Discourse Trauma

After only two weeks of the new (old) presidential administration in the US, I feel bruised and exhausted. That’s the point, of course. The new cabal’s post-inauguration strategy has been literally described (gleefully) as “shock and awe.” The plan was to overwhelm all of his “enemies”—i.e., anyone not submissive to MAGA ideals—with so much outrageous, illegal, extreme, and chaotic behavior that we would be stunned into submission. It’s a form of violence. It’s abuse.

Of course, there is pushback and resistance and an avalanche of court cases to forestall the new administration’s actions. People will try to resist the illegal and cruel policies of this president. Sometimes they will succeed; sometimes they won’t. People will suffer, and so will the rest of creation. American leadership in the world, our national security, and our economic prosperity will suffer. And we will waste an obscene amount of time that we could be spending on productive ways forward into a more just, ecologically sustainable, and joyful society.

Whatever does or does not get broken in the next years, I’ve been reflecting on how the words themselves inflict damage—the flurry of outrageous executive orders, the “bow to Trump or you’re fired” emails to civil servants, the lies and lies and lies, including the disgustingly racist attempt to blame the DC plane crash on “DEI hires.” The news media reports on all this, of course, so our little brains are filled with the ugliest discourse-sludge. Here’s my point: the discourse itself is purposely traumatizing.

I would argue that as a nation we are experiencing loud, constant, verbal abuse. This is a classic strategy of domination; verbal abuse trains the abused person to cringe and cower, to feel weak and loathed and helpless. “Flood the zone with sh**” is literally how Steve Bannon describes it. And he’s right. Flood the zone with a constant stream of abusive rhetoric and you will keep everyone scrambling. This is essential to an overall strategy whose fundamental principle is domination.

So what is a faithful response to discourse trauma? I don’t know. I’m overwhelmed and scrambling, exactly as planned.

I guess step one is to name this rhetoric for what it is: violent abuse. Discourse can be violent, too, especially when it literally threatens vulnerable and/or innocent people. We are hardly responding as easily triggered snowflakes when we find this rhetoric abusive. People’s real bodies and lives and livelihoods are on the line.

And we are right to call it out. Another strategy of the abuser is to hold the abused to higher standards than he himself upholds: to say he can degrade and insult and torment, but no one can criticize him. I refuse to fall for that. Calling out abuse is not the same as committing abuse.

So whatever our thoughts about the role of government, immigration, sexual ethics, abortion, economics, whatever, we must reject lies and cruelty perpetrated in words as well as in deeds.

Step two might be to understand that our entire media ecosystem is built for discourse trauma. The “outrage industrial complex” breeds a “culture of contempt.” Angus Hervey and his team at the Australian nonprofit Fix the News are focused on countering this by lifting up good news from around the world. In their January 16 newsletter, Hervey reflected on the media ecosystem at length:

[W]e’re living through an unprecedented age of disinformation. Everyone is talking about “ensh[**]tification” — Cory Doctorow’s term for the way platforms degrade as they try to extract maximum value from users — and “slop,” an increasingly common, endless stream of low-quality, algorithm-optimised online content. But in focusing on the pollution of our information streams, we’re missing how the pipes themselves have been recalibrated to carry mostly sewage.

… News organisations have spent decades optimising for this kind of reporting. They’ve long known that it’s the negative, highly arousing stories that get the most traffic …The result is a kind of perpetual motion machine of pessimism, each component feeding off  the energy of the other’s decline.

Hervey notes that things are going to get much worse with this new US administration—remember, Hervey is observing this from Australia—and we’re all going to have to figure out how to survive it. His recommendation, unsurprisingly, is to manage wisely the media sources one allows into one’s attention:

The solution isn’t complicated, though it requires some effort: Get rid of algorithmic media and switch as much as possible to chronological media. … The challenge is learning to see our information ecosystem for what it has become — a vast apparatus fine-tuned to amplify our darkest impulses — and then having the wisdom to step away from it. It may seem quaint to suggest that emails and books could save us. But in an age where our collective attention has become everyone else’s most valuable asset, the simple act of reclaiming when and how we consume information might be the most radical move we have left.

How to manage my sources and still know what’s going on is a skill I’m trying to figure out. New information pathways are emerging and it’s all happening very fast. I’m still flailing.

Step three, I believe, is to speak the gospel. Sometimes that means recognizing and courageously naming distortions of the faith. You have no doubt read about Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon at the National Cathedral prayer service on the morning of the inauguration, a message that drew what I would describe as swift and abusive retribution from the president and his supporters, including death threats and gender-inflected insults about how Budde is a witch and a demon.

The ensuing kerfuffle prompted many Christian voices to defend the bishop. But her detractors also claim Christian reasons for their hatred. As Shane Claiborne wrote last week, what we have witnessed once again in this incident is a “collision of Christianities” in our country, a collision between Christian Nationalism and the way of Jesus. Claiborne does not mince words:

[B]etween the Christianity of Trump and the Christianity of Christ, we recognize the widest possible difference — so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure and holy is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt and wicked. I can see no reason to call this [i.e., Christian nationalism] Christianity — except the most deceitful one.

And using Jesus as a tool for political power is the most deceitful one.

Trump has turned the seven deadly sins into a way of life, made a mockery of the fruits of the Spirit and regularly betrayed the core tenets of the Sermon on the Mount. He needs Jesus, to be sure, but it’s time to stop pretending he is actually a follower of Jesus. There comes a point when, in the words of Jesus, “We cannot serve two masters.” Christians cannot follow Trump and Jesus.

This is not about who we like better or align with politically. It’s not about choosing Team Budde or Team Trump. It is about two competing versions of the Christian faith. It’s not about left and right, but what it really means to be faithful to Jesus. 

This is not just about Trump, of course. In fact, Trump is simply deploying for his own purposes a Christian nationalism that has been brewing for many decades among extensive networks of power and influence, as Kristin DuMez and many others have demonstrated.

So calling out the distortions of Christian nationalism is one aspect of preaching the gospel. The other is to hold out the good news of the gospel as Jesus himself announces it in Luke 4. We can hold out the vision of a shalom where all creation flourishes in justice and peace. Budde’s sermon itself, based on Matthew 7:24-29, exemplifies this kind of vision work. She spoke about unity, dignity, honesty, humility, and mercy. She looked the new president in the eye and begged him to show mercy for the vulnerable.

This particularly outraged the president and his supporters. But let’s recall that Jesus called out religious leaders of his day not because they were too loosey-goosey on ethics and showed too much empathy. He called them out because they hypocritically demanded a legalistic perfection of others, gathered power for themselves, and did it all without mercy (Matthew 23, for example).

It seems to me that we can receive the national prayer service and its aftermath as a call to renewed courage. I am waiting to see if the church will find resolve in this moment. Are we willing to serve a prophetic role and calmly call out cruelty, lies, coercion, and domination as the sinful use of power that it is? Are people of good will who supported Trump for whatever reason now ready to say, “I still think we have to address the issue of [name your issue], but not like this”—and withdraw their support? Are all of us willing to preach Jesus as he is revealed in the scriptures—the one who welcomes the outcast, heals the sick, cares for the poor, refuses political power, and reconciles us to God by his own sacrificial love? Can we hold out a vision of shalom for all creation and pray that God will bring it about through our feeble and stumbling efforts?

There’s a difference between the ever-reviled “wokeness” and being spiritually awakened to God’s love. Can we wake up in this moment? As the late contemplation scholar Barbara Holmes wrote, “Domination cannot withstand the steady gaze of the inner eye of thousands of wakened people.”

Image credit: oceanblueproject.org