At some point, we'll have to admit that we simply don't know about the Maine Senate candidate's past motives and much more.
Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks at a town hall in Ogunquit, Maine.
(Sophie Park/Getty Images)
I have a vague understanding of online discourse and decided to give it up a long time ago. Arguing about our problems on the Internet seems to me philosophically similar (and equally likely to succeed) to homeopathy. You can't fix a car by repeatedly slamming it into the brick wall you crashed it into in the first place.
However, every now and then events conspire to convince me to turn into a crash test dummy – the latest example being Graham Platner's US Senate campaign and the maelstrom of crap it stirred up. As a Mainer with a profile similar to Platner's, I am perhaps in a better position than most to voice my opinion on this matter.
But the process of reviewing what had already been said to determine whether anything was worth saying left me demoralized to the point of paralysis. Worse, it left me lonely. As usual, everyone seems absolutely sure of what they think and feel, while I sit silent and seemingly alone in my ambivalence.
It would be easy for me to take a hard line against Platner one way or another, get a subscription and a couple of bucks for it, and in addition alleviate this loneliness. Why not? It often seems that our political discourse is the exclusive domain of charlatans and opportunists, people who may or may not believe what they say, but believe it 100 percent, saying it for the purpose of enriching themselves.
I'm divided on one major topic of the Platner debate – that he's a political novice with questionable judgment who has too many Reddit skeletons in his closet to stand a chance as a general. Part of me thinks this may be true and may even be as self-evident as those who oppose Platner seem to believe. And then another part of me responds: Does anyone really think they know what will and won't be fatal to a candidate's chances? And if in fact some people do Believe me, it is possible to know; perhaps it is their judgment, and not Platner’s, that we should question?
Then there is Platner's politics and its obvious source: a blue-collar post-industrial viewpoint based on Platner's experiences with American overseas adventures. As a native of central Maine whose parents often had to choose which bills to pay, I could make a strong case that Platner is not, in fact, one of my people. I could argue that Tony's having a famous architect grandfather and an assistant district attorney father and attending not one but two private high schools disqualifies him—always and forever—from being called a working-class hero. And part of me—the part that remembers the numbers on my father's pay stubs, the part that still lives on the public high school diploma and nothing else—believes it's true.
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But it is also true that Platner, at least in my opinion, appears to be what he claims to be. In a world desperately short of character and conviction, he seems to have both. Moreover, it is Platner's shortcomings that I find most attractive. I was so drunk in public. I have a tattoo that I definitely should have thought about. I've been through mental crises that weren't very pleasant, but that I'd like to think made me a better friend, husband, person.
One of the things I've learned, by my own assessment of mental fragility, is something of a paradox: I know almost nothing. And while this probably sounds like a state of mind that you would rather avoid, I would encourage you to consider that it is this ignorance that can save us.
Never before have so many of us been so sure of this. While your auto mechanic doesn't have a firm grasp on what to do about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the mid-level lackey at your bank knows exactly what the latest season of his favorite TV show looks like must would have been written if it weren't for the idiots who actually wrote it, we get the feeling that saying “I don't know” might be the last subversive action we have left.
I don't know, for example…if God exists. Or, supposing He knows, I do not know at all what His nature may be. I don't know how He feels about homosexuality, or whether He even cares about the existence of a President of the United States, let alone who it turns out to be. I should note that my lack of knowledge about the divine is not due to a lack of exposure to or immersion in various religious traditions. I was said there is a lot about God, but I don’t know anything about Him.
Likewise, I don't know whether tariffs are sound economic policy.
I don't know enough to decide for other people, including children, especially children, which books they should read and which they shouldn't.
I don't know if abortion is murder or healthcare. Maybe both?
I don't know if Tom Brady made Bill Belichick great, or Bill Belichick made Tom Brady great, or if together they achieved a level of achievement that neither of them could have achieved alone.
And so on.
Please understand that I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about these things, but they are not the same as knowing. We seem to have lost the ability to make this distinction, even though in fact the distinction is not a subtle one at all. Thoughts and feelings are by definition subjective. They only exist in our heads and/or guts and have little impact on the real world. They are not knowledge.
If you try to acknowledge how little you know, you may notice something happening—an almost tangible sensation of a weight being lifted. Admit your confusion a few times in a row, and you might even find yourself standing up a little straighter. We've all been in a posture of militant confidence for so long that we've stopped noticing how uncomfortable and lonely it is.
The irony, of course, is that we started pretending to know everything for the exact opposite reason – we wanted to be less lonely. We wanted to recognize our people, and we wanted them to recognize us, and somehow, through a combination of technological advancement, savvy marketing, and old-fashioned human stupidity, “belonging” came to mean complete allegiance to socio-political dogma and excommunication of anyone who expressed doubt, let alone dissent. Simply asking questions out loud is enough to confuse you. Admitting that someone outside your group may have a valid point of view can cost you friends, your job, your marriage.
Perhaps one of the things we have in common, among most others, is the limitations of our minds, our views and our ability to understand. In other words, one of the fundamental things about being human is the rare understanding of what you are talking about. But we have deprived ourselves of this connection with each other by pretending for so long, constantly and loudly, that we know everything about everything.
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And yet it’s so easy to fall back into each other’s company and trust. All we have to do is say it and mean it: I don't know.
There is no surrender in these words, there is freedom and real power in these words. This is, of course, a softer power than that of the dime store demagogues and infotainment stars, and it will never, ever make you rich. But admitting what we don't know is hardly an act of surrender. It is a decision to accept and admit to ourselves and others that we are simply groping in the dark, trying our best, trying in good faith. There is no weakness or shame in this.
I think we are all itching to admit how confused and confused we are. Because what quickly follows the admission, out of habit, that we know nothing, is a feeling of peace, a real acceptance of the essence of human existence: we are all doomed to die, understanding little more than we understood when we were yanked screaming into this world. And therein lies real, lasting communication—the kind of communication that can help us overcome our differences, help us solve problems, and ultimately live better lives together.
Perhaps the real lesson of what is happening to Graham Platner and him is that in this late, distracted age we are not really interested in real solutions to our problems. That all we really expect from the political process is the warm, amniotic sanctimony that comes with believing you're undeniably, objectively right about something—even about the flawed past of someone you'll never meet. Perhaps in a world as seemingly out of control as ours, it is an understandable desire to feel like you. knowthat you are right and they are wrong, and, secure in that certainty, you might get some sleep tonight. But for me it’s just another noise at a time when we can no longer hear our own thoughts. And damned if we don't feel like we're running out of time to shut up and re-realize how little we know.
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