The Awesomeness of Elizabeth Warren
What it Really Means to be The Best Among Us, in the Best Way
Here's a tiny question. What really qualifies a person for the job of a leading a society? Just credentials? Charm? Ideas? Or something more, something deeper?
Elizabeth Warren absolutely killed it at the Democratic debate last night, which was her first really big moment on the national stage. She didn't speak the most. But when she did, every word, every syllable landed like a hammer blow aimed squarely at the forces that have made America the world's first poor rich country — authoritarianism, patriarchy, runaway capitalism, a culture of cruelty, rampant inequality. Bang!
Forget all her plans and agendas for a moment. They're vital, they're awesome, they're crucial. America will never recover without them, or their equivalents — only keep declining. But where did they come from? What was the spark behind them? There is something truer still happening here. I thought about it for a while. I tried to put my finger on it. Here's what I came up with.
Elizabeth Warren is so good that it frightens me a little. Not just good "at", meaning high-IQ or "intelligent" or skilled or experienced and so on. But good. Courageous, brave, doesn't-give-a-damn what the bad guys think, fierce, passionate, unafraid, authentic. (Do you think it's funny and telling that when I said "good" you probably confused it for "good at"? Wait — isn't that the problem?)
She is not just one of the most "smart" or "brightest" people I have ever seen — though there's that, the Ivy League factor, if you like. But it's not worth a whole lot without something more fundamental. Call it what you will — but it's not "likeability" (read: being meek and timid for a woman) "intelligence" (read: being able to speak technical political jargon that men invented for men's sakes) or accomplishment (read: doing things that count in men's eyes.) It is something much, much deeper. That something deeper is there in her in spades, that something that counts in a much truer tally — and it shone last night. It is the something that matters the most, my friends. Goodness. Mettle, fiber, backbone, care. Character. a soul, humanity, decency.
There are many words for this elusive, ineffable quality — yet none really do it justice. So let me draw an analogy.
Sometimes I'm a little afraid of my partner. I don't do something I said I'd do. I say something stupid. I write something that's not so good (this one happens a lot) I forget to take the trash out. I veg out instead of getting off my ass and finishing that book, song, article, essay. Now, all this happens regularly. I'm not just only human — I'm a lazy, forgetful, ornery son of a gun. I'm a donkey pretending to be a dude.
Uh oh. It's time for some wrath. It's getting cloudy in heaven. Time for a little scolding, a challenge, a provocation, a reprimand, a reality check. I live in constant fear and anxiety and dread of it. But it's a kind of delicious fear. Nope. Not in a bad way. Threatening me, ridiculing me, mocking me. I'm not afraid of her like an abuser. I'm not scared of any kind of harm she'll inflict on me. I'm not afraid of "her" at all, really. I love her all the more for it — this fact that she frightens me, in a good way.
It's a subtle point I'm trying to make. Perhaps you see it — or maybe you don't yet.
I am afraid — terribly afraid, if I'm honest — of disappointing her. Of failing her. Of somehow not living up to her expectations and ideals of me, of us, of what I'm capable of…versus if I'm actually sitting on the sofa wallowing, lazing, or dozing. Now, I understand we live in a time where it's not trendy to express such thoughts. But I don't think anyone has ever had a genuine relationship without expectations and ideals. Sure, we fall short — but the question is: do we struggle upwards?
She is always challenging me to be my true self, my authentic self, to do the things that count most, to live up to my possibilities. It makes me afraid — in a good way. Can I do it today? In this way? Will she like this song, this chapter, this idea? Will she think it's trite, foolish, that I can do better? I'm afraid. I am engaged in the struggle to be my better self, always, thanks to this woman that I love. It's the most beautiful experience I have ever had.
The point of all that gushy sentimental claptrap is this. My partner challenges me to be my best self, always, every day. It scares me. It makes me anxious and stressed, sometimes — yet not in a bad way, in a positive, optimistic, life-affirming way. But what kind of person can challenge you to struggle to your best self? Not just a "smarter" one — they might well just take advantage of you. Only a genuinely good person — one much, much better than me, to begin with, can engage me in the struggle to become my best self.
And that, my friends, is how Warren makes me feel. (No, no, I'm not proposing to her.) I mean that she scares me a little since she makes afraid me of disappointing her — because she is challenging all of us to become to our better selves. She is a person of abundant character, in that sense. Go ahead and call it a terrible and hackneyed and cliched and even a sexist analogy if you like. Does any part of it ring true, though? How long has it been since a politician made you feel a little afraid of disappointing them — instead of them disappointing you?
Warren challenges each and every one of us to be our best selves. To create a country full of people constantly engaged in this beautiful and noble and impossible struggle to become our better selves. Let me make that concrete a little. The ones who give each other decent healthcare, retirement, education, transportation. The ones who genuinely care for one another again. All those things are necessary to become your best self, no?
But then what? Then do we all go compete to work for Wall St or Silicon Valley, so we can make our fuck-you money, and walk away from society, living in grand, stupid little islands of our own design? Nope. Then we can really begin to give. Then we lead. Even in small ways. Maybe we mentor, maybe we coach, maybe we volunteer, maybe we start up. Maybe we just aim to become teachers — like Warren did. Maybe those worthy aspirations take us to worthier places, still. That's part of her message, her perspective, her attitude, too, isn't it?
Do you see this strangle and subtle set of thoughts I'm trying — and probably failing — to express? Let me sharpen them.
Warren challenges each and every one of us to our best selves. Not just our technocratic selves, or our consumerist selves, or our ideological selves. Not our egos or our ids or our shadows. Not just little greedy appetites or angry children or babies throwing tantrums when they don't get their diapees changed (yes, I said diapees). Wait — isn't that what most politicians and pundits want? Isn't that how they divide us and tempt and control us? But Warren's genuinely not interested in any of that. She's fundamentally concerned with what I'd call the eudaemonic struggle — the beautiful, arduous, upwards climb towards the impossible peak of the better self.
She thinks every single life should start from the same place — and be able to climb as high it can. And that it should be caught, gently, if it falls, reassured, its tears brushed away — so it can climb again, again, again. (This line of thinking has deep roots in history — from Aristotle to the great prophets to European social democracy. Only we Americans seem to have neglected it, forgotten it, ignored it.)
Now. What does all that make her? Sure, she's smart. She's "intelligent" in that cold, abstract, Ivy League way — so what? Tons of people are — but they're still terrible people. Ah, that's the point. She's not. She's that rarest of things — not just one of them, the failed American elite, who look at the stock market booming, and declare everything ok, while the average American dies in debt, but one of us. Just average people with working souls.
(Please understand I'm not saying she's perfect, or flawless, and so on. I'm saying what I'm saying: she appears to be a good, decent, and humane person, in the expansive sense of empathetic, courageous, true, beyond being simply "intelligent". And those are the most crucial qualities of all. They're what we need most right now — maybe always. If you don't believe that, go ahead and take a look at the Oval Office, Wall St, Silicon Valley, K St.)
It's not the impersonal analytical qualities we should value in a Warren. It's character. It's goodness. It's that sense of uncompromising defiance. It's the soul power, stupid. The humanity. The decency. The wisdom. Because without those things, all the "analytical skills" in the world aren't worth a damn. Just take a look at an Ezra Klein. Nice guy. He's been wrong about every single thing in recent American history, from the rise of Trumpism, to the rise of camps — not because he's dumb, but because he lacks a soul, and without a working set of values to guide your "analytical choices", you will more or less always get them wrong, because you don't know if a concentration camp is just another "policy choice."
Warren is the best among us in the best way, my friends. She is a decent human being. Now, you might think that's nothing at all. But my friends, there is nothing harder in indecent and obscene times — which is what these are — than to remain decent. To grow in decency, in fact. She used to be a die-hard Republican. But seeing the misery and destruction those ideas wreaked — guess what — she changed her mind 180 degrees. How many other leaders do you know who have done that? I can't think of a single one.
She is not just the best among us in some kind of cold, abstract way. That was Obama. The professor who couldn't fight — except to bomb villages with drones — but definitely not the Republicans. The wise man who tried to fix healthcare with…more capitalism. The imperious intellectual who ran the country with a team McKinsey consultants…who promptly drove it into the ground. Yes, really — during the Obama years, life expectancy, incomes, and savings all fell. Warren isn't that person — the dry, arid, abstract intellectual, lacking human values, the capacity and need to relate, a soul.
She is a very different person. She is the best among us in the best way. There are many "bests" among us, but the truth is that so far, not many of them are nearly good enough. The "best" kids — meaning the "smartest" — go off to work on Wall St and Silicon Valley. They don't give a shit about anything or anyone but themselves and their own gratification. The "best" managers, meaning the most profitable ones, become CEOs, who promptly loot the companies they're entrusted with. They don't give a damn about anyone but themselves and the hedge fund bots that trade their shares. The "best" among us are often only "best" in the worst possible way — and that is what has gone wrong with America in many ways, my friends.
But Warren is the best among us in the best way, the way that counts the most. She has grown in decency. She has retained and expanded her humanity. Her courage and passion have only ignited hotter. So much so that there she is — not just catering to us, telling us what we want to hear…but what we need to. Speaking these difficult truths to us. These hard and painful facts. We are a failing country. The world laughs at us. The bad guys are demolishing our society. We need a plan, a hundred plans, a thousand plans.
And so she says we need to always be engaged in the struggle to become our best selves. Again — or maybe for the first time, take your pick. But only the best among us in the best way, the person of the truest character, goodness, humanity, decency, can do that — challenge, encourage, provoke, lead us to become our better selves. No one else can do it, when you think about it. (All that is what it genuinely means to be the best among us, isn't it?)
Here is a secret. That is what a democracy really is. It is what civilization really is, if the word means anything. And it is what a life well lived is, too. Just that — to be perpetually engaged in this impossible struggle to ever become your better self. To be able to fall from the heights into the dirt, laugh — instead of screaming at your neighbour, beating the earth, or kicking the mountain — dust yourself, look up, set your jaw with determination, and try all over again. All the things that we cherish and treasure, all the things we have learned from the catastrophes and mistakes of history — they add up to just that.
It seems to me that Elizabeth Warren understands all that. In a way that our leaders have long since forgotten. She scares me. Because I know she'll always challenge me, encourage me, provoke me, test me. Are you becoming your best self? Still in the fight? Still climbing Camus' impossible mountain? Fell down again? Laugh — dust it off — look up — try again. Get up there.
I'm trying, I'm trying, damn you. Thank you, thank you.
Umair
June 2019
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