Readers, I will shortly be on the road to Nashville. It’s a day-long drive, so please be patient about approving comments. I won’t get to them till tonight.

I want to share a couple of things with you. First, I was thinking the other day about what Dante has to say to us Americans in this moment. You might recall that the Divine Comedy, the Commedia, was written by a man whose life was ruined by the political intrigue and violence wracking Florence and Tuscany in general. Dante spent the rest of his life in exile from Florence; his great poem was his way of trying to make sense of what had happened to him and to his world.

Among other things, it’s a highly political poem. We don’t need to get into the details here, but I do want to share one thing with you (I’ve copied much of what follows from a post from six years back). At about the halfway point of Purgatorio — which means the halfway point of the pilgrim Dante’s entire journey through the afterlife — the pilgrim arrives on the Terrace of Wrath: the place in Purgatory where the tendency to the sin of anger is purged. This place is covered by a thick black hot cloud of smoke, and sparks — this symbolizing the blinding effect of wrath.

There Dante meets a man named Marco, and asks him what is to blame for the world today having been consumed by evil and chaos. The moral philosophy Marco espouses is at the heart of the Commedia‘s meaning. Here, from the Hollander translation, is how Marco responds:

First he heaved a heavy sigh, which grief wrung

to a groan, and then began: “Brother,

the world is blind and indeed you come from it.

 

“You who are still alive assign each cause

only to the heavens, as though they drew

all things along upon their necessary paths.

 

“If that were so, free choice would be denied you,

and there would be no justice when one feels

joy for doing good or misery for evil.”

Marco refers to the medieval habit of blaming moral failures on forces outside of man’s control — symbolized by the heavenly spheres (hence the belief in horoscopes). Marco’s point here is the same as Shakespeare’s: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Men believe that they can’t help themselves, that they are playthings in the hands of forces larger than themselves — but that isn’t true. Marco continues:

“Yes, the heavens give motion to your inclinations,

I don’t say all of them, but even if I did,

you still possess a light to winnow good from evil,

 

“and you have free will. Should it bear the strain

in its first struggles with the heavens,

then, rightly nurtured, it will conquer all.”

In less poetic language, Marco concedes that we all have inclinations toward sin, but we can still see good and evil, and have the power, through free will, to resist our sinful inclinations. If we refuse sin the first time, and keep doing so, there’s nothing within our own natures that we cannot overcome. This is what Purgatory is all about: straightening through ascetic labors the crooked paths within us, making ourselves ready for Heaven. Marco goes on to say that if we submit ourselves, in our freedom, to God (“a greater power”), we free ourselves from the forces of fate and instinct. Here’s the clincher:

“Therefore, if the world around you goes astray,

in you is the cause and in you let it be sought…”

Boom, there it is. If you want a world of peace, order, and virtue, then first conquer your own rebel mind and renegade heart. Quit blaming others for the problems in your life, and take responsibility for yourself, and your own restoration. God is there to help you reach your “better nature,” but because you are free, the decision is in your hands.

But you know Dante: there are always public consequences of private vices. In the next line, Marco turns to political philosophy, explaining that as babies, we are all driven by unformed and undirected desire. If we are not restrained in the beginning, we continue on this path, until we become ever more corrupt. This is why we have the law to educate and train us, and leaders to help us find our way to virtue. The problem with the world today, Marco avers, is bad government, secular and ecclesial — especially that of Pope Boniface VIII (his name cloaked here), a wicked man who leads his flock astray.

The rest of this canto concerns itself with analyzing great political questions of Dante’s time, in light of what comes before. For us, we should focus on how the failure of authoritative moral leadership in the family, in the church, in the school, and in other institutions, has brought about our current crisis. Remember how on the terrace of Envy, Guido railed against the progressive decline in moral order owing to parents not raising their children to love virtue? We see a similar judgment here. Yes, each person must be held accountable for his own sins. But it is also the case that the abdication of authority and responsibility by those who ought to be teaching, guiding, and forming the consciences of the young plays a role. Ignorance of the moral law is ultimately not an excuse, but as ever in Dante’s vision, we are not only responsible for ourselves, but also for our neighbors in the family of God (notice that Marco began his address by calling Dante “brother”). If society’s institutions fail to govern justly and teach rightly, the consciences of others will not be “rightly nurtured,” and will, therefore, be conquered by vice.

What do we do with that? Dante is telling us that if we rest in our anger, we will remain in blindness. If we react only by blaming the evil of the other side, and justifying whatever we choose to do by saying we couldn’t help ourselves, they forced us to do it — then we are surrendering to vice, and are lying to ourselves.

If we want to repair this disordered world, says Dante, we should start with the disorder within ourselves. And more, if we see disordered consciences everywhere, well, let us reflect on the failures of the teaching authorities, and ourselves, to form the consciences of the young. (In this canto, Dante is especially hard on the medieval Catholic Church, which had become deeply involved in politics.)

What is the alternative? The alternative is to dwell in the hot, blinding cloud of Wrath, and to keep tearing the world apart.

Along these lines, I received a very thoughtful e-mail back in October from a reader. I asked him permission to publish it. He said yes, but his response got lost in the daily deluge of e-mail I receive. He wrote back yesterday. Now I’m going to publish the slightly updated version. Here goes:

I have long thought I ought to write to you but in earnest did not know where to begin. I have purchased Live Not by Lies and am very much looking forward to reading it.  Your post “Deadly Sins of Left & Right” prompted me to reach out at long last.

The following note is long yet I hope informative. I hope you take away a few things. First, there are many of us on the left who are heavily debating what should be done about the alarming illiberal tendencies that have cropped up in our movement. Second, I and many others agree that we are living in a time of great cultural reformation and would be greatly aided by a conservative movement that is led by individuals interested in conserving in the first instance rather than destroying. Third, there are many areas of common cause between us should we be able to come to the table together.

Let me begin by saying I too am deeply frustrated by many of the sins Ruy Texeira lists although I’m unsure if I agree with his exact conceptualization (for example most leftists would happily shuck socialism as a term in exchange for a policy set they like). I’d like to add one deadly sin and then address a more general point about what I think is happening more broadly.

The deadly sin – I think the left often discards what I’ll call “lived experience”. The left is interested in thinking through at a high level what sets of policies we ought to adopt nationally (and occasionally regionally) but has given relatively little thought to what those policies mean for individuals and the communities in which they live. They assume that these broad policies will fix the social and economic ills that they rightly, in my estimation, identify as great wrongs to be addressed but dedicate virtually no time to how those policies will be implemented en masse. I honestly believe what most people want are lives in which they themselves, their families, and communities can be productive and flourish. I am unsure how much of the left writ large really cares about that these imperatives given how little attention they are paid. If they did, I think some of the difficulties with connecting to non-coastal elites around language and policy would be alleviated although that might be a vain hope.

I do strongly disagree with Ruy’s last sentence, namely “that debate is not currently happening”. That I think is patently false. I am a young scholar at very liberal, well resourced academic institution that many would call one of the bases of the young liberal left.  I assure you we are most certainly talking about it. No one likes cancel culture, everyone thinks the wokerati are deeply problematic, and most want more spaces and processes for addressing these concerns.

A huge problem for which we cannot easily solve is of course Trump and the conservative media and politicians who support him and his nativist impulses. As you have said on many occasions, Trump and the Republican Party’s primary goal is to enrage the media and demonize the left. If one is faced with a constant barrage of disorienting invectives, corruption, and norms shattering plus now mounting death and economic collapse, can you blame the left for going a little mad? Wasn’t that the point?

There is a broader issue that I would like to add that I think you skirt around often but I would like to bring to the fore. We are undergoing a cultural change of epic proportions at the present moment and it centers on the question of whose voice counts and when. One of the frustrating things about current discourse in the US is the disparate set of facts from which individuals of different political leanings draw and how they construct deeply flawed arguments around those incomplete fact sets. This is a problem that I sense most acutely exists on the right (the proliferation of QAnon being a terrifying example) but exists to a large extent on the left as well.

I generally think the right misunderstands or perhaps underestimates the importance of taking minority voices seriously that are not their own. However at the same time I believe the right is correct in that there are many knee-jerk reactions on the left that are paradoxical and nonsensical. New directives appearing daily and weaponized to determine relative social worth is dangerous for all the historical examples you provide.

I think for my white and male brethren this is a particularly painful process. Whilst some quieting and thoughtful listening is required one can reasonably ask how and under what circumstances. Those parameters are unclear and being worked out in real time which is unaided by the ricocheting around the social media sphere. As a Black man, I feel relatively insulated from this process because my cultural norms are not being reformatted and on balance my voice is being heard more rather than less. Furthermore what I have long known to be true about the world is now becoming common discourse. That incorporation isn’t pleasant for many who want to see themselves as the undisputed heroes in their cultural story.

The primary reason I want to point out these fissures is that I haven’t seen anyone name exactly what is going on which is a form of identity remaking and redefinition of the sacred and profane. Those things are painful and take time. To the great detriment of the US at the present moment, this work is typically the task of the more conservative members of society but they stand behind a man who is obviously immoral, flagrantly corrupt, and marching his supporters towards mass death (210,000 and counting at last check, Oct update: now 220,000 since my first draft, Nov update where are rounding on 240,000). How can one take conservative voices seriously if they shout and lay garlands on a man who fails on all accounts on which they say we should adjudicate our leaders. As a result, conservative voices are not included in these conversations and it is hard to argue that they should be.

The conservative movement has been increasingly angry and scared for years. Rather than create meaningful dialogue around very legitimate concerns, it has elected a leader who has made the left equally angry and scared. Congratulations. It is hard to place the current disastrous state of affairs in this country anywhere other than at the feet of conservatives for this reason alone.

As before, thank you for your thoughtful voice and writing. You continue to be a considered window into a world that I do not regularly inhabit and often struggle to understand.

Post Election Update: Although it seems the election has been decided, the Trump administration and his Republican sycophants are demonstrating exactly why they don’t deserve to govern. Elections are only valid insofar as they serve them. It’s sickening. And a quick rejoinder to “the left never accepted 2016”, HRC conceded immediately, called on her supporters to accept the election results, and reprimanded those who sought to overturn the clear results. Trump, in contrast, refuses to concede, has encouraged his supporters to overturn the result, and mobilized Republican leaders to do the same. The rot is at the center in the conservative movement.

I’m inclined to agree with this reader on the question of accepting the legitimacy of this election, not because I think it was fraud-free, but because, with Tucker Carlson and Erick Erickson, it seems to me that any fraud that might yet be uncovered will not be enough to swing the election. My belief is that Trump should concede that he has likely lost this election, and act as if he had (meaning, help with the Biden transition), while saying that his lawyers will continue to search for potential violations, and that he reserves the right to rescind his concession if they find them before Inauguration Day. (Remember, Al Gore rescinded his concession to George W. Bush in 2000.)

On the broader question that the reader’s letter raises, I think now would be a very good time for both Left and Right to turn inward and seek out the faults in ourselves that has made this country such a fractured and angry place — and what we can do personally, in our own lives, to repair it.

A friend texted me yesterday to say that his Biden-voting brother cursed him out for defending Trump voters. It was shocking and hurtful to him to hear a kinsman speak to him so viciously about politics. I know this man, the friend who texted me, and he is both a gentle man and a gentleman. The idea that anything he could say, or would say, could draw that kind of bitter response is shocking and saddening. But you know, it’s happening everywhere, on both sides. The world is blinded by wrath, and indeed we live in it.

For me, one of the things I most love about practicing Orthodox Christianity is its emphasis on mastering the passions through prayer and fasting. Of course this means getting out of the way of the Holy Spirit, who does the work of clearing the air and smothering the consuming fire of the passions. This is a lifelong project.

Dante was no pacifist, but he also knew that passions unbridled by reason would destroy individuals, families, cities, and societies. He had lived it. His long walk through the Inferno and through Purgatorio revealed to him exactly how he and everyone he knew did that to themselves. It is true for us as well. We will not live in peace if we only seek to defeat and utterly crush our opponents. We have to also allow our own wrathful and vicious natures to be crushed by God. Only in that way can we hope to be fully healed of our blindness.

Look, I’m guilty of it too. We all are. I’m going to be thinking about this on the way to Nashville.