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SHEELA CLARY: The Preamble

The worthiest enemy of authoritarianism is authority. But who are the authoritative heroes available to us, and to the younger generations in particular? Who speaks a truth that everyone can get behind?

Snow fell quietly throughout the late afternoon and evening on Sunday. After dark, guided by my son’s headlamp, my family of six, including dog, got bundled up in snow pants, boots, and accessories and took a snow walk down the road. All was still. It was as though the trees and sky were asleep, hypnotized by the light, dry snow filtering down in silence. The dog led the way in her new red jacket with the glow in the dark edges. We made snow angels in the clearing by the river, then we headed further out, walking one by one along the winding riverside path we take in summertime to arrive at our tubing spot.

In June, July, and August, there is green all over, cut green grass below and tall green grass all around, with birdsong everywhere and the adjacent water’s refreshing invitation. But on last night’s snow walk, we were guided through the dark by just a dim headlamp, with the way ahead visible only a few feet at a time, and we could not see what might be waiting around the next corner. The water was somewhere just off to our right, but with its white icy collar, we couldn’t tell where the snowy ground ended and the thin ice began. I was reminded of the last few minutes of “The Shining,” when little Danny Torrance scrambles through a snowy maze with his axe-wielding father in limping pursuit. I marched, unnerved, through our snowy maze, until we turned a corner and came upon large tracks not made by us nor by any other human, and, afraid the dog would pursue that creature and find her way into the river, we turned toward home.

Now it is the morning after the storm. A fresh sky is spread out above, and a bright sun is shining down on a white world. The storm would be the better natural imagery for Donald Trump’s second Inauguration Day, as I recall the apocalyptic imagery—“American carnage”—he invoked on Inauguration Day 2017. Back then, I was part of a group of women invited to respond to Trump’s ascendence in our own creative ways. We put together a series of curated speeches and performances, which we performed from the stage of The Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. As the largest local venue hosting a #resistance event, it was standing-room only in that 800-plus-capacity theater.

But I don’t remember any of the speeches. The only thing I clearly recall from that afternoon is my sister’s rendition of the “Schoolhouse Rock!” version of the Preamble to the Constitution on the ukulele, which she conducted as a singalong with the whole audience.

“We the People [she paused to find the right chord, having just taught herself ukulele] …… in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquil-it-eeeee….provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, ah-hand, secure the Blessings of Liberteee, to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution….. for the….. United States of ….America!”

I remember that song. I remember I felt lifted, and belonging to something much greater than any one person. Her performance was delightful, poignantly sad, and unifying.

But rereading my own speech now, I understand why it was not memorable. I had set out to offer one explanation for why so many people had seen Trump as their savior, which was the landscape of unfortunate life outcomes that so many young people were facing. So I delivered a recitation of hard-to-hear facts about the sad fates of low-income children, and I did it with a heavy, artless, and humorless approach. I did not tell all the truth the way Emily Dickinson advised us to tell it: slant. Worse than technique, though, was my substance. I did not tell the full truth at all. Some of my “facts” were bad assumptions.

A friend who was sitting in the balcony that day with her 11-year-old twins told me afterward that the boys perked up when they heard a catch in my voice. I had gotten emotional when I started talking about my former students and where they ended up after high school. I used a kid I called Mike as an example of what happens to you when you are failed by an unfair system. After explaining his unsuccessful school trajectory and the dead-end jobs that followed, I wound up my cautionary tale with this sentence: “Today, Mike is reading a book about child sacrifice,” as though that detail served as an indication of his life prospects.

Cringe. Today, Mike is killing it. He is well established in a government-sector job. He lives in a house he bought with his own money with his wife and children. My whole premise, which presumed that we are all victims of the system, was wrong.

But my sister’s song was not wrong. It took some of the most undeniably important and meaningful sentences in our entire national playbook and presented them in such a way—the audience had lyrics in their hands—that everyone could recite them together, and enjoy themselves doing it. She told all the truth, charmingly slant.

This week, no one had the heart and energy to organize and attend such an event to coincide with Trump’s second inauguration, but if they had, a light touch would still have been the right approach. The worthiest enemy of authoritarianism is authority.

But who are the authoritative heroes available to us, and to the younger generations in particular? Who speaks a truth that everyone can get behind? As for me, I was wrong about Mike’s prospects, what else might I be wrong about? #resistance was a failure. It brought about the opposite results to those it purported to want. Trump is back again, having won the popular vote, too, this time. As our country skids into yet another U-turn in our national leadership, what will authoritative leadership and citizenship look like? Would we recognize them if we saw them?

Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” claimed that when things fall apart, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” My sister can hear the shift in my voice when conviction is taken over by passionate intensity, when the possibility of hearing other perspectives has been precluded, when I am committed to a half-truth that I have decided is the whole truth. At these moments, she calls me out, and then calls me gently back to order.

When I think of that line from “The Second Coming,” I always think there must be a way to be our best with conviction, rather than our worst with passionate intensity. But now is not yet the time for that way to be made plain to us.

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