Voltaire's Garden

A Guide for Living in the New America

If every day still feels like a crisis, that it’s hard to believe what is happening in America, to America, I congratulate you. Your ability to feel shocked, appalled, and dismayed implies belief in a democratic resistance that may somehow be enough to overturn our new authoritarian government. But make no mistake about it, authoritarianism is here; fascism is happening right before your eyes.

“Let us work without reasoning,' said Martin; 'it is the only way to make life endurable.”
― Voltaire

We are always emotionally betwixt and between when a train wreck demands our attention. When it’s someone else’s wreck, it’s easier to look away. We do that all the time. Many of us need to focus on mere survival just to get through the month. We have bills to pay, places to go. And I say that not to scold the moral lassitude of ‘we the people’ but to acknowledge we can love what is beautiful, precious, valuable about life and know the news is too wretched to face. We would prefer not to. That is to say, we’re mostly Bartleby the Scrivener. Can we be that honest?

“So true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.”
― Herman Melville

Our authoritarian leaders are hoping for as much: that we are too occupied with loving what life we have than addressing their depravities and our indolence. When all the news---including this note---is reminding you that the world is ablaze and there is likely very little you can do to stop it, what else is there to do but live as if you are free and to turn to better things, like wondrous sunsets, umbrella drinks on the beach, or maybe just a yoga class with friends.

“If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?”
― Voltaire

To admit defeat does nothing helpful and there may yet be some mitigation, even reversal should there be a midterm election and results. To believe that our democratic norms will function “normally” and that the Congressional midterms (still more than a year away) will function according to norms signals what exactly? Hope? Naivete? Optimism? I feel sure there is more than enough worry and consternation about the present to leave these matters for later. I’m willing to believe there are good people and lawyers working at this very moment in anticipation of election (and maybe even more importantly, post-election) mayhem.

“Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.”
― Voltaire

Most of us have heard the reasonable, serious analysis that explains how this catastrophe arrived---the long history of missed opportunities, overplayed hands, neglect, resentment, and all about how the deeper endemic issues including our history of national violence, oppression, racism, immigrant resentment, sexism factor into the story.

There remains a podcast and media business that makes its living exposing the facts, as if any believe such things as facts exist. And I do tune in--- I even re-upped The New York Times--- and manage to feel remiss when I am unaware of the latest and next implausible outrage that The Bulwark or Pod Save America or some or another outlet offers as the daily fodder. But whereas in the past I would feel the horror, atrocity, or scandal as an insult to our collective purpose, I am no longer of that opinion.

“Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.”
― Voltaire

Not all of us are monsters but there are plenty enough in the usual disguises, some even look like our harmless neighbors, those “good people” we have known for so long, who we want to respect. Their moral turpitude seems too much to compute, so perhaps it’s all best left unmentioned. Make no mistake: these folks---be they naïve, ignorant, or more openly complicit--- are as much the problem as their elected saviors. To call them out is likely a step too far not because they don’t deserve it but because we know it fails to answer the one question we need always to be asking: Would that help?

I can’t pretend any safe rhetorical response is more than comic relief. Don’t we all want safe schools, clean water, a fair and cooperative workplace, a civic life that insures the domestic tranquility under the justly applied rule of law? Ummm.

The cynic (could it be the realist?) angrily replies, we never did live in such a country nor share those ideals. It’s easy to concede the point. It’s harder to accept that such values are no longer the stated aims of our collective governance.

Most of the media pretends there are still two sides to the story and while the NYTimes notion of “fair and balanced” may not be as phony as Fox, it is determined to act as if their Fourth Estate role still operates within more than mere performative democracy. It would be bad for business to admit otherwise and business at The Times ain’t that good to begin with.

Anger is exhausting and because it eventually bores, we’ll beg for it to end. There’s always another form of entertainment or responsibility of family or work that gives us excuse or good reason to “move on.” And I am tired of being tired and angry. Aren’t you?

I applaud the aging liberal Boomers who make the time and have the means to protest and also write about it. I am of course among those aging liberal Boomers but honestly feel conflicted about what more to say or do.

“Do you believe,' said Candide, 'that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?'
Do you believe,' said Martin, 'that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?”
― Voltaire

I am told by no less than truth-telling comedian now-former-podcaster Marc Maron and dozens of other articulate critics to just get out of the way, acknowledge that the future belongs to younger folks, that my generation deserves the brunt of the criticism for the mess we’re in. Indisputable it seems to me.

I always had a problem with his tone,” Maron said about Maher, “and it happens with some of the other boomers, there’s this desperate chasing of relevance that changes someone’s mind in terms of how they approach what they do and also kind of makes the whole undertaking feel desperate.”

And yet you can’t tell me the “average Obama voter” (count me in) didn’t harbor these American illusions and isn’t angry, sad, frustrated, and bewildered about how to respond and what role to play if there is any possibility of meaningful change.

And by the bye, this note isn’t merely repartee to Maron’s strafing my desperate Boomer-ness or deeper need for relevance. I have never, not once in my life, felt relevant. I will, however, admit to all the usual forms of desperation.

Rather this is a kind of last waltz, a prolix farewell to politic commentaries on the Rajanaka Substack. I need to write more about how we can take care of ourselves and each other because this world is gonna’ world and there’s not much more I need to say about that that you can’t find elsewhere, better written and better informed. The rest, about taking care, well, that I need to say because I need it and I hope you’ll read more of that too. In the meantime, I am going to persist here just a bit longer.

Our new America and its governing regime make no such commitments or pretensions to democracy, much less any good faith effort at debate and compromise in governance. There are no longer the basic grounds for democracy operative in government. Congress is performative insofar as it engages perpetual fundraising and registers its complaints in dramatic overnight speechmaking; otherwise, it’s just bending the knee or deciding it can’t do anything to stop the Leader and leaving for the next recess.

The regime in contrast has expressed their intentions rather plainly and the majority of voters---no matter what percentage they are of the public at large---put them in power knowing full well what he’d done the last time and said he was going to do this time. No one is coming to the rescue---not Congress and not the courts because when the case arrives on the Roberts shadow docket it will invariably find a way to give him what he wants. Justice is like dying for your country: as the Leader put it, it’s only for losers.

It is neither fate nor fatalism to say we’re getting what we deserve. Rather, it is just another one of those uncomfortable facts we know means we’re all going down on the same ship. While those morally incompetent voters (likely to include your family members and other “nice” people) who brought us here really do deserve to feel the results that will befall us all, there’s not enough schadenfreude in my account to pay the tab. We’ll still go on summer vacations and to family gatherings and we’ll decide just not to talk politics. Not because politics doesn’t matter but because this is what we choose when depravity bears a face so familiar we’re on a first name basis.

I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”
― Voltaire

I’m also not even sure where we, the dissenters, the people who stand for liberal democracy agree. Some Democratic leaders like that good fellow Pete apparently still believe we can talk our neighbors into sanity and decency. This would be merely laughable but Pete’s such a nice, smart fella’, I just can’t. Others like Newsom have finally decided (after efforts to placate the Right and of course having failed to win over Joe Rogen) that the time “to go high when they go low” is past.

I don’t think that go high when they go low was the wrong choice; I think it was too good for an America that doesn’t really care about what’s good. Well at least not until it hits their pocketbook or their own family. Apparently, it’s got to be personal before “empathy” can kick in. Okay, but how much despair can we really imbibe and still function? That’s why we tell ourselves the hope-stay-hopey Barack story even when we have no evidence that the world is not what we see before our eyes. Hope is too often lyin’ eyes deciding that that’s more bearable than the facts.

“Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.”
― Voltaire

I confess to enjoying Newsom’s recent trolling because at least it's breaking through. Democrats demanding a more dignified moral high ground can offer their sermons to their dwindling choirs and empty pews. I’m not convinced that Newsom’s entertaining insights will matter but I am entertained. That may have to do.

I don't believe all these players, inside and out of the Democratic party, are acting in self-interest or bad faith but neither do I see leadership that can rally our fractured, complex coalition.

The reason is simple enough: that coalition of Democratic voters does not stand together for much of anything: each interest group has its agenda and much of that is contested and conflicting. (And if Bernie were right all along then why hasn’t the Left prevailed but in the Bluest of districts? You can’t tell me that the Democratic machine was so powerful as to stifle all possibility when the American voter had the choice. America is not a “right-of-center country” like Charlie Sykes wants us to believe, rather it is a deeply paralyzed, divided country and as incompetent as it is indifferent to anything but immediate-interests.)

“Do you believe,' said Candide, 'that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?'
Do you believe,' said Martin, 'that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?”
― Voltaire

We the opposition don’t stand for anything together compelling enough nor do we have the propaganda network that reinforces a 24/7 message quite like Fox/MAGA. Let’s not underestimate how messaging does its insidious business: most Americans were never taught how to think, only told what to think. Now they don’t need to think, they can scroll or ingest the latest conspiracy, much more entertaining than truths hard won.

“But there must be some pleasure in condemning everything--in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties.'
'You mean there is pleasure in having no pleasure.”
― Voltaire

Our absence of critical awareness means that most lack the elementary skills required to function in a democracy, much less the 21^st century. Such collective ineptitude works just fine when its properly manipulated by those in pursuit of power before all else. Given the limited attention span and the seemingly infinite distractions before us, what else should we expect? We all want to survive this more than we want to do the elemental work required to change: to develop the critical skills, comprehension, and make the necessary effort will take away from other past times.

A significant number of our fellow citizens apparently don’t care whether we live in a liberal democracy or an oligarchical dictatorship so long as the price of gas and eggs is deemed affordable. What happens to other people may startle, even muster disapproval (as the polls currently show as masked thugs not required to show their faces or their badges abduct people from opposition political rallies and Home Depot parking lots) but if the past is any predictor of the future, we have no reason to believe America will rise to the complex challenges of democratic pluralism.

“You are very harsh.'
'I have seen the world.”
― Voltaire

Even when they come for me or you, the hue and cry won’t matter because the ruling party doesn’t need to care--- norms could have mattered less to Mitch when he gave us the Roberts Court of sycophants, grifters, and right-wing operatives. In other words, those in power will use their power to stay in power at any cost. This is no longer merely a political movement, it is a cult, a religion with a mob ready to use violence knowing it will get away with it. Democracy has been replaced with the next episode of The Apprentice.

In the meantime, the media treats this as political theatre when those rules no longer apply. We aren’t entirely helpless when it comes to our inner lives, even our personal lives but neither do we have recourse from within the system or its past norms. You’re not on your own: we have each other. Little else remains to protect us from the system itself.

What we remains for us as citizens is protest, perhaps disobedience but with the understanding that our resistance will eventually bring the knock on the door. Are you ready for that IRS audit? What will you do when your job demands you go along with its institutional capitulation? My employer, a private University, will eventually pay the shakedown price to receive its research funds, funds being extorted to enrich the few, and it will bow to the lawyers and “make a deal” with evil. I won’t have the courage to quit, not when I still have a mortgage.

We’re all going to be compromised somehow, no matter our principles or values. Make the deal you need to make and accept the consequences. Living with ourselves has never been the easy part but now its almost all that is left.

“Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities.”
― Voltaire

The country may be changing demographically but that is proving a mere inconvenience to those for whom minoritarian rule is simply a matter of manipulating elections and ignoring the law. Texas just showed us the future in a state where Hispanic residents now outnumber non-Hispanic white residents, and under-represented groups are now gerrymandered out of power. With the military in the streets, are you ready to protest?

Democracy apparently belongs now to other countries as America sleeps into one party rule. If you may live in one of those pesky of Blue enclaves (also soon “protected” by the military or a paramilitary force answerable to Dear Leader), I wish I could join you. I live in a rural America that wants this deplorable racist autocracy even if it doesn’t understand how little their messiah cares about them.

So what do we do?

I think we continue as best we can to protest and to seek coalitions of the willing, even as elections become more like one-party statism. But above all I think it prudent just to take Candide’s advice: tend your garden.

Voltaire survived the Reign of Terror by what appears to have been sheer will, clever avoidance, and the help of good friends. He lived to have his say, lived his life in the face of what could not be denied. Perhaps America will be as fortunate as those who thought "liberté, égalité, fraternité" worth the effort but in the meantime…

“Let us cultivate our garden.”
― Voltaire