The Death of Shame

I fired up the old email machine this morning and one of my morning emails informed me that a Michigan elected official is married to a neo-Nazi, and apparently some constituents have a problem with that. Some, I thought, is significantly less than you'd want to see for something like that. The official in question is Maple Valley Township Treasurer Meghyn "Meg" Booth, who it just so happens is a Republican if you can believe it. Her husband is Johnathan Christopher “Chris” Booth, and he'd been posting on YouTube videos that make claims like "Black people oppress themselves" and "America was built by and for white people” and talk about Nazis in the 1930s breaking “the chains of Jewish tyranny in Germany.” And there's a lot more, too. It's really sickening. Read up!

Anyway, the community is divided, I guess, because their Treasurer is married to what can only be described as a Nazi, and she's liked a number of his Facebook posts dealing with extremist themes, and because her husband has issued some rather direct and menacing threats against those who criticized him, and while she says she doesn't condone what he's said, she doesn't condemn it either, and she doesn't think differences of opinion should break up relationships—a position that frames being a Nazi as a "difference of opinion," rather than an alignment with an ideology that is absolutely unacceptable, given that in living memory it industrially murdered human beings by the thousands every day, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

And this is an increasingly common position! The adult leaders of Young Republicans were just caught in a group chat loving Hitler and slurring it up, and the criticism they received for this was so great that it inspired Vice President Juvenile Delinquent "JD" Vance to hitch up his big-boy pants and trot out to the cameras to admonish people for making such a big deal about what a few misguided little 30-year-old kids have to say behind closed doors. Some prominent Democratic influencers and advisors have even started recommending we redraw the lines of what is permissible to include a lot of this sort of thing, in order to "win." And there are many people, Democratic influencer or otherwise, who will make the point that the reason the community is divided is because some people make Nazi-adjacency a hardline purity test, which makes it hard to build a coalition ... with Nazis, I guess.

Did Meg Booth know about her husband's status as a Nazi influencer, through which he apparently sold racist merch and for which he has apparently been paid thousands of dollars by YouTube? Nope, it turns out she didn't know until just before the Guardian published its story—the exact moment when not knowing became impossible. What a convenient coincidence! "He's always had these quirks," Booth said. Oh, cool. Sounds like she's really giving him hell at home about it. I guess it's harder to oppose Nazism when it's what puts bread on the table. Speaking of bread, YouTube has apparently cut off Chris Booth's channel and its monetization, which frankly surprises me—deplatforming Nazis has become a controversial take. Did they know that he was a prominent Nazi account in clear and obvious breach of their terms of use? Apparently not until right before the Guardian report came out—the exact moment when not knowing became impossible. Just like Meg Booth! Convenient coincidences abound! There's no way that Google could monitor things like that.

It's something people get to say these days, you know, about anything; it's the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card: I didn't know. Just say you aren't familiar with whatever it is, or if you are familiar then you don't know the details, or if you know the details it's not right to comment on something that's still unfolding. It's not just local Michigan politicians who get to enjoy this immunity-by-ignorance. In most areas if somebody asks you about a matter centrally relevant to your job and you claim both ignorance and incuriosity, you'd probably get fired before too long. Not with politicians, though. The president can launch into a racist diatribe pushing the malicious white supremacist "replacement" hoax, and every member of the Republican Party gets to say they haven't seen the post or heard the statements, and that's usually the end of it; everyone asking is satisfied with their profession of ignorance on critical matters, everyone asking is willing to treat the alleged lack of awareness as fully exonerative, and on we all move tra-la-la down the road. And that's if anyone even asks; these days it seems even asking the question is political, which is a relatively new word that means unfair to Republicans.

It's becoming increasingly better not to ask, because it's becoming increasingly better not to know. If you know, then you have to do something about it, and then you might get in trouble for doing something about it. If you don't, you don't, and you won't. Thus, not knowing has become a virtue among people who would rather not have to give a shit. Shame dies by atrophy.

I'd actually prefer it if these stories expanded from their interrogation of Meg Booth about her association with Nazism of her husband, to also start interrogating her and every other Republican about their association with the Nazism of the Republican Party. I already name-checked Young Republicans, which per its own website banner is the "future generation of Republican leaders"—but there's not much that Chris Booth is saying in video that isn't also being said from the very top of the Republican party's seats of power and influence right now in the present. From the president down it's all talk of ethnic cleansing and national purity and vengeance against the enemy within that's poisoning the nation's blood with diversity and equality, and none of this is being opposed meaningfully by members of that party—on the contrary, it's being supported and advanced and accelerated by them. If that's not a Nazi party I really don't think it's possible for there to be such a thing. I think "married to a Nazi" should almost be taken as a given for a member of a Nazi party.

Such an alignment used to be considered shameful, not just another option on the table, and it would have meant consequences for anyone holding a position of public trust, whether they knew about it ahead of time or not. Somehow not knowing about it would have also been seen as shameful, I think. It strikes me as a shameful thing for someone holding public trust to admit. How are you a Treasurer for a community when you are incurious about where thousands of your own household's dollars are coming from? How do you ignore racist merch in your garage—or if it wasn't in the garage, how do you fail to notice the inventory on your household books? What else are you managing to not know?

But these are impolite questions to ask these days, as is calling a party that seeks to achieve Nazi goals using Nazi methods "a Nazi Party." It's seen as condemnation. I'm given to understand that people being so unyielding on little political disagreements on quibbling topics like Nazism is the exact reason we have so many Nazis in the first place. Being called Nazis makes them want to be Nazis.

So Nazism is your fault, if you are someone who thinks Nazism is unacceptable and shameful.

Wow. Who knew?

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It's not just talk for Republicans, you know—the Nazism. Unlike Chris Booth, they're acting directly on it. They've got masked anonymous brutality squads in our major cities, kidnapping people based on their appearance—which means their race—and packing them off into domestic concentration camps, and shipping them off to foreign slave camps and wherever the hell else. Kidnapping people based on race is something the Republican-appointed members of the Supreme Court said was fine, although they approved it on the shadow docket and didn't bother to expound much beyond the fact that they just kind of reckon it's fine. The Vice President just repeated the baseless "eating dogs and cats" line about Somali immigrants that was such a laugh line during the election. The kidnap/brute forces tear-gassed a children's birthday party recently. And Republicans are talking about work camps for our nation's ever-increasing number of homeless people—even though most homeless people already have jobs. And Republicans are working very hard to end any semblance of free and fair elections at every level. And I want to stress, this is a very very limited list of examples; it's just things that are sitting at the front of my mind as I write.

And of course there are all the things that aren't directly tied to Nazi methodology and Nazi propaganda to accomplish Nazi goals. Speaking of the ever-growing number of homeless people, Republicans are working very hard to starve Americans by the million. They're stripping people's healthcare. They're making education a luxury item. At the same time, the president just tore down the East Wing meanwhile to build a $200 million dollar gilded ballroom. He just redid the Lincoln bathroom in what he insists is statuary marble. He hosted a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party.

The party caught my attention. It seems to me that a "Gatsby" theme is a little too on the nose; I suspect they must have meant a "Roaring 20s" theme. The Great Gatsby was a novel set during the Roaring 20s, but it's a novel explicitly about careless wealthy people who don't care about the lives they destroy because they don't have to care; they just walk away from the carnage they cause utterly unencumbered by shame or awareness. The Roaring 20s ended when those who roared loudest crashed the car of the American economy, and some of those at the wheel were ruined but many walked away from the wreckage, leaving the poor of the country to shoulder the burden in the ensuing decade. I don't know if the people who attended the Gatsby party had this exact theme in mind—to be honest fascists generally don't strike me as being very good at appreciating themes in art—but they sure did embody it: Careless people, who believe carelessness is their right and that bills are for other people to pay.

And if you ask careless people about all these things, they'll tell you the same thing the politicians do, which is that they don't know about it. I don't follow politics is the popular line. They profess their ignorance about what is actually happening in the actual world as if it's a virtue. I don't let these things affect friendships.

These are careless people—specifically, they don't care, and they've managed to create a permission system whereby caring is a fault and anyone who cares is therefore at fault for caring. They've removed any sense of shame whatsoever from their shameful practices.

Don't blame them. They didn't know. If you make someone know by telling them, then they'll let you know why they don't care. That's a distraction, is a popular line; the idea being that we are incapable of focusing on more than one thing. Let's not be divisive is another line. Well what about when so-and-so did such-and-such ... is a fun way to start. Oh everyone is corrupt is another fun one. It's all a reason to not care.

If you suggest to a careless person that they should care about something terrible that is happening, they'll often tell you that you scolding them that they ought to care is the reason they think the terrible thing is good, actually—which gives away the fact that they knew about it all along, but I find a careless person generally doesn't care about that revelation of their motives, because not caring was always their goal, so they don't actually care how it is they manage to achieve the goal of not caring, and they don't care if their previous reason for not caring doesn't work anymore.

They tell you you're shaming them. And I get it. Who wants to be shamed?

But more people should be more ashamed, I think. It seems to me that this death of shame is a big part of how we've arrived here. It's pretty shameful to be OK with Nazism. It's pretty shameful to belong to a Nazi party. It's pretty shameful to live in a Nazi country. It's pretty shameful to lavish yourself with opulence while you're ensuring that millions starve and suffer. Maybe it has occurred to you, as it did to me, that the actual reason Maple Valley Township is divided over this Nazi in their midst not only because some people there are opposed to Nazism, but also, crucially, because a lot of people there are just fine with it. Like their Treasurer, they claim to not know about everything that is happening, and then go tra-la-la down the road, unless you force them to contend with it, in which case they inform you that their support of it is your fault for making them feel so irredeemable and condemned about it that they feel compelled to support it, and having shifted the burden of culpability from themselves to you, once again tra-la-la down the road they go.

Now there are well-meaning people who will tell us something close to the same thing; that we should take care with shame. Shaming can exclude and expel and dehumanize people as irredeemable. Shaming can make people less likely to turn back from the dark path they've chosen. And shaming is used by fascists, in fact, to try to shame people for who they are, to try to exclude them for being gay, or trans, or an immigrant, for not speaking English well, for not being Christian, or just for being ashamed of shameful things and for insisting on equality and human dignity. So shame would appear to be a dangerous substance, at least one best handled with protective gear. We might invest some time in how shame works, and what it does.

I don't want to push people further down the wrong path by condemning them. And I'm all for paths of redemption and letting people walk those paths.

Yet I do think it's not only appropriate but absolutely crucial to be ashamed of shameful things. And I don't think you solve problems without naming them, so I don't believe that naming equates to condemnation. I'm told that naming people Nazis because of their alignment with Nazi ideals and tactics condemns them as irredeemable, which leaves them isolated with no path for redemption. This would seem to suggest both that 1) it is the job of others to redeem people engaged in abuse and harm, and that 2) the only way to get careless people to care is to tell them they're already OK and nothing they're doing is wrong. That doesn't seem right; I would hope that nobody well-meaning is suggesting that. I don't think that is the lesson history teaches us about Nazism is that Nazis weren't accommodated and validated enough. I suspect the people issuing warnings about shame are not saying that, if they are well-meaning. I think they're saying something else. I sure hope so.

What then to do?

This is a pretty complicated topic, and even though I think there are clear bright lines, they've been lost in the gray tangle of discourse. I have a lot of thoughts that will, I suspect, spill out over the next several weeks.

But today let's talk about careless people and shame.

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Have you ever been ashamed? There's a good chance you have; it's a fairly common human experience.

I can think of a couple ways it can happen.

The first is when somebody tells you that you are unacceptable, and if it goes on long enough then the somebody doesn't even need to tell you this anymore, because you'll tell yourself every day. Ask any kid who has been teased by the whole class. Ask any gay kid who grew up in conservative evangelical communities. Ask a Black person who grew up in America.

The second is when somebody tells you that what you've done isn't up to the standards you ought to set for yourself, and if this goes on long enough then the somebody doesn't even need to tell you this anymore, because you'll tell yourself every day. If you want to know how this one works, find somebody who seems to have a sense of responsibility and empathy for people around them, and ask them who taught them the standards and principles they hold to. Find someone who cares about other people, in other words.

In the first case of shaming, the result of the shame is alienation and isolation and a sense of not belonging—provided the person receiving the message believes the message. In the second type of shaming, the result is socialization, empowerment, and a sense of belonging—provided the person receiving the message believes in the shared standards, and provided the shared standards are positive.

Believing is key to the effect. You can't make somebody feel shame that refuses to feel shame. It's interesting, isn't it, that even racists agree that it's bad to be a racist? That didn't used to be the case. Something changed—for the better, I think. It didn't solve racism, but it did push it back out of the realm of the admirable. This is why racists try to circumvent charges of racism by starting their racist statements with "I'm not racist, but." And there's something powerful but difficult about saying "that's fucked up, dude," to a friend, which is why it's important to do so with friends when they do or say something that is fucked up. What's powerful about it is that you, as friend, are inside the realm of shared standards. What makes it difficult is that once you've said it you both know that the friendship has been put at risk of the standard. One will likely eventually have to give.

Whether this second type of shame is positive or negative depends on whether or not the shared standards are positive or negative. If a queer person has liberated themselves from their evangelical upbringing and understands that who they are isn't anything shameful whatsoever, then attempts by evangelicals to expel them may still cause them great harm, but the attempts to shame them will be ineffective, because they will feel not shame but pride that they have managed to wrest their humanity away from those who sought to own and control it. This is how Gay Pride works, for example. It's how the Black liberation movement has operated. On the negative side, if somebody has been raised in the strictures of supremacy, and taught that other people don't matter and do not deserve to treated with human dignity, then when they are confronted with the ways that they deny our shared humanity and embraced an inhumane spirit, they will feel not shame, but pride. If they are taught that maleness is domination and emotionless, then they will police themselves to suppress their emotions and act in dominating ways. So it is with our national fascist movement and their pride of domination—their white pride, their male pride.

What Republicans have managed to do is redraw the boundaries of the acceptable until lies and corruption and gutter racism and bigotry of every kind is their shared acceptable standard. It is in this they have effected a sort of death of shame—by making shameful things acceptable and acceptable things shameful. These are the boundaries that many Democratic influencers now think we ought to accept. If you can't shame them, is the thinking, you've got to join them. What's the use of trying to shame the unshamable?

And no, Republicans and other kinds of Nazis are probably not going to be ashamed about their involvement with shameful things, nor will those who are married to Nazis somehow without knowing that's what they are, who believe that Nazism is just another little quirk, a little disagreement that shouldn't affect relationships. Nor are careless people whose only goal is not caring so they don't have to heed the call of responsibility we all bear to one another.

Yet it is shameful, what's happening. I'm ashamed of what they have created, floating on the permission caused by our sea of careless people. I'm ashamed to live in a country that treats people as if they are disposable, as if they are trash, that celebrates ignorance and indifference, that embraces propagandistic narratives of dehumanization and immiseration and genocide and slavery, that calls murder safety, that calls brutality order, that calls corruption justice, and embraces our old traditional foundational lies of supremacy. None of this is worthy of the standards we ought to hold ourselves to as a country. Those who support it are degrading their own essential humanity by rejecting it in others. Does this mean they're irredeemable? I wouldn't say so—but I'll have more to say about redemption and humanity someday soon. What I will say right now is that redemption cares. If you're looking for a reason to not care about what happens to other human beings, then what you are trying to redeem is almost certainly not your humanity, and what you are trying to effect is probably not redemption.

However, redeemable or not, the supremacists among us are shameful because of the inhumanity of their supremacy; because they are my fellow citizens, because they are my friends and family and neighbors, because they are people within our shared human community, and because they will not be ashamed of themselves, I will be ashamed of them. I am ashamed of them—not because they are making themselves inhuman, but because I see that they are human, and they are betraying their humanity.

And I will express that shame. Nazis will not be shamed, probably, but I will be ashamed of their increased acceptance within society, and I will let them know that what they have chosen to be is unacceptable to me, that I can still see their humanity no matter how they try to hide it, can still see all the ways they are making themselves unworthy of it, can perceive the ways they are rejecting it.

I probably can't make somebody feel shame who ought to. I can't make careless people care. But I can care at least, and so can you. Those who are joining it will have their goal of carelessness complicated by the sight of us. Those who are being told by the new fascist boundaries of shame that they don't belong will be told they do belong. Those who are being ground under the wheels of this latest fascist machine will see who cares, and in that we will be situated to provide whatever assistance we can. And, by caring, we will learn how to care better. We will learn how to assist more effectively. And, wherever we stand, the line will not be redrawn, but held. It may be mixed into the tangle of confused discourse, but those interested in redemption seek it and find it. It's a bright line, and if anyone wants to follow it, they can find their redemption. Those disinterested in redemption will seek to hide it, and by their choice we will know them.

In this shameful careless age, we can and should and must choose to not be careless people.

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A.R. Moxon is the author of the novel The Revisionaries and the essay collection Very Fine People, which are available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places. You can get his books right here for example. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. He always giggles falsely.