Did Our "Unmitigated Temerity" Bring Us to This Place?

A Directionally Different Friday Post

I had told myself I wasn’t going to write any “demanding essays” on Substack until I completed the revisions on my novel—and as I’ve cut 100 pages and an entire plot line, that’s no easy task.

What I figured I could absorb into my main “job”, was maintaining the more lighthearted “Friday Feels and Fancy Tickler’s” series, which by their very nature, help me feel a little better about the state of the world.

But the stunning abuse of power we’re witnessing—the outright lunacy—has gotten so catastrophically out of hand that I find when I should be working on revisions, I sit steaming over my keyboard instead.

So here I am…writing my Friday post but today, absent the pixies of goodwill, knowing that if I don’t go on record, (even if it’s only with myself) I will never be able to concentrate on the creative work at hand.

But first, a little step back in time….

In November of 2022, in celebration of its 60^th anniversary, To Kill a Mockingbird was rereleased for a special two-day screening in movie theaters across the country. I was lucky enough to see one of those screenings, which I attended somewhat tentatively, not knowing whether the movie, the messaging and the performances, would have held up with time. And you can probably anticipate the punchline—they did, and in woeful fact are perhaps even more fitting today.

The first time I saw To Kill a Mockingbird, I was just a child, still living in the pre-Civil Rights Act South, but in a household where Martin Luther King, Jr. speeches were regularly played on vinyl, and John F. Kennedy was perceived as a hopeful emblem for a changing world.

In the years before streaming, I would try and watch the movie whenever it was broadcast, but at least once a year. And I came to cherish the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, not only for its urgent storyline, but the beautifully vivid imagery as evidenced in the passage below:

“Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.”

But the reason the movie, and later, Harper Lee’s novel, made such an impression is that it was the first time I was exposed to the savage ugliness that existed in the world; an ugliness that given what we’re currently witnessing, has wretchedly been brought back into fashion today.

Through Mayella Ewell we saw the perfect archetype for what over 100 years earlier Dickens warned us against in A Christmas Carol, when Scrooge encounters two emaciated children clinging to the Ghost:

“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

Amen Charles. No one can say it any better than that.

In Bob Ewell we witnessed a seething, violent man drunk on racism and hate. Director Robert Mulligan cast James Anderson in the role—an actor whose flawlessly executed rage- and revenge-filled scenes brought Ewell’s character to life with such precision, I’ve never been able to separate the man from the character he portrayed. (Scenes which also left a 6-year-old me to wonder how a man could not only double-down on his hate-fueled lies, but seek revenge for a crime that he—not the accused black man, Tom Robinson—perpetrated? The adult me has to ask if the “repackaging” of the January 6 Capitol Riots as a “Day of Love” is any different? I think not.)

And then there’s Jem, Scout, the infamous Boo Radley, and of course Dill, the stigma-carrying illegitimate child. (Perhaps Lee even intended to communicate the character’s latent homosexuality as Dill was famously inspired by Truman Capote, Lee’s childhood friend.) But it’s not just Dill who suffers the label of “otherness,” it’s the motherless Jem, his tomboy sister, Scout, and the biggest stigma-carrying character in Lee’s novel, the mentally impaired Boo, who in a feat of storytelling genius, is rendered the courageous hero in the end.

And yet the characters I keep coming back to are Oscar-winner Gregory Peck’s Atticus, with his wisdom and powerful courtroom speeches; and the unfairly accused Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), a black man victimized by white racism, which at its core was tied then (as it is now) to the fear of an eroding power base. (If I can’t see myself—a poor and ignorant white man—as better than the collective “black you”—than what is left for me to hold onto?)

But of all the scenes and dialog in the Oscar-winning screenplay, the line I keep coming back to is taken from Atticus Finch’s closing arguments, when he calls out the fact that if not for Tom Robinson’s empathy and kindness, he would never have been put in a position to be falsely accused. (See Brad Montague’s lovely “Empathy is Dangerous”—I promise, this one won’t make you sad.)

The line occurs when Finch boldly confronts the jury with the truth he believes to be at the center of the case—that none of what happened to Tom Robinson would have happened had he not had “the unmitigated temerity to feel sorry for a white woman.”

When I heard that line again in a nearly empty theater on a bleak November day, it echoed my own thoughts that so much of what was currently happening in the country—the resurgence of vitriol and hate—was because we had “the unmitigated temerity to vote a black man into office in 2008.” (A black man, mind you, with a “dubious” middle name.)

[Substacker Andrew Jazprose Hill’s remarkable essay, A Face That Says It All—And Keeps on Saying It All, does a better job of conveying these sentiments than I ever could.]

Imagine that. The “unimaginable uppitiness” of our country’s validation of a black man. A fact which provided the perfect opportunity for all those previously closeted Bob Ewell’s to once again rear their ugly heads. (Remember conservative twit, Charlie Kirk’s “black pilot” remarks?)

And who better to nurture that Petrie dish of hate-filled lies than the Orange Mussolini—armed with an unstoppable propaganda machine in the form of Fox News, and now funded by a billionaire who likely thinks Eugenics was a very good idea.

(Okay…I may have gotten a little carried away there, but we Democrats have a tendency to operate under the “dictatorship of politeness,” and from where I’m sitting, I’m not sure that has done us much good.)

So let’s return to To Kill a Mockingbird, a movie I would encourage you to watch in its entirety, but if you can’t squeeze out the time, consider watching Atticus Finch’s formidable closing arguments, captured in the clip at the bottom of this post. And as you listen to the words below, ask yourself if you truly believe that the people in power are ones you trust to uphold the integrity of our courts and our law.

"Now, gentlemen, in this country our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system. That's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality!"

I don’t need to replay the coverage of January 6, or reread Liz Cheney’s, “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning,” or see Mike Pence’s (yes, Mike Pence) call out of the president’s lies about Ukraine, to know my own answer to that. (Timothy Snyder wrote an excellent essay on the recent events involving Russia/Ukraine, Appeasement at Munich, which harkens back to Hitler and WWII.)

In addition to racism, antisemitism, I worry over so many things…the arrogance of nihilism—and other topics covered in this exceptional David Brooks Opinion piece, the unintended consequences of ill-conceived cuts—the loss of institutional memory, increases in crime, civil unrest. Which is not to say that the pursuit of budgetary efficiencies shouldn’t always be a bipartisan goal.

I worry mightily over climate change, the merging of religion and government (just look at how well that turned out in the Middle East). And I grievously lament our quickly eroding world reputation….

But of all that…what concerns me the most is the way in which the current president’s promise to his constituents that they will never have to vote again, is well on its way to becoming true.

Let me end with this…

As I tackle the uphill battle of revisions, for the next three or so months, Wit & Wisdom will by necessity be taking a “lighter approach,” but I want anyone who reads this newsletter to know exactly where I stand….and that I’m harboring a growing, nearly unbearable fear that if he is not stopped, what we are witnessing is the beginning of the end—both of the country, and of our precious democracy.

Here’s to hoping I’m wrong….

With gratitude for your support,

xo Diana

P.S. A little movie trivia: Gregory Peck and Brock Peters, (who played Tom Robinson) remained lifelong friends, with Peters delivering Peck’s Eulogy at his funeral in 2003. Peck and Mary Badham (Scout, and sister of Director John Badham) also remained friends up until the time of Peck’s passing.