roll away the stone

I want the writing today to be about being believed.

The protests, these handwritten pleas for sanity, are continuing. While it’s important to keep a record of what is going on, there are other issues to be considered, and to me at least – there – the first linguistic hint of the sense of not being believed – I think they are related. I was not listened to, as a child, as an adult, and now I seem to be engaged on what might appear to be a fool’s errand, if that’s been my history, to write. But writing, while it needs readers, is more than a search for likes. It is exploration. It is speaking to the tree outside my window, who knows a lot more than I about watching stupid mistakes and brilliant ones alike, while letting squirrels run up and down its trunk. How old is it? Maybe 125 years? I’m not sure. I wish there was a survey of trees here. The point is that the truth doesn’t just ally itself with the wealthy, and what is in fashion one month will be out the next. Like when your mother told you to brush your teeth, or to not go out with the person who insulted your favorite book, the truth is not something that everyone wants to hear. But if we continue to let the people with money buy elections, we will only be exposed to the narrative that they want us to believe so we keep on buying things, keep believing lies, keep thinking they have our best interests at heart. They do not. Funnily enough, the living beings that have our best interests at heart are frequently the ones who are abused by the evil, abused by those who love power more than anything, who would crush even the smallest threat to their dominance. Bugs, squirrels, birds, water – we kill them and then we die.

There were a lot of people out protesting on Saturday in the small town. I think they should think about the line being longer then maybe more people will come. The protest started at the small corner in the center. Now it extends down the road. Why not extend further? There should be more advertising. Still so many people say – we didn’t know – it’s my first time here. Although how that is possible speaks to an innocence or to a level of busyness , neither of which I would like for myself personally.

If you know what I mean.

That’s another phrase that speaks to how unused we are to being believed. And while there were more people out protesting last Saturday, more people driving by and honking, more young people – two of whom, delightfully, screamed and shouted at every person who went by who gave us the finger or shouted out “you suck!” as did one person in a truck – the numbers still did not perhaps reach the level of revolution. More people came out to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride. Irony. And if a foreign power is plotting to undo the American experiment on its 250th anniversary, well, they have picked their useful idiots well. Even the man next to me, who was very old and sitting down, but lively and participating, noticed that the pickup trucks were generally the ones who said something or gave the international symbol of dislike. He asked me later if I heard of a last name clearly related to his family. Architects, it seemed. He looked disappointed when I said I had not. I don’t remember the name. But clearly a scion of the area, the town, whatever. And yet the men – for they were mostly men – yelled, threw middle fingers. Harley riders too. A trend. But if there were fewer people insulting the crowd, and more, many more, demonstrating with us, my friends overseas ask how people can yell insults at a group of peaceful protesters or not see the damage being done to their interests. My only response is to suggest that these angry supporters of the current administration have been the victims of propaganda. Outlets like Fox News – who jump to the disparaging, the dismissive, the liars – that’s what they see, that’s all they see. So they think everyone against them is their enemy. It’s propaganda. Yes – this dissatisfaction may have gained energy from loss of manufacturing jobs, or illness in groups who were told Teflon and Gore-Tex were fine, etc., and discovered, horribly, that they were not, but it’s the onslaught of propaganda that explains the most. The ability to convince.

So how to convince?

Rhetoric used to be taught in schools. Rhetoric – as defined by Wikipedia – on a side note – please contribute to sources of knowledge that value freedom – is the art of persuasion, part of the trivium of education. Aristotle, that annoying know-it-all (long story having to do with an argument with my first American professor of Philosophy after having studied in the UK and France), said, Aristotle, not the American professor, that rhetoric was “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion”, and “a combination of the science of logic and of the ethical branch of politics”. Ah ethics. However, I am not going to be convinced that competence and integrity are out of fashion. The thing is – one – you can’t win an argument if the judge is already going to rule against you, and two – the ability to persuade, while linked with the number of people who believe you, is not necessarily linked with the truth.

Another sidebar – some stories are coming out that perhaps the winning of all the swing states was due more to computer intervention, and ballots with only a presidential vote on them. Very few have won all the swing states. Apparently, armed with a list of names and addresses, and some software that one has manipulated, results can be altered. In the swing states, or even particular areas within those swing states, there was a much higher percentage of ballots with only a vote for president. A discrepancy by county. I can understand why election fraud seems like an unwelcome visitor at this point in the fight, but it’s something to keep in mind. And – it relates to how arguments are won. How are we convinced? And by whom? Are you winning if you cheat? And if you accuse others of what you have done yourself, see 2000 election, or Clinton’s emails, is it a smokescreen like in some 1970s cartoon?

So, the art of convincing others. One might say that hand-drawn signs, like letters from children, draw attention to the grassroots source of resistance. “The medium is the message,” said Marshall McLuhan. But our understanding of a concept changes with time as well as method. Jane Fonda said recently that we were in “our documentary moment” meaning, if you had ever wondered what you would have done at a crucial moment in history, now was your chance to find out. She is listened to – but not by all. The poster I hold every week is looked at but only as a part of a group. In addition, the power discrepancy between conveyor of message and audience must be weighted out. Who will be believed is more linked to who is more likely to be believed in a particular scenario, before the words ever leave the lips, or the marker hits the posterboard. How many people remember that she used to be called “Hanoi Jane” when she protested the Vietnam War? Sometimes I feel time makes circles around me, around us all. How to get that on a posterboard.

I always struggled to understand what Audre Lorde meant when she said, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Perhaps I was too literal, thinking the tools to build must always be the only tools available. Or maybe I was so steeped in thinking that there was only one way to build, so what other tools could you possibly use? Which shows that I had been convinced that there was only one path to success, narrowly defined, and the best I could hope for was trying to win approval for what I said. Except I was always on the outside. I wasn’t in the master’s house either – but it’s very possible I wasted many years – as with the argument with the American philosophy professor – trying to have a conversation when I was only being suppressed. There is a great book called “How to Suppress Women’s Writing” by Joanna Russ. All forms of submission and suppression begin in the master’s house. Unfortunately, many people have learned the forms and fight using them. And those who think that they will win the argument by using the words of wealth and success are missing the point. Justice is for everyone if it is to mean anything. I understand the quote better, or differently now. Because if you are trying to argue with people using the grounds of their own argument or their background canvas, then you are not really challenging anything, or changing anything. You are arguing in a fighting ring when the ring has been constructed by the victor, the audience hand-picked, and even the winner and loser chosen for their ability to commit to form. Then the battle is only superficially about who is stronger in a certain way, or who is more likely to be believed. Instead, it is about a story, told back to sleepyheads who recognize their dream-like selves, hoping for comfort and love. It is abusive, scripted in advance, and deeply cynical. Another way, equally cynical, of looking at this might be to say that Harvard had no choice but to fight back. What else could they do? First there is the ethical consideration of letting fascists control education. But then there is the on-brand part. Leader, or being led? Left, or left behind? Who built the boxing ring? Maybe it’s not by accident that the current head of education in this country used to run wrestling. Make it about survival of the fittest, even if the game is rigged. Make sure the film is directed by Hollywood, in the correct proportions, as Aristotle might have asked for. What could be more American than to build a fable on the bones of the conquered?

But “people have the power” as Patti Smith sang. Last Saturday’s protest had some music and a microphone for rousing chants. Neither worked. They only played her song once, then another a few times, and some song curation was desperately needed. At one point I wanted to run up and ask if anyone had anything by The Clash. Also – in a group of people mostly over 55, perhaps chanting wasn’t the thing. What people wanted was to see the cars waving and honking as they went by. It wasn’t about volume – but more about a wishful dialogue. In a car-driven world, waving to the children in the passenger seat as they wave back and the driver – mother, father, whomever – honking – is as close to a European café culture as we are ever likely to get in America. What has café culture got to do with protests? Maybe you don’t want the older man you see ordering a blanc limé in the morning, walking his small, indiscriminate type of dog, whether he smokes or not, whether he is friendly or not, maybe you don’t want him to die alone because he can’t get a doctor because he has no health care, or be unable to get to his local hospital because it’s been closed and rebuilt as condos. Or the pregnant woman who comes to sit, alone, and drinks a coffee and reads a novel she bought in the bookstore down the street. You hope she gets good medical care all the way through her pregnancy, and is not just rushed to hospital when her blood pressure goes sky-high, leading to her fighting for her life and the baby being in NICU. They are people, like you. Your community is about life, not hierarchy. It’s wonder, not desecration. It’s a shy smile, not the spotlight. It’s blossoming, not bombardment.

A protest is a good means of changing public opinion. You form friendships, alliances. You see your fellow townspeople out of bed, on the streets, speaking out. I said in one of these writings from a few weeks ago that the way forward was in person, not on the screen. We need to see people, with all their flaws. People have to see each other, because then the ability to demonize the other is removed. I would be willing to bet that for every person that drives by waving a middle finger, there is another who thinks – these people are not strangers or dangerous, and so maybe they are worth listening to? Questioning and learning. America, with its myth of rugged individualism, may have been the perfect petri dish for an internet of isolation. A country of lonely, isolated people looking for something. But it’s not what billionaires and fascists are offering. You can acknowledge a disheartened person’s search for meaning without finding it on Amazon or X, or selling their dream as a zero-sum game.

But still the question is – how do we convince? Like many women, I have had my words ignored, or better yet, heard them coming out of a man’s mouth a few minutes later, to be applauded, when my comments were met with silence. This is true for people of color, obviously, or any marginalized group. Where I work, I am watching in real time as people are silenced. My role, strangely enough, or not, is to be silent, but when I do have an opportunity to speak up, to suggest, or to gently – always – gently – correct – I am generally looked at as though I am a talking bear. Silenced. Sometimes I have the unhappy schadenfreude of hearing them say I was right, months later. I don’t enjoy it. Why use my own examples here? Well, because firstly, what I have experienced others have as well, and may feel acknowledged and drawn into how to solve this problem of how to convince, and secondly, I think the everyday examples have some general application to the question of how people are convinced. I do want to avoid thinking about the negative and the stupid that for many of us make up our work day. Why has “failing up” become a thing? The current american cabinet (sic – they don’t deserve capitalization – a subtle way of endowing power) is a perfect example. A head of defense who ropes in his lawyer and his brother and his wife to miliary secrets on his personal phone. An attorney general who misunderstands the Constitution and does not uphold the law as stated by a flawed Supreme Court. A secretary of homeland security using half-naked, tattooed men as the backdrop to her own Only Fans video. These people are playing games with your future, and they are hoping you buy the upsell subscription.

The ability to convince is perhaps about controlling the narrative. Every person is already a sign that signifies something to a particular viewer. How strange it must be, to be a mediocre man, and yet hear every sentence fall as if from an oracle! But women assist in this endowment of greatness. I’ve worked for many women who puff up men in their department and give them all the kudos they might have withheld from others. A strange phenomenon. Greed, power, and the cynicism of the corrupt do the rest. A MTG is a useful idiot of American corruption. The video of her telling a British journalist to go “back to her own country” was staggering. But here we are. A government run by people who are going to re-run their high school election for who is the most popular, funded by pure evil and blatant cronyism. The ignorance of people – see president, who could only believe that now he’s besties with one of the most cynical and corrupt dictators on earth, was laughed at by the head of El Salvador who is now using the idea of prisoner exchange to ramp up his own power grab in the area… And so forth. Everything is connected – but if you are trying just to create an argument, apparently, you can’t have all the ideas in one place. Keep the message simple. Even if it isn’t.

My tutor in the UK wanted a focus on the main point. It was critical to convince, to establish an argument. She was right. She also said, “use longer sentences.” When I arrived here, my professors said, “use shorter sentences.” There is convention, suggestion, and then there is control. The mediocre now are testing how far their control goes.

The thing is to learn the difference and the destination.

Rebutting a false narrative is perhaps the hardest job anyone trying to convince or argue back has to do. And this tragic situation that we are all in, where the future of so much rides on the ability of people to rethink, regroup, revolt, is the work of countering a narrative that is demonstrated daily in the papers, on TV, in soundbites. I used to teach Media – I wish I still did, because if there was any skill that was needed now, it is the ability to examine the linguistic choices, the stylistic choices both of figure of speech and of person, and the silent meanings on screen and in print that have all the power, as they simmer beneath the surface of a headline repeated in the billions. The most recent example of this that I saw was of a photo of a black man accused of a crime, and the photo of the man who had committed the most recent mass killing in a school, once again by a white man, side by side. One a grimace; the other a smiling photo, as if to say, we take you, white murderer, at your word. Everyone else, first we will review gender, LGBTQ+, color, background, ethnicity – we will review and then decide how we draw your portrait. Those of you who studied Art History might remember that subject, scene, and arrangement – become a book on history. A tulip is much more than a flower.

I went through some papers yesterday – resurrection – and I found this comment from an old professor:
This essay is crammed full of potential argument but does not reach the point of articulating a decisive line of thought…the first phase would be a writing directed at the writer herself, the second, a writing which sets the reader firmly in its sights.

I understand the comment, incisive, brilliantly written, helpful rather than dismissive, more than I did when I first received it. Sadly, or not, her observation may still be all too accurate. History and reflection upon a life offers us an opportunity to rethink a narrative. She wanted me to learn how better to construct a convincing argument. In an academic sense, and possibly in every sense, she was right to do so. Focus on convincing, and winning the argument. Don’t get distracted, sidelined, confused.

But the answer isn’t to turn all of us into a bunch of quick-witted, rapid-response rebuttal agents who answer every statement with another statement. Shakespeare said, “Kill all the lawyers”, didn’t he? The point is, that while it’s generally understood, perhaps in a hyper-medicalized way, and perhaps not by MAGA people, that there are different types of thinking and approaching the world. Making everyone into an argument winner is like the big-shoulders suits for women in the 1980s in America. You ignore that it’s fashion, and you ignore that it’s saying, underneath it all, that you should be more like an entitled white man, perhaps a bit more clever, because you have learned to play their game. Learning to play the game is not the point of all this. If there is any good to come out of this terrible time, before it gets worse, much worse, it is to realize that there are a lot of things that need to change. And worshiping billionaires and allowing mediocre men to be the oracle are two of the main points that need to go. I see the Democrats wrestling over how the party should move forward. Perhaps don’t choose a man to lead, and perhaps don’t go back to business as usual. When you ignore the crowds who come out to hear the leaders, one too lefty and the other too angry and female and young, and then you say, “oh, we don’t know what to do”, you’re just underlining the point that you don’t want change either. Better the devil you know. Like the woman in an abusive relationship who tries to take heart from the fact that everyone in the community loves the husband. She’s just waiting for when it trickles down to her. But it never will. And she knows it. Abuse is at the center of all our problems. The abuser plays on your fears and desires and you become addicted to the yo-yo of emotions. Stock market 401K anyone?

Remember this?

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

Still no answer on how to convince. If the first section of this suggested that we become better at arguing or willing to do so, maybe this part will be to fight for the right of people not only to speak, but to be listened to.

We are being abused. And that means it is time for us to stop being abusers as well – of ourselves, of those who we have ignored, of the simple, and the small, and the innocent.

Can you convince someone who has sold their soul that they’ve made a mistake? Maybe not. But you can go out there and act with integrity, and know when they laugh at the word you chose, or the stammer you get speaking to groups, or the work you did that they stole – it’s not you.

An argument is a battle. This is a planting.

And funnily enough, I’ve just read an article and it quotes something which I recognize as biblical – perhaps I will go look it up.

It is Matthew 25.40 –
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Mateo 25.40
Y respondiendo el Rey, les dirá: De cierto os digo que en cuanto lo hicisteis a uno de estos mis hermanos pequeñitos, a mí lo hicisteis.

Mathieu 25.40
Et le roi, répondant, leur dira: En vérité, je vous dis: En tant que vous l’avez fait à l’un des plus petits de ceux-ci qui sont mes frères, vous me l’avez fait à moi.

What is interesting as well is the context:

44-45
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

Abuse is about power. Convincing is about power. No one believed Mary Magdalen. We need to learn who to believe.