Finding myself at the wrong party

Seeing Myself Out (after finding myself at the wrong party)

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.

                                    Kenneth Burke, from The Philosophy of Literary Form 110-111

            As those of us with compassion, empathy, and even a modicum of cortical functions all continue to sort through this wreckage that was once our democracy, I wanted to take a moment to share some thoughts. I realize that most of us are growing weary of the myriad autopsies being preformed on the cadaver of our body politic; however, indulge me as I attempt my own humble analysis of the devastating aftermath and some of what I believe may have led up to it.

            The above quote is by the great philosopher and literary theorist Kenneth Burke. I would like to begin here by borrowing and refashioning his “Burkean Parlor” model for my own recounting of how I felt that night.

Denial

            That night as I watched his "poorly educated" voting base spread red across the election map, as though our democracy were exsanguinating before my eyes, I experienced this profound sense of having just walked into the wrong reality. "This can't be the right place."  It was as if we'd all been having a lovely conversation when suddenly things turned ugly all at once. "Who invited him?"

            We’d been at such a wonderful party, thrown by an awesome host, someone smart, articulate, funny, sophisticated, and wise, and his equally amazing wife and family.  Everyone seemed so comfortable and well-behaved that we may have neglected to notice some unsavory characters showing up uninvited. Or worse, we laughed them off and decided that they were merely annoyances, and that we were good and smart and superior, and most importantly we were the trusted friends of our lovely hosts. Oh sure, we didn't all agree on everything. We quarreled as good friends will, but in the end we all snacked on the sumptuous hors d'oeuvres, drank, and fell into this complacent belief that what we had was genuine solidarity and the invincible strength to endure as a party. What could possibly go wrong? After all, this was our second party. Things were running smoothly, with only a few rumblings in outer rooms by discontented friends of friends, who were only there by the grace of our host's generous invitation.

Anger

            But as we all engaged in our enlightened banter about nothing in particular, there was this shrill voice that kept crescendoing over our civil conversations. The voice was not merely loud, but repetitively chock-full of the same tired old shibboleths and hyperboles. He also pointed accusingly at some of our Muslim guests, asking why they were allowed in, and that they should have been frisked at the door. He likewise questioned or had his boys question our Latino neighbors as to whether or not they had an invitation. He didn’t even seem to understand that this was not his party, going so far as to ask our host whether or not he had been invited, demanding to see his invitation.

At a certain point, I gazed over to try to locate the source of this boorish cacophony. And I finally spotted him: a small orange butter goblin over by the dip, his blond coif an alarmingly complex comb over like a stripper's merkin, his audience an entourage of Caucasian old money and several scantily clad female teens. And while most of us were horrified by what we were hearing (much of it the same old racist garbage culled from the Saxon tradition we’d heard from a long lineage of frightened white men), his numbers seemed to be growing, as more and more people in the room gravitated toward this tiny Il Duce. At one point he even started grabbing some of women and bragging as his old boys grinned like wounds.

            And as I was desperately trying to make sense of it all, my state of shock and denial gradually transformed into a slow-burning rage: my autonomic nervous system suddenly kicked into that fight-or-flight fork in the road. "This is utter bullshit! Let's storm the fucking Bastille! Let's rise up and take our party back! To the streets! Everyone, bring torches and gasoline! This aggression will not stand, man!"  "Let's throw them out of this house pronto!"

Bargaining

             This stage didn't last long, thankfully, as I suddenly remembered that I am a lifelong pacifist. Consequently, launching a violent coup and subsequently leading the junta seemed an unlikely option. Then I thought why not convince my fellow party-goers that we need to immediately find another party (as this one was clearly polluted by a porcine herd of old, white, racist mammonites)?  "I hear Canada is lovely this time of century." "I have relatives in Italy."  "I've always wanted to see New Zealand." We would launch our own diaspora from the bondage of these invasive swine. 

Depression

            But as most flights of fancy have a habit of giving way to pragmatism, so was our short-lived plan of exodus. Besides, this was our house, our party, our conversation. It was heated at times, but always promising and civil (mostly). Whereas these interlopers were little more than an unsavory fringe who were attempting to overthrow all the work we had done. And they seemed to be succeeding.

Acceptance

            Not a chance.