Listening to 22-year old, Los Angeles poet Amanda Gorman read her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of President Joe Biden last Wednesday, I was struck by what I saw as her brilliant understanding of the politics of hope and mercy v. the politics of fear and vitriol. Her savvy is embodied in two sets of lines: First, “where can we find light in this never-ending shade?” and, second, “being American is more than a pride we inherit, /it’s the past we step into/ and how we repair it.”
She reminded me of another political theory, one that combines physics with successful gamesmanship — Newton’s third law of motion (every action has an equal and opposite reaction), with the successful gaming strategy of “nice, tit for tat.” This may sound a bit far afield, but that’s what happens sometimes when poetry takes hold of us — it energizes us to start thinking for ourselves again.
Gorman helped me see that former President Trump’s “legacy” may well be the exact opposite of what he, and his growling hordes, would have it be. His four years of outrageous and mean-spirited bully speech, his coddling of white supremacists and other racists, his grotesque sexism, his xenophobia, his profound disrespect for environmental science and public health dangers of climate change and his fatal fumbling in response to the COVID pandemic are all actions that have resulted in the opposite reaction of revitalizing of the American liberal tradition.
And Trump inciting his followers to violently take over Congress, and perhaps even capture and assassinate members of the House and Senate, turns out to have been such a boneheaded and heartless over-reaction to a liberal victory that it, too, re-energized the fading will and altruism of many Americans and left Trump with an unforgettable and unforgivable legacy of blood and death, the ugly stain of which will always be unavoidable when his name is mentioned.
Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of motion is what makes airplanes fly and, it could be argued, political cultures evolve. For the third law to be productive, however, the reaction to every action must be equal in its opposition. In an airplane, the airfoil of a wing deflects air downward, and in reaction the wing is pushed upward. If the action and reaction aren’t equal, a destructive turbulence replaces the uplift of flight. And as we’ve seen, when that happens in a culture of opposites, like ours, the political turbulence can be horrendously dangerous.
Trumpism was an extension of years of liberal bashing that was never quite extreme enough to coalesce a strong liberal reaction. The right sought to intimidate the left; it sort of worked for a while, but in the end the actions of Trump and his mob were so extreme that the reactions were overwhelming.
It turned out that way because the extremist right misapplied the most successful game theory of all — that of “nice, tit for tat.” The only cardinal sin in that approach, and the one that brings ruin, is if you escalate. The theory rests on starting out “nice,” and then responding, retaliating, in proportion — every action met by an equal and opposite reaction, and then returning back to “nice.” When you escalate, the other side has no choice but to do so too, and the whole process swirls madly out of your control.
Trump, the enflamed Twitterer, escalated the liberal/conservative split in America immediately upon taking office. And he brought ruin on himself and his party. His nasty bullying behavior created an empowering reaction, one that was solid, organized, decent and non-hysteric, like President Joe Biden himself, who knows the game and how to play it.
And now young people on the left have been politically activated in a way that I haven’t seen in years, energized to lift American politics from its mire of cynicism, voter suppression, dumbed-down education, ideological truculence, reactionary distrust of science and political hopelessness and withdrawal.
Amanda Gorman saw what happened and described the possibilities in these lines from her wonderful rap cadenced poem:
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright.
Joe Biden at 77, has enough young blood left in him to turn to a 22-year old poet with a social and political genius to speak across generations, demolish ageism and racism in the same poetic breath and give us hope, and more — the inspired will power to get back to work once again “aflame and unafraid” and help make our country, “A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold,/fierce and free,” a country “better than the one we were left with,” raising “this wounded world into a wondrous one…”
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
(Image by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff)
Yes, what happens when poetry takes hold of us and energizes us to start thinking for ourselves again! Let’s hear it for a president humble and receptive enough to take wisdom from a 22-year-old poet and a young poet courageous enough to speak her truth to millions!
Thanks, Barrett, for another great meditation. I read every week as part of my Monday morning coffee ritual and think we’re having breakfast. but I rarely comment on this page, as you know. Forgive me for being out-of-touch.
I was happy to see you write on Amanda Gorman, because, for me, her poem was the most important part of the ceremony. As a friend of mine, Tim Cahill, summed it up:, it was “Part sermon, part prayer, part song, part rap, totally tremendous.” I also liked the fact that you singled out the line “where can we find light in this never-ending shade?” A person of our age and more pedestrian sensibilities would have automatically written “darkness” as the counterpart to “light.” It’s embedded in the culture and, if you grew up Christian, it’s the ur-metaphor of Genesis. We understand the meaning of “shade”, of course, but across generations, that is to say, how my granddaughters would read this, to “throw shade” on someone is to express contempt obliquely, without taking a person down by name, but in context it is understood explicitly by the audience. It is the form a political “dog whistle” takes, albeit dog whistles are less cool and more crude. It is how people who claim not-to-be-racist talk. And it is a major tool of the language we’ve heard from Trump, whether he understands the implications or not. He does get it as a defensive gambit. As such, it is the language of “plausible deniability.” Steve Cohen talked about Trump’s oblique language in testimony. As in organized crime, one never speaks explicitly, but via metaphor, always distant from the act. Eli Wallach, playing Don Altobello in Godfather III, gives a memorable example: “I have a stone in my shoe. You can remove it.” “Shade” is the opposite of insults spoken in “doing the dozens” or in “talking trash,” both of which are in your face. “Shade” is subtle, yet understood. People do it in their peer groups, and some do it on a national scale, as we saw on January 6, where shade was thrown on our Capitol, our legislative bodies’ deliberations, our elections, our democracy, and by further implication, shade was thrown on specific people, with Pelosi being the big target. No, “shade,” not “darkness,” is the word, and a young, brilliant poet would know that. A complex word, speaking to you and me in a kind of literal sense but speaking to her own generation with a richer texture, one which says to them to understand the language you hear, understand the shadings of words, understand the violence that lurks behind the casual offhand remark. Root it out. Be the light that exposes it.
Had the term and meaning been in use at the turn of the 17th century, Shakespeare would have used it in a heartbeat.
This poem will take its place in the roster of great American verse and someday it will be taught in classrooms. The sooner the better.
Thanks again,
Jim
Absolutely, Margaret. It was a brilliant choice for Boden to include her.
You need to learn Newton’s third law. The two forces act on two different bodies and they are always equal,