Better Angels > Shittier Devils

Courtesy of our man in the Outer Banks, a dose of optimism at a time where that particular emotion comes in short supply. It's a nice thought, in any case.

We live in turbulent times. The Big Cantaloupe in the White House shreds norms daily and governs to feed his ego and his wallet. Income inequality grows. Divisions abound. One major political party has chosen power over principle. The other regularly sticks screwdrivers into electrical outlets. Of course, it all may be moot, as a disease that sounds like a euphemism for a hangover may thin the herd considerably.

But I bring encouraging words. Not from me. My life advice pretty much consists of: be kind; stretch and hydrate; get some sleep. No, these are from Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian. He wrote a book a couple of years back titled The Soul of America, and sub-titled The Battle For Our Better Angels – a nod to Lincoln’s remarks about “the better angels of our nature.” It’s a more eloquent way of saying, “Folks, if you think it’s bad now, we’ve had it worse and somehow made it through.”

Or to put it in Meacham’s words, the book is “a portrait of hours in which the politics of fear were prevalent – a reminder that periods of public dispiritedness are not new and a reassurance that they are survivable.”

Meacham examines different periods of our nation’s existence in the past 160 years: Reconstruction and the rise of the Lost Cause narrative; the decades-long fight for women’s suffrage; the re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan and Red Scare in the 1920s; the Great Depression; McCarthyism and the Communist scare of the 1950s; the struggle for Civil Rights in the 1950s and ‘60s. The book grew out of an essay that Meacham was asked to write for Time mag in the aftermath of the white supremacist/neo-Nazi assembly in Charlottesville in 2017 in which a woman named Heather Heyer was killed, and President “Very Fine People on Both Sides” made a hash of the entire ordeal.

The book isn’t as imposing as it appears, at least in hardcover. It’s 400-plus pages, but 130 of them are footnotes and attribution. He refers often to the speeches and writings of former presidents. Brief observation: dear lord, even if you didn’t agree with their politics, nearly all of them, or their speechwriters, were remarkably eloquent.

Presidents at times acted nobly during challenging periods, but also reacted to social movement from below. Though opposed to slavery, Lincoln grappled with what to do once it ended, including sending black people back to Africa. Woodrow Wilson was disinterested in, if not downright dismissive of, the women’s voting movement early in his presidency before signing off on it later. Franklin Roosevelt came from a privileged background, but became a champion of the working man and steered the country away from the nationalist fervor that took hold in Europe and produced the likes of Hitler and Mussolini. Harry Truman descended from slaveowners and was openly racist early in adult life, but desegregated the military and the government workforce because he felt for both the underdog and those who fought for the country. Lyndon Johnson came from a segregationist upbringing to push through sweeping Civil Rights legislation because he believed it the right thing to do.

Few believe our current president capable of acting beyond his own self-interest. His own party has shown little inclination to hold him accountable. Which brings us to the end of Meacham’s book, where he offers advice. Among his recommendations: enter the arena, which is to say, pay attention and vote; resist tribalism, as little is accomplished or endures by one group acting alone; respect facts and deploy reason, which seems self-explanatory, but is becoming increasingly difficult; find a critical balance. By that, he means, “Being informed is more than knowing details and arguments. It also entails being humble enough to recognize that only on the rarest of occasions does any single camp have a monopoly on virtue or wisdom.” His last recommendation is, keep history in mind, as it provides, if not a guide, at least perspective beyond the here and now.

Meacham concluded: “For all our darker impulses, for all of our shortcomings, and for all the dreams denied and deferred, the experiment begun so long ago, carried out so imperfectly, is worth the fight. There is, in fact, no struggle more important, and none nobler, than the one we wage in the service of those better angels who, however besieged, are always ready for battle.”