On Indignation

Robert E. Lee: military genius, Christian, slave-owner, college president, and leader of an army that fought its own government in order to preserve its right to legally enslave people. Many prooftext and anecdote their way into believing that he was a purely evil traitor who deserves nothing of significance other than a negative reference in history books or a southern hero who deserves massive monuments in public places of him in full military regalia.

Abraham Lincoln: beloved president, emancipator of the slaves, preserver of the union, orator, and undeniable racist. If Lincoln lived today, his views on the moral and political equality of the races would be more on par with Richard Spencer or David Duke than those on the front lines of the fight for racial equality.

Bill Clinton: popular governor, president, philanthropist, and first First Man by popular vote. He’s also a famous adulterer who while president carried on a notorious affair in the oval office with a young intern and then lied to cover it up. The uneven power dynamic in that relationship should concern even those who generally believe sex between consenting adults is not a matter of public concern.

Floyd Mayweather, Jr.: successful boxer and promoter who was one of the top twenty highest-paid athletes in 2016, and whose matches with Manny Pacquiao and Conor McGregor dominated the headlines. Mayweather is also a serial domestic abuser, pleading guilty to domestic battery on at least two occasions and accused of multiple other incidents of violence against women.

This list could go on and on: so many people giving with one hand and taking with the other—locked in history, blinded by vice, incapable of consistently finding the better angels of their natures.

“Nobody’s perfect,” we always say. “Please give me another chance.” “I’m sorry, I made a mistake.” Day in and day out, we give lip service to our common imperfections, hoping that others are more generous with our mistakes than we are prone to be with the mistakes of those who tailgate us or make us wait for forty-five minutes before calling us in to our appointment. But “mistake” is just a shallow word, right? It doesn’t contemplate evil or utter irredeemability of character or personhood. Where is the tipping point that renders someone’s “mistakes” so grotesque as to obliterate any good they may possess or contribute? Is there a tipping point? We seem to have an infinite capacity to tolerate “mistakes” in the form of greed and lying in our political leaders, domestic violence from our athletes, and virtually anything from our entertainers, as long as they are funny or talented (see Woody Allen or Roman Polanski).

At the same time, indignation feels good and sometimes feels right, so we apply it to those whose positive contributions don’t eclipse their vices in our minds. It gives us warm fuzzies to feel morally superior to other people, and we justify it by identifying real evils, such as racism, misogyny, sexual abuse, and violence. Indignation never feels so good as when we can paint with broad strokes: “I want nothing to do with him.” “If you don’t agree, I will defriend you on Facebook.” “God, I thank thee that I am not as other men.”

In moments of complete self-candor, however, the indignation makes us uncomfortable. Why? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously wrote, “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being” and we sense that internal battlefront every day. Sometimes we feel so morally progressive and wise compared to history, and on other days we wonder what future generations will be saying about our writings, our stories, and our cultural honors, whatever they may be. We have all discriminated, hated, cheated, lied; we have all blindly pursued self-interest above all else. We may not own enslaved people, but we profit from slave labor across the world, keeping us in possession of the best phones, clothes, and gadgetry. We may not rape, but we consume entertainment and spout daily rhetoric that contributes to the ongoing sexual objectification of fellow human beings. We feel this darkness and dissatisfaction in our deepest souls and are not at all confident that history will remember us well.

None of this is meant to equivocate all vices or to in any way lessen the toxic, destructive violence of various forms of political and social oppression. Please, keep talking about why we have monuments to Confederates standing outside courthouses that are supposed to symbolize equal protection under the law. Please, keep talking about how women continue to be patronized, marginalized, and under-compensated in the workplace. Please, keep advocating for our criminal justice system to consistently work actual justice instead of mass criminalization of the poor, minorities, and mentally ill. But when you do so, do not think of yourself as “other than” those who have gone before you or those who are dialoging with you. We are in this together. If we destroy everything that is tainted by racism in this country, we will have to destroy ourselves in the process and will pass on rubble to the next generation. (That fact is as much an indictment of our shameful national history as it is a caution against a wholesale destruction approach to reform.)

So who should we honor? Why should we honor them? How should that honor be shown? I have nowhere near sufficient wisdom or perspective even to pretend to know the answers to these questions. But as we work through this together, let’s do it as generous and courageous people who acknowledge ourselves to be both part of the solution and the problem, not arrogant and untrained surgeons amputating everything that looks diseased.