Dear Reader,
For a moment, imagine with me a different America: a competent president sitting in the white house, political operatives fighting for what is good and true, republicans open to bipartisan measures, and a political system that favors logic, facts, rhetorical rigor, and competent leadership. Now open your eyes. If you're thinking to yourself, he just described a fantasy, you'd be right. I've just described the America found in the late 90s and early aughts classic, The West Wing.
After a night of endless doom scrolling, I gave in and decided to give The West Wing a shot. I was too young to appreciate the show in its heyday, and part of me is ashamed that it took this long to finally watch it in full. I was hooked from episode one and burned a hole in my TV from binging the first two seasons over two weeks. I could go on about the writing and the performances, but halfway into season three, I realized that there was something more at work. I found myself tearing up at the oddest moments. It wasn't until episode one of season three (a brilliant examination of America's post-9/11 reality) that I noticed a theme. Fans of the show will know what I'm talking about. It's usually a monologue given by a pivotal character at a vital moment in the plot. The camera zooms in, their eyes shimmer, before launching into a brilliant string of prose, elucidating the ideals that make the American experiment special.
For me, the idealism expressed in these speeches is part of The West Wing's appeal. The show itself is a love letter to the American experiment and the ideals it represents. But the West Wing is successful because it does not shy away from America's realities. That's the brilliance. It recognizes America's hypocrisy without giving into nihilism, highlighting the paradox of the American story: a country whose ideals often outpace its praxis.
For many of us, the last few years have worn away whatever trust we had left in the American project. And for more of us, that trust was lost at our nation's inception. But political and national nihilism held by many has done little to help us address the gargantuan gap between who we want to be and who we are. Political nihilism is responsible for the current state of the GOP. Trump's rise to power was secured in part by dissatisfied voters who later turned into dissidents, storming the capital in an attempt to upend the very American values they claimed to espouse.
The critiques levied at America, her history, her politics, and her foreign policy are fair and often valid. But the tone of those critiques has changed. Hating America is in vogue. Whether it's American celebrities threatening to give up their citizenship or college freshmen bashing small-town politics with big-city educations, the idea that one can love this nation and her ideals while highlighting her failings is a dying art. American politics have become a zero-sum game, requiring either blind allegiance, apathetic participation, or vitriol-infused rage.
It begs the question, can one still believe in the idea of America while also acknowledging its flaws? Some say this is idealistic. A political fancy. But in a world where nihilists disguise themselves as realists, isn't idealism precisely what we need?
Let's make one thing clear, The West Wing's America is the definition of idealistic. Like all good stories, the good guys are noble, and their cause is just. Their America is a work of fiction, but fiction and truth aren't mutually exclusive. Fiction is a vehicle for truth, facts that are often lost in the hustle and bustle of the real "world." For whatever reason, cynicism and skepticism have become markers for maturity. Ideals are for those prone to flights of fancy.
But it's worth mentioning that there's a difference between idealism and naivete. To believe in America's ideals and, indeed, to hold them as objects worthy of reverence is by no means naive. Our conception of ideals is rooted in Platonic metaphysics. Platonic ideals represent the non-physical essence of things, those eternal forms against which all other things were measured. Ideals are, by their very nature, unattainable. Ideals are "unrealistic." They stand above and beyond us, just out of reach, begging us to climb further and aim higher, tempting us to believe in those intangible goods like freedom, justice, equity, goodness, and truth. Ideals are like the horizon, you circle the globe in pursuit of it, but you'll never cross her sun-soaked shores.
America is and has always been a nation of ideals, a work of fiction, a sunset just out of reach. She's failed to live up to them because they themselves rest at too lofty a height. Self-evident truths are rarely easy to live out. The America I love is not the nation that is, but what she could be. For even if she is a fiction, she is a worthy one.
It doesn't take a degree in political science to know that America is facing some challenging times. The night is ahead of us. Mass shootings, food insecurity, a growing political divide, a failing economy, rampant inflation, inequality at home, and war, and global turmoil abroad, shroud our nation in darkness. But ideals do their best work at night. When all is dull and dim, ideals shed just enough light to lead us forward. "Every time we think we've measured our capacity to reach a challenge, we look up, and we're reminded that capacity may well be limitless."
It took three seasons of a television drama to teach me that.
Recent Publications:
How To Be Calm in a Reactive World: An Interview w/ Rich Villodas
Recommended Reading:
Shemaiah Gonzalez, Undaunted Joy: A brilliant newsletter looking for joy in the ordinary.
Nicholas Trandahl, Mountain Song: An insightful collection of poetry by poet, outdoorsman, and veteran Nicholas Trandahl.
Writing Update:
Check out my new poetry collection Skipping Stones. If you already got a copy share the book with a friend and make sure to leave a review on Amazon.