I’m with you, Richard Armitage

Dear Mr. Armitage,

The most important thing I discovered in your interview with New York Moves over the weekend was an enhanced capacity to speak controversially. I said this immediately, and I said how it cheered me, because I have so often struggled to speak controversially when I thought it mattered or even when it didn’t. That was, and remains, the most important thing. What you said seemed a departure from your previous interviews, and then when it was affirmed that you had endorsed your own desire to speak about politics and your opinions, I was even happier. Because I know how hard it is to speak when someone is saying, “Are you sure you want to say that?” and you wonder, “Is it wise for me to say that?”

As your fan, I am interested in your opinion about everything. However, I don’t care about your politics all that much in the aggregate, although I am much, much, much further left than you appeared in these statements (and than most of my fellow citizens). I question your praise for the current coalition government of the UK no matter what point you meant to illustrate when you said it. A government is not better simply because its members negotiate with each other if what they negotiate is destructive and debilitating to the weakest people in the society. But I don’t hate you for it. Poor Armitage — nobody loves a centrist!

If I’d have been going to abandon you on the basis of less than fully informed statements with offensive political meanings, though, I’d have turned off my screen last December when you unthinkingly endorsed Tolkien’s identification of the dwarves with the Jews. Yes, I understand all the possible explanations for your statements because I ran them through my head. I didn’t find them mitigating and I wasn’t alone. I even played a segment of one those interviews to a friend who loves your work, too, and she winced — could you really be so unaware of the debates about the giving of Jewish features to movie villains in the last few decades?

In the end, I concluded, despite your use of (Tolkien’s) racist language, you’re not an anti-Semite, you were just ill-informed about what all of those associations would call into the heads of Jews (and, for that matter, Palestinians). And yet, I’m still a fan. Maybe my politics aren’t important enough to me, although people who know me in real life would say differently. Though Judaism is one of my deepest commitments, somehow I managed to keep loving your work and loved it even more. I’m sure some people will call that hypocritical. One thing I know now, more than ever, though, is that people are full of contradictions. Indeed I know this partially because of things your work taught me about inner tensions and paradoxes and the need for compassion. Maybe I just chose not to take your statement personally.

Because you stopped saying those things about dwarves and Jews after the fourth or fifth day of the press tour, I assume you got wind of how some readers were reading those statements and realized it would be wise either to stop (or to find a way to point out that those were Tolkien’s opinions, they counted as liberal to radical in the 1930s, and engage with them yourself more critically). But no matter the topic, we all rub up against someone. In fact, hardly anyone I know would fully endorse my political opinions. Are there dealbreakers for me in regards to you? Sure. Racism, homophobia, spousal abuse, intentional cruelty would be some of them. I don’t think these things are inherently party political, though, so I hope that even fellow fans of mine would see such things as problems. Had I seen a sign of those things, though, I’d already be gone. I’ve been watching you closely for almost four years now and I’ve read all your older press and if there had been any hint of something truly problematic for me, I wouldn’t be here now.

I mention this stuff about the dwarves not because I’m angry any more, but mostly because I’ve heard now twice that liberal fans would not be so broadminded if your remarks had squared more closely with American conservatism. I’ve been broadminded before and likely I will have to be again. I would not have hated you, and your work would not have been lowered in my estimation had you said you were in favor of other things. I do think anyone who thought you were likely to be an American-stripe political conservative had to be ignoring evidence that’s been in the clear for years, now. Had I thought that a realistic possibility I potentially wouldn’t have let myself get in this deep with you.

But since it’s implausible to some that I could admire your speech without admiring the content of what you said, I might as well say what I love about your politics. I might as well be damned for something I’ve actually said. Because I agree with what I took away from your views in that interview, and I lived every day through what you were describing. I’m not hiding behind my often-expressed desire not to bring politics into this world, nor am I writing to explain or justify the opinions of others. These are my opinions. Mine alone.

You were right, when you said that the Republicans were trying to destabilize Obamacare. [Note to a future US leftie, if that’s what you intend to become: we’ve started to call it the ACA now.] The destabilization was something that both the representatives of the GOP in DC and many GOP voters who called in to tell them stand firm in their opposition sought. This is simply not up for debate — it was widely covered at the time, although there were some GOP voters and representatives (John McCain comes to mind) who thought the whole thing was crazy. The destabilization of the law, the delay of its implementation, its revision, were the stated aim of many of the GOP house members and some of their Senate representation. It is indeed “saddening,” as you said, that anyone would have tried to sink a law that is already helping people get care and will help more in the future, particularly without proposing an alternative to address the crisis that health care is causing on our streets, in our hospitals, and to our national economy. Although there was some rumbling around the corners, some posturing, no one in the GOP had anything constructive to say. Indeed, you could have accurately stated that the GOP wished to repeal Obamacare. I heard that in the news more than once from the very mouths of GOP congressional representatives. It looks we’re headed in that direction again. Hang on for January.

I, like you, think universal health care incredibly important. It moved me that you said that. Not because I’m a huge fan of the ACA. I think it does not go far enough and will have to be rewritten to cover a number of loopholes in coverage that have emerged, especially given the failure of some states to expand Medicaid. I loved it that you said that because it proved that I was not mistaken when I deduced from the previous evidence about you that you have a truly kind heart. Could you have said something about health care and its necessity to everyone from a conservative standpoint? Yes. That would have made me equally happy. It probably would have reminded me of my mom, in fact.

I might be expected to object to your statements about politics and religion — both as a religiously observant person, and as a scholar who knows way more about the history of the church / state relationship in England and the U.S. than you do. Because I teach classes on this topic, it’s really not fair for me to comment on this. Although you didn’t finesse the statement especially well, I think I know what you were trying to say — that U.S. politics are more superficially reflective of some Americans’ religious sympathies, and that the insistence of some voters on seeing their religious values reflected in secular law in the U.S. — and their belief that their values are universal rather than particular — is strong in a way that it’s not in the UK anymore (or in most of Europe for that matter). These values collide with the multicultural trajectory of the U.S. in really uncomfortable ways — and even though the Anglican Church is rather enmeshed with the UK Government, this relationship of religious sentiment among voters and political expression of it is a path on which the UK is, indeed, at a very different point.

I absolutely agree with you that it’s a problem to mix religion and government. I feel that way about the U.S., I felt that way about Germany, and I feel that way about Israel. Probably for different reasons than you do; my guess is that your worries lie in the realm of how a state religion or a government in the hands of a particular religion or confession potentially affects personal freedoms — or in this case, the possibility of a functioning political realm. I am less worried than those things than about how a government in the hands of a particular religion affects that religion, and the energy of the religion itself. As soon as the state starts telling us things about religion or enforcing values that are said to be religious ones, the vitality of the religion in question takes a huge, huge hit. This is a historical lesson demonstrated repeatedly over centuries and across cultures. This effect explains why a “Jewish” state can house one of the most secular societies in the world.

But despite what I suspect are differing concerns, I loved that you expressed this value, one of my most important ones: that religions espouse particular values with which governments should not get involved. I’ll take a moment to be professorial: Adam Smith said exactly this in The Wealth of Nations (1776). Once upon a time, a lot of U.S. conservatives agreed with this position, as well. I think some still do.

Finally, you said that the Constitution needs to be changed and guns and ammunition should become absolutely illegal. I could have kissed you. All of my family are hunters and gun enthusiasts and I respect their love of these most interesting machines. I enjoy or at least have no aversion to eating most of the things they shoot as long as the shot is taken out of the ducks. I understand that hunting is a culture. I grew up with guns in the house and all around me and was taught to shoot a rifle, kill a deer, field dress it and carry it home. I did it once to demonstrate that I could. I’m sure my brother will make my nieces learn how. My sister-in-law hunts. I think I could still clean and load a rifle, but I’m not sure I could aim well enough to hurt anyone, and in fact, I’d rather die than do that. Yes, you heard me right.

I would love to think people could be responsible gun owners, and I think they were in the 1970s, but I don’t experience that much anymore. For me the potential benefits of guns are outweighed by the negatives I’ve seen all around me for years. I have lived in Germany where there is a high level of gun control. I’m delighted to go on public transportation there and not be tense about what people have on under their jackets. This is the third campus I’ve worked at where I’ve been in lock-down one or more times because someone showed up on the campus with a weapon to try to kill someone else and/or himself. And I would be delighted never again to hear the news of another Newtown, CT, or something much more common and banal — never to read another newspaper article about a four-year-old who killed himself or another sibling because responsible people left a loaded gun where he could get at it.

I loved you for saying this, because it’s something that Americans really disagree about at the moment, but also because it really is a matter of social safety and freedom — that the freedom to have a gun not be more important than the freedom to a live a life free of violence. You confirmed what you’d said some time ago about being a pacifist. You underlined my opinion you of as a caring person who worries about the lives of the people around him, even those he doesn’t know. I also loved that you’re aware of the contradictions of working in an industry that glorifies violence (even if I think your causality is faulty) and that you realize the tendency to violence in all of us — in you when you shoot a gun for a tv show, in your nephew when he’s playing with a sword. Your comments made me think, not that you’re naive about guns, but rather that you’ve thought about it a fair amount and that you know that the attempts in the U.S. to determine a level of gun or ammunition that’s okay have ended in failure, and logically always will, until we are able to take them off the table for everyone.

I don’t think your publicist was sleeping, or, for that matter that you were drunk — or that anyone who says that much with that much relative cohesion is inebriated. Even so, in vino veritas. Always speak your truth, Mr. Armitage, whenever you feel you can. Even if it doesn’t confirm my political opinions. Especially if it doesn’t confirm my political opinions. I like to be surprised and entertained by you. And in this case I was surprised by your bravery. You teach me something every time.

So keep up the good work. Every time you speak the truth without apology, it makes it easier for me to do the same.

As always,

Servetus

~ by Servetus on November 18, 2013.