What happens now?
“What happens now?” Like many of you, I have been mired in this question since the morning of November 6. What will happen with our democracy, our freedoms, the millions of undocumented immigrants, climate change, the global order, hatred, and bigotry?
Are we witnessing the end of liberalism and liberal democracy as we know it, both here and in many other parts of the world, and entering a new era of nationalism and authoritarianism, sometimes called “soft fascism”?
The uncertainty about what lies ahead, the fear and vulnerability weigh heavily. I know that some are panicking.
Among all my concerns, I fear most for the truth. We are swimming in an ocean of disinformation, conspiracy theories, propaganda, and blatant lies. The boundary between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood, is increasingly blurred.
In her major work The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt writes: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
Vast numbers of people in our country are no longer able, or willing, to make those distinctions. But I believe that most still are. God help us if we don’t take this seriously and we remain indifferent.
I have heard and read over the past few weeks that, if things turn ugly in the months and years ahead, many plan to retreat and turn inward into their personal lives, into their work, to take this opportunity for self involvement and self care. I understand the instinct to detach in order to protect oneself from a highly unsettling and distressing reality. But this attitude is alarming.
I am an admirer of the Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Žižek. I first encountered his work through Aviva Zornberg’s books and have since read him extensively and listened to numerous lectures and interviews.
In a recent interview about our presidential election, Žižek echoes Hannah Arendt, claiming that the greatest danger we face today does not primarily come from fundamentalist and fanatical individuals. Instead, it rests with those who adopt a cynical and indifferent stance. Such individuals become the ideal subjects for authoritarian regimes, as they pose little to no threat to the established order. And, in their apathy, they become complicit.
Truth, warns Žižek, is a category that demands subjective engagement. In the face of truth, one is not allowed to take a neutral position. Truth is exhausting and taxing because it constantly demands that we take responsibility for our lives and for our society. It is precisely when truth shocks us, when it hurts, that it requires our full engagement, not our withdrawal.
This is a warning we must very much take to heart.
In 2016, the term “post-truth” was named “Word of the Year” by the Oxford dictionary. Post-truth is defined as “relating to and denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”
In a brilliant reflection about the concept of post-truth, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l says:
“When we no longer know what to believe, there is an erosion of trust and the result is that a free society cannot function in the absence of trust… A free society depends on trust, trust depends on honesty in public life, and honesty in public life depends on truth as a norm. Or to put it as we must: a free society is a moral achievement and without that we will lose it. We have forgotten that without a shared moral code to which we are all accountable, into which we are all educated, and which we have all internalized, we will lose the trust in public life on which our very freedom depends… Post-truth will lead us inexorably to post-freedom, which is a place none of us should want to be.”
At the beginning of the Morning Blessings (Birkhot HaShahar), the traditional set of blessings recited at the beginning of each day, we thank God for enabling the rooster to distinguish between light and darkness. According to several commentators, the rooster symbolizes the human understanding and moral conscience that enables us to distinguish good from evil and truth from falsehood.
At the end of the Morning Blessings we thank God for giving strength to the weary.
On this Thanksgiving weekend, as we express our gratitude for multiple blessings in our lives, may we appreciate these two divine gifts which are vital to the preservation of our freedom: the capacity to distinguish truth from falsehood, and the strength to face the challenges that seek to wear us down. And may we commit to never relinquishing those gifts.
Shabbat shalom and happy Thanksgiving weekend,
Rabbi Roly Matalon