Reverend Graham and the clear view

I received a stunning amount of clarity from an unlikely source this week. It’s always fascinating to learn things from people I strongly disagree with. It doesn’t happen often (or often enough?). But I don’t think I’m alone. In this age of bunker idealism it’s hard for an opposing voice to break through. 

I have Rev. Franklin Graham to thank for that. Graham, a fierce Trump supporter and partisan loyalist, is not someone whose views I admire. He’s on record as having said that Islam is a religion of hatred. He boosted “birther” theories about President Barack Obama. He’s supported President Trump on a range of contentious issues from Charlottesville to Stormy Daniels.

But Franklin Graham was in the news for a different reason this week. His father, the Rev. Billy Graham, died at 99. Billy Graham was a cultural icon when I was growing up, a beacon for the faithful. He’s often viewed as a prime influence for the Christian conservatism that remains a major force in American politics today. In the summaries of Billy Graham's life work, it was noted that he became somewhat uncomfortable with this mantle over time. He eventually expressed regret over some of his actions earlier in his career when, as an advisor to presidents, he may have been too partisan.

Virtually every article about Billy Graham’s death also mentioned his son Franklin Graham, the heir apparent to his father’s religious legacy. Franklin Graham has no fondness for political impartiality and has been unafraid to align himself publicly with President Trump. The differing approaches of the two men are detailed in The New York Times article, “Billy Graham Warned Against Embracing a President. His Son Has Gone Another Way.” 

This piece explores the nagging issue that many Christians grapple with when it comes to Trump. How can a man so seemingly devoid of Christian values be a representative of the Christian faith? Graham explained his support for Trump this way, “That doesn’t mean he is the greatest example of the Christian faith, and neither am I, but he defends the faith,” he said. “There’s a difference between defending the faith and living the faith.”

I found this to be an incredibly lucid description of why human beings cling so fiercely to their idols. Somehow, we don’t expect our politicians to live their ideals — just to fight for them. Granted, Trump lives this divergence writ large. He doesn’t appear to be even trying to live the ideals of Christianity.

But this simple explanation illustrates why people support President Trump with such vengeance. In other words, we believe what we believe. We know what we believe. And we aspire to those beliefs regardless of how we get there or who leads us.

When I read the quote from Franklin Graham ("defending the faith" versus "living the faith"), I had a surprising first reaction: I thought of President Clinton. How many Democrats shrugged when Clinton had an affair with an intern in the White House, then lied about it repeatedly? For a large swath of the American public, it didn’t matter how Clinton acted personally. They believed in his ability to make the country better because they liked his policies. Diehard Clinton supporters said it was none of anyone else’s business how he acted in his personal relationships.

Heaven knows, there was enough evidence of Clinton’s infidelities before he was elected. Like Trump, Clinton’s transgressions were well known to the voters who put him in office. Still, Clinton managed to successfully present himself as a God-fearing man, a church goer. A defender of the working class. A friend of African Americans. Clinton supporters embraced the politics and turned a blind eye to the unsavory personal behaviors. They bet on the fact that Clinton was a good politician who’d be good for the country. And he largely was. Remember that booming economy?

We can certainly argue about the relative egregiousness of Trump’s flaws versus Clinton’s. I believe that Trump’s personal inadequacies seep far more into his presidential duties than Clinton’s ever did — and that it does matter to policy making and effective leadership (for example, taunting a foreign leader).

But let’s not argue that point for now. I’m looking to find common ground by listening to people who don’t think like I do. I want to understand how to move forward in some way that resembles unity. We can learn things, all the time, from anyone. But we have to put ourselves in a position to listen.

For now, I’m surprisingly grateful to Franklin Graham for illuminating a paradox so concisely. Americans have a long tradition of separating the person from the policies when it comes to electing politicians. And while many of us are particularly rankled by the mean-spiritedness, inappropriateness, and unpredictability of our current President’s personal style, other Americans have simply accepted the fact that they didn’t elect the man. They elected a fierce defender of the policies they believe in. We’ve all chosen our politicians in the same way from time to time. Consequences be damned.

Finding the end zone in the new America

After watching The Florida Project last weekend, I’ve been thinking a lot about endings. The film’s final scene left me almost suspended in the story, unable to fully grasp all its possible meanings as I watched the credits roll. I couldn’t shake the final frames that portrayed fleeting moments in the characters’ lives: a hopeful fantasy merged with a painful reality. It's an ending you can craft to fit your own interpretation of the film, a sort of perfectly ambiguous finale that plays like a dream (or not), depending on your point of view.

The story centers on a single mom and her six-year-old daughter, Moonee, who live in the shadows of Disney World and in the margins of society. A bright purple motel dubbed the Magic Castle, where they live in a single room, forms the backdrop for their daily struggles to find viable sources of food, shelter, and clothing. They eek out an existence on poverty’s edge, relying on each other’s ingenuity while thwarted by their own frailties and impossible odds.

Moonee’s mom makes plenty of questionable choices that make her character hard to like, but her predicament is easy enough to understand. We’re reeled into her hardships without a lot of judgment. We get her. Moonee is a bit of a revelation. She and her buddies manage to retain the playfulness of youth with an imagination that floats above the adults around them, whether licking ice cream cones, playing hide and seek, or vandalizing private property. It all seems strangely of a piece.

So much seems familiar — the Magic Kingdom fireworks at night; the large green road signs directing traffic to Seven Dwarfs Lane; the sherbet-colored condos that sit perennially unoccupied. The closeness to Disney’s fabricated Main Street only underscores how the American dream seems desperately out of reach for Moonee and her mom.

Written and directed by Sean Baker (Tangerine), the film’s ending has sparked a lot of discussion (Spoiler alert from here!). Shot on an iPhone, the final sequence feels grittier and more animated than the rest of the film, which was shot in smooth 35mm. The pacing is faster; the soundtrack bursts with music for the first time in the film. The characters move and act differently. The final moments nearly force the audience to take notice. We know something extraordinary is happening, but we’re not quite sure what.

If you only saw a clip of the film’s ending out of context, it may seem like a breathless race through Disney World by a couple of kids on a fun getaway. But in the context of the film, it’s something quite different. It plays like a desperate rush into the heart of capitalism, searching for a happy ending that we know to be elusive.

Imagine what you will. Disney has never seemed more hollow and out of touch. While this symbol of commercialism delivers the Magic Kingdom as a fantasy escape, Moonee can’t live in that world any more than she can continue to live in the cheap motel she calls home. What she doesn’t know is that it’s not even worth aspiring to. Flights of fancy come to an end eventually, even expensive, glittery ones.

These days, it’s the end to our great America project that I can’t stop thinking about. Like so many Americans, I just want our divisive storyline to come to a conclusion. But when a White House attacks its own country’s leaders and institutions, what comes next? Exactly what is happening? It feels as painful and ambiguous as any tipping point can be. There's no script for this.

When this era comes to an end (and it will), I wonder if it will be an ending we can all agree on, in a place that feels real. Or will the context we’ve constructed for ourselves make us interpret the result of this troubled time in different, incompatible ways. That’s the scariest thought — that the deep fissures in our society will stay with us for decades, long after President Trump leaves office.

Trump declared a new American moment in his State of the Union address, but I see it differently; I see a renewed America project. We are still a young country, struggling to find our way, Like the weary, restless characters in The Florida Project, we just want to get by and get along. The first step may be to decide exactly what we are running from, or to.

Right now, my wants are simple. I want to be able to talk with my friends and neighbors about why it’s important to question a president’s actions as possible obstruction of justice; any president. I want to be able to explore the question of constitutional crisis without being called a Trump hater. I want to call out the mean-spirited, distorted rhetoric that we’ve all started to take for granted as a part of our public discourse.

We may only be able to recognize the end of this era when we look back. But there is much we can do now to construct how we want the ending to play out. How can we escape the mess we're in and live as respectful Americans together? What does that look like? Let's lay the groundwork for that now. Cue the music. It's time.

Fumbling my way into a new year

I packed up Christmas early this year. Unhooked the ornaments from the tree, took the jingly wooden Santa off the doorknob, removed my daughter’s stained-glass Christmas tree, the one she made in middle school, from its special spot in the kitchen window over the sink. I stored the mementos, glass bulbs, and Christmas lights neatly in the basement, with the kind of efficiency I often attribute to spring cleaning or washing my car. Things I have to do, but offer little pleasure, so I do them as quickly as possible.

I didn’t even spend much time decorating the tree this year. My daughter did it for me, one snowy afternoon while I was napping on the couch. I would have been happy to help, but I’m glad she took over this year. My heart was not into it. It wasn’t my only festive absence. The nutcrackers that usually adorn my mantel stayed stashed in plastic bins. One small, half-dying poinsettia sat on my dining room table. The season just seemed flat, like champagne without a tight cork, promising a celebratory zeal but delivering something far less.

I knew in early December, as I put tiny wreaths on the front windows of my house, that I was searching for the Christmas spirit and coming up short. I tried to rally. I wrapped presents with sparklier bows. I gave to more charitable organizations. I emptied my pockets for the grocery-store bell ringers. I handed out homemade Christmas cookies to a wider variety of neighbors and friends. I soaked in the anticipation of the two little girls who live across the street as they counted down to Christmas day with glistening eyes.

But the fact remains: Despite a year filled with good health and relative happiness, 2017 is a year that I can’t wait to leave behind. I have no real grievances to count. Not like my junior year in high school when my Mom came home from the hospital on Christmas Eve with a fresh mastectomy, and I was terrified she might die. Not like the Christmas that I had to tell my daughter that her father and I were divorcing after 26 years of marriage. And certainly not like when our family was forced to stare down the holidays the first year after my ex-husband’s suicide.

Which is a long way of saying, I’ve had far worse years. In strict accounting terms, 2017 wasn’t half bad. I stuck to a better diet and lost weight. I shared a long lazy week on Lake Ontario with my extended family and they are all healthy and well. My niece and her husband are expecting a baby, the first in that generation, and our family is ecstatic about the new arrival. I traveled more than usual to visit friends. I dodged numerous layoffs at the company I work for, and a new tax bill promises to leave more money in my paycheck next year.

And still the uneasiness remains. It permeates my consciousness like the subzero cold that has gripped Northern New England this holiday season. I can’t warm to the chill. And this chill is multi-pronged: emotional, psychological, maybe even spiritual.

I feel like I’m in mourning, and I can’t quite shake it. Because despite my wanting to close the door on 2017, I fear that 2018 won’t be a whole lot different. Celebrating the new year feels like a hoax. We’ll still be living in a polarized American society in which it’s difficult to have honest conversations about what really matters to us. And we’ll still be led by a man who is crass and unpredictable and lacks the moral authority that the position demands.

Worse yet, I can’t share this deep distress with virtually half the nation because they simply don’t see things the way I do. Where they see smaller government, I see the cementing of the haves and have-nots. Where they see regulatory reforms that help businesses prosper, I see an assault on our environment and citizen protections. Where they see fake news, I see the last, best hope for truth in a civilized society. I pray that we can at least agree on the inappropriate behavior of the man in the oval office when he berates and belittles anyone he choses with a quick tweet.

Hours from the new year, I’m still searching for the spirit of the season. To believe. To have faith. I want to breathe it in deeply as sustenance against the onslaught of the frantic, uncertain governance that marked 2017 and will likely launch 2018.

Mine is a simple quest for unity, not of policies, but of the national spirit. This usually requires a leader who knows how to—and wants to—unite his people. In lieu of this, we are left with a humbling responsibility as individual citizens: to know when to listen and when to speak up in the service of essential discourse that arcs toward peace.

As the holiday season winds down with no real respite to the ongoing agitation in sight, I feel depleted. And yet I look to the future with what loosely resembles hope. Because it’s human … and daunting … and frightening … and necessary.

It's a new year. Anything is possible.