adapted to the changes to the extent that simply re-adding what is lost might have harmful instead of restorative effects….” We might hope additional information– January 6 Committee and Mar-a-Lago—might change minds and hearts. But Miller didn’t end his book with the customary “how to fix things” chapter; he perceived little willingness to let go of the message. And yet, Benen suggested this might be the time to “help generate a worthwhile conversation.” And so, I remain hopeful, recalling the friend who said, just after the 2016 election, that maybe we needed to go through this. She meant we’d have the chance to recognize what we don’t want. Of course, that was before we had any idea how far it would go. Yet I still hope that those of us who are willing can start to work together to discover what we do want, beginning with a more inclusive national story, that has room for us all. And I find especially hopeful that our first president, George Washington, who “couldn’t tell a lie,” but who owned slaves, nonetheless set us on our democratic path when he turned down becoming king. Now, that’s a real American story.