You Are What Your Record Says You Are. Bill Parcels
What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher. Chuck Palahniuk
Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes! Ray Bradbury
Every recorded event is a brick of potential, of precedent, thrown into the future. Eventually the idea will hit someone in the back of the head. Anne Michaels
Tomorrow was created yesterday…….And by the day before yesterday, too. John le Carré
The past sits back and smiles and knows it owns him anyway. Barbara Tuchman
The evils against which we contend are frequently the fruits of illusions similar to our own. Reinhold Niebuhr
This past Wednesday at the United Nations Security Council, under the presidency of Tunisia, a debate was held to examine the relationship between “fragility and conflict.”
With statements from the heads of state of Kenya, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Niger and Tunisia itself, members of what are known in the Council as the “A3 + 1,” the Council focused as it so often does on the fragility of African states, the combination of widespread poverty, climate change impacts, COVID-19 vulnerabilities, threats from terrorism and insurgency, and weak structures of governance which conspire to create societies which in some instances seem forever hanging over a ledge.
Several statements, including from the newly-minted Security Council members (India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico and Norway), indicated an appreciation of the diversity of fragility’s root causes as well as the tools and stakeholders that need to combine forces in order to address those causes, increase confidence in governance and help to build what Kenya referred to as “bridges of peace.” The issue of “inclusion” was also noted frequently, especially by former president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and the foreign minister of Ireland, both of whom rightly noted the degree to which doors to participation in governance by women, youth and all racial and religious groupings creates more reliable governments and helps to overcome legacies of colonialism, discrimination and militarism that continue to fuel fragility in the present.
But perhaps the most interesting statement during this debate was made by the US representative who, with no apparent sense of irony, highlighted fragility related to corruption, a lack of regard for the rule of law, and “authoritarian tendencies” which, he maintained, continue to sweep across the African continent. And while lamenting the “politicization” of fragility analysis, the US diplomat reiterated the oft-stated claim by the US that it is Iran which, above all, is fomenting regional chaos and exacerbating regional fragilities, a statement which few Council members have ever accepted, at least not at face value.
To the credit of the US, I suppose, there was at least some recognition that fragility is not an African phenomenon alone, that once we get beyond economic indicators to what Niger’s president referred to as “the health of our governance and the cohesiveness of our communities,” then the fragility of many states and peoples comes into play. In that vein, the habit of Council members more than willing to weigh in on African issues but not place their own fragilities on the table, comes into sharp, if discouraging focus.
When this meeting was over, I had to pivot quickly, not to another UN event but to the unfolding assault on the US Capitol, an assault that had been brewing for months with the blessing and encouragement of the US president and a shocking number of state officials and federal legislators. The fragility which the US representative piously and oh-so-ironically outlined in his Security Council intervention a mere hour ago was now being played out on the streets, not in Tripoli or Juba but in Washington, DC. The fragility which the US and other large powers have done much to stoke in other places when it was politically or economically convenient to do so could now be found lapping at the shores of the Potomac, threatening high officials with hanging and offering unflinching and unthinking support to a US president who successfully sold a pack of electoral (and other) lies in the way that such lies are often best sold – by repeating them over and over until the audience is ready to die for – or kill for – a narrative grounded far more in negative grievance than positive policy, aside perhaps from the “positive” for some of keeping the US president entrenched in power.
I strongly suspect that anyone reading this post has been fully immersed in commentary and analysis about these events which continue to evolve as we learn more about the players, instigators, fellow travelers inside of government, tools of organizing and much more that serve to appropriately complicate the narrative of the “unruly mob overwhelming Capitol police.” I won’t presume to waste your time pontificating as one more, erstwhile “talking head,” aside from these few comments that are consistent with your expectations of me as an individual and us as an office.
The first thing to convey is perhaps the most obvious. This isn’t over. As I write, dispatches are being shared describing online chatter regarding fresh threats of violence following up on occupations which have now been rehearsed and confidently assessed, both in terms of the tools and strategies of violence and of the existence of sufficient “cover,” for now at least, in state and federal offices to ensure the unlikely event of a retributive bloodbath. Such “patriotic” violence will not, will likely never, incur the wrath inflicted on last summer’s protesters for racial justice, persons who would never have been allowed to get close enough to the US Capitol to see the windows, let alone smash them, even if they had wanted to do so.
Second, the fragility currently impacting the quality and reliability of our own governance is part of a larger pattern, one which the current pandemic may have done more to expose than any single other cause. Food insecurity is higher than at any point in my lifetime. Lost wages and livelihoods are only widening the distance between the rich and the rest. Children across the country, as in other parts of the world, are having their formal schooling and other age-appropriate activities compromised with consequences for our future largely unknown. Masks have become almost grotesque symbols of “oppression” as arrogant dismissals of public health warnings have filled hospital wards and brought health care workers to their emotional breaking point. Community cohesion is at best in a troubled state as partisan politics and alternative versions of reality conspire to turn neighbors into enemies and provide new incentives for people determined to care about little beyond the borders of their own domiciles and social circles.
Combined with fresh authoritarian indulgences, this stew that we have prepared for ourselves with its multiple ingredients of fragility, chaos and self-deception has been simmering on a metaphorical stove for some time, the toxic scents from which having sent our own version of Humpty Dumpty crashing to the pavement.
As in the childhood riddle, our own Humpty’s injuries are severe, a reminder that “all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.” This inability to effect proper healing needn’t be our contemporary fate, but there are things required of us now, beyond the security fortifications and rushed impeachment proceedings, beyond the now-pervasive accusations and condemnations, matters related to our national character which we have yet to fully examine let alone adjust.
As with other national crises in my now-long memory, I am once again stunned by the delusional and self-righteous defaults of so many of our national commentators, including those representing my section of the political spectrum – the “I told you so’s,” the half-truth equivalences, the rolling out of the old national game of “light and darkness,” good and evil. If our Humpty is ever to be reassembled, is ever to be made close to “good as new,” it is self-righteousness that we can least afford now. We did not “all” storm the Capitol building, nor did we “all” pin our knees to the necks of black protesters or bring our health care system to the brink of dysfunction through our own willful negligence. But each in our own way – my own way – we have helped bring this current crisis to a boil. And while we might well “root” for punishment or sanction of the offending “others,” we need to also own our own mess, our own contributions to a social (dis) order that has never been as kind, helpful, generous and fair as we have more than willingly imagined it to be.
One large piece of what we need to “own” comes courtesy of a statement from president-elect Biden as well as others within and beyond his circle, that this current wave of violence does not represent “who we are.” This tendency of ours to extrapolate a version of ourselves that conflates our aspirations and our practices is a habit that we simply cannot indulge at this thoroughly unsettled moment. No, Mr. Biden, this is in fact who we are. This is our record now. This is what our history of choices has made of us. Indeed if you listen to the stories and voices beyond our elite centers of policy and their self-referential bubbles, this is part of who we have always been. Part of our gender and racially-challenged national profile. Part of the exceptionalist arrogance which we have too willingly inflicted on others in all global regions. Part of the self-righteousness in which we have liberally bathed even when that water was obviously more polluted than pure. Part of the ample “portions” that we have enjoyed but that were not ours to take in the first place.
As a nation we have excelled at much, at times benefitting many through our universities, our technologies, our multiple forms of expertise and, at moments, our progressive values. But sadly this “much” also includes slinging often-demeaning allegations and indictments beyond our national borders, as well as beyond the borders of our intellectual and ideological comfort zones. This isn’t going to work for us anymore. The fragilities that we have patronized and misrepresented in other cultures and communities have found their beachhead here. And they won’t readily recede even with the shifting of the tides.
No, it’s not over and won’t be until we are willing to faithfully address the multiple fragilities now manifest in our institutions and in ourselves. Our national iteration of Humpty is lying in pieces on the pavement. It will take much more than political retribution and enhanced security forces to make it whole again. Indeed, it will likely take a national reckoning of sorts –an examination of historical patterns towards which we remain largely oblivious, the bricks that we don’t recognize until they hit us squarely in the head — if we are ever to firmly and fairly pursue the good that we have too often presumed and insufficiently practiced. We’ll see what we’re actually made of in the weeks and months to come. A large swath of the global community which is not laughing at our follies is now holding its collective breath.
I’m holding mine as well.
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