Published July 17, 2024
With age comes wisdom, or so one hopes. It can also come with a menu of weird and vivid dreams. Here’s an example. In my school days, I had no interest in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Written in the late 14th century, the tales are a collection of twenty-four earthy and risqué stories told by London pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury, England. They’re a classic of medieval literature. I didn’t care. They always struck me as grindingly tedious. But on a long-distance drive recently, I listened to them on CD. I was instantly hooked. So much so that, since then, they’ve invaded many a restful evening’s sleep. . .though in somewhat different form.
In my dream, the current occupant of the White House, along with his staff, vice president, and the entire BosWash (see below) news media pool, embark on a pilgrimage to a distant convention. As a matter of principle, and in compliance with the Green New Deal, they take an environmentally friendly bus, powered by an electric battery. . .which, regrettably, needs to stop every couple of hours to recharge.
And since the bus is very large, and so is its battery – weighing in at more than 8,000 pounds – recharging takes an awkward amount of time. The good news, in my dream, is that the interstate route they choose has plenty of rest stops with Tesla recharging stations and a generous assortment of fast-food “inns.”
And so the pilgrims pass the electric charging hours eating and telling each other ribald stories, like:
The President’s Neurologist’s Tale
The Cackling Vice President’s Tale
The Nervous Party Pollster’s Tale
The Overweening First Lady’s Tale
The Evasive Press Secretary’s Tale
The Rascally Relative’s Tale
The Depressed Party Chairman’s Tale
The Devious BosWash Reporter’s Tale
And so on.
Happily, I always wake up before some ugly political incident – like a shooting in western Pennsylvania – interrupts the pilgrimage. So we can set my dream aside now, as just another fanciful confection. But we shouldn’t ignore that curious word “BosWash.” And here’s why.
The term “BosWash” was first used by Herman Kahn and Anthony Wiener in a 1967 report on the heavily populated and highly urbanized East Coast corridor – in effect, a megalopolis – stretching from Boston to Washington, D.C. The same report described California’s roughly similar San Francisco to San Diego corridor as “SanSan.”
Today the SanSan has an outsized grip on new technology development and trade with Asia. And while demographic trends do shift, and more and more people flee the blue states of the northeast, the BosWash is still home to the lion’s share of America’s elite news media and its political, cultural, and intellectual leadership institutions.
As a result, the two coastal corridors can seem very nearly like nations within a nation. They’re remote from those dark and scary colonies like Utah, the Dakotas, Texas, Florida, and Arkansas – and not just in miles. Yet they exert a massive influence on every aspect of American life, which can easily breed both a sense of entitlement and a disregard for the concerns and beliefs of “flyover country.” This has consequences.
Whatever one thinks of a candidate like Donald Trump – his flaws are obvious – he’s the creation, at least in part, of those in our enlightened classes who despise not just him, but also the millions of ordinary citizens he connects with, viscerally, in America’s hinterland. Elitist calls for unity and appeals to a shared national identity are absurd and offensive when masses of everyday Americans are dismissed as racists, homophobes, proto-fascists, and potential insurrectionists by the very leaders who claim to represent them.
The result is a deep well of grassroots frustration that leads to more anger and more division, and ultimately to acts of violence. Woke bigotry and “progressive” zealotry aren’t the only ingredients in today’s rage epidemic, but they own a generous share of it.
As I’ve noted previously, historians like Britain’s Tom Holland and others see the current crises in Western democracies, including the United States, as similar to the late-stage Roman Republic. Rage is self-sustaining and always toxic. It ruins persons, dissolves social bonds, undermines justice, and poisons cultures. It needn’t continue. We can change. But if we don’t, it ends badly.
What can we do as believers? I’ve tried to answer that before, most recently here and here. But I’ve been reflecting especially these days on a passage from the Book of Sirach:
Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight. The vengeful will suffer the Lord’s vengeance, for he remembers their sins in detail. Forgive your neighbor’s injustice, then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven. Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the Lord? Could anyone refuse mercy to another like himself, can he seek pardon for his own sins? If one who is but flesh cherishes wrath, who will forgive his sins? Remember your last days, set enmity aside; remember death and decay, and cease from sin. Think of the commandments, hate not your neighbor; remember the Most High’s covenant and overlook faults. (27:30-28:7)
We’re not powerless. Renewal starts with each of us. We may live in a social media free-fire zone, but we can refuse to be part of it. We can choose to live differently, to work for a holier and more humane nation, to turn away from anger, and thereby to begin the work of re-seeding the world around us with a witness of virtue, leaving the rest to God. It sounds hopelessly pious. It sounds weak and impractical. But it worked in Jerusalem. It worked for Paul. It worked for Augustine as the Roman world fell apart. It was Augustine, after all (among so many others), who reminded us that we’re all just pilgrims in this world. And a good pilgrim shows others The Way forward in his passing. That’s our own particular task. . . and tale.
Francis X. Maier is a Senior Fellow in the Catholic Studies Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mr. Maier’s work focuses on the intersection of Christian faith, culture, and public life, with special attention to lay formation and action.
