Eve Tushnet has an occasional series called "Things I Know But Cannot Prove," a list that every man should compile for himself in spare moments, both to keep track of what he knows—I, for one, tend to forget—and keep a little humility about what he can and can’t prove. One item on mine used to be "Love of your fellow man is nice poetry, but, when it comes to how to behave, far better to trust good manners ."
As it happens, that statement has been upgraded to Something I Know and Can Prove thanks to this passage from Florence King’s novel When Sisterhood was in Flower . The set-up is that our narrator’s traveling companion has begun to wreak havoc at a roadside motel, which is hardly surprising given that she’s a mentally unstable medievalist; in this case, Gloria’s confusion vis-a-vis reality has caused her to tear around the parking lot shouting "I hear the Plantagenet herald! Make haste to Gloucester!" and "Raise the portcullis in the name of the king!":
The manageress burst into a hoarse whiskey laugh and caught Gloria by the arm as she rounded the office. "Okay, kid, okay," she chortled good-naturedly. "You just had one to many, that’s all. Happens to the best of us."Two things are obvious: that the manageress has no idea what in God’s name Gloria is on about, and that she treats her with great humanity and humor anyway. Just think what would have happened if she’d tried to understand poor Gloria, or tried to love her (which would, at least to some extent, depend on understanding her); the interaction would have never gotten airborne!
"We can’t raise the portcullis!"
"Chrissake, kid, you can’t get nobody to fix things nowadays. The plumbers charge ten bucks an hour and don’t do a goddamn thing." Her warm, husky, maternal voice did the trick. Gloria became docile and allowed herself to be led back to the cabin.
"You gals lay off the sauce now," Fran advised. "If you’re hung over tomorrow, just stay in bed, don’t worry about checkout time. My maid got shot last night so there won’t be nobody around anyhow."
Gloria put her arms around Fran and laid her head on the woman’s shoulder. "My liege lord has the pox!"
"That’s nothin’, you oughta see Harry’s piles. Big as baseballs. Now go back to bed and sleep it off. Night-night."
This was the thought that sprung to mind as I read this post from James in which he unpacks this paragraph of Freddie’s on what politics should look like:
Fraternal love. Mutual respect. Understanding. These things are worth the fighting for, and I want no part of a political dialogue that doesn’t have, peeking out from the cracks, a sense of love, real love, hidden within it.Manners were invented so we could get along with people we don’t love, understand, or respect, and they work. In fact, they work better than love, understanding, and respect insofar as those emotions, while better and deeper (ceteris paribus), are conditional . I love my friends and kin when they do things I don’t understand, but I’m sure I couldn’t offer such an unflinching embrace to every Democrat in America.
Edmund Burke said that magnanimity is not seldom the truest wisdom in politics. Magnanimity, civility, good manners: these are the watchwords of a healthy political discourse, not love, understanding, and respect. Looking through an old notebook yesterday, I found where I’d written in emphatic block letters "RITUAL, NOT THEOLOGY, WILL SAVE US NOW." This may have been something like what I meant.
