Or is there?

Can a work be at once a work of fiction and non-fiction, or are the categories so ill-fitting that The Wolf at Twilight belongs in neither one – a veritable situation of being “neither wolf nor dog?”

These are questions that bear some discussion, because they underpin the dilemma that has confronted my two creative works about Native America, Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight, from the moment they first came out.

Let me tell you where I stand on the issue.

It is my personal conviction that we human beings are “believing” creatures.  Until we take something into our hearts and embrace it with conviction, we are seeing through a gossamer (and distancing) veil of analysis.  It’s true that the information we gather during analysis guides us toward belief — and one would hope that our information gathering is informed and educated – but it is not belief.  Belief is saying, “Yes, this is the way it is, and I will stand by it and defend it.”  It is a commitment of the heart.

I come from a long background in the study of religion.   One of the ongoing arguments in the intellectual field of religious studies was whether or not one must be a believer to understand a faith or a belief system.  After participating in this discussion for years, I came to the conclusion that the knowledge you gain is different based on whether you are a believer or an observer.  Each has its role:  sometimes it is better to stand on the outside for perspective; but to the extent that you can enter into a belief system and inhabit it, you come closer to the heartbeat of the spiritual experience that it expresses.

I came to believe – and I believe to this day – that the goal of any work of art that addresses spiritual issues should be to bring those who see or hear or read it as close to the experience of real belief as possible.   When I worked as a sculptor I sought to embody spiritual states rather than describe them.  When I turned to writing I sought to recreate moments of spiritual encounter rather than discuss them from the outside, and to walk my readers into them so they could participate in those encounters.

When I came to the unlikely calling of giving voice to the deep and complex spirituality of Native American people – a spirituality that has, I believe, much to teach us all — the challenge became more complex: how could I help you, the reader, enter into a complex spiritual experience not my own in a way that your hearts could be touched and your spirits informed by the richness of their belief?

I did not want you to be able to move to the distance of analysis.  I did not want anyone to leave my writing saying, “That’s interesting.  I’ll have to give it some serious thought.”  Yet I did not want you to think you (or I) could appropriate Native belief – a complex, multiple, language- and culture based-spirituality – for ourselves.  To encourage that would be to continue the long tradition of cultural appropriation that has been our way of dealing with the Native peoples since our arrival on this land, and I wanted no part of it.

What I needed was a way to bring you, the reader, into the presence of Native belief, just as I had been brought into its presence, without allowing you the distance of the observer or the false identification with it as if you were donning its mantle as your own.

This was no easy task.  But I believed that Native experience contained truths we needed to know, and I knew that I had to make readers believe what I told them in order for them to take it into their hearts.   I had to write in a way that would grab you at the level of belief; I had to bring you into the presence of Native experience so that you would participate in it, be inhabited by it, and leave a changed person.

A tall order, yes?  But that’s how important I thought the truths of Native American experience were to the shaping of an authentic American spirituality.  We as a people have gotten lost somewhere between dogma and agnosticism, yet we are a spiritual people who hunger for belief.  The Native way, with its tradition of granting each person the right to his or her own spiritual journey, while finding truth and meaning in the land, seemed to me to feed that hunger with an authority and authenticity that nothing else possessed.   I needed to find a way to lead you into its presence in a way that would invest your experience with the authority of belief.

And so I set upon the task of searching for a literary vehicle that would serve that end.  Neither Wolf nor Dog, and, now, The Wolf at Twilight, are the results of that search.   Though done as traditional narratives, they use aspects of the novel, oral history, mythology, parable, and spiritual homily, to bring readers into the presence of Native experience as participants and not as observers.

How I came to create that narrative form is a story in itself.   It involved learning from Native storytellers, the fortuitous accident of becoming involved with collecting Native oral histories, and long personal and scholarly experience with the methods and purposes of sacred texts.   It also involved exploring ways of using language to describe, evoke, engage, and transport readers to the physical and emotional places I wanted them to go.

The end result, as reflected in Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight, was a genre-blending, category-blurring literary vehicle that placed you, the reader, by my side as I walked into another world and handed you off to people whose spiritual reality was so integrated into their daily life that it could not be separated from it or reduced to homily, lecture, or teaching.  What I experienced, you experienced.  What I felt, you felt.  And by making myself and my responses as emotionally authentic as I could (readers can sniff disingenuousness a mile away) I convinced you to follow me, participate with me, and take my experiences into your heart as your own.

To do this, I used first person narrative – that magical, distance-destroying literary point of view — to bring you along as fellow travelers into a world that is populated by actual people (though often well-disguised), actual settings (rendered with as much physical and emotional accuracy as I could muster), real events (though often not experienced in exactly the sequence or the manner in which they are presented), all developed along time-honored, almost archetypal, plot lines and universal stories of the human heart.

But none of this would have mattered if the works had not been absolutely authentic at the places where they touched against Native belief, practice, and understanding.  The words spoken had to be captured and shaped with the fidelity of the best oral history, the conversations and sense of humor had to be pitch-perfect, the experiences of such places as sweat lodges and boarding schools had to be as carefully rendered and factually precise as if this were an historical documentation.   I could take liberties with the characters and their narrative, but not with the world through which they walked. You and the other readers, both Native and non-Native, had to give total assent to the possibility of what I presented.  Factually, culturally, and interpersonally, there could be no false notes.

And so Dan and Grover and Wenonah and Jumbo and I and everyone else – real people all, but well-disguised where necessary – set off to lead you to a place of absolute emotional, cultural, and, to the extent possible, spiritual authenticity.  We went into Native reality and made you part of it.   There were no lies in that world; no falsifications of cultural circumstance, emotional response, or historical event.   You met real people, heard real stories, experienced real emotions, and participated in real events.   To the extent that I was able, I took you beyond understanding into participation.

So, what was I creating — fiction or non-fiction?  I truly don’t know, and, for my part, I truly don’t care.  My job was to bring you into the presence of a people and way of life, not to pass a litmus test of factual accuracy.   For me, the question of “is it fiction or non-fiction?” was as irrelevant as asking if Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows is fiction or non-fiction, or if Bach’s Mass in B Minor is fiction or non-fiction.  My goal was to create something authentic, and to the extent that I was able to do so, I was not bothered that it did not fit neatly into standard literary categories.

To put it another way, I was creating works of spiritual encounter, not literary or historical documents, and the liberties I took were directed toward that end.  In so doing, I was working in a long and honored tradition of spiritual writing.  The Gospel writers employed contradictory narratives to communicate the spiritual richness of Jesus’ mission; Taoist teachers placed stories from many sources into the mouth of Chuang Tzu to help people apprehend the Tao; Kahlil Gibran created the character of Al Mustapha to give proper voice to his spiritual teachings.  Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight were my journeyman efforts to use the skills at my command to open people to the interwoven cultural and spiritual reality of Native America.

In the last analysis, I was following the guidance of the man who served as the primary model for Dan:  “People learn best by stories,” he told me,  “Because stories lodge deep in the heart.”   Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight were created as teaching stories meant to bring you into the presence of the rich, human, and deeply integrated spirituality of contemporary and historical Native life.   If they did so, they have served their purpose.  How they should be categorized, I leave up to you.

Here is an interview that I recently did on The Wolf at Twilight.  I think it will give you an insight into the book that is well worth having.  We have permission to use this interview in any way we like.  So I offer it up to any of you who wish to use it, publish it, excerpt it, or pass it on.  I encourage you to do so, not only because I would like the book to sell well, but because the more I get feedback on it from Native and non-Native readers, the more I become convinced that it contains an important story that must be told.  That I was able to tell it has been my good fortune.  It is now up to all of us to make sure that we pass it on.

Enjoy the interview:

Kent Nerburn’s new book, The Wolf at Twilight: An Elder’s Journey into a Land of Ghosts and Shadows, is a follow-up to his award-winning classic, Neither Wolf nor Dog. It continues the story of the Lakota elder, Dan. But this time it brings us along on Dan’s search for his lost sister who disappeared decades ago in the Indian boarding school system. I talked to Kent via email about The Wolf at Twilight. I’d like to share our conversation with you.

Neither Wolf nor Dog has long been one of my favorite books. I was concerned that The Wolf at Twilight wouldn’t measure up. But it is every bit the equal of Neither Wolf nor Dog, and, in some ways, it’s superior.

That’s kind of you to say. I tend not to compare books. They’re like children: each is unique with its own strengths and weaknesses. However, I’m curious, what is it that you found “superior” about The Wolf at Twilight?

I was taken into the book on a different level. Neither Wolf nor Dog was a road trip with revelations and insights. The Wolf at Twilight reads like a mystery with revelations and insights.

That’s because it’s based on a mystery – the mystery of what happened to Dan’s little sister, Yellow Bird.

But there was something else, too. There was a different emotional texture to the book – kind of an undercurrent of sadness and loss.

That ‘s there, no doubt. And it’s quite intentional. Much of contemporary Native life is about sadness and loss – more than most of us can ever understand. I wanted to bring that timbre to the book. But I hope that’s not all you took from it.

On the contrary. That’s just the added textural element that intrigued me and made the book so satisfying. Other than that, it had the same quality of insight, the same wonderful sense of humor, the same surprising combination of comedy and tragedy, and the same rich cast of characters that made Neither Wolf nor Dog so unique. But this time you offered up a” can’t put it down” plot line and shed some light into the darker corners of Native experience.

Well, I wanted to tell more of Dan’s story, to be sure, so readers would have a further glimpse into the world of contemporary Native American life and its spiritual insights and beliefs. But I also wanted to go a little deeper into some of the darker places than I did in Neither Wolf nor Dog, so readers would come face to face with some of the hidden history of Native America. I guess if it were up to me to describe, I’d say that Neither Wolf nor Dog was written in a major key, and The Wolf at Twilight was created in a minor key.

I like that description. But let’s change gears for a moment. The Wolf at Twilight is a difficult book to categorize. It reads like fiction, but you say it is based in fact.

It is, absolutely. It’s a strange literary beast, to be sure, but that’s how I wanted it. It falls into the squirmy literary category of “Novelized non-fiction,” which is as shapeless, amorphous, and contradictory a category as I can imagine. I prefer to think of The Wolf at Twilight as a teaching story. Dan once said to me, “People learn best by stories, because stories lodge deep in the heart.” I wanted to tell a story that would lodge deep in the reader’s heart, and would do so in a way that reveals some of the dark truths of Native experience while giving voice to the bright truths that Native reality contains.

You keep referring to the light and the dark truth of Native reality. Can you explain this a little more?

Sure. As regards The Wolf at Twilight, the dark truth is the tragic, often horrific reality of the boarding school experience where Indian children were taken from their parents’ homes, stripped of their language and identity, and made to become someone they were not. It’s a truth of childhood rapes, forced labor, unbearable loneliness and dislocation, and an indoctrination into self-hatred that has repercussions to the present day.

The bright truth is the beautiful and deeply insightful way of teaching, learning, and understanding, that the boarding schools tried to destroy, but which still beats at the heart of the Native experience.

In The Wolf at Twilight I try to bring you into the presence of both these truths through the story of Dan’s search for his little sister, Yellow Bird, who disappeared from the boarding school system under mysterious circumstances when both she and Dan were very young.

Give me some examples of the dark truths of the boarding school experience.

Here’s one that is told by Dan’s friend, Grover, in the course of the book. He recounts the story of a young boy in a boarding school who was falsely accused of using his handkerchief for toilet paper and was dropped down in the outhouse and made to crawl back and forth on his hands and knees digging for his handkerchief while the school matron stood above and watched.

These things really happened?

Absolutely. These, and worse.

But the book doesn’t seem to dwell on things like this.

No, just like the Native people don’t dwell on them. They are always present in the mind and heart, and the trauma runs deep. But life needs to go on. Dan and Grover reveal these dark truths as much as is necessary, but I wanted to focus on the bright truths that Dan reveals about the traditional Native way of teaching and understanding the world.

Tell me some of these bright truths.

Sure. Let me read you a short passage where Dan is speaking:

“We do not look at our children as ‘full-growns waiting to be.’ We see them as special beings who bring us the freshness of wonder. They keep our hearts soft and our hands gentle. They keep us from thinking only about ourselves. They give the elders a reason to live, because we entrust the elders with the shaping of their hearts and setting their feet straight upon the path of life.”

This is part of a long teaching he gives about the circle of life. Like so much else he says, it offers us a glimpse into a beautiful way of life that we came close to destroying, but which still beats strong in the Native heart.

They sound like teachings worth learning.

They are, and throughout the book Dan speaks about them at length, revealing such things as the way the elders taught the young by training their powers of silence and observation, and the way that moral behavior was taught to children through observation of the animals.

And he offers his usual interesting takes on modern culture – for example, saying that Native cultures are “honoring” cultures, while European cultures are “discovering” cultures.

As always, he’s a deeply insightful man whose thoughts, to my mind, are well worth hearing.

I can’t let this interview pass without noting the wonderful sense of humor that The Wolf at Twilight shares with Neither Wolf nor Dog.

I’m glad that came through. It’s an essential part of Native life and has been part of every situation I’ve had the good fortune to experience.

Like Jumbo, the four hundred pound mechanic, and Shitty, his assistant Shitty who drives a pickup truck with a plywood door and a mason jar for a carburetor?

Exactly.

And Mr. Peanut?

We don’t talk about Mr. Peanut.

Understandably.

But, yes, this is exactly the kind of humor that I so treasure about the Native world. The tragic and the comic are inseparably intertwined, as are the sacred and the ordinary.

I’m glad you mentioned that intertwining of the sacred and the ordinary.

To me it is one of the key elements of Native culture that the rest of us should embrace. The spiritual is ever-present in their lives, no matter how ordinary or even debased the particular situation might be.

Like the time Dan berated you for not offering thanks to the Creator for a half-cooked rancid hotdog?

You’ve got it.

What else is it that attracts you to Native cultures?

The love of family, the deep connection to the land, the belief in honor, the respect for the elders – I could go on and on. But I hope all these values are revealed in the book.

Well, you’ve been very kind to answer so many questions. Let me try to sum up. Would it be safe to say that The Wolf at Twilight is a teaching story that is part history lesson, part spiritual lesson, and part road novel, and part mystery?

That’s a lot of parts. But, at its best, “yes.” I would add that it’s a glimpse into contemporary Native life that few non-Natives ever see and a story worthy of the hearing.

Let me close with one last question about your interest in Native issues. How did you come by it, and what do you see as your responsibility to Native materials as a non-Native writer?

Thank you for asking this. Part of my interest in Native issues is due to circumstance. I live between three reservations in the woods of northern Minnesota where the white footprint does not run deep. Living and working among Native people where the land still feels like theirs makes it easy to care about the world as they see it and live it.

But part of my interest is because of my belief that a true spirituality should grow naturally from the land. America is Indian land, and the Indian peoples have shaped their spiritual understanding in a way that feels authentic and integrated. We all have much to learn from it, and I want to do my part to assist n that learning.

However, having said that, it is a challenge being a non-Native writer working in Native subject matters. You must always be taking your spiritual temperature to see where you’re at. And you are always open to the criticism of “dabbling in Native themes for fun and profit.” But I look at it as a chosen obligation to use such skills as I have to help bring Native issues and knowledge to as wide an audience as possible.

We are all common children of a common land, and there are wrongs that must be acknowledged and healing that must take place. But more than that, there is a richness in Native tradition – spiritually, culturally, and morally – that has much to teach us all. We need to find a way to listen to that richness without trying to appropriate it or twist it.

My job, as a writer, is to serve as an ally to the Native people to get their story told to the extent that they want it shared, and to help bring the depth of their spiritual insight to bear on the world in which we all live.

The Wolf at Twilight, like it’s predecessor, Neither Wolf nor Dog, is an effort to do this. I hope that you and your readers will find my efforts worthwhile.

I have half-baked theories about his bi-racialism fostering an innate sense of compromise, and larger conspiratorial fears, fostered by my more wing-nut friends, about greater forces than we know forcing decisions upon even our most visionary politicians. But I don’t trust any of these thoughts. They are simply the product of an utter stunned disbelief that the Democrats and Obama would roll over in the face of the moral bankruptcy and outright political criminality of the Republicans and Blue Dogs, and allow a too-gullible American public to be manipulated by craven, disingenuous, politically bought-and-paid-for minions of corporate interests.

So, I resist. Maybe Obama is smarter by a factor of ten than I am, and that he’s playing political “rope a dope.” I have to hope so, and while I entertain this faint hope I will keep my silence regarding my great and bottomless disappointment at what appears to be a policy of appeasement that ranks with the greatest political miscalculations in recent memory.

Perhaps I’ll write more on this as the situation progresses. My hope, however, is that he’ll prove me wrong. All I know for certain is that he allowed the opponents, who are some of the most venal politicians I have seen in my lifetime, to define the issue as one of “public option”, when the real issue is affordable health care for all. It is, as I said before, a fist fight in a closet while the house is burning down.

But, enough. I’m depressing myself just thinking about it. Let’s move on to something more pleasant and exciting.

That “something” is the imminent release of The Wolf at Twilight and the strong support it has already received from many people in the Native community for whom I have the greatest respect. In a few days my new website will be active, and you’ll be able to read many of these comments for yourself. I’ll send out a note when it finally goes on line. But, until then, I thought I’d share the first review we’ve received. It is from Foreword Reviews, which I have been informed is a core source used by librarians and independent booksellers.

Here it is. Enjoy:

The Wolf at Twilight: An Indian

Elder’s Journey Through a Land of Ghosts and Shadows

Kent Nerburn

New World Library

Softcover, $14.95 (344pp)

978-1-57731-578-0

Kent Nerburn’s latest book, The Wolf at Twilight, is a combination of memoir, historical narrative, and spiritual reflection that showcases his innate flair for storytelling. In response to a summons from Dan, a tribal elder, Nerburn returns to the Lakota reservation that provided the landscape for his previous book, Neither Wolf nor Dog. Dan wants Nerburn’s help in finding his sister, Yellow Bird, who was lost nearly 75 years earlier to the U.S. Indian re-education programs. Dan and Nerburn embark on an unsettling journey into a part of the past that has long been relegated to the shadows of the American conscience.

Nerburn’s access to this history is one of the chief strengths of this book. From the 1870s through the 1940s (and beyond) Native American children were separated from their families and sent to federally funded boarding schools whose mission it was to strip Indian language, spirituality, and culture from the children. Former students are increasingly telling of their experiences of malnourishment, overwork, and brutality at the hands of the government and church, and the study of these schools has become one of the most active areas of American Indian historical study. In The Wolf at Twilight, the memories and experiences of Dan and his family give the reader a glimpse of this history and its impact on individuals.

It would be tempting for Nerburn to report this information from the detached and authoritative role of the observer. He successfully shrugs off the role of journalist, however. Nerburn is just as comfortable writing about his own connection to the fraught relations between White America and Native America as he is Dan’s. It is precisely his connection with the people and places in his book that gives his writing resonance. The Wolf at Twilight is a wonderful read for any reader who wants to learn more of our national history, who longs to connect to spirituality, or who simply wants to read a story told from the heart. (November) Lizzy Shramko

Remember, you can pre-order an autographed copy of The Wolf at Twilight by going to wolfnordog.com. I’m very proud of this book and very excited to share it with you.

Technorati : boarding schools, historical trauma, native american, wolf at twilight

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, here is the drill: establish a false position — it doesn’t matter whether there is even a shred of truth or rationality to it — then manipulate the Democrats into arguing about the false position. It’s a political variation of the “Have you stopped beating your wife, yet?” fallacy. It can also be called “throwing a bone in the woods,” where you send someone off chasing something that is irrelevant so they will remain occupied or preoccupied while you deal with the issue at hand.

In this instance, the Republicans have thrown a number of bones into the woods, and they have done so with a manipulative brilliance. They started with the debatable proposition that our health care would get worse if we went to a single-payer system. We would become like Europe or Canada, where, by false anecdotal evidence, we are led to believe that people are denied appropriate care or forced to wait for months for treatment. Now, such a proposition is susceptible to analysis and is grounds for legitimate debate: would our health care be worse if we went to such a system? I would love to see this analyzed and parsed by good political minds, even though I already have my biases. It would be an educational experience and would either change my mind or firm up my convictions.

But that’s not how the Republicans are playing it. Once they got this doubt, and the fear that it fosters, on the table, they trotted out the old bugaboo of “government bureaucrats in charge of your health care.” Anyone with a shred of political awareness realizes that Medicare is a government program, and that insurance companies, with their need to cull the herd of high risks, are already in charge of your health care, and are far more Draconian than any governmental system would ever be. But the mysterious “government bureaucrats” were dredged up and put out like terrifying scarecrows to keep us out of the fields of rational discourse. And the Democrats bit. Instead of going back to the heart of the issue, which is how a single payer system, or even Obama’s seriously neutered “public option” approach would benefit us all, they went to the margins of rationality to fight out the “government bureaucrats” argument.

This gave the Republicans the edge they needed. They saw that the Democrats had once again proven willing to engage in a false argument, so now all that was needed was to make that argument more personal and absurd, and to drag the Democrats along. In an act of evil genius, they bypassed the standard “Obama will force you to have abortions” argument and went to an astonishingly novel argument: “Obama will tell you when you have to die.” It is so prima facie absurd that the Democrats thought they could knock it down with a feather. But there’s where the evil genius aspect comes: by engaging in it, they gave it currency, and the media, which has long since given itself over to an “on the one hand, on the other hand,” approach to reporting rather than intelligent analysis, went panting along behind the argument, accepting its framing, and discussing its merits.

The Republicans could have just as easily made the argument that by funding health care we are putting our troops in harm’s way, or curtailing our space program, or taking food out of our school children’s mouths. But they didn’t. They went to the single most frightened group available, and their only real, viable base — old white people. “Obama will tell you when you have to die,” they said. And then they used the absolutely brilliant technique of inciting these folks to go to Town Hall meetings and shout out. It was brilliant because Town Hall meetings are small venues. Had they said, “get out on the streets,” or “stand with signs on street corners,” like the Democrats do, it would have failed, because the tiny nature of the protests would have been revealed by scale. It’s always better to have a small theater completely full than a big theater half empty, and by flooding the Town Hall meetings with people who are incited to behave in an uncharacteristically uncivil manner, they make it look like both the scale and the intensity of the opposition is greater than it is.

It’s a perfect technique for a party with small numbers. It is contained demagoguery, spurred on by a small handful of angry white male radio folks like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Glenn Beck, who can increase their influence exponentially through the use of radio and television, and make the mainstream media run toward the argument because the media, as it is currently configured, always goes toward the loudest noise.

Ergo, we have a false premise, and a very threatening one at that, being promoted from behind the scenes by vast amounts of money, amplified exponentially by select media operatives, and carried forward by a small group of people who are being manipulated into action because they are very frightened by what that false premise portends.

The media, unable to resist going toward loud noises, reports the noise as if it’s a seismic rumble, and the Democrats do their part by continuing to think that rationality will win the day. Did they forget that this same Republican machine was able to paint John Kerry as anti-American and George Bush as a war patriot?

Thus, the Democrats have fallen for one of the oldest demagogic tricks in the book: Establish a false premise and force your opponents to debunk it, because if you argue a wrong premise, you lose. Witness “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?”

Sadly, the Democrats would be better served by establishing a counter premise that they have found hidden documents proving that Al Qaeda is behind the opposition to health care reform because without it our children will not get the medical care necessary to grow up strong enough to fend off the Islamic terrorists when they storm the gates. The Republicans would have to stand up against it, and a lapdog media would cover it like it was a real issue.

This, sadly, is what we’ve come to. What is frightening is that it borders on the techniques the Nazis used to promote their agenda prior to their takeover of the German political system, though I do not wish to carry the analogy beyond one of method.

What has happened to us when we lose the capacity for intelligent discourse? I’m not even asking for CIVIL discourse, because sometimes anger is hard to overcome. I was as guilty of it against George Bush’s war as any of the frightened old white folks are as they thunder and rail at the Town Hall meetings. When anger shows up, you merely need to extract it from the arguments, keep the focus on the issues, and shake things down to fundamental premises. It’s what good mediators and facilitators do all the time.

But when false arguments are allowed to be promulgated and are promoted as simply “smart politics,” everything begins to fall apart. Discourse becomes demagoguery, and the anger that should be extracted has nowhere to go, because it is based on false premises. This is what leads to violence.

It is up to the Republicans to bring this discussion back to dead center. If they don’t, the blood is on their hands. But the Democrats have an obligation, too. They need to reframe this discussion to appeal to our highest and best ideals. Instead, they’re off in a corner trying to sweet talk someone who’s carrying a knife while the cameras roll.

I don’t like it, and I don’t understand it. Obama, Obama, wherefore art thou?

Technorati : healthcare, obama

I am now watching a group of young people make the fascinating move into adulthood. There are new marriages, new families, infants, toddlers, college — all the experiences that are part of starting out in life. Some of these young people have good jobs; some are struggling; some are trying to live below the radar or off the grid. But they all have dreams, and they all are alive with the freshness of possibility. Their lives spread out before them in rich abundance, and I envy them. But I also fear for them. They are, with few exceptions, dancing on life’s tightwire without a net — they do not have and cannot afford health insurance. It’s not that they don’t want it. They can’t afford it. The simple cost of living — food, rent, college or college loans, daycare, cars and car insurance — are just too much. They scrape, they dream, and they survive. But one broken bone, one pregnancy, one unexpected illness, and those dreams are dashed. It is wrong and it is unfair. And there are, for reasons that are almost impossible to fathom, a great many people who seem to think this is just fine. And this is what has been keeping me awake.

It is not just fine. It is not fine that our young people cannot afford to get sick or have an injury; it is not fine that people in mid-life cannot change jobs or make any move in life because they would lose health coverage; it is not fine that older folks can have the savings they have worked their entire lives to acquire turn into a tiny joke in the face of some catastrophic medical bill. And I think most people of good heart believe this. Yet whenever the issue of health care reform comes up in America, some truly dark forces rise up to twist it, distort it, and kill it.

Who are these folks, and how does this always happen?

Well, we know who the folks are. They are the Wall Street-driven insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies and various for-profit entities whose ox would be gored by meaningful health care reform. That they are venal and cold-hearted is unfortunate, but understandable. They are in business to make money, and they are responsible to people and organizations who have invested in them with the intention of making money.

Why they are so powerful is less understandable. But, accept for a minute that this is just the way it is and just the way it is probably going to be. The question then becomes, why do people of good heart get manipulated so easily and readily by these cold forces? And, perhaps more importantly, how?

The answer seems to lie in a core xenophobia that looks upon America as the best place and the best way in everything we say or do. This kind of naive “island mentality” allows those with the tools to do so to manipulate our understanding by creating a dangerous “other” out of everyone or every place that does things differently. We are not part of a dialogue of cultural options; we are “the last best hope” that must stand up against whatever bogeyman is currently pressing its face against our window.

In the case of health care reform, this bogeyman is “socialized medicine” or “government run health care.” Never mind that almost anyone who has ever been sick or injured in a country with universal health care comes home filled with wonderment at how smoothly their treatment went; never mind that most of the people thundering against reform are counting the days until they can get their single-payer government-run Medicare. These are conveniently disregarded in favor of fear stories about lines and rationing and now, absurdity of absurdities, government-designated dates and times of death. It is simply mind boggling how such stories and such narratives gain currency.

But this has been the broad method of the opponents of health care reform since day one back in the Truman administration: scare people rather than inspire people. Make change into something dangerous. Define the unknown as a dark and frightening place.

Now, here is where the disconnect comes. People of intelligence recognize this tactic and they recognize that it is driven by for-profit entities that cannot change the way they operate or think, lest they cease to exist. Such a situation is eminently understandable. But why do the politicians allow this kind of transparent manipulation to color their thinking? You can say it has to do with lobbying dollars; you can say it has to do with constituent pressure. Yet, none of that makes sense. When you look around you and see the young people and the families and the elderly living without coverage and living in legitimate fear of what this means, how can you not rise above your desire for reelection or corporate dollars and, instead, do the right thing?

I have said this before: one to one, Americans are some of the kindest, most giving people on earth. But something happens when we think as a collectivity. We are far too prone to become cruel, suspicious, and vindictive, all under some clumsily constructed guise of “individual freedom” and “choice.” We close our hearts, we close our pocket books, and we close our minds. We become moved by fear, not by compassion and hope. Look at this grotesque war in Iraq: our politicians could raid our children’s bank accounts because we were afraid. Look at our bailout of the banks: we wrote them a blank check because we were afraid. The lesson is clear — make people afraid and you can do anything in their name, whether it is to rob their bank accounts or close their hearts and minds.

I don’t want to make this into a political diatribe, because then I will lose my Republican friends in this monologic discussion. And though I must point out that it is primarily the Republicans and the odd Blue Dog Democrats who have started waving the banner of fear, my real sadness and my real source of sleeplessness is the Democratic response. The Democrats know that this is their chance to do something good for the country and for the children and families and elderly. They know this is their best chance and probably their last chance on health care, probably for a generation. Yet they are letting the opponents define the game.

First of all, and most transparently, they are letting the Republican and Blue Dog opponents define the battle. As with prescription drug reform, they have allowed the opponents to make it an argument over the size of a closet when the issue is how to rebuild the house. If you can convince people that the real issue is not health care reform, but a “public option” within the insurance company-driven game, then even if you lose, you win, because there has been no reform, only a reshuffling of the deck. So you draw the Democrats into this argument, make them deal with it as if it is life or death, then allow them a measure of victory, and everyone goes home thinking that we’ve got reform. No, what we’ve got is a different configuration of shelves in the closet. The structure of the house is still weak and crumbling and unsustainable. But the Democrats are trumpeting their success, though the success is precious little success at all. And the house continues to sink.

This brings us to the biggest failure — President Obama. What happened to the man who could inspire with oratory? Where is the bully pulpit? Why is he allowing idiotic arguments about his birthplace or government-mandated death dates to bring him down to the level of scratch-and-bite? This is a man who sailed above the ordinary with a rhetoric of inspiration. Why is he now not inspiring us with the possibility of good rather than arguing with those who are professional purveyors of fear? How can he have gotten bogged down in tactical battles while the strategic objective is slipping away? This issue, my friends, is his Viet Nam — not Iraq or Afghanistan. He’s become Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson trying to make arguments about the necessity of certain actions, while the whole war is slipping away. And, sadly, the casualties this time are the young people I see trying to make their way in a world that is pretty much stacked against them.

Let me say it clearly before I close. The Bush administration is being revealed as having been little more than a bad man manipulating a hand puppet. The Obama administration rode in on a wave of excitement that was made even greater by the failure of that previous administration. Obama had our hearts and minds. We were ready as a country to follow him anywhere, even though his opponents were vociferous and determined. The Democrats chose him over Hillary because they didn’t want a tactician, and the nation embraced him because he had a vision. Now, in the process of governing, he has found himself fending off an attack of political ferrets, and, as a result, he appears to have taken his eye off the ball. He is talking tactics, not strategy.

Perhaps he has a grander vision; I’d like to think so. But if he doesn’t, he’s losing. And if he loses, those young people struggling to raise families, pay for college, pay rent, and put food on the table, will be the biggest losers.

If I had his ear, here’s what I’d say. “Don’t let health care be your Viet Nam, Mr. President. If you do, no wall we build in Washington will be big enough to hold the names of all the casualties your failure will leave in its wake.”

But I don’t have his ear, and I’m not sleeping well these nights.