A Failure of Imagination
Some hope for tomorrow.
Before Christmas, a post from the Sheriff’s Office of Franklin County, Kansas, went viral on Facebook. It was about their response to reports of a woman walking along a highway early in the mornings. It turns out, of course, that she was walking to work at a truck stop every morning to support her kids. If you’re familiar with these stories, which turn up like clockwork around the holidays, you know that the deputies began to drive her to work and eventually bought her a car.
These stories are almost always shared by people who mean well. I’m not the first person to point out that they’re actually just evidence of society’s failures. People wouldn’t have to walk to work if there were well-funded public transportation systems or if their wages brought them out of poverty; or, people could choose to walk to work safely if we invested in pedestrian-friendly infrastructure and transit-oriented housing. I thought about that when I saw this particular story making the rounds, but decided not to be a curmudgeon and hold my fire. While people think these show that humans have big hearts, they’re actually evidence that Americans’ hearts are often very small: we only recognize suffering when we see it right in front of us, and we only want to alleviate it when we have a personal hand in helping, when we can see the joy in the face of the person we’ve helped. And, it must be said, are only willing to help when we find that person virtuous. The people in these stories are almost always walking to work.
These stories are actually evidence of a small heart, one that isn’t big enough to see the whole picture, or can’t imagine that suffering exists when we aren’t there to witness it, and that the world is better once hardship is reduced or eliminated, whether we approve of the choices of everyone involved or not. Lately, I’ve come to think that this tendency of Americans is relevant to our current circumstances. These faux feel-good stories show not just a failure of empathy, but mostly a failure of imagination, which, after all, empathy requires.
A failure of imagination explains a lot about the Trump era. Tonight, Joe Biden memorialized the Covid-19 dead amidst a backdrop of standing lights along the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The lights symbolized those we’ve lost, the people we can’t see who died alone and unattended by family, their lives celebrated in a place that has been important to past generations of Americans now no longer here, a speech watched by other Americans across vast distances at roughly the same time. The memorial was a necessary salve for the past year, during which our nation has lost more people than almost any other time in our history.
It’s remarkable, once you see it again, to realize how important it is for a president to do his or her most basic job: reminding Americans that we share a country, big and diverse. When I’ve watched people act with selfishness during the pandemic, it’s mostly been justified by what those people can or can’t see in front of their own faces—they didn’t know anyone who had died, or they knew someone who had Covid-19 and it was just a mild case, or they couldn’t personally be convinced that the numbers were real—and so all of the tales of suffering and death must be incorrect or lies. This lack of trust re-centers the doubting individual and erases the polity. The theories they devised and spread to back their doubts up are astounding in their reach and ridiculousness, but were supported by an indulgent and largely absent national leadership. If I am not personally affected by this virus, I don’t have to act—that’s been the stance many of us have fought for nearly a year now.
The Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Atlanta, Wilton Gregory, sent a message of comfort the people mourning lost loved ones. We do so, he said, as “fellow citizens who share some limited potion of their grief and sorrow.” Fellow citizens—we are bound to them. We haven’t nurtured that notion in at least four years; our fates are entwined with those with whom we share an arbitrarily defined physical space on this Earth. Instead, we’ve had the opposite. For President Donald Trump, the only Americans who mattered were, very narrowly, his supporters. The only people allowed to call themselves American, in his eyes and the eyes of his supporters, were those who shared the qualities of his base: white people with a certain set of ideals. We lived under an administration that wanted to deny citizenship to people based on the color of their skin and their religion, one that fought to the end to deny the votes of Black Americans. This is not unusual in American history, but it was a step back from where we had been. Two weeks ago, it caused another crisis along the same National Mall Joe Biden stood on tonight. I still know people who can’t imagine that Biden won because they don’t personally know many Biden voters. I can’t see it if it’s not in front of my face: it’s the toddler-level mentality we’ve suffered under. The Trump world, as a imagined, was a small one, and as his party abandons him and he faces consequences for the first time in his life, his world will become smaller still.
I’m bound to be disappointed in the Biden administration—I think it’s our job as citizens to always want more and better—but for now simply having a memorial service at all, to have a moment together as citizens who don’t see each other but know we exist, was a welcome return to the status quo ante. Especially after a year of privation, on a personal and national level. Overall, though, Biden’s administration offers hope for some sense of shared entitlement to the same kindness that would lead some to buy a van for a woman in need, some basic sense that we owe each other something. I am a bit worried about tomorrow, but it does feel that the majority of Americans, including the 81 million who voted for Biden, are gaining a little ground, setting foot a little more firmly in reality, in a sense of nationhood, and refusing to give way to the disorienting forces of chaos that tapped our worst historical impulses so well. A Biden administration won’t cure everything or, maybe even anything. I don’t know if we’ll obviate the false feel-good stories in time for next Christmas. But for a moment it was a relief to simply be able to mourn what we’ve lost together.
What I’m Recommending:
One of the post-Bon Appetit ventures for Sohla El-Waylly, Off-Script with Sohla, has become my go-to entertainment. As with Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, I feel like I’m learning, not just picking up recipes. I’ve watched the pound cake episode numerous times because I’ve been wanting a good pound cake for forever. I still haven’t tried it, though.
If you haven’t seen Lubalin turning Internet drama into songs, please do yourself a favor and catch up. I appreciate that there are other people who appreciate the found poetry of a good social media fight.
Cute Animal Pic of the Week:
This summer we helped rescue an orphaned pup that we called Potato. He was adopted in July into a home that adores him. Occasionally I get pictures, and seeing his good life couldn’t possibly make me happier.
