Determination

Today I have one poem and two essays. The first essay makes a case for the forgiveness the poem exalts. The second essay makes the opposite case, which the poem hints at near the end. Which essay do you prefer?

• • •

“Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do,”

said Christ upon the cross, the epitome of pure forbearance.

True, if they were not so ignorant and blind,

they would not spite and hate and spit and cut and kill,

and our forgiving them, our interceding prayers,

would be the Christian way—to sacrifice the self.

But Christ could raise himself from the dark dungeon of death.

Democracy cannot. Once dead, it’s dead forever.

• • •

Essay 1

A Spacious Room

1. The Mind’s Room

The mind is like a room. Some rooms feel lived-in and welcoming, with the patina conferred by long conversation and the slow accumulation of thought. Others feel cold, sealed off, packed with certainty, and locked from the inside.

We all meet with cold minds in the course of our lives—more and more these days, when what passes for education seems to inculcate confrontation into our habits of thought. Intellectual confrontation, combativeness, and victory follow from the notion that every conversation is a contest and every idea a potential threat.

But there is another kind of thinking, less violent and more sustaining, that does not delight in argument or pitched debate or victorious certainty. It listens. It waits. It questions. It lets things settle before speaking. It tries to understand before passing judgment.

Most of us are not drawn to this kind of thinking. It is hard to be attracted to the quiet of it in a culture that delights in the clangor of battle. But some part of us still longs for it—for the open door, the long silence, the friend who says: “Tell me again, and this time I’ll listen harder.” This is where honest thinking begins, thinking does not dash recklessly toward a conclusion.

What kind of mind-rooms are we building in this nation at this time? Are they rooms that invite others to enter, or bunkers from which we broadcast our fearful certainties?

Because if thinking is a moral act—and it is—then the rooms we build matter. Their shapes determine whether we are open to honest thinking or whether we prefer to hear only the echoes of our own voices.

2. Crimestop

In his dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell coined the term crimestop for the recoil of an indoctrinated mind before a forbidden thought. He described it as an internal brake catching: a clutch, a silence, a instinctive rejection. It was a tool of the novel’s fascist state. But something like it has already taken hold among us, before we have taken the final leap into authoritarianism. It has not yet been imposed upon us. We have chosen and cultivated it.

Many of us call it conviction, courage, or faith. But often it is really fear dressed up as those virtues. Fear of being wrong. Fear of losing power. Fear of the unknown.

We have come to imagine that our worst intellectual habits are imposed from without. Algorithms make us ignorant. Cable news brainwashes us. The language police deteriorate out language, our discourse, our common sense. But the truth is simpler and harsher. We close the door from the inside. We silence ourselves. We decline the invitation to think, not because we are coerced, but because the uncertainty that accompanies diligent thinking is painful.

So we decorate our rooms with samplers of familiar talking points, with posters of own favorite slogans. Those who react to our wall hangings with the slightest unease we reader as dangerous—not just different, but rude, not just unfamiliar, but inimical.

Crimestop not only kills honest thought, it also kills honest relations. It eliminates the friction of encountering other minds. We do not need to enter someone else’s mind-room if we refuse to leave our own.

But staying at home will stunt you, and eventually starve you to death. What dies first is not intelligence. It is communion with the unfamiliar others whose ideas can move new furniture into our mind-rooms. Over time, without refurbishing, our own intellectual furniture becomes threadbare—and then falls apart.

3. The Violence of Certainty

Certainty makes us feel anchored. It offers the appearance of conviction without the labor of inquiry. But unexamined and intransigent certainty is a kind of violence—the quiet brutality of scornful rejection. Certainty without humility is contempt. And contempt is contagious.

Arrogant, unintelligent ignorance is despicable enough. But intelligently wielding ignorance is much worse. Those who measure intelligence by how swiftly they can dismantle an opposing position confuse dominance with insight. On television and on the internet, in classrooms, around dinner tables, we act out habitually this performative intellectual dominance. But behind the sharp-edged performance, unknown to the actors themselves, lies exhaustion. The reenactment of the performance is thin, unsatisfying.

This is because we really long to be understood, much more than we want to be correct. Always demanding to be right offers no warmth or welcome. And the one who demands it suffers the loneliness of a well-defended mind. There is cold comfort in having built walls of one’s mind-room too thick for anyone else to penetrate.

If confrontation is our reflex, then we are not thinking, we are posturing. In the shadow of determined certainty, cooperation and mutual respect exit the room.

4. Words as Bridges

Words are the tools we use to reach one another or to repel one another. In our confrontational default mode, we mark our meaning, post warnings, prohibit trespassing. We call it precision and discipline, but it is really fear—fear of contamination, fear of contradiction, fear of being forced to share the same world if we share the same words.

So we abandon them. Liberals give up “patriotism.” Conservatives distort “freedom.” “Truth” becomes purely subjective, and therefore completely irrelevant. “Tradition” becomes an excuse for injustice. “Science” becomes a sneering expletive.

Words are not weapons. They are bridges—fragile, perhaps, but still capable of carrying freight when traversed carefully. When a term is distorted, the remedy is not rejection but repair. We reclaim words not through rhetorical force but through patient, consistent use—in complete thoughts, in full context, in daily life.

A word like “family” need not exclude. A word like “nation” need not intimidate. If they do so now, we need to reclaim them through ordinary conversations—in schools, in churches, in town squares, in chat rooms, at home.

Language requires stewardship. That means resisting the urge to sensationalize, refusing to surrender complexity for convenience, and remaining engaged even when dialogue is frustrating.

That is how language becomes usable again—not by reclaiming it in theory, but by practicing it in public. That is how we refurbish the bridge.

5. Honesty as Communion

Another word that we have corrupted is “honesty.” It has become a weapon in our confrontational arsenal. The cruder, meaner, more demeaning, more violent our expression, the more “honest” we consider it—as though we are only honest when we spew our vilest inner thoughts.

Of course, this is a bastardization. Honesty is not an assault. It is an encouragement to communion—a demonstration of one’s willingness to show up without disguise.

Montaigne wrote that lying is a baleful vice because it breaks the bond of community. “It is only our words,” he said, “which bind us together and make us human.” But we use words like armor, to defend, to intimidate, to strike. Rarely do we use them as open windows to our minds.

And yet, honesty asks for precisely that. It prompts us to say what we mean without imposture or performative presence. It motivates us to open our minds to good faith interpretation, even when we are uncertain whether there is any good faith around us.

In public life, this kind of honesty is nearly extinct. We reward outrageous confidence that does not even try to hide its ignorance. We reward violent bombast that disdains and scoffs at truth. We cheer extravagant, even impossible, assertions so long as they are brayed without a trace of doubt.

But doubt is not defeat. It is a form of reverence. It signifies that we recognize the existence of others, that we do not have the unilateral privilege to impose our language upon the world. It is a gift, a gesture of recognition, a small repair in the shared room of the mind.

When we lie or manipulate language we withdraw from that shared space. We exit the room. And outside the room is not a community, but a crowd of strangers, shouting and refusing to listen to others.

Honesty is not just a virtue. It is a way to remain in the room together.

6. The Grace of Listening

There is a simulated sort of listening that is actually just waiting to attack . It nods while it prepares its rebuttal. Many of us listen in this way. It is the listening of politics, of debate, of cocktail-party one-upsmanship. It bristles with porcupine quills. And it keeps us apart.

But there is another kind of listening that lets the defenses drop, a listening that allows space for others, that recognizes their independent dignity. It is not passive or weak or fawning. It simply receives and gives freely. It says silently: You do not need to fight me to be heard.

This kind of listening is rare, because it is exposed. It asks us to suspend judgment, to assume good will on the part of others before adopting a defensive stance. It asks us to release the straightjacket of demanding to be right. It asks us to make room for discomfort, for the uncomfortable pensive pauses that indicate the activity of actual thought.

But the reward for this discomfort is clarity—not the clarity of certainty, but the clarity of care. When someone listens to us in this way, we do not feel defeated—we feel seen. The room grows larger. The accessories seem more inviting. The contest is suspended in favor of a shared search.

The silence of such listening is not merely the absence of speech. It is a deliberate choice, a discipline of humane forbearance, a signal that we are confident enough in our shared responsibilities not to interrupt. In the current climate of rampant, noisy overconfidence, restraint is an extraordinary act of attention.

Listening in this way makes peace audible, invites others to remain open in our presence, rejects the discourtesy of dominance for the considerateness of civility. In the sunlight of its grace, understanding has the energy to grow.

7. A New Threshold

In our time, the threshold to every mind-room is double-locked. Even if the locks are turned back, the room is filled with protective paraphernalia, screens for concealment, corners for retreat. We regard our ideological prejudices as our rightful inheritance, and our inheritance as our inalienable property.

But none of this is necessary.

The room of the mind—the room of the nation—is threadbare, but not yet derelict. The door is still open. What bars entry is simply prideful habit.

We do not need new weapons. We need new habits: the habitual courage to say, “I do not know, but I am willing to learn,” the habitual humility to say, “I see it differently, but I’m still listening,” the grace to say, “You are welcome here, even if we never agree.”

These are not gestures of surrender. They are gestures of sovereignty—the kind that values shared inquiry over isolated victory. They respect difference and dignify the shared discovery of truth.

We cannot rebuild trust by defeating one another, but only by first seeing, and then internalizing, the truth that defeating one another is self-defeating. We must learn that the nation’s mind-room is not an arena for confrontation, but a chamber for cooperation.

If we have the courage to cross the threshold unarmed, we will find that room seems different, warmer, more welcoming, more spacious—a generous space for living.

• • •

Essay 2

A Table Demolished

After the war, Americans believed in shared rule. We disagreed—often sharply, sometimes bitterly—but we accepted the need to argue, to bargain, to yield. That belief held us together: democracy was not contention, but conversation. That belief is gone. The table we used to gather around has not just been abandoned. It has been deliberately demolished by a political faction that no longer believes in shared power. Its adherence have no interest in compromise. They want obedience. And yet, even now, decent people keep reaching out, trying to be civil, trying to listen harder, hoping for a return of good faith. This is not a conversation anymore. It is a siege—and the ones pounding on the door have come to take, not to talk.

This has happened before. When the Confederacy left the Union, it did not go quietly. It announced its purpose with howling rage: it would not remain in a nation where slavery could be abolished. Denied the total power it demanded, it chose war. That impulse—the preference for violence over compromise—never disappeared. It put on a suit, quoted scripture, conned the public, gained power, and passed unjust, one-sided laws. But the motive was the same: rule or ruin. Today’s authoritarian right inherits that legacy. It flies the same flags, speaks the same language of grievance and victimhood, and clings to the same belief: that equality is an attack, and that power, attained by any means, must never be shared.

The right still speaks the language of democracy. But it uses that language like a crowbar—to pry open the system and tear it apart from within. It cries “free speech” while spreading lies, demands “religious liberty” while imposing religious doctrine, preaches “law and order” while pardoning insurrectionists. It rails against “tyranny” while subverting elections. They neither mean nor believe what they say. They throw their base the meat it loves to eat, then they do whatever feeds their own insatiable hunger for power.

Democracy depends on mutual restraint. We accept limits so others can live free. We follow rules not because they favor us, but because they benefit everyone. The authoritarian right rejects this. It treats rules as weapons, not limits, as cudgels they use to beat their opponents. When the right wins, it changes the rules to cement control. When it loses, it breaks the rules to claw back control. It turns rules into threats. We can no longer pretend we are governing together. To do so any longer is not civic decency. It is surrender.

To understand the modern right, look past its slogans to its postures. It claims victimhood while it punches down. It complains about repressed speech while it shouts loudest in every forum. It demands deference and offers none. It craves respect while it requires obedience. This is the psychology of victim-bullies: they strike first, cry loudest, and insist that any attempt to hold them accountable is an attack. Their primary tactic is reversal—crying persecution while inflicting it. And when the reversal is rejected, they grow more vicious.

For decades, we have tried to meet the right with understanding. We have tempered our opposition, softened our language, and explained our values reasonably. We convinced ourselves that showing empathy would lead to compromise. We have made excuses: “They’re hurting.” “They’ve been left behind.” “They’re just afraid.” But they interpreted decency as weakness. They answered reasoning with hostility. They escalated. They shouted louder. They pushed further. They abandoned persuasion when persuasion failed—and turned instead to dominance. Now they want the final word—and the coercive power to force others into silence.

We are not in a conversation. We are in a fight to preserve self-rule. Cooperation will not return by staying calm while the right violates the law. It will not return through civility toward those who excuse—and often commit—political violence. Democracy will not be restored until those who seek to destroy it are defeated. They demand consequences for others. Let them face their own. Until they are bound by the rules they break, there can be no trust. Until they are defeated, peace is impossible.

It is morally self-satisfying to talk of healing, of spacious rooms, of open doors. But you cannot share a table with someone who takes a sledgehammer to it before you even sit down. Nor can you safely share a room with an arsonist. We must rebuild, but first we must clear away the rubble—including those who made cooperation impossible. Only then can we try again.

We do not need endless war. But we do need truth. And the truth is this: we are not divided because we argued. We are divided because one side abandoned argument and turned to subjugation. That side must lose clearly, unmistakably, and soon if this country is to speak again with one voice—the voice of liberty.