GUEST POST: Weeping, Wailing & Wonder
The global and local politics of empathy, ethics and resistance | february13.2025
EDITOR’S NOTE: In the year ahead during these deeply troubling times for America, WestVirginiaVille.com will feature guests posts from thoughtful folk with some connection to West Virginia. The essay below is part one of a series by Jeff Seager, who in his other role on my writing sites has been a great help in offering editing and feedback. Today, he steps forward with his own byline, reflecting on the turbulence and tumult roiling the country daily.~ Douglas John Imbrogno
Text and Photos by Jeff Seager for WestVirginiaville | february13.2025 |
PART ONE: A Reflection on First Principles
This is about us, not me, but let me begin precisely here: I am an old white guy who is sick and tired of other old white guys telling everyone what to do, how to live, who to love and where to go.
You may have noticed the other day that we Americans, without prosecutors or public presentations of evidence, deported a bunch of guys who somebody thinks are criminals. We sent them to Guantanamo, the same place where suspected and un-tried terrorists have been imprisoned for more than 20 years, because in that place they are quite deliberately beyond the reach of justice.
To be clear, when I say “we Americans,” I mean Donald J. Trump, the 45th and, now, (God help us) 47th President of these disunited states, acting bizarrely on our behalf but not in our short-term or long-term interest. Nor in the interest, say, of actual justice. It is not a heavy lift to assert that a vast majority of Americans would be better served by a president and a Congress focused on work that actually improves our lot in life. But this year, that’s not what we got in the Cracker Jack box of time. With all this in mind, even before this business with Guantanamo, I recently went to Washington, D.C., to try to encourage my members of Congress not to be utter stooges. More about that, I reckon, in Part Two of this tale. Today we speak generally of the ethics and evolution of resistance.
FACTS IN EVIDENCE
Here’s a Fun Fact. The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 was passed to guard against future presidential overreach after FDR issued a bunch of executive orders that conservatives of the time found hard to swallow. They wanted to keep that from happening again. But, my, how reliably and slowly that pendulum swings, and here we are again. As clearly as in 1946, the law’s original text prohibits presidential actions that would be commonly seen as “arbitrary and capricious.” (These are the exact words used.) So imma just going to bypass any opportunity for anyone to offer an alternative view, and tell you unequivocally that each and every act this guy has undertaken after he walked into the Oval this year has been both arbitrary and capricious. Prove me wrong.
No one weeps for the wicked, but the sweeping arrests undertaken by this new administration are beyond cruel and unusual punishment for those possibly illegal (but un-prosecuted, and therefore not guilty) immigrants, and for all of us. Like much else this New York real estate fraudster is doing, and has always done, these acts are shameful and, yes, illegal, and, yes, unconstitutional. (Don’t take my word for it. Ask any first-year law student, any local attorney, any Supreme Court Justice.) And while the wheels of justice grind slowly, Elon Musk and his Muskrat Pack do not.
Why won’t someone shame them? Between Feb. 4 and Feb. 10, I walked the halls of the U.S. Congress for three days to ask that question again and again. I sought to encourage opposition Democrats and shame the intransigent Republicans. To no avail, as any savvy citizen may have guessed, because in the Grand Scheme of Life I am nobody. And again, notwithstanding, I will assert without fear of contradiction that I am a 68-year-old white guy, and my knees are killing me. But not, I insist, from begging.
THE SMUGNESS IS THE POINT
As we watched from the public gallery in the Senate, an unbroken line of Republicans smugly strutted and sought to shame their Democratic colleagues for daring to take an earnest stand for decency and truth. They confirmed the appointment of Russell Vought, architect of Project 2025, and did nothing to constrain the unelected maniacal meddlers who have slashed and burned the foundational knowledge of our democracy that is stored in the obscure tables of hitherto secure relational databases. This shame will forever darken the legacies of every Republican Senator now in office, if indeed they are remembered as anything other than traitors. They have betrayed all of us, even themselves, for the modern equivalent of 30 pieces of silver.
Too strong? I have not even come close to running out of metaphor and analogy (so, of course, mansplainer that I am, I win). The 1919 Chicago White Sox (aka the Black Sox) will be revered as heroes again before the names of these senators are spoken by anyone in a voice other than a low, seething hiss. And you know it, dear reader. You know it.
So yeah, I’m an old white guy who in fact looks enough like the Grifter-In-Chief that the ubiquitous algorithms sometimes mistake me for him. And just like him I get a pass, being an old white guy, as I enjoy the unearned benefits of old men in charge. People call me ‘Sir‘ and defer to me at times and in places where I feel unworthy of that honor. What a burden! I’m only half joking. My heart hurts when I look around and see my brothers and sisters treated badly because they don’t look like me, or because they speak differently or don’t express love in the same way I do.
The popular narrative these days supports all these distinctions, these excuses for discounting the humanity of people in our own extended family. (We can talk more about that someday, but right now it’s a distraction from the center ring of this political theater-in-the-round.) We diminish also the value of our water and air, and all other resources that sustain us. The cynical political narrative conjured by neo-con think tanks is as twisted and distorted as a tree that grows in the crevices of a rock. You can’t believe this stuff just because it’s a compelling narrative (which it is). You have to do some thinking for yourself. It isn’t the exercise of reason that we hear the bloody right wing incessantly claim they champion. It is un-reason. And unreasonable.
Old white guys have been running things for a while, and our track record is not great. How these men believe they can make anything great is far beyond my reckoning. Like corporations, an unfettered and unregulated man is always much more likely to screw things up in just the way any male child takes something apart and fails miserably to put it back together again. I did it when I was a child. Many men still do it because they never grew up. Or, more pointedly, they never grew a soul. And a person without a soul is a terrible thing, whether you are inside that skin or out here having to cope with its anguished insults.
WHAT WE ONCE DID
Then there are the corporations, an inevitably masculine construct. What a joke that they seek to control and prey upon the people they once were thought to accommodate and support. They would do better if we regulated them as we once did, but they have fought for 40 years or more to shake off those restraints, just as a two-year-old fights to get his unreasonable way with you. And then, because we were not good parents, good stewards of the public trust, the two-year-olds won and we are now at the mercy of toddlers. (If you’ve ever owned a toddler, you know that they have no mercy. Ask how I know.)
This is not a joke, but a deeply dishonorable and sinister arrow to the heart of our nation. (Happy Bloody Valentine’s Day, America!) Meanwhile, the Senate majority on the floor gloat and strut and laugh at us. They could be imagining and inventing new possibilities for this nation’s future. Where are the people who once believed, as the author Ray Bradbury imagined, that we should constantly be jumping off cliffs and building our wings on the way down? Where are the people who believe in The People?
We did once. Do you remember? Interstate highways. Dams to generate power and to protect us from floods. Transcontinental railroads. We were great, but not like this. And it had to be scary for our grandparents to take those risks, but it was probably so worth it for them to endure the momentary fear that the fall itself would be fatal. (Looking back, it all feels worth that risk to me now.)
And in all the great and high-functioning ancient indigenous tribes, it was our mothers and grandmothers who civilized us, who served as overseers, who guided policy and practice. And this loving practice is the key that is so often obliterated by the demands of corporate feudalism and — dare we at last say aloud — fascism.
There’s no reason to be dismayed by that. This fact is just a thing, and we can change things. And we must. We may be better equipped for that than any other living organism. But we may have forgotten how, and we may now fail to understand that the time for action is indeed in this moment or never at all.
Let’s consider the possibility that it may be our mothers, or perhaps our daughters, who save us from this rapid descent into madness. All the mothers, maybe. All the daughters. Give them the keys. The power. They have so much practice in getting it right; how, pray tell me, is this a gamble?
Life has always been a practice, and not until recent generations was it a race to own the most stuff. Just as God is a practice, and not some kind of merit badge or other tangible assertion that we’re inherently virtuous. And for some reason, women have often intuitively understood all this and men (usually) do not. Also, did I mention that I’m a 68-year-old man? I think I may be qualified to self-assess in this matter.
LETTER FROM THE PAST
Maybe it is a a weird time to call upon Chinese wisdom, considering modern China’s seeming determination to own us. But we need all the wisdom we can gather now from the threshing-room floor, so …
‘One who has a man’s wings
And a woman’s also
Is in himself a womb of the world’
And, being a womb of the world,
Continuously, endlessly
Gives birth;
One who, preferring light,
Prefers darkness also
Is in himself an image of the world
And, being an image of the world,
Is continuously, endlessly
The dwelling of creation;
One who is highest of men
And humblest also
Is in himself a valley of the world,
And being a valley of the world,
Continuously, endlessly
Conducts the one source
From which vessels may be usefully filled;
Servants of the state are such vessels,
To be filled from undiminishing supply.
~ LaoTse, from the Tao Teh Ching (Way of Life) translated by Witter Bynner
This guy left us that lesson about 27 centuries ago, just as he left his prestigious government job and retired to a simpler life. Unlike the present day, the emperor he served gave him ample notice and compensation. An American poet then gave us this lush translation. If we ever learned that lesson or any other from LaoTse, we here in the West never applied it much. But we are endlessly born and endlessly dying too, and we might do well to remember that as we go.
We will be seen. We will be known. We will be held accountable as we always were, as we should be. Choose wisely as you move through this world right now, brothers and sisters.
There’s an antidote for this insanity we witness around us. The word we use most often for it is ‘love.’ So let’s choose now to live with honor, without regret. To love with our whole hearts. To extend that love if we can to the world and the people in it. Live in the light, shunning darkness and hate. It won’t be the first thing we tried, or failed at, or wished we could accomplish against great odds.
Do this now for the community that is our nation. We will need each other sooner than you may know.
Jeff Seager is a native West Virginian who returned to the state in 1991 after a long absence and against stern advice to the contrary. He lives in South Charleston, where he awaits the invasion of the MAGA horde with an arsenal of marshmallows to slow their progress up the steep steps of his hillside home. Jeff’s photos are all from his weeklong visit to the U.S. Capitol in February, 2025.
Jeff’s piece makes a lotsa sense. Thanks!