I’m ready to let 2021 go, with some sadness and some gratitude. It’s been a season of loss and a time of revelation.
I’m thinking first of all of January 6, 2021, a date which now signifies the attempted coup against democracy that started well before that date and is continuing.
The important revelation of January 6 is not about the former guy or his minions—the important revelation is that a majority of white Americans seek to end democracy and support an authoritarian dictatorship, as long as that dictatorship guarantees their white privilege.
I don’t buy it that these same white Americans are fooled or misinformed about the integrity of the 2020 election. I’ve spent a lifetime among white Americans, and I know that among them, Truth and belief are fungible. Group acceptance and belonging alone are sacred. Within the group, individuals use their mental energies to recast and retell their group narrative. They know the narrative is untrue. And they know the group dynamic rewards them for lying, because lying is a demonstration of loyalty to the group.
Lying is the basis of white identity, and the stronger the need for that identity, the more unhinged and extreme the lies become.
This lying has both inventiveness and continuity, so that it is entirely possible for white Americans to passionately advocate things that make no sense or are contradictory to each other—guns, abortion, social welfare, etc.—because the actual content of the purported beliefs don’t matter,. It is the group advocacy of the beliefs that matters. A thing can be argued today, and the opposite thing argued tomorrow, as long as the act of arguing serves the cohesiveness of white identity.
Again, this is my experience of living among white Americans. Those who support democracy, which is to say multiracial democracy, will do well to consider this dynamic of lying and belief. Our side should be focused on getting and maintaining democratic power. Once we crush the institutional and economic power of white supremacy, hearts and minds of white people will follow in time. But we shouldn’t waste time trying to make sense of their beliefs, or arguing with them.
I am grateful that 2021 kicked off with a powerful lesson regarding this dynamic, as professional agitators carefully organized the January 6 attempt based on an obvious lie, and the vast majority of Republican elected officials then endorsed the lie, and a substantial majority of white Americans, as we enter 2022, say they believe the lie and are ready to act violently to support the lie. Could we ask for a more clear revelation of what being white in America is all about?
On a personal level, I started 2021 in a different place from where I find myself now.
I was deeply in love, in a relationship then seven months old, and had few if any dissatisfactions in it. I thought the barriers to our intimacy and closeness—and they were clearly present—would be overcome as we slowly intertwined our lives.
Five months into the year that relationship ended suddenly, unexpectedly. I got thin and conflicting explanations as to why. I’m still working through it.
What I’m left with is an appreciation of how difficult it really is, in this time, to completely feel one’s feelings—in a word, to be authentic. Yet authenticity is what we need and crave. I started dating again, perhaps too soon, with this notion of authenticity in mind, both for myself and for my dating partners. I redoubled my introspection and my search for insight through meditation. After a while, I stopped looking at authenticity as a prerequisite and qualification in my search for a new partner, and began to look at authenticity instead as something precious, difficult to attain, and to be celebrated when it appears. And I have high hopes.