We just found out that privilege is a very real thing. We just found out that this nation has disappeared our women and has allowed contempt for them to linger. We just found out that we have to work hard every day to keep composure, to be honorable, but to never stop fighting in our belief in common decency, because that challenge never fades and our duty to it is immutable to our humanity.
We also found out that, in times of great change, many suffer in silence. Equally apparent is that the anonymity of our democratic process has afforded a group of people to bellow out to the world a grievance that will take us a long time to decipher. If the people have spoken, I want to know more about who “the people” are and what exactly was said through this election. We just found out that we aren't "we," and that it's time to seek the ties that bind us with vigor and resilience.
Where are our warrior poets? I miss you and I long for you. I love to watch combat sports because I believe that warriors can teach us valuable lessons. I cannot watch them this weekend because I'm very sensitive to the bravado that found its way to our highest political office and I’m unwilling to giving money to a culture that formulates success on the same method. We love those who speak loudest, without caution or care for the power of words. I will go searching for warrior poets when the sun rises.
From here on out for a very long time I will commit to my work, to love and strength, and to make myself a citizen poet. I’ll try to be discreet when warranted and passionate when needed. That will be the index of my fight to make elitism be about hard work and not about privilege. Society sometimes needs ivory towers. It needs people to push the state of the art and it needs those who commit to advancing the excellence and beauty of small victories... piece by piece until it changes the lives of everyone with compassion, service, and skill. Like the Roman Senator Gracchus once quipped, I believe not in being a man of the people, but a man for the people.
I reject our false populism. We decry all our public officials but rarely have to do the difficult work they do. Our political elites are ourselves, and that awful reality is something we have to reckon with as citizens; we must teach our children to think beyond the romance of our vote and to commit to civic duty and all the messy things that duty brings. We hate our ambiguities and we judge those who live their contradictions and yet we cannot help but embody them.
I will look for the disappeared. When we appear, it must be put in the service of those that are most vulnerable and it must do so by discovering how little we know about each other and how often we undervalue the suffering of others. And I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there are many people in the world right now in a state of suffering. The politics of how we articulate that suffering will depend on the tenor of our daily work.
For those that have never seen Chief Joseph's speech at Bear’s Paw Battle, there is some value in reading it today:
Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Ta Hool Hool Shute is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are - perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.
I won’t call it a surrender speech (as it is commonly referred to) because, if I feel what those words say, Chief Joseph did not surrender. He committed to the most important part of himself – his capacity to seek those who have disappeared. To women who have suffered years of subtle (and also brutal) violence at the hands of casual ignorance, I promise to see how many of you I can find. For the scared and frightened people who have lost their homes to poverty and worse yet, exploitation, I too hope to find you. To the men and women who have lost their jobs and are afraid for your future, who long for bygone prosperity, I will do my best to listen. They who led on the young women and men are not dead. I hope I can find them too. And if in this battle of ideas that has become a tragic mess you find me cold and lost, please afford me a warrior’s kindness.
I learned a long time ago that it's hard to claim suffering without evoking the contradiction of the sufferer. People can't claim poverty because the speech-act belies the state of poverty that is being spoken of. Those who suffer are the disappeared. My heart is sick and sad. For those that were heard last night, I would submit that to be heard, and to appear is a privilege, it is privilege, and with it comes the massive responsibility of looking for those that are vanished or worse yet, suffer without ever having the right or ability to appear.
From where the sun now stands I will fight… I must, even as night makes me disappear.