I normally think of my columns as independent of one another, but occasionally I realize I’ve written a series of columns that individually stand alone but could also be considered variations on the same theme. I’d like to extend the themes of a couple of recent columns to really emphasize how perilous our current situation is.
Our misrepresentation of who Dr. King is in American history makes us complicit in our oppression. The inability or unwillingness of white Americans to recognize and accept that in a democracy you have personal moral responsibility for the society’s condition, or in the words of Rabbi Abraham Heschel, “…in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”
In “The Republic,” Plato writes that the state is the soul writ large … This would be especially true of a democracy. A state that lacks justice is a state of unjust individuals.
The renowned British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said that the Western philosophical tradition consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. Now I can’t speak to the entire Western philosophical canon, but when it comes to Western political theory the man’s got a point. For the last 2300 years, every serious Western political theorist has struggled to answer the question posed in The Republic, “What is a just society?”
In “The Republic,” Plato writes that the state is the soul writ large. Because the state consists of individuals, the state then is the magnification of the individual. This would be especially true of a democracy. A state that lacks justice is a state of unjust individuals. Dr. King had more than a passing familiarity with Plato, and like Plato, he considered the question of justice to be a moral construct, not a political one.
White America has a real affinity for the improvised ending of MLK’s “I have a dream” speech. To have a dream you must first be asleep; if you’re awake, you have to deal with reality as you find it. So, on the questions of race and justice, it’s obvious White America prefers to sleep and perchance to dream.
Another way to think of awake is consciousness; to be conscious is to be aware of and responding to one’s surroundings. Unconsciousness is the part of the mind which is inaccessible to the conscious mind but still can affect behavior and emotions. Now you know why Ron DeSantis, et al are so adamantly against “woke culture.”
There’s an almost childlike giddiness that White MAGA America gets by quoting the line about being judged by the content of their character whenever the question of racial justice is raised.
So let’s grant MAGA America and White MAGA Americans their wish, and judge them by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
Let’s define terms. If you look up its meaning, character will be defined as the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual; with that in mind, we also need to define moral. A good dictionary will tell you moral has to do with the principles of right and wrong behavior, and the goodness or badness of human character. When we examine the mental part of the character definition, what are they talking about? Mental here is referring to cognitive abilities relating to or involving conscious rational intellectual activity. This means the ability to think clearly and logically. What’s clear is that character is a function, an active process that requires some necessary cognitive prerequisites.
Everything in our definition of character is referencing the character of the individual. Humans are social animals however, and as such, we categorize individuals (including ourselves) into social groupings. The person who has identified themselves as a MAGA individual, has also generally self-aggregated themselves into a group as MAGA Americans. Not all White Americans are MAGA Americans, but nearly all MAGA Americans are white and Republican. We’re going to do an exercise in inductive reasoning, which is the logical process of reasoning from the specific to the general, from the singular to the plural as it were. Our predicate therefore is, what is true of the individual self-identifying as a White MAGA American, can reasonably thought to be true of the self-aggregated white MAGA America.
Sometimes the best way to understand what something is is to know what it is not. We have defined character as including the capacity to make moral judgements, discern right from wrong, good from bad. The opposite of that is the sociopath. A sociopath is a person who consistently shows no regard for right and wrong, and ignores the rights and feelings of others.
If there were a picture dictionary to define words, the picture for sociopath would be Donald Trump, and you don’t need a clinical degree to make that judgement. But the real issue isn’t Trump, but what he’s emblematic of. He didn’t create this moment, but this moment made him possible. He’s also in the picture dictionary twice, the second time as a pathological liar.
Then there are the Republican members of the US Congress. Let’s take Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who makes the lion in the Wizard of Oz look like a Marvel superhero. In our picture dictionary, McCarthy would define craven, contemptibly lacking in courage, cowardly.
Let’s expand our sample of Republican members of Congress and see what that tells us. Marjorie Taylor Green (GA), Lauren Boebert (CO), Ronny Jackson (TX), Louie Gohmert (TX), Paul Gosar (AZ), add a few senators for balance, Sen. Ron Johnson (WI), Sen. Marsha Blackburn (TN). This random sampling of malcontents can be found in the picture dictionary under actively ignorant.
Then there are the over 100 Republican members of this Congress who supported the January 6 insurrection and didn’t vote to certify the 2020 Presidential election who, despite their public oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.
None of these the Republican Congresspersons or Senators snuck into Congress, they’re all elected, they therefore represent and reflect the moral sentiments of most people that voted in their elections. For the record 95% of Republican House members are from majority-white districts. This is not an accident or a coincidence, this isn’t a dream, this is what America looks like if you’re awake because its who America is.
I suggest you heed Toni Morrison’s advice, “when people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”