TWO TOUGH MUST-READS
Welcome to my second blog.
I am recommending two books that are difficult to read in specific ways.
One tackles political truth-telling and conspiracy theories in the Trump era. The second is a memoir about sexual assault, written by a survivor.
So many of us have a Trump hangover. We. Do. Not. Want to deal with the confusing, infuriating, and draining barrage of lies, half-truths, fights with family and friends, manipulation, illegality, racism, xenophobia, and on and on. So, read books like The Death of Truth.
Sexual assault is more common than we know, and it’s never easy to read about. By all accounts, it is a terrifying, humiliating experience. Tougher when public on a grand scale. To then write about that trauma and recovery adds another layer. Chanel Miller writes about her experience in Know my Name.
The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
Having spent years as a literary critic and the chief book critic of The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani has studied cultural forces and zeitgeists, from social media to academia to literature to television to politics. And in The Death of Truth, she tackles truth-telling and the sanctity of truth in our public arena, including its most consequential institutions.
Objective truth is ridiculed and questioned, and in that process, discredited. The very fundamentals of science, the enterprise that organizes knowledge to make predictions about the universe, a seeker of truth, is now debated. Conspiracy theories like QAnon abound, and we no longer know who to trust.
Kakutani published her book during the Trump administration’s sophomore year in office, but these critiques hold. Political movements like Trumpism do not dissipate when their leader relinquishes power. So the issues in the book are still very much alive and will continue to be, I think, for decades.
Those of us familiar with George Orwell’s cautionary dystopia tale 1984, an examination of the role of truth and facts in politics, and the manipulation of them, have feared Donald Trump’s cult of personality as much as the book’s main character Winston Smith did Big Brother. Kakutani realizes this and deftly slices through Trump’s Orwellian tricks (“War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” “Ignorance is strength”), using words to mean the exact opposite of what they mean.
And that terrifies me most. That some of us, when presented with “alternative” facts and theories and having had them repeated to us, especially in a punishing media/social media cycle, slowly begin to accept them as truth. Thus forcing us to question our original concept of what the truth was.
Now, this is different from avoiding the consensus trap and groupthink. We must allow opposing thoughts because they help not only by forcing us to double down on how and why we know something but by bolstering our arguments. It’s necessary.
But Trump and his minions (including the shamelessly acquiescing Republican Party) did not offer much in the way of fact. They peddled in conspiracies, like the Russia collusion investigation. Trump said it was a Democratic conspiracy against him and the presidency, that Hillary Clinton and the Dems were the ones colluding with Russia to stop him from winning. Because he believed his falsehood, he lashed out at the American press (no matter its faults, a gatekeeper of truth-telling), the Democratic party and its voters, the FBI, and Justice Department. That was a mistake.
The investigation revealed that his presidential transition team and early cabinet members colluded with Russia. Something he often does, according to Kakutani, is doublespeak.
“In fact, Trump has the perverse habit of accusing opponents of the very sins he is guilty of himself: ‘Lyin’ Ted, ‘Crooked Hillary,’ ‘Crazy Bernie….’ In Orwell’s language of Newspeak…a word like ‘blackwhite’ has ‘two mutually contradictory meanings’: ‘Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this.”
I’ve had friends who have gone down the QAnon rabbit hole and into the alternative news wormhole that is Newsmax, OANN, Alex Jones, and Dan Bognino. We can’t even agree on a set of facts from which to establish discussion. They even echo Trump’s sentiment that what we read and see isn’t what’s happening. They weren’t like this before the Trump administration, and I fear that they will continue down this line of thinking for years.
Kakutani helps us understand how we got here and how it might continue. She exposes word tricks authoritarians use to manipulate, and she equips us with the knowledge of how to defend ourselves against these attacks.
If you worry that some of your friends and family are susceptible to this manipulation, if you fear a further decline in truth and trust in our public institutions and a second Donald Trump presidency in which he tells lies to assert power over truth itself, then Michiko Kakutani’s The Death of Truth is an illuminating read.
Oh, and you can get through it in one sitting.
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
Speaking of public institutions.
In her devastating memoir, Chanel Miller focuses not only on rape culture and the PTSD she suffers as a rape survivor but the despicable inaction of Stanford (where the crime occurred) and the criminal justice system.
Miller is an artist, a writer, and a survivor, someone who exudes transcendence, and it’s with every single word in this book that she speaks the truth about sexual assault, pain, trauma, healing, and resilience.
Know My Name is a difficult read.
Miller takes us through a run-of-the-mill campus party, one she admits is fun enough, even for an introvert like herself. She then deftly transitions from innocent joy with her sister (who attended Stanford) to waking up in a hospital, her skin dotted with bruises and cuts and her hair dirtied with tree and bush detritus, surrounded by police and nurses. Chanel notices her gray dress is bunched around her waist, that she is wearing green sweatpants, unsure how she got them. And notices she’s not wearing her underwear. Where had they gone? This moment is pure horror, heavy and swimming around her every being, lurking, looking not to kill but to scare. At that moment, the police tell Chanel that she has been a victim of sexual assault by Brock Turner.
The first moment of surviving.
“I always wondered why survivors understood other survivors so well… Perhaps it is not the particulars of the assault itself that we have in common, but the moment after; the first time you are left alone. Something slipping out of you. Where did I go. What was taken. It is terror swallowed inside silence… This moment is not pain, not hysteria, not crying. It is your insides turning to cold stones. It is the utter confusion paired with knowing. Gone is the luxury of growing up slowly. So begins the brutal awakening.”
In turns poetic, gripping, and illuminating, Chanel Miller takes us through the humiliations and horror and small triumphs of the trial, including her arresting impact statement where she reclaims her name. Reading it tore me to pieces. I read the remaining pages through tears.
Brock is found guilty. But things worsen when he receives a light penalty (and is eventually released with minimal time served), and through this, we viscerally experience Miller’s frustration and dismay. After all the testimony, after her testimony, and all the evidence and witnesses, Judge Aaron Persky, a Stanford alma mater and swimming alum like Brock Turner, grants leniency. He stated, “I mean, I take him at his word that, subjectively, that’s his version of events. The jury, obviously, found it not to be the sequence of events.” According to the Washington Post, this implies the judge disregarded the jury’s conviction and used his own judgment to decide the punishment for the three felony charges.
Betrayal by a system that historically finds men more credible than women.
Think of Anita Hill, Christine Blasey Ford, and countless other women, many of whom didn’t have their day in court and instead faced accusations of lying by other institutions meant to protect them: police, shelters, family, friends. I have uncles who have said, “Yeah, I do believe this woman, but so many of them do this for money or recognition.” Through the book, we now recognize the maleness of it all, the systemic misogyny. We question this highly regarded institution. Can we trust it?
It’s fair to say the leniency Brock Turner was gifted will leave us fatalistic and really fucking angry, but here Chanel Miller encourages us to think proactively. Her ability to use this moment to fight for other women who have been and who might be hurt is an encouraging call to arms. I was left not thinking so much about the outcome as I was about joining the good fight. That takes a great person and masterful writing.
Know my Name is a testament to courage, experience, and resilience. Miller allows herself to be an artist and writer, a person outside of Jane Doe, someone other than a victim who signed a dotted line labeled rape victim.
She is a woman. She is a sister, a partner, an ally, and an advocate for survivors of assault. She is a fighter in a long line of trailblazers looking to improve our criminal justice system; to ensure that anyone seeking justice can be comfortable knowing that predators will be punished.
She is fighting to ensure the improvement of campus security. She is demanding a new dialogue about masculinity and safety on campus. And importantly, she is looking forward, or precisely, forward-looking, a truth-seeker.
Chanel Miller wants us to know her name. You and everyone you know should know it.
National Sexual Assault Hotline (Available 24 hours): 1–800–656–4673
RECS:
A Lot of People are Saying by Russel Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum
Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo
