Square World

I keep thinking that the election of Trump has turned us all into conservatives.

I mean “conservative” in a more old-fashioned (and I think truer) sense than what is generally thought. I don’t mean Republican — the Republican party is a radical reactionary party, not at all conservative.

I mean that we liberals and progressives have learned that national respect for truth, expertise, and empiricism is something we’re in danger of losing. It’s not a given. We can’t take rule of law for granted; we can’t assume our institutions won’t fly apart.

Everything good we’ve built is also the foundation on which further progress is made.

The fight right now is to preserve those good things.

* * *

When I was 16 years old I wanted to épater la bourgeoisie and grow up to be a writer (I kind of did) and wear all black (I often do) and smoke Galouises (I never do).

I was in favor of burning down everything and rebuilding a just civilization from scratch. Barring that, I just wanted to be seen as a guy in favor of that kind of thing. :)

But now, at age 49, it seems like I just want people to accept facts and science, and to stop lying.

* * *

At 16 years old I had contempt for the people who were slow and careful, who dotted i’s and crossed t’s, whose watchword was diligence, who displayed patience, who played the long game.

After all, every second of delay was another broken heart. Every minute was unjust.

But I was a bullshit artist at that age, and I didn’t know or care that it took work — slow, steady, and unglamorous — to build good things that are hard to break.

And while I worry like crazy about our nation, I have some faith — because I choose to, because it’s the moral choice — that the square world that I used to hate, that I now love, will get the job done.

I don’t mean just Robert Mueller and his investigation, though I do include him. I mean all the people working — most of them quietly, some flashily, but all with care and good faith — toward preserving what we have, so that we can resume our long journey toward living up to our founding ideals.

* * *

What we have of national goodness, so incompletely realized, is fragile.

This Fourth of July I thank Square World for their work, and hope to be able to say of myself that I am part of that world.