On the Doom Inherent in Moral Indignation
Chania, Crete, October 2021.
Dear Reader,
National dissolution is constantly overhyped. As is an ~ impending civil war ~, World War III, or the next trending freakout topic to be. (Also, even if it is inevitable, why worry about it? Hit the gym and procure a rifle).
What’s intriguing about those topics is how they highlight the closing of the discussion, what gets tolerated to be discussed. Not in a pedantic, Ben Shapiro-style “debate me” way, but in the way where people roll their eyes and don’t engage (for instance, Emma Camp’s New York Times op-ed on the college campus and self-censorship). At some point, an idea simply isn’t battered about anymore. The masses accept it, then move on.
This acceptance (resignation?) happened with the terms “diversity, equity, and inclusion” over the last few years. Sure, it’s still written about among conservatives and Wesley Yang, but higher ed admins don’t pretend the limits and problems of DEI initiatives are up for discussion.
Even Republican legislators generally pay lip service to the importance of diversity. The discontents who oppose the DEI philosophy gather among themselves to discuss it—and become outlets for the DEI-supportive to voice their (hedged) criticisms without getting labeled problematic or questionable. But the Rubicon has been crossed. Anything indefensible is shrugged off as “the occasional excess of earnest people.” Influential institutions and avant-garde intellectual circles bury differences, pretending that contentious meanings are actually stable and unified. The science is settled (or not settled, when it’s deemed convenient to pretend no one can really define a woman).
DEI isn’t unique; it’s just easy to trace. When I was an undergrad, DEI wasn’t so expansive and initiatives were more limited (though it was growing). In the early 2010s, the unquestioned trend was calling anything “green”—the cult of “sustainability” and the environmental sphere was presumed to have the fealty of any right-thinking types. After 9/11, it was the twisting of what “freedom” meant and what was required to protect it (unending and poorly defined wars of aggression, expansive executive power, mass surveillance and the destruction of privacy).
As those terms expanded and contracted to suit political purposes, so does DEI. Oliver Traldi noted an example of this phenomenon when Tufts University sent him a fundraising email: “As graduate alums, you and I share core Tufts values, including those of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ).” Ignoring the presumption that students and alumni of a university need to be united on an incredibly contentious/politicized definition of those terms, tacking on “justice” seems to be a major jump, even for lackluster university bureaucrats. As the administrative side of higher ed becomes more active in “student life” and monitoring the academic side of the university (faculty diversity statements, mandatory syllabus additions on the importance of diversity and inclusion, bias-response teams…), a party line is established.
Many people argue such a line is a good thing (and in some cases it might be), but it’s an unavoidable line, and to deny the line exists sends a particular message.
The great sociologist Paul Hollander, writing in 2006 about Hungarian politics, noted how the lack of interest in engaging others on contentious ideas signals trouble for the political system:
The difficulties of Hungary suggest the fragility of one of the post-Communist systems which until now appeared to be successful in building a working democracy. These difficulties raise questions about the capacity of Hungarians (or any other nation) to maintain a stable democratic political system that is embedded in a deeply divided population.
Genuine and durable political pluralism requires a capacity to tolerate the strains of disagreement, to coexist peacefully with those we deeply disagree with about important public-political matters and social values. There is next to no dialogue between the polarized political forces in Hungary while also “an unwillingness on both sides to come to terms with the persistence of the other,” as a commentator observed.
That deeply divided population turned on the socialists after 2006, when the prime minister was caught on tape admitting that his government lied to win the election and betrayed the public. Thus the dominance of Viktor Orban ever since. Nationwide agreement, in that instance, came with a vengeance.
In America, discovering a nationwide agreement on what justice, diversity, inclusion, freedom, and environmental sustainability all mean would be a utopian task. But limiting discussion by using social pressure to silence questions is a reminder of the Bush era—swap out questioning one’s patriotism for questioning one’s anti-racism.
Again, from Hollander:
It is a reminder that moral indignation is a more powerful force in political conflicts than material interest, and that moral values and interests are vital determinants of political struggles regardless of the popularity of moral relativism among some Western intellectuals. Whether or not this is a source of comfort or dismay depends on our view of human nature.
I hesitate to use DEI as an example precisely because discussions of diversity, free speech, and cancel culture have gotten so hackneyed. But it’s a rich vein to observe how language slips and changes, and it’s fresher than the damage wrought by the Bush administration. That many people believe Trump was a worse president than Bush shows the power of moral indignation.
As Musa al-Gharbi (another sociologist!) observed, “People who proclaim themselves champions of the marginalized or disadvantaged don’t seem particularly interested in what the people who they’re trying to empower actually think about the world.” Like Francoist Spain’s claim to represent the church, the king, and the family, or the communist penchant to claim to be the vanguard of the proletariat, speaking in the name of diversity and justice needs to be considered with a skeptical eye.
Recent work
After a year of trying to find an outlet, Front Porch Republic published an essay of mine on John Dos Passos and American modernism.
The Cleveland Review of Books also published an essay of mine on the Midwest and its hands in shaping debates on nationalism, multiculturalism, and pluralism. What is America, anyway?
Gimcracks and Tchotchkes
Gary Saul Morson, Tolstoy’s Wisdom and Folly, First Things
Farahn Morgan, Rebellion at the Burrito Lounge (and subscribe to her Substack!), Long Road Home
Kate Tsurkan, “I am very skeptical about the impact of art on the masses”: An Interview with Artem Chekh, Apofenie
Sean Wilentz, The Paradox of the American Revolution, New York Review of Books
A poem
Herman Melville, Shiloh: A Requiem (April, 1862)
A song
Michelle Gurevich - Goodbye My Dictator