Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 308 of 447 · 20 per page

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  When you finally do, you discover two things: you’ve been out there for almost two hours, and your girlfriend has called and texted you half a dozen times. Where are you, where are you, where are you, she asks, and just as you lift the phone to your ear to call her back, the front door of the building opens and a herd of scorers begins to pour out, including her. You give the woman you’ve been talking to your phone number, tell her to call you if she needs anything, and then dart across the lawn. Your girlfriend is glowering. Your new friend is running next to her, looking a little anxious and breathless, and gets to you first. “She was just worried about you,” your new friend says, with such preemptive anxiety that you are taken aback. The three of you get in your car, and your girlfriend is radiating fury. You drive silently to the friend’s house. When you get there, she seems almost reluctant to get out of the car, and once she’s out she lingers, like there’s something she wants to say. But then she goes inside. As you pull away from the curb, your girlfriend slams her hand on the dashboard as hard as she possibly can. “Where the fuck were you?” You explain about the woman in the bathroom, what she said to you, how you couldn’t text because she was talking and you didn’t want to interrupt her. You fully expect this explanation to deflate her rage—you even expect her to apologize—but somehow she gets even angrier. She continues to pound the dashboard. “You are the most inconsiderate fucking person I’ve ever met, and how fucking dare you just walk out of the building with no explanation like that.” Every time you bring up the woman she starts yelling again. A few blocks from your house, you pull over. “Don’t talk to me like that,” you say. Then, horrifyingly, you start to cry. “I had to make a decision, and I feel confident that I made the right decision.” She unbuckles her seat belt, and leans very close to your ear. “You’re not allowed to write about this,” she says. “Don’t you ever write about this. Do you fucking understand me?” You don’t know if she means the woman or her, but you nod. Fear makes liars of us all.10

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  But when she stands, she does look drunk. How will you get home? You reach for your wallet, but you have no cash, and after a few minutes one of the poets comes up to you. “I’m so sorry,” he says a few times, his speech slurred, though sorry for what he does not specify—but then he presses a twenty-dollar bill into your hand for a cab. You tell him you’ll pay him back, but now that you think about it, you never did. When the cab pulls away from the bowling alley, you see her car gleaming in the parking lot and pray that it doesn’t get towed before morning. In the back of the cab, she closes her eyes, begins to mutter a monologue that lasts for the entire drive home. You fucking cunt I fucking hate you goddamn you Carmen fuck you fuck your mother fuck everything you cunt you goddamn fucking slut fuck you … The sensation of pulling a sheet from the bed is terrible. You will sleep on the couch. That’s what people do, when they’re mad at the person who would otherwise sleep next to them. You’ve never done it but you have heard of it happening. You’ve seen it in movies. You can’t find your pajamas. You go out to the living room, strip down to your underwear, and curl up on the broken couch with the springs pressing into your side. You pull the sheet around you. It’s that soft, wonderfully stretchy jersey fabric, the same type you had in college. She peels the sheet away from your body; you shiver.30 “What are you doing?” she asks, standing over you. You don’t say anything. Then, when she doesn’t move, you tell her, “I’m angry, and I’d like to sleep alone, please.” She kneels at the side of the couch like a supplicant with an offering. You think maybe she is going to try to kiss you, or maybe fuck you, though you won’t let her, though you won’t let her you won’t let her you won’t— She leans over and begins to scream directly in your ear, like she’s pouring acid out of her mouth and into you. You try to scramble away, but she is pushing on your body, howling like a wounded bear, like an ancient god. (An ancient bear; a wounded god.)

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  õ But by this point, conservative Christians had realized that if they wanted to protect their vision of the traditional family, sexual ethics, gender roles, and the all-around authority of scripture as they interpreted it, then they had to get involved with the United Nations because it had enormous global influence. õ One of the founding principles of the UN charter is equality between men and women. Since the 1970s, the United Nations has convened periodic conferences to discuss the empowerment of women around the world, and in 1995, one of these happened in Beijing. õ As reports from the conference filtered out, some activists in the Christian right did not like what they heard, especially the call for national governments to treat men and women as socially equal, able to fill equivalent roles in the workplace, public sphere, and at home. õ Evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons got organized. At the United Nations’ follow-up conference on women’s issues in New York five years later, some people passed out fliers that warned of the spread of the “homosexual agenda” and “widespread abortion.” õ One of the leaders of this bloc of conservative Christian organizations was a man named Austin Ruse, who ran the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (now called the Center for Family and Human Rights). õ Ruse realized he could prevent the conference from reaching consensus on women’s issues by creating a “pro-family” voting bloc of conservative, religious countries that did not want to be bossed around by Westerners. That alliance included the Vatican—which sent a representative to the conference—and also Sudan, Iran, Libya, and Syria. õ These countries are not exactly renowned for their records on human rights—particularly the rights of Christians. But the American activists were pragmatists, and the strategy worked. They kept the New York conference stuck in debates over abortion and homosexuality, and prevented serious discussion of poverty and violence against women. 310 The History of Christianity II õ The Christian right got a boost in this global alliance building when George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election. Bush appointed conservative Christians to key leadership positions in government and at the United Nations. Conservative think tanks and ministries like Focus on the Family—which had started out only concerned about the American culture wars—started devoting money and time to building international networks of likeminded activists. SUGGESTED READING Butler, Born Again. Jenkins, The New Faces of Christianity. Kruse, One Nation Under God. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER ä When Americans use the phrase “the Christian right,” what do they mean? ä Why did conservative activists argue that liberals’ defense of women’s equality in foreign countries is a kind of cultural imperialism? ä How might the Christian right’s campaign to build international alliances influence America’s domestic culture wars? Lecture 31—Culture Wars and the Christian Right 311 312

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  FUNDAMENTALIST OPPOSITION õ Today, Pentecostalism is a thriving international branch of Christianity. A 2011 Pew study estimated that more than 580 million people worldwide practice Pentecostal Christianity or its cousin, Charismatic Christianity. õ But 100 years ago, most Christians found Pentecostal beliefs and practices totally outrageous. Much anti-Pentecostal backlash came from the diverse subculture of conservative Protestants who were, by the turn of the 20th century, beginning to think of themselves as fundamentalists. They believed they were the only Christians left who really stood by the fundamentals of the faith. õ This conflict between fundamentalists and modernists hinged on the question of how Western Protestants ought to respond to the big changes of the 19th century. Such changes include intellectual developments like the theory of evolution, but also social and economic changes too: the growth of noisy, smelly cities; the influx of immigrants, many of whom were not Protestant or even Christian; and the rise of first-wave feminism. õ The fundamentalists were those Protestants who strongly opposed these developments and fought against efforts to back away from a literal reading of, for example, Genesis. They fought against the drive to embrace modern scholarly methods and even to entertain the thought that other religions might be valid ways to know the divine. õ Fundamentalists found all that outrageous, and they fought hard to keep control of their churches, seminaries, and missions organizations between roughly 1900 and 1930. In most cases, they lost. Many—although not all—of them broke away to found their own denominations. õ The fundamentalists’ exact beliefs varied between Baptist fundamentalists, Presbyterians, or Mennonite fundamentalists. But in general, they shared some basic things with the Pentecostals. Lecture 23—Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism 225 They believed that the Bible was wholly free of error. They believed that modern scholarship usually couldn’t be trusted. They believed God was all-powerful. And many of them believed that the world was ending soon. õ Below is a list of five key fundamentalist doctrines, though it is not an exhaustive list of fundamentalist beliefs: 1. The miracles in the Bible really did happen. They were not optical illusions, or myths, as renegade modernist scholars in Germany and elsewhere had argued. 2. Jesus died on the cross for our sins. 3. Jesus experienced bodily resurrection after crucifixion. 4. Jesus came from a virgin birth. 5. The Bible is completely without error, even when it comes to historical fact. 226 The History of Christianity II

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Had he lost her trust? On occasion, she looked at him harshly or even upbraided him in the thunderous style of her father. No, the queen would not be easy to manage, and slowly he found himself working harder than ever to impress her. As part of his plan for the men to slowly take over power, he made sure that all correspondence from foreign governments would be first routed to his desk. He would keep the queen in the dark on several important matters. Then he discovered that the queen had learned of this and behind his back had ordered all diplomatic correspondence to go through her. It was like a chess game, and she was playing several moves ahead. He got angry and accused her of undermining him in his work, but she stood her ground and had a very logical response: unlike Cecil, she spoke and read all of the major European languages and understood their nuances, and it would be better for all if she personally conducted diplomacy and brought the ministers up to date on foreign affairs. It was useless to argue, and he soon realized that when it came to handling such correspondence and meetings with diplomats, Elizabeth was a master negotiator. Slowly his resistance wore down. Elizabeth would remain in charge, at least for the first few years of her reign. But then she would marry and produce the necessary heir for England, and her husband would take over. It was unnatural for her to continue in this role as an unwed ruler. It was rumored that she had confided in several friends that she would never marry, and that she had an overwhelming fear of marriage based on what she had seen with her father. But Cecil could not take this seriously. She kept telling everyone that all that mattered was the greater good of England, but to keep England without an heir apparent was to risk a future civil war. Surely she could see the logic in this. His goal was simple: to get the queen to agree to marry a foreign prince in order to forge an alliance that would benefit England in its weakened state. Preferably this would be a Protestant prince, but as long as he was not a Catholic fanatic, Cecil would approve the choice. The French were dangling before her a marriage with their fourteen-year-old king, Charles IX, and the Habsburgs were promoting a marriage with Archduke Charles of Austria.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  Of these two texts the former is especial y interesting for us since it places the word σινδών in the mouth of the iconic, some would say paradigmatic, Nazirite Samson, that is, in the mouth of one of those “young men” (ἐκ τῶν νεανίσκων) whom the Lord anointed to be Nazirites (Amos 2:11–16) and whom the people of Israel led astray. In Judg 14 it is one of the primary objects by which Samson’s enemies, the Amorites, the very people whom the Lord had vanquished according to Amos 2, shame him. Judges 83 For commentary, see Harper, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Amos and Hosea, 63. 84 Kuruvil a points to difficulties in the connection of our passage to Amos 2 ( “Naked Runaway,” 531), but misses the connections that we highlight. 85 The Hebrew word that it translates (סָדִ֣ין) is found elsewhere only in Isa 3:23. A further study of Isa 3:23 might bear fruit. 173 Mark 14:51–52 173 14 depicts well the violent wrath of this wild and chaotic “young man” who, inspired by the Lord’s spirit, repays his shame by wreaking violence on an Amorite vil age before he returns, his anger unabated, to his father’s house. 86 καὶ ἥλατο ἐπ’ αὐτὸν πνεῦμα κυρίου καὶ κατέβη εἰς Ἀσκαλῶνα καὶ ἐπάταξεν ἐξ αὐτῶν τριάκοντα ἄνδρας καὶ ἔλαβεν τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτῶν καὶ ἔδωκεν τὰς στολὰς τοῖς ἀπαγγείλασιν τὸ πρόβλημα καὶ ὠργίσθη θυμῷ Σαμψων καὶ ἀνέβη εἰς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ (14:19).87 The language in fact graphical y narrates the very kind of violence used by the Lord in the dispossession of that same land of the Amorites in Amos 2 in order to give it to Israel.88 It may even echo the violence of Nazirites, like Samson, who played a significant role in that dispossession as recorded by Amos. Again, we suggest that it is not coincidental that this is the same kind of violent, anger-fueled, and divinely directed chaos that is prophetical y announced in Mark 13, that is on display in the garden in Mark 14 including vv. 51–52,89 and that continues through to the end of Mark’s gospel. True, the connection is not made explicit through logical rationales provided to connect the dots for unlearned readers, because the astute reader only needs a few choice intertextural y charged clues to “understand.” 90 86 Josephus’s rendering of the account of the birth of Samson also is suggestive in that Samson’s mother receives the announcement of Samson’s birth from an “angel” who is described in Ant. 5.8.2 as a νεανίας and in 5.8.3 as a νεανίσκος. See Collins, Mark, 795–6 n. 222. 87 In Amos 2:9–10 the Amorites are mentioned twice as those who kept the land from Israel and those whom God destroyed to give the land to Israel. It may not be clear from Judges that the peoples described in Amos are the same ones described in Judg 14; however, in Judg 14 the

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Always being rational can be tiresome. But for some people, this makes them terribly uncomfortable. They experience this primitive thinking as softness, as mysticism, as contrary to science and technology. Everything must be clear and analytical in the extreme. They become devout atheists, not realizing that the concept of God cannot be proven or disproven. It is a belief either way. The repressed, however, always return. Their faith in science and technology has a religious air to it. When it comes to an argument, they will impose their ideas with extra intellectual heft and even a touch of anger, which reveals the stirring of the primitive within and the hidden emotional need to bully. At the extreme, they will indulge in a love affair that is most irrational and contrary to their image—the professor running off with the young model. Or they will make some bad career choice, or fall for some ridiculous financial scheme, or indulge in some conspiracy theory. They are also prone to strange shifts in mood and emotional outbursts as the Shadow stirs. Bait them into just such overreactions to prick their bubble of intellectual superiority. True rationality should be sober and skeptical about its own powers and not publicize itself. The Snob: These types have a tremendous need to be different from others, to assert some form of superiority over the mass of mankind. They have the most refined aesthetic tastes when it comes to art, or film criticism, or fine wines, or gourmet food, or vintage punk rock records. They have amassed impressive knowledge of these things. They put a lot of emphasis on appearances—they are more “alternative” than others, their tattoos are more unique. In many cases, they seem to come from very interesting backgrounds, perhaps with some exciting ancestry. Everything surrounding them is extraordinary. Of course, it later comes out that they were exaggerating or downright lying about their background. Beau Brummell, the notorious snob and dandy of the early nineteenth century, actually came from a staunch middle-class background, the opposite of what he peddled. The family of Karl Lagerfeld, the current Chanel creative director, did not inherit its money but made it in the most bourgeois fashion, contrary to the stories he has told. The truth is that banality is part of human existence. Much of our lives is spent doing the most boring and tedious tasks. For most of us, our parents had normal, unglamorous jobs. We all have mediocre sides to our character and skills. Snobs are especially sensitive about this, greatly insecure about their origins and possible mediocrity.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  THEOPHYLACT. Or each one of the people is the vineyard, each likewise is the husbandman, for every one of us takes care of himself. Having committed then the vineyard to the husbandmen, he went away, that is, he left them to the guidance of their own judgment. Hence it follows, And went into a far country for a long time. AMBROSE. Not that our Lord journeys from place to place, seeing that He is ever present in every place, but that He is more present to those who love Him, while He removes Himself from those who regard Him not. But He was absent for a long time, lest His coming to require His fruit might seem too early. For the more indulgent it is, it renders obstinacy the less excusable. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. Or God took Himself away from the vineyard for the course of many years, for since the time that He was seen to descend in the likeness of fire upon Mount Sinai, He no longer vouchsafed to them His visible presence; though no change took place, in which He sent not His prophets and righteous men to give warning thereof; as it follows, And at the time of the vintage he sent a servant to the husbandmen, that they should give him of the fruit of the vineyard. (Exod. 19.) THEOPHYLACT. He says of the fruit of the vineyard, because not the whole fruit, but part only, He wished to receive. For what does God gain from us, but His own knowledge, which is also our profit. BEDE. But it is rightly written fruit, not increase. For there was no increase in this vineyard. The first servant sent was Moses, who for forty years sought of the husbandmen the fruit of the law which he had given, but he was wroth against them, for they provoked his spirit. Hence it follows, But they beat him, and sent him away empty. AMBROSE. And it came to pass that He ordained many others, whom the Jews sent back to him disgraced and empty, for they could reap nothing from them; as it follows, And again he sent another servant.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Such news made Blunt angry and envious. He was a loyal Englishman. With the success of the Mississippi Company, Paris was drawing in investment capital from all over Europe. If this continued, France would soon become the finance capital of the world, surpassing Amsterdam and London. Such newfound power for the French could only spell disaster for England, its archenemy, particularly if another war broke out between them. More personally, Blunt was a man of great ambition. He was the son of a humble shoemaker; from early on in his life he aimed to ascend to the highest levels of English society. His means of getting there, he believed, would be through the financial revolution sweeping Europe, which centered on the increasing popularity of joint-stock corporations like Law’s and like the South Sea Company. As opposed to building wealth through the traditional means of owning land, which was expensive to manage and highly taxable, it was relatively easy to earn money through purchasing stock, and profits were tax free. Such investments were all the rage in London. Blunt had plans to turn the South Sea Company into the biggest and most prosperous joint-stock company in Europe, but John Law had stolen his thunder with a bold venture, and with the full backing of the French government. Blunt would simply have to come up with something bigger and better, for his sake and for the future of England. The South Sea Company had been formed in 1710 as an enterprise that would handle and manage part of the English government’s enormous debts, in exchange for which the company was to be granted a monopoly on all English trade with South America. Over the years the company did almost no trading but served as an informal bank for the government. Through his leadership of the company, Blunt had forged relationships with the wealthiest and most powerful Englishmen, most notably King George I (1660–1727) himself, who became one of its biggest investors and was named governor of the company. Blunt’s motto in life had always been “Think big,” and it had served him well.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  great generals and the best artists, inventors, and tradesmen. Under her influence, a man or woman could see the world with perfect clarity and hit upon the action that was just right for the moment. For Athens, her spirit was invoked to unify the city, make it prosperous and productive. In essence, Athena stood for rationality, the greatest gift of the gods to mortals, for it alone could make a human act with divine wisdom. To cultivate his inner Athena, Pericles first had to find a way to master his emotions. Emotions turn us inward, away from nous , away from reality. We dwell on our anger or our insecurities. If we look out at the world and try to solve problems, we see things through the lens of these emotions; they cloud our vision. Pericles trained himself to never react in the moment, to never make a decision while under the influence of a strong emotion. Instead, he analyzed his feelings. Usually when he looked closely at his insecurities or his anger, he saw that they were not really justified, and they lost their significance under scrutiny. Sometimes he had to physically get away from the heated Assembly and retire to his house, where he remained alone for days on end, calming himself down. Slowly, the voice of Athena would come to him. He decided to base all of his political decisions on one thing— what actually served the greater good of Athens. His goal was to unify the citizenry through genuine love of democracy and belief in the superiority of the Athenian way. Having such a standard helped him avoid the ego trap. It impelled him to work to increase the participation and power of the lower and middle classes, even though such a strategy could easily turn against him. It inspired him to limit wars, even though this meant less personal glory for him. And finally it led to his greatest decision of all—the public works project that transformed Athens. To help himself in this deliberative process, he opened his mind to as many ideas and options as possible, even to those of his opponents. He imagined all of the possible consequences of a strategy before committing to it. With a calm spirit and an open mind, he hit upon policies that sparked one of the true golden ages in history. One man was able to infect an entire city with his rational spirit. What happened to Athens after he departed from the scene speaks for itself. The Sicilian expedition represented everything he had always opposed—a decision secretly motivated by the desire to grab more land, blinded to its potential consequences. Understand: Like everyone, you think you are rational, but you are not. Rationality is not a power you are born with but one you acquire through training and practice. The voice of Athena simply stands for a higher power that exists within you right now, a potential

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  PIETY ON THE EVE OF 1776 õ From the 1720s onward, the religious revivals of the First Great Awakening were bringing sinners to Christ throughout the colonies. Yet for every ex-sinner who stayed in church, there were probably 10 or more who drifted back to their non-believing ways. õ As far as historians can tell, the revolutionary era was a real low point for organized religion in America. Several scholars, including the eminent evangelical historian Mark Noll, have found that less than 10% of Americans in the revolutionary era were formal members of local congregations, even if they may have affiliated with a Protestant denomination on paper. õ These pioneers had plenty of rebellious feelings, but in many cases their gripes had little to do with religion. They were mad about the increasing tax burden foisted on the colonies to pay for Britain’s wars against France and Spain, especially since the colonies were not represented in Parliament. Some drew inspiration from the ideas of English philosopher John Locke, particularly his notion that a government must have the consent of the governed to be legitimate. õ Despite relatively low church attendance, Protestant Christianity complemented the American colonists’ secular grievances and inflamed their passion. They fused Locke’s ideas with earlier Puritan theology that understood human nature as totally depraved, and so they concluded that one should never trust a human king with too much power. õ Another religious motivation was anti-Catholicism. Most American colonists thought of themselves as Protestants, even if they didn’t necessarily go to church. They were none too pleased with the crown’s insistence on tolerating the presence of a huge number of French Roman Catholics to the north in Quebec. 150 The History of Christianity II õ A handful of America’s founders, like John Witherspoon and Patrick Henry, had evangelical sympathies. But the more important ones, like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin, were either lax about their faith or openly skeptical of Christianity. Some were apathetic Anglicans. Others were deists who believed in a distant God who set the universe in motion but was no longer involved in humans’ affairs. õ However, historians know that the founders did not want to strip Christianity out of American culture. They saw it as an important ethical resource for society. Even Thomas Jefferson, who was the most skeptical of all the founders, saw some value in the social influence of churches. He collaborated with evangelicals and respected their faith. Lecture 16—Religion and Revolution in the 18th Century 151

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Time was against them. That same day, Shackleton ordered one boat to be prepared for an extremely risky attempt to reach the most accessible and inhabited patch of land in the area—South Georgia Island, some eight hundred miles to the northeast. The chances of making it were slim, but the men could not survive long on Elephant Island, with its exposure to the sea and the paucity of animals to kill. Shackleton had to choose carefully the five other men, besides himself, for this voyage. One man he selected, Harry McNeish, was a very odd choice. He was the ship’s carpenter and the oldest member of the crew at fifty-seven. He could be grumpy and did not take well to hard labor. Even though it would be an extremely rough journey in their small boat, Shackleton was too afraid to leave him behind. He put him in charge of fitting out the boat for the trip. With this task, he would feel personally responsible for the boat’s safety, and on the journey his mind would be continually occupied with keeping track of the boat’s seaworthiness. At one point during the voyage, he noticed McNeish’s spirits sinking, and suddenly the man stopped rowing. Shackleton sensed the danger here—if he yelled at McNeish or ordered him to row, he would probably become even more rebellious, and with so few men crowded together for so many weeks with so little food, this could turn ugly. Improvising in the moment, he stopped the boat and ordered the boiling of hot milk for everyone. He said they were all getting tired, including himself, and they needed their spirits lifted. McNeish was spared the embarrassment of being singled out, and for the rest of journey, Shackleton repeated this ploy as often as necessary. A few miles from their destination, a sudden storm pushed them back. As they desperately looked for a new approach to the island, a small bird kept hovering over them, trying to land on their boat. Shackleton struggled to maintain his usual composure, but suddenly he lost it, standing and swinging wildly at the bird while swearing. Almost immediately he felt embarrassed and sat back down. For fifteen months he had kept all of his frustrations in check for the sake of the men and to maintain morale. He had set the tone. Now was not the time to go back on this. Minutes later, he made a joke at his own expense and vowed to himself never to repeat such a display, no matter the pressure. After a journey over some of the worst ocean conditions in the world, the tiny boat finally managed to land at South Georgia Island, and several months later, with the help of the whalers who worked there, all of the remaining men on Elephant Island were rescued.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  As he went deeper and deeper into these stories night after night with his staff, he reminded them that this past was still very much alive. The old enemies were still at work against him. There was CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr, who seemed to hate Nixon with unusual zeal. His reports from Vietnam always managed to highlight the worst aspects of the war and make Nixon look bad. There was Katharine Graham, the owner of the Washington Post , a newspaper that seemed to have a personal vendetta against him going back many years. She was the doyenne of the Georgetown social scene, which had snubbed him and Pat for years. Worst of all, there was Larry O’Brien, now the chairman of the Democratic Party, who as a key adviser in the Kennedy administration had managed to get Nixon audited by the IRS. As Nixon saw it, O’Brien was the evil genius of politics, a man who would do anything to prevent Nixon’s reelection in 1972. His enemies were everywhere and they were relentless—planting negative stories in the press, procuring embarrassing leaks from within the bureaucracy, spying on him, ready to pounce on the slightest whiff of scandal. And what, he would ask his staff, are we doing on our side? If his team did nothing to respond to this, they would have only themselves to blame. His legacy, his ambitions were at stake. As the stories began to pile up of antiwar demonstrations and leaks about his administration’s Vietnam War effort, Nixon became red-hot with anger and frustration, the talk with his staff heating up on both sides. Once, as Colson talked about getting revenge on some particularly nettlesome opponents, Nixon chimed in, “One day we will get them—we’ll get them on the ground where we want them. And then we’ll stick our heels in, step on them hard and twist—right, Chuck, right?” When informed that many of the staff at the Bureau of Labor Statistics were Jews, he felt that was probably the reason for some bad economic numbers coming from there. “The government is full of Jews,” he told Haldeman. “Most Jews are disloyal.” They were the mainstay of the East Coast establishment that worked so hard against him. Another time he told Haldeman, “Please get me the names of the Jews, you know, the big Jewish contributors to the Democrats. . . . Could we please investigate some of the cocksuckers?” Auditing them would be in order. He had other harsh ideas for how to hurt Katharine Graham and embarrass Daniel Schorr. Nixon also began to feel increasingly anxious about his public image, so critical to his legacy. He badgered his staff, and even Henry Kissinger, to promote to the press his strong leadership style. In interviews, they should refer to him as Mr.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  equivalent of a gold rush—the recent discovery of rich veins of oil in nearby western Pennsylvania. In 1862 a young Englishman named Samuel Andrews—an inventor/entrepreneur who had known Clark in England—visited their offices and pleaded with Clark to become partners in the oil business. He bragged of the limitless potential in oil—the lucrative series of products that could be made out of the material and the cheapness of producing them. With just a little capital they could start their own refinery and make a fortune. Clark’s response was lukewarm—it was a business that experienced tremendous ups and downs, prices continually rising and falling, and with the Civil War now raging, it seemed a bad time to commit so fully. It would be better to get involved on some lower level. But then Andrews gave his pitch to Rockefeller, and something seemed to spark to life in the young man’s eyes. Rockefeller convinced Clark that they should fund the refinery—he would personally ensure its success. Clark had never seen Rockefeller so enthusiastic about anything. It must mean something, he thought, and so he relented to the pressure from the two men. In 1863 they formed a new refining business called Andrews, Clark and Company. That same year, twenty other refineries sprouted up in Cleveland, and the competition was fierce. To Clark, it was quite amusing to watch Rockefeller in action. He spent hours in the refinery, sweeping the floors, polishing the metal, rolling out barrels, stacking hoops. It was like a love affair. He worked well into the night trying to figure out ways to streamline the refinery and squeeze more money out of it. It had become the principal generator of profit for their firm, and Clark could not help but be pleased that he had agreed to fund it. Oil, however, had become Rockefeller’s obsession, and he constantly bombarded Clark with new ideas for expansion, all at a time when the price of oil was fluctuating more than ever. Clark told him to go more slowly; he found the chaos in the oil business unnerving. Increasingly, Clark found it hard to hide his irritation: Rockefeller was getting a bit puffed up with the success of the refinery. Clark had to remind the former bookkeeper of whose idea it had been all along to start their business. Like a refrain, he kept telling Rockefeller, “What in the world would you have done without me ?” Then he discovered that Rockefeller had borrowed $100,000 for the refinery without consulting him, and he angrily ordered Rockefeller to never go behind his back again and to stop looking to expand the business. But nothing he said or did seemed to stop him. For someone so quiet and unassuming, Rockefeller could be annoyingly relentless, like a child. A few months after Clark had berated him, Rockefeller hit him with another request to sign for a big loan, and Clark finally exploded: “If that’s the way you want to do business,

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Anger: It is natural and healthy for you to feel anger at certain types of people—those who unfairly block your advancement, the many fools who have power but are lazy and incompetent, the sanctimonious critics who espouse their clichés with so much conviction and attack you without understanding your views. The list could go on forever. Feeling such anger can be a powerful motivating device to take some kind of action. It can fill you with valuable energy. You should embrace it and use it throughout your life for such a purpose. What might make you hold back or tamp down your anger is that it can seem to be such a toxic and ugly emotion, as it often is in our culture. What makes anger toxic is the degree to which it is disconnected from reality. People channel their natural frustrations into anger at some vague enemy or scapegoat, conjured up and spread by demagogues. They imagine grand conspiracies behind simple inescapable realities, such as taxes or globalism or the changes that are part of all historical periods. They believe that certain forces in the world are to blame for their lack of success or power, instead of their own impatience and lack of effort. There is no thought behind their anger, and so it leads nowhere or it becomes destructive. You must do the opposite. Your anger is directed at very specific individuals and forces. You analyze the emotion—are you certain that your frustration does not stem from your own inadequacies? Do you really understand the cause of the anger and what it should be directed at? In addition to determining if it is justified and where the anger should be directed, you also analyze the best way to channel this emotion, the best strategy for defeating your opponents. Your anger is controlled, realistic, and targeted at the actual source of the problem, never losing sight of what initially inspired the emotion. Most people engage in some cathartic release of their anger, some giant protest, and then it goes away and they slip back into complacency or become bitter. You want to cool your anger, bring it more to a simmer than a boil. Your controlled anger will help give you the resolve and patience you will need for what might be a longer struggle than you had imagined. Let the unfairness or injustice lie in the back of your mind and keep you energized. The real satisfaction comes not in one spasm of emotion but in actually defeating the bully and exposing the narrow-minded for who they are. Do not be afraid to use your anger in your work, particularly if it is allied to some cause or if you are expressing yourself through something creative. It is often the sense of contained rage that makes an orator so effective; it was the source of much of the charisma of Malcolm X. Look at the most lasting and compelling

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  decisions, especially those that have been ineffective—can you see a pattern, an underlying insecurity that impels them? Examine your strengths, what makes you different from other people. This will help you decide upon goals that mesh with your long-term interests and that are aligned with your skills. By knowing and valuing what marks you as different, you will also be able to resist the pull of the group bias and effect. Examine your emotions to their roots. You are angry. Let the feeling settle from within, and think about it. Was it triggered by something seemingly trivial or petty? That is a sure sign that something or someone else is behind it. Perhaps a more uncomfortable emotion is at the source—such as envy or paranoia. You need to look at this square in the eye. Dig below any trigger points to see where they started. For these purposes, it might be wise to use a journal in which you record your self-assessments with ruthless objectivity. Your greatest danger here is your ego and how it makes you unconsciously maintain illusions about yourself. These may be comforting in the moment, but in the long run they make you defensive and unable to learn or progress. Find a neutral position from which you can observe your actions, with a bit of detachment and even humor. Soon all of this will become second nature, and when the Emotional Self suddenly rears its head in some situation, you will see it as it happens and be able to step back and find that neutral position. Increase your reaction time. This power comes through practice and repetition. When some event or interaction requires a response, you must train yourself to step back. This could mean physically removing yourself to a place where you can be alone and not feel any pressure to respond. Or it could mean writing that angry email but not sending it. You sleep on it for a day or two. You do not make phone calls or communicate while feeling some sudden emotion, particularly resentment. If you find yourself rushing to commit to people, to hire or be hired by them, step back and give it a day. Cool the emotions down. The longer you can take the better, because perspective comes with time. Consider this like resistance training— the longer you can resist reacting, the more mental space you have for actual reflection, and the stronger your mind will become. Accept people as facts. Interactions with people are the major source of emotional turmoil, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The problem is that we are continually judging people, wishing they were something that they are not. We want to change them. We want them to think and act a certain way, most often the way we think and act. And because this is not possible, because everyone is different, we are continually frustrated and upset. Instead, see other people as

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Also remember that when people are drunk and behave differently, often it is not the alcohol that is speaking but the Shadow. Overidealization: This can serve as one of the most potent covers for the Shadow. Let us say we believe in some cause, such as the importance of transparency in our actions, particularly in politics. Or we admire and follow the leader of just such a cause. Or we decide that some new type of financial investment—mortgage- backed securities, for instance—represents the latest and most sophisticated path to wealth. In these situations we go much further than simple enthusiasm. We are charged with powerful conviction. We gloss over any faults, inconsistencies, or possible downsides. We see everything in black-and-white terms—our cause is moral, modern, and progressive; the other side, including doubters, is evil and reactionary. We now feel sanctioned to do everything for the cause—lie, cheat, manipulate, spy, falsify scientific data, get revenge. Anything the leader does is justified. In the case of the investment, we feel justified in taking what normally would be seen as great risks, because this time the financial tool is different and new, not subject to the usual rules. We can be as greedy as we like without worrying about the consequences. We tend to be dazzled by the strength of people’s convictions and interpret excessive behavior as simply overzealousness. But we should look at it in another light. By overidealizing a cause, person, or object, people can give free rein to the Shadow. That is their unconscious motivation. The bullying, the manipulations, the greed that comes out for the sake of the cause or product should be taken at face value, the overly strong conviction providing simple cover for repressed emotions to play themselves out. Related to this, in arguments people will use their powerful convictions as a perfect way to disguise their desires to bully and intimidate. They trot out statistics and anecdotes (which can always be found) to buttress their case, then proceed to insult or impugn our integrity. It’s just an exchange of ideas, they say. Pay attention to the bullying tone, and do not be fooled. Intellectuals might be subtler. They will lord it over us with obscure language and ideas we cannot decode, and we are made to feel inferior for our ignorance. In all cases, see this as repressed aggression finding a way to leak out. Projection: This is by far the most common way of dealing with our Shadow, because it offers almost daily release. We cannot admit to ourselves certain desires—for sex, for money, for power, for superiority in some area—and so instead we project those desires onto others. Sometimes we simply imagine and completely project these qualities out of nothing, in order to judge and condemn people.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  “I used to put a flower in my hair and walk in the sun. After big rain, I walk in the sun. The flower I put on my ear. So wet, so cool.” Her eyes drifted from me. “It’s a stupid thing.” She shook her head. “Stupid thing. To be a girl.” After a while, she turned back to me as if remembering I was there. “You eat yet?” — We try to preserve life—even when we know it has no chance of enduring its body. We feed it, keep it comfortable, bathe it, medicate it, caress it, even sing to it. We tend to these basic functions not because we are brave or selfless but because, like breath, it is the most fundamental act of our species: to sustain the body until time leaves it behind. I’m thinking now of Duchamp, his infamous “sculpture.” How by turning a urinal, an object of stable and permanent utility, upside down, he radicalized its reception. By further naming it Fountain, he divested the object of its intended identity, rendering it with an unrecognizable new form. I hate him for this. I hate how he proved that the entire existence of a thing could be changed simply by flipping it over, revealing a new angle to its name, an act completed by nothing else but gravity, the very force that traps us on this earth. Mostly, I hate him because he was right. Because that’s what was happening to Lan. The cancer had refigured not only her features, but the trajectory of her being. Lan, turned over, would be dust the way even the word dying is nothing like the word dead. Before Lan’s illness, I found this act of malleability to be beautiful, that an object or person, once upturned, becomes more than its once-singular self. This agency for evolution, which once made me proud to be the queer yellow faggot that I was and am, now betrays me. — Sitting with Lan, my mind slides, unexpectedly, to Trevor. Trevor who by then had been dead just seven months. I think of the first time we had sex, not with his cock in my palm like we usually did, but for real. It was the September after my second season on the farm.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  DISAGREEMENT IN THE MOVEMENT õ Black Christians and activists were divided over the question of how they should resist injustice. There were radicals, especially younger student activists, who were impatient with nonviolent marching. They said that in a world where white mobs were still lynching civil rights workers, violence would sometimes be necessary. õ Others, like the Baptist minister Joseph Jackson, thought King’s movement was dragging the church into a dangerous kind of political activism that wasn’t the church’s proper role and would only backfire. In 1961, King’s allies got into a fight with Jackson and other leaders in his denomination, the National Baptist Convention (NBC). Jackson was president of the NBC, and King and other progressives hoped to replace him with one of their allies. õ But their confrontation at the annual meeting in Kansas City turned into a melee. The pushing and shoving got so heated that one older minister was accidentally shoved off stage and fell four feet. He died a few days later, and Jackson blamed his opponents’ convention tactics for the accident. King’s faction lost the election; he and his followers left to form their own group, the Progressive National Baptist Convention. õ Jackson, for his part, believed that black Americans could improve their lot by working hard, having faith, and obeying the law, which would eventually change through the democratic process. King had to acknowledge the passionate disagreements on how a Christian should act in politics, even within his own community. õ King understood that not every minister was called to be a prophet, but the future of the civil rights movement depended on those, like him, who were called to behave as the prophets of the Hebrew Bible had done: Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel refused to “get used to” injustice. King’s momentum from his campaign of civil disobedience kept growing. Lecture 30—The Gospel and Global Civil Rights 295 õ King loved to quote the prophet Amos: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Prophets are, almost by definition, outsiders who don’t have political or economic power, but King and his allies showed that this prophetic tradition was a powerful tool for building a mass movement. They brought more than 200,000 protestors to join the March on Washington in 1963 and pressured Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act the next year. 296 The History of Christianity II

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  People keep asking who you are. You grin and place your hands in front of your eyes, the Weeping Angel’s signature pose. No one gets it. “What is she?” someone asks, pointing to your girlfriend. “A Dalek.” “What’s that?” “The most evil aliens in the entire Doctor Who universe. They committed genocide against the Time Lords, and the Time Lords against them. They basically destroyed each other.” You are definitely the most uncool person ever to attend this MFA program. The woman from the Dream House, as a Dalek, can barely move through the crowd. People keep knocking into her costume.21 You want to tell her a joke—“Start yelling ‘Exterminate!’ People will move!”—but she wouldn’t get it. You watch her down one drink, then another. After an hour, she walks home drunk and furious. You follow her for blocks, watching her bump along ahead of you, not certain what to do because you have the keys to your house. She has a colander on her head, like a conspiracy theorist—a true tinfoil hat. You’d been angry with her before, but there is something so tender and vulnerable about a grown woman, in a disintegrating costume of a character from a show she does not watch, stumbling back to a house in drunken anger. You think, this will be a good story, one day. A wasted undergrad happens across your path. “A ghost,” he says, his eyes widening. “A ghost!”22 He tries to touch you. You tell him to go fuck himself, dip away from his grasp, and unlike that time in Savannah, she does not rescue you. When you get to the house, she is kicking the door. The knobs of her Dalek costume are falling off into the grass. You approach her. “I have the keys,” you say, wearily. She jumps, and then begins to scream. “Why would you scare me like that? What the fuck is wrong with you?” She is still yelling as you go inside. “Why did you want to make such a fancy dinner?” she says. “You fucked everything up, this whole night you fucked up. We just have this weekend together and you have fucked everything up.” She is still yelling as you begin the laborious process of washing your face, your skin emerging in patches through the makeup. “What the fuck are you supposed to be, anyway?” She is still yelling as you stand in the shower, the temporary hair dye swirling creamily down the drain. She is still yelling as you put on your pajamas. In bed, she says, “I want to fuck,” and you say, “Maybe tomorrow,” and turn into your pillow. Maybe next Halloween will be better.