A GLIMPSE INTO OUR INNER BEINGS: WHAT WE READ

In this space over the last 3 ½ years, we’ve acknowledged drawing on books we’ve read for ideas on matters we see as worth writing

about. We’ve pointed readers to books (The Half Has Never Been Told, The Color of Law, and The Warmth of Other Suns) we regard as essential for understanding race in America. We reviewed one of them (The Color of Law) in explaining America’s chronic housing discrimination problem. And, we drew on Madeline Albright’s Fascism: A Warning, in sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump’s dangerous affinity for dictators.

                      

Reading books defines each of our lives, beyond the utility of their content. We find

solace in the books strewn around our homes and offices and packed onto our shelves. None of us can contemplate a life without books. But, what do we read and why? With each of us, there’s a story offering insight into who we are and how we’ve evolved.   

Henry: Diversity, Diversity, Diversity

Many books I’ve read have taken me places I

couldn’t have imagined and offered context for the jumbled exploration of my own thoughts. From my earliest years, reading provided a spiritual experience in which I could join others in exploring humanity and personal relationships. Even in childhood, I read many

different things in many different areas.  I still do: science fiction like Isaac Asimov’s The Foundation Trilogy and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler; physics, like The Great  Unknown by Marcus Du Sautoy

and Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams; religion, including The Bible and A History of God by Karen Armstrong; fiction,including mysteries like Walter Mosley’s Down the River Unto the Sea and classics like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, John Updike’s Rabbit Run, and The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. In keeping current on events of the day (and in step with my co-authors) I read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

                    

Each of these works, and many others I’ve read, remain part of my fabric. This approach

has a drawback. Sometimes, when I go into a bookstore, I find myself happy and sad at the same time – happy because I’m amidst so much knowledge I’d hope I can absorb and sad because I can’t read it all.    

Rob: A Change is Gonna Come

If 25 years ago I’d been asked for an explanation of what I read and why, the answer would have been quite different than what I offer today. Before the late ‘90s, with the exception of trashy

“airport novels” I occupied  myself with on cross country flights, I read nonfiction. My bookshelf included volumes on elections (Theodore H. White’s The Making of the President series), analyses of World War II

(Richard Overy’s Why  the Allies Won), political memoirs (Robert McNamara’s In Retrospect), and biographies of major historical figures (Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson series).

These books brought  me considerable knowledge about a few subjects and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them. But, as I see now, I was missing something. A change was coming.   

In 1999, a friend invited my wife and me into a couples book club. Under its rules, each

person took a turn at picking the book for quarterly dinner meetings. Book club membership changed my reading habits (and my life). During the ensuing 21 years, we’ve read 90 books, about half fiction. I found myself reading, and enjoying, A Confederacy of Dunces, John K. Toole’s wonderful, Pulitzer Prize winning novel  set in

New Orleans, where I once lived, and Stephen King’s 11/22/63,  a time travel novel that presented an entirely different perspective on the JFK assassination. 

My book club experience confirmed the wisdom in the old adage some writers live by: if you want facts, write nonfiction. If you want truth, write fiction. l took that to heart. My

book club experience in hand, and after my wife’s death, I  decided I’d try my hand at writing fiction. I began grabbing more and more novels. I still read lots of nonfiction, but I’m now a confirmed, dedicated fiction reader too.

Woodson: Choices and Goals

My book choices are influenced largely by my life choices and goals. With fewer days left to live than I’ve already lived and with goals remaining, I concentrate my reading on what furthers achievement of my goals.

                        

Because I am a property manager and real estate investor, I read a lot on real estate and economic matters (books like Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Chris Hogan’s Everyday Millionaires, Joseph

Stiglitz’s People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent, and  Property Management Kit for Dummies by  Robert Griswold).  My interest in political and racial issues is satisfied by reading books like Doris Kearns Goodwin’s masterful Team of Rivals and the critically  important That Used to be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World and How We Can Comeback by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan Meltz, and

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Finally, because I participate in several Christian ministries, I read books

on religion, including Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem, Instinct: The Power to Unleash Your Inborn Drive by T.D. Jakes, Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, and The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav. Then there’s the Holy Bible. I read that too.

                         

As with Henry and Rob, my reading focus developed over time. It reflects life choices

I’ve  made because of my evolution as a person and as a professional, and through recognizing the limitations we all face as humans. Reading remains an essential part of my life.   

            

  

THE PUBLIC AND HARD CHOICES: TWO VIEWS

This post concerns process as much as any substantive topic. Hopefully, it provides insight into how the three of us think, evaluate, and conceptualize issues. It originated in thoughts

Henry expressed about the capacity of voters and the public for sorting out complex issues and making nuanced judgments. Today’s politics, about which we so often write, forces difficult choices. Many issues are far from simple and may implicate moral and ethical dilemmas juxtaposed against deeply held social and ideological positions. Operating in the public sphere today offers few easy moments. Often no good choices exist.

Henry’s Optimism

We live in different cities, so we frequently communicate by text, though we also confer regularly by telephone about the substance of our

writing. One of us sees an idea in the day’s news or runs across an intriguing thought in an article or book. We ask for each other’s reaction to this or that development in the impeachment saga, foreign affairs, sports, or an aspect of interpersonal or family relations.

One day recently, in a series of text messages, we considered the capacity of Americans for making fine distinctions between pieces of evidence in the impeachment inquiry. Henry expressed confidence a large part of the public can sort and sift through the evidence, making intelligent decisions about such things as which acts of President Trump constitute impeachable offenses and which don’t. We recognized the impeachment enterprise could require understanding the difference, for example, between criminal acts and those which, though technically not a crime, still might constitute an impeachable abuse of power.

The Dissenters Respond

Woodson and Rob disagreed. Their text messages asserted that many members of the American

electorate can’t regularly make those distinctions. Such individuals rely on and adopt slogans and spin generated by political leaders with an agenda. Woodson and Rob pointed out, for example, our recent experience with the Mueller Report. 

One reason the early spinning by Attorney General Bill Barr derailed the potential impact of Mueller’s Report was Barr’s focus on a narrow point he claimed the report determined – “no collusion,” a term that doesn’t exist in federal criminal law. Trump and his allies took Barr’s misleading claim that Mueller found “no collusion” and ran with it, creating a false narrative the report itself never overcame.

Relatively few Americans read the dense, technically worded 400 plus page report and only

a few more closely followed the reporting concerning Mueller’s work. Those who did one or the other realized summarizing Mueller’s conclusions about Trump’s 2016 election involvement with the Russians in one or two words wasn’t possible. 

Rob and Woodson argued the Mueller Report reaction and the response to other still-emerging details of Trump’s illegal or unconstitutional behavior demonstrated the limits of popular ability for sorting out difficult public policy issues. Indeed, one reason Trump’s phone call to Ukraine’s president tying U.S. military aid to a “favor” for him in digging up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden may have broken through with the public lies in its simplicity. Understanding a shakedown requires much less capacity for nuance than sifting through Mueller’s machinations about collusion and obstruction of justice.

Elitist?

Some may suggest the view Rob and Woodson

take smacks of elitism. You don’t trust THE PEOPLE, such observers might say. Mistrust of the general population goes back centuries in American public life. The reason for the electoral college? The framers weren’t sure voters could make informed decisions on who should occupy the White House. Instead of leaving the matter to popular will, as President Hillary Clinton discovered in 2016, they established a system they thought diminished the chance an ill-informed public could make an irrational presidential choice.  Oh, and don’t forget that until ratification in 1913 of the Seventeenth Amendment, state legislatures, not voters, elected members of the United States Senate. In short, mistrust of the public enjoys a glorious history in America and misgivings about the capacity ordinary citizens possess for sorting through complicated public policy issues doesn’t necessarily prove elitism.  

Saving Grace

Despite our disagreement about how much nuance Americans exhibit in the public policy sphere, we concurred on one thing: a thoughtful person can make a difference in public policy debate. American history is replete with examples of single individuals making distinctions about divisive issues that end up having a major impact on the body politic.

Take the example of Edmund G. Ross, an obscure Senator from Kansas, who cast the deciding vote preventing conviction and removal from office of President Andrew Johnson in 1868. Johnson was a bad president, a racist who stopped much of

Abraham Lincoln’s bold plan for healing the nation after the Civil War. The charges against Johnson, for which the House of Representatives impeached him, stemmed from a petty fight over something called the Tenure of Office Act, aimed at keeping

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in office. The underlying issue had no real importance in American governance. Senator Ross’s vote, as chronicled in John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, prevented an injustice.

                  

Senator Ross’s vote represents but a single instance in which one person made a difference and changed history. Americans may not always recognize the fine distinctions thoughtful public policy consideration and development require, but in the republic’s 243 years, we’ve gotten some things right.