Tell Better Stories

Is there any path forward not dependent on luck or magical thinking? Any playing field on which Nancy Pelosi suddenly rises up with a magical staff and shouts “You shall not pass?”

This fight seems to be over, I get it. It’s a world where we roll over and go back to sleep because whatever, it’s just an earthquake—call me when a wildfire is consuming Bob Hope Drive. In a world where the very air we breathe can compromise our health, a world where exchanging supermarket pleasantries with a fellow human might spell our personal doom or the death of our parents or neighbors, we are on the verge of understanding all too well how good people found themselves living and participating in fascist societies. Remember when culture seemed to have turned a corner? Gay marriage came suddenly after years of slow progress. Recycling didn’t seem like a dirty word. Yoga and bicycling weren’t the signs of being a hippie—they were normal. Americans started to appreciate the value of giving up cars or considering hybrids. As usual, the young people were driving change, rolling their eyes at the open contempt from their elders, just as generations of young people have done.

But now those young people have precarious lives ahead of them, as do we all. Fury Road seems a perceptive documentary. How indeed do we get an uncontested election not decided by an ideological legislative body in pursuit of a dangerous partisan agenda? How do we get back to at least pretending to be a democratic society hoping to stave off climate apocalypse, one where our grumblings were based on the corruption of democracy via corporate profits and systemic racism instead of the clear path forward spelling the death of climate and human rights?

Is “I told you so” useful in this context? Reminding likeminded people it was always about the absurdly venerated Supreme Court? Not when all your friends already agree with you. We all told each other so changes nothing about the dire predicament we now enter into.

My backup plan always involved my passport and a plane, or in a pinch, Tijuana or the Long Beach container port. Thailand, Berlin, Barcelona, Sydney, Wellington, Ubud…all these options are closed to us due to pandemic. So instead we fight.

But how do you fight when your only option is Nancy Pelosi finding herself gifted with the powers of a wizard? I admit this seems unlikely.

And so we watch this video. Watch Chris Cooper talking about story. Remember that the Bible is a collection of stories. Mormonism comes out of newer stories and has 15 million adherents. Religion is based on great storytelling. Hearts and minds are won, entire societies are built on who has the most amazing stories to tell and who tells them most skillfully. Stories are what I do. What many of us do. The path forward for the American experiment is super-screwed, Team Lofty Ideals. But what we can do is what we have always done—tell more and better stories. Fight the propaganda. Share your stories, share other people’s stories. Craft a better narrative. 

 We may well have lost the war. Life as we know it is on the verge of keeping us under constant climate threat, as the rich build their bunkers and sea walls and the rest of us scheme for how to stowaway on a container ship to New Zealand. But all of us still have to get up every day, feed ourselves and our families, thrive to the best extent possible, and survive the coming storm. Hell, it’s already here. If US culture were a car, it just got permanent plates instead of those paper ones we thought we could throw away soon. 

 The arc still bends toward justice, and minority rule ended relatively peacefully even in South Africa after fifty years of apartheid.

Seize the narrative. Tell the best stories. Beat corrupt minority rule at the game it’s been playing so well. Be like Chris Cooper and speak to what is good and right. Seek incremental success, and know that bold wins are few and far between, and involve wizards. Do what you’re best at, and do it often. And don’t let the bastards get you so far down you forget to get back up.