The Bishop and the Billionaire

Five directional thoughts to align ourselves for the fight ahead. Notice direction, fight upward, ladders downward, look inward, grow outward.

This essay is cross-posted on Substack. Visit The Reframe to see it on the main site.

Hello, cousins.

It was the worst of times, it was the somehow-even-worse of times.

Let me give you a tale of two lecterns.

The world's wealthiest man stood at a presidential lectern and gave a Nazi salute and thousands of Republicans cheered. We all saw it, we all heard. It's an unmistakable gesture, one of the most recognizable in the world, and it was given in as deliberate a manner as possible, so all the Nazis currently celebrating it did not mistake it. To debate what it was resembles debating whether a rock that fell to the ground after it was dropped fell to the ground after it dropped. Yet the debate was forced, all the same, by people committed to rejecting the evidence of their eyes and ears. It's the same debate we have any time any Republican makes an overt pitch toward Nazism. The debate, I think is the main point—the fact of the debate, I mean. The fact that there is a debate demonstrates the impunity over definitions of reality that Nazis demand and now enjoy, that one of their most prominent adherents can give the most famous signifier of their allegiance in the most obvious way without enduring even the consequence of having it named for what it is.

Take professional whitewasher for the far right and Washington Post columnist Megan "McGriddle" McArdle, for example, who offered her defense of the incident. The headline to her piece advertised that there was "missing context" to the salute, "context" that included only the quickest dismissive glancing skip off the surface of the rather bloody obvious fact that the billionaire in question spends much of his time interacting with and agreeing with and promoting Nazi accounts on his website that he purchased for the benefit of and promotion of Nazis. McArdle's remaining "context" was a hodge-podge of diffuse anecdotes that never touched upon the fact that this billionaire spends most of his leftover time advocating for far-right extremist governments around the world, or that the occasion of his gesture was the inaugural celebration of a fascist proto-dictator named Don Trump who is revered by Nazis and who has spent his political life using Nazi tactics and rhetoric in pursuit of Nazi policies. Trump even spent his most recent campaign quoting Hitler, but we're meant to think this salute was something other than it was, even though it was delivered by exactly the person you'd expect to deliver such a gesture, at the exact place where you'd most expect to see such a gesture. What coincidences we're told to believe in!

Narratives facilitating the rejection of the evidence of one's eyes and ears remain popular for millions of presently comfortable Americans who prefer comfort to truth. If the world's wealthiest man gave a Nazi salute, that means one would have to think about what it means, and thinking about what it means would mean facing a thing or two about one's country and one's self that aren't so comfortable. Therefore, no matter what the gesture obviously was, it must have been something else—anything else. If it might have been something else, then it was that thing, no matter what that thing is. In fact, it exists in a quantum superposition of improbability; it was every other thing it might have been other than the thing it manifestly was, and it was all of those things simultaneously, and if some of those possible things are contradictory to one another then shut up, because the most important thing to understand is that the billionaire's gesture wasn't what everyone can see it was.

McArdle's subhead read "We can't have a functioning democracy if we think our opponents are evil." The suggestion here is that it is thinking our opponents are evil that is dangerous, in a way that our opponents actually being evil is not. It also ignores the reality that the same people to whom McArdle extends the benefit of her doubt have been on the record for a long time as holding nothing but contempt for democracy, and have very consistently stated that all of their opponents are evil. It also ignores the fact that their rationale for saying their opponents are evil is not a list of actually evil things their opponents are currently doing, but rather a string of Nazi conspiracy theories and grievances. This is context so relevant to the matter that it seems curious indeed for such an infinitely curious and dedicated context aficionado as Megan McArdle to ignore it—so curious, in fact, that it would almost seem to expose McArdle's actual intention in writing and the Post's intention in publishing her, which appears to be to use curiosity as a smokescreen for credulousness, and to craft an excuse for a Nazi having given a Nazi salute.

So that's the first lectern in our tale.

Later in the week, an Episcopalian bishop named Mariann Edgar Budde stood at a church lectern in Washington's National Cathedral. There, in front of President Trump and everyone else, she delivered a sermon about what unity is and the sorts of dehumanizing things that make unity impossible, which just so happen to be the exact things that America's Nazi Party is pursuing with vigor and glee right now. Notably, the sermon ended with a meek but impassioned plea issued directly to Trump. It was a call for basic human decency from a man who has never showed any interest in basic human decency, and it made quite a hubbub.

Now a "bishop" is a title of leadership in the Christian church, and Budde is a Christian according to everyone, and so am I according to me though I doubt many Christians would agree after listening to me for more than a couple minutes. I've got a lot of things to say about the Christian church's relationship to abusive power and anti-human bigotry, and what the institution has become as a result, and what I think should happen to the church as a result, most of which would probably not be fun for clergy of any denomination to hear. I think that needs to be said before I focus on what I find salutary about Budde's comments, because I, like Megan McArdle, am a big fan of context.

Today, let's consider the fact that Budde used her lectern and her institution to bring a simple message of basic truth and decency and to deliver it directly to indecent power, right to the dear leader's face. This was notable for its rarity—rare from any institution, but especially rare from the church, an institution which, by the principles it claims to hold, ought to be making it a regular and constant practice. It was notable, too, for its powers of moral clarity.

Like the billionaire and his Nazi salute, the act of the plea itself was clarifying in its blatant unambiguity, but the response to the act was more clarifying still.

There was a quick and vigorous response to this homily from many of the same people who had just days before rushed to defend the Nazi billionaire. Their response was far less confused about the bishop's meaning than it had been about the billionaire's: As far as they were concerned, it was a vicious attack.

And it was an attack, because any decency is an attack against indecency. Indecent people felt the sting of the attack, and pronounced themselves attacked by it, and thus by responding with fury to decency, they exposed their own mountainish indecency.

I recommend reading the whole sermon, but here's the text of the bishop's horrible attack against American conservatives:

"In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families who fear for their lives.

"And the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in our poultry farms and meat-packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shift in hospitals–they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes, and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches, mosques and synagogues, gurdwara, and temples.

"Have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. Help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land."

Gosh. What a vicious attack. I hope they're all OK.

I notice nobody today is arguing whether or not the bishop challenged the president here. She did. We all saw, all heard. We also see what it is that such a man experiences as a challenge.

Who could argue with such a call to basic decency?

Who could defend a Nazi salute?

Who, indeed.

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Here's one reaction to the bishop:

"The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart. [Racist lies redacted] Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and the church owe the public an apology!"

That's chief Nazi Donny Trump himself, writing on his social media platform Truth Social—a site popular with liars—but all his sycophants joined the chorus, and people who want to align themselves with such things aligned themselves with indecency did so, and so, for a moment or two, everything came into sharp focus for anyone still interested in observing what is observable. For many of our institutions, for many of our institutions, a basic call for decency is an inappropriate and indecent attack that must be cast in such a bad light that it is no longer recognizable as what it is, while a Nazi salute is an awkward gesture and a harmless goof whose meaning cannot ever be known, but which ought to be given the most scrupulous benefit of the doubt, until it reaches such a state of imperviously confused curiosity that it can never be known for what it is.

Here's what I think about these reactions: They make instantly clear exactly what it is that a lot of people are working very hard to obscure, and who it is doing the obfuscation. You can tell by watching them work to obscure those things. So we can clearly see these are people manifestly opposed to perceiving things clearly, and they oppose perception both within themselves and others. So this makes instantly clear exactly what it is that people oppose and support.

I notice that a witness to the fact that the billionaire's gesture was a Nazi salute does a lot more to clarify matters around it than debating that observable fact with somebody demonstrating an unwillingness to observe ever could. I notice that the bishop's witness to the truths of human decency did a lot more to clarify the indecency of those who oppose it than debating with indecent people in favor of decency ever could. I think the reason for this is that debate over an indecent lie puts indecency and lies on the same level as decency and truth, while simply witnessing to truth leaves truth and decency on the table by themselves, and forces a reaction to truth and decency from indecent liars; forces them to work to get their indecent lies onto the table. This is a reaction that clearly exposes the direction in which indecent liars align themselves.

If I am opposed to decency, I have to treat calls for basic decency as an attack. When I treat simple calls to decency as an attack, then it's clear to anyone who still observes observable things that I'm the kind of person who is opposed to decency. It's clear to see that I am fundamentally aligned with all kinds of indecency—I am an indecent person, in other words. It's as clear as a Nazi salute. Speaking of Nazi salutes, if somebody gives a Nazi salute at a rally for a Nazi politician, and everyone cheers, then they're Nazis, and their party is a Nazi party, as anyone who is willing to observe observable things can observe.

When a fascist politician responds to a call for mercy from a citizen with a demand that the bishop delivering it should be deported, it exposes what fascists mean by deportation, and the way it has nothing to do with questions of legality or immigration.

And so on.

What a simple declaration of truth exposes is the direction people are facing, and the direction they are moving.

A few hours after Budde gave her sermon, Trump revoked the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s guidance against arresting undocumented immigrants in churches. This is the sort of brutal and bigoted action that comforts and encourages the sort of people who are comforted and encouraged by bigotry and brutality, which you can tell by observing how they are comforted and encouraged. People who love brutality and bigotry have a lot to celebrate, these days, and they'll tell you so, by celebrating. It's like a Nazi salute in policy form. The direction of alignment is exposed, and there's nothing to argue—which is why people dedicated to obscuring things so desperately want to debate about them.

It seems to me direction is very important; it's like the needle on our compass, pointing us toward the better future we know is possible, because we see it breaking out here and there, because we see how it stands exactly opposite the direction that fascists are pushing.

A week ago I gave five thoughts on the fight before us. I defined this fight as a struggle to demolish the genocidal billionaire scam upon which our country was founded, a fight to replace it with something else. I recommended that we play the right game—a game where score is kept by repairing broken things. I recommended we face the worst, but imagine the best and embrace the better. And I recommended we play to win the game rather than play to observe the rules.

Now I'd like to talk about five directions that I believe will align us toward winning.

Each of these could make its own essay. Maybe they will, someday soon.

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1. Notice the Direction

Exercise moral clarity. It all begins here. Without the moral clarity to understand what is good and what is bad, and the determination to witness to it and confess to it, we will lose our compass and wander lost. To achieve moral clarity, simple statements are best, especially ones that notice the direction. "I think bigotry is wrong and you should stop making excuses for it," or "I think it's wrong to hurt people and I can see how you're harming your own humanity by celebrating this."

Truth is all around, so finding truth gets easy quickly if you practice. "I don't support dictators." "That was a Nazi salute." "That isn't true." "People are terrified with good reason by what you support." "All people are our human family." "Immigrants are people." "Trans people are people." "Women's bodies belong to them." "Education on all subjects is an investment in human growth."

This won't convince everyone. That doesn't matter. Convincing everyone isn't the goal; noticing direction is, and noticing who aligns with and against simple declarations of truth and decency will do that. Your practiced indifference to convincing your opponents, meanwhile, will deliver the message that truth and decency are things that will be pursued without first receiving permission from indecent liars.

Try this one:

"That is fucked up. I'm not doing it, and you should be ashamed for asking."

Now that will get you some clarity!

Moral clarity will tell you what you will do and what you won't do. It will keep you pointed in the direction you're moving and tell you what direction you oppose. It will teach you to welcome feeling the wasted and frigid headwinds of opposition from fascists and the indecent liars who support them, because it means you're moving against all their evil intentions and toward everything they oppose.

Celebrate aggressively. Getting clear on what is good and bad doesn't just free you to oppose what is bad; it allows you to celebrate what is good. Remember we should do things fascists cannot do. Fascists simply cannot celebrate the joys and the beauty of our diverse human experience, because they abhor it and seek to destroy it. For this reason alone, it would be good to celebrate it, and for this reason alone, celebrating it will be rightfully considered aggressive. The more you celebrate all that is good in humanity, the more people opposed to all that is good in humanity will show themselves for what they are. So let your celebration take as many forms as you can find. Aggressive celebration is art, is music, is food, is a party, and is also quiet contemplation, also is time spent alone recharging your batteries.

Moreover, celebration is attractive and generative, which makes it more convincing than a million debates. I believe it is all the more attractive the more aggressively anti-fascist it becomes, in the same way that certainty is more attractive than diffusion. Fascist celebration is an ugly thing because it celebrates ugly things. It can't be hard to throw a better party.

Aggressive celebration is dissatisfied. It knows its direction, so it knows what progress looks like, but also knows that progress is only a step on a journey. This means aggressive celebration can applaud every bit of progress it sees, no matter where it comes from, no matter how small and incremental, but it also knows how to aggressively reject false progress, to aggressively reject calls to use a single step as an excuse to stop the journey. Aggressive celebration does not fail to rejoice every step on the journey, while remaining dissatisfied by how much farther we have to go.

You know your direction, so cheer for every win.

You know the journey, so fight while cheering.

And you cheer, because you know your direction.

Fight Upward

Our fight is against abusive power, not people. This doesn't mean we ignore the relatively powerless people who have made themselves dangerous by aligning themselves with abusive power. Nor does this mean that we might not find ourselves in conflict with relatively powerless people carrying out the orders of empowered abuse in order to secure some small and temporary privilege. It means that we remember that our battle is against the billionairists who are devouring us, and always remember to notice who in every conflict has the power and privilege and who does not, and never take the side of the powerful over the powerless, never take the side of the wealthy over the impoverished, never blame the people who suffer the effects of decisions rather than the people who made the decisions.

It means understanding that the enemy is a spirit of billionairism, which holds that the purpose of all human activity is to generate value for as few people as possible, and that those who fail to do so deserve punishment and death.

This means recognizing that all violence is caused by abusive power, no matter who actually enacts it. When your father is trying to choke your brother to death, what happens to your father in that fight is your father's fault, not your brother's; your father's doing, not your brother's.

It means recognizing that politeness and calm and legality are not the same as goodness; in fact, politeness and calm and legality are often the privileges abusers afford themselves to lend themselves a sense of goodness, because the actual markers of goodness sit with the very humanity they are rejecting in themselves so that they can better reject it in others.

It means not trusting leaders who would make peace with the billionaire scam that is devouring us and our planet, and working to replace as many such leaders as possible, or even becoming those leaders ourselves.

We notice direction. We fight up.

Ladders Downward

"Ladders downward" means leave nobody behind. The fascist offer is an offer of false peace. It's an offer to look the other way for now, and receive the advantage of not getting the boot yourself. But it's a lie; the boot is coming for us all. So look downward, and see who is already getting the boot. Send all your help that way—all of it. Give money or time or energy, if you have it, to legal defense funds for immigrants and independent journalism and bail relief funds and mutual aid networks and medical debt relief and to people in the queer community.

"Ladders downward" also means letting go of questions of "deserve." As long as there exists some group that billionairists can convince you doesn't deserve help, they'll be able to prevent all help, focusing all efforts not on helping people in need but on the far more expensive task of making sure that no money is "wasted" on people who don't deserve it. Let go of all that. It's an exclusionary mindset. Exchange it for an inclusionary one. Everyone deserves. Money spent on giving food and clothes and shelter and education to somebody who could have afforded it is money well spent, because it means somebody who couldn't have afforded it is also getting it, and no more money is being wasted on bureaucratic and exclusionary questions of deserve. It's not just kinder, it's cheaper.

"Ladders downward" also might mean climbing down, for those who are offered ladders up. I ask myself: might there be some areas where I can climb down? I'm a cis white middle-aged able-bodied guy. Spaces are set up for my advancement and platforms are optimized for my growth, and today's fascist project is trying to enforce those privileges as the exclusive right of people like me. Where can I oppose that motion by climbing down instead? How can I make room for the advancement of others and the voices of others? How do I entangle myself less with the billionaire scam? When a fascist culture offers you a ladder up, I recommend you do a countercultural thing with it. Pull it down. Give it to somebody else.

We notice direction. We fight up. We help down.

Look Inward

Think in. Moral clarity won't go very far if it's just an external exercise. If I don't put these same directional tests to myself that I put to others, I'll be easily confused by smooth petitions to some lie, crafty arguments for some inhumanity.

The billionairist scam is a supremacist creature, and its lies are foundational to our culture. It's a logical inevitability that such an all-pervasive presence has permeated my membranes in many ways, a logical inevitability that such a spiritual invasion will be harder for me to detect the more it has permeated. So I find that the first person to interrogate is always myself—another case where watching direction is so important. I can look to those who are doing more work and paying higher costs than me, and notice the ways I am being left behind by them, not because they are moving too fast, but because I am not moving at all. I can notice the ways in which I have failed to distress supremacy around me. I can follow the track of those who are making the journey faster than me.

Think near. The full scope of all the devastation and sabotage and cruelty our fascist Republican billionaires culture is enacting is daunting. There's a danger that we fall into the trap of feeling we must solve it all. Just as we celebrate the smallest steps forward, we ought to focus on the small things we can do. Who is in need in your community. Who in your life is in need? If there isn't anyone, go into places you aren't already and start looking. I doubt you'll have to look far.

We notice direction. We fight up. We help down. We start in.

Grow Outward

Think out and think far. The billionaire scam believes in the lie of scarcity; that there's not enough for everyone—not enough food or water or money or jobs, yes, but also not enough freedom to go around, not enough humanity for humanity to be extended to all humans. It's a lie you have to believe if you want to dehumanize and enslave people and steal their lives and their bodies so you can turn them into wealth and ease for yourself, as America's founders did, as the Confederacy did, as the turn-of-the-20th-century robber barons did, as the Jim Crow Democrats did, as American Republicans are doing today, as any organization that would be accurately named fascist or Nazi clearly wants to do.

But we know better. We know that humanity belongs to all humans. We know that scarcity is a lie that causes scarcity. We know this is a world of plenty, where the more people have, the more there is. The more we abandon scarcity and embrace plenty, the more we can let go of dangerous and antiquated tools like borders and armies and police and prisons.

Recently a reader in the UK Pennsylvania recognized in my surname a variation of her own, and she wrote me an email in which she referred to me as "cousin," which tickled me, so I called her "cousin" back, but then it occurred to me that whether or not there is some traceable ancestry, it's correct. She's my cousin, and so are you, and so is everyone else. We think our families have a limit; it's the ultimate lie the fascists would like us to believe. The ultimate truth they oppose is universal human family. We're all cousins.

This means that anyone who wants to join the effort can join. All they have to do in order to join is ... join—to stop opposing fundamental truth and basic decency and their own humanity. And if anyone does this, we will notice, because we know our own direction and can recognize it and celebrate it aggressively even while noticing the need for still further movement. We'll notice it in the way that they stop climbing ladders up toward supremacy's lies and start sending ladders down toward those harmed by those lies. We'll notice it in the way the inner work they're doing expresses itself outwardly, which we'll recognize in them because we cultivate it in ourselves.

And we know that fascists can be sly at pretending to be allied with goodness, gesturing toward whatever virtue they are demolishing as a pretext for the demolition: suppression in the name of free speech, segregation in the name of fairness, imprisonment in the name of freedom, violence in the name of peace. So we return to knowing our direction and moving in that direction. If they join, they'll have to move in the direction we're moving if they want to stay with us. If they don't, they won't. And then we'll know.

We see things as they are and we witness to it without debate.

We notice direction. We fight up. We help down. We start in, then we move out.

Look out for your cousins.

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A.R. Moxon is the author of The Revisionaries, which is available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places, and the essay collection Very Fine People. You can get his books right here for example. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. This next one ... is the first song ... on his new album.