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Knowing What Time It Is
I was driving home one Wednesday evening in the early 1980s with my wife and two kids in the car. It was dusk, that time of the day where the dark is affecting your vision but your headlamps aren’t yet really helping. I was on a four-lane commercial road in the lane on one side closest to the center of the road.
As I was traveling along I suddenly caught a momentary glimpse of a horrifying sight. A woman was standing in the lane next to mine with oncoming traffic headed directly for her. She was perhaps 100 feet in front of me in the oncoming lane to my left. Before I passed her, an oncoming car struck her full force without braking. It was obvious that he couldn’t or didn’t see her. If she had been in my lane I would have hit her too. The force of the car hitting her at 40 miles-per-hour was that she flew into the air about 20 feet, coming down to crash onto the roof of the moving car that hit her as it moved along underneath her angle of flight. She rolled off the roof and collapsed in a heap onto the pavement.
At this point, the driver of the car that hit her freaked out utterly, wrenching his wheel to the left, which sent him careening into my lane, directly toward the driver’s side of my car. Instinctively I pulled hard right and weaved wide out of my lane, preventing a collision with the other driver, and I immediately pulled a u-turn into the parking lot on the left-hand side of the road. As I was pulling the u-turn, the driver who had hit the woman, crossed two more lanes stopping as he hit a pole on the opposite side of the road.
All of this, my seeing the woman at the last second, the driver hitting her, careening toward me, my reaction to avoid the collision, all of it, happened in a time window of perhaps 10-15 seconds.
I pulled into a parking spot and jumped out of my car and started running toward the street where the woman was lying in a heap. I actually have no functioning memory between the moment the woman rolled off the top of the car onto the street and the moment I started running toward the street. I think the shock of what I had seen sort of blanked my memory over the next few seconds.
As I ran toward the street, I have a distinct memory of a mental conversation that took place in my head. There was a side of me that didn’t want to run out to that woman and render aid. I kept looking around the parking lot thinking surely someone else would go out there and do something. But as I ran toward the street, I could see several people standing there staring into the street, but no one was making a move in her direction. At this point, maybe 25 seconds had passed since I first saw the woman standing in the lane with oncoming traffic.
I kept running and, when I got to the woman, the first thing I did was wave my arms at the oncoming traffic to prevent both of us from being run over, in her case a second time. When I bent down to see what I could do, her eyes were open and fixed. She had a weak heartbeat and was shallow breathing. There was no significant external bleeding taking place. Someone brought a blanket with the idea of keeping her warm, but not long after the ambulance arrived, they covered her up completely since she died there in the road.
We learned later that she was an elderly woman who lived in the apartments across the street. She had gone for groceries and on her way back to her apartment became disoriented and confused. She had stopped in the road trying to reorient herself where she was struck by the car.
As I was the only witness, besides the driver of the vehicle that struck her, the police who responded to the scene asked me a lot of questions. I stood on the side of the road talking with the police for a while and they asked me to come down to the station to give a complete statement regarding what I had seen.
I sent my wife and kids home and got in the back seat of the police car and was surprised to find they had the driver of the vehicle that hit the woman in the back seat with me. He was utterly wrecked. He was sobbing and almost incoherent. I rode back there with him to the police station and gave them my statement. Among other things, I said that if she had been in my lane it was highly likely that I would have been the one to hit her. The visibility was just that bad and her presence there so unexpected.
While I was at the police station, my wife got a strange call from our pastor. It turns out that someone from a local news station took a video of me talking with the police, and on the 10 o’clock news showed that video with the caption “A young man driving in the 4400 block of Alameda avenue struck and killed a woman who was crossing the street.” So all of our friends, who watched the news, started calling our pastor in a panic and he gently reached out to my wife to confirm whether I had indeed killed someone that night. This was my first exposure to the incompetence of the press, though I have had much more opportunity since then to witness the widespread sloppiness and indifference to accuracy that characterizes so many of them.
I write all of this because, in a few unexpected seconds, entire lives were changed. One woman’s life was ended. One driver’s life was scarred forever. I was certainly changed by those events though not to the degree of the direct participants.
And the thing I have found is that coming to grips, in the actual traumatic moment, with the implications and import of what is happening around you, is really, really hard. I have been through numerous life-changing events — deaths, illnesses, being uniquely placed to take on responsibilities that I was very reluctant to take on, the need to intervene in a violent confrontation, and I’m afraid many other situations if I ever had the stomach to sit down to tally it all up. In every one of these circumstances, I have observed a very human propensity to favor denial over coming to grips with the actual momentousness of the events. I have found the pull toward denial is especially strong whenever the act of acknowledging the momentousness of events entails upon me some moral obligation to take an action that I would rather not take.
As I’ve gotten older and observed more of these kinds of events, I have found The Lord of the Rings to be ever more resonant with my own meditations. The Hobbits were caught up in events and found themselves bearing unwanted responsibilities that they would never have expected themselves to bear.
“I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had ever happened,” Frodo said. But he nevertheless knew, in some essential way, the gravity of what he had been caught up in.
The ability to perceive the moral and practical implications that are embedded within a moment of crisis is to possess a kind of moral understanding akin to knowing what time it is. It is the knowledge, under duress, of how what’s happening in the moment fits within some larger and even more important context.
Lately I have started suspecting that the problem of knowing what time it is, in the midst of a crisis, explains some of the turmoil and acrimony within a variety of conservative communities, both political and theological. It boils down to a dispute between those who think there is little left to “conserve” and those who think the institutions continue to be worthy of respect. Some conservatives think that retaining respect for “the institutions” is the true task of
conservatism. Others think the institutions, as we know them, are more like false storefronts on a movie set, providing nothing more than a shadowy memory of something that is no longer actually there.
What time is it?
Many of the legacy, clubbish Republicans, especially in the Senate, along with no small number of (mostly) Never-Trump pundits (e.g., David French, Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, etc.) all seem to perceive our current moment as a mere incremental continuation of a decades-long plodding debate between the left and the right over this or that legislation or policy prescription.
There are other people who, looking at our current moment — the corruption of the law enforcement agencies in the federal government, the winking and not-so-subtle encouragement of rioters and vandals, the open and brazen lying and corruption of public officials and the press, the suppression of free speech — think the time is late and, more to the point, that American institutions are largely gone.
My own sense is that the situation is dire and that a kind of mass delusion has taken hold of many people who have their hands on the levers of power. I find it hard to conceive of any naturalistic explanations for the widespread synchronization in the timing of these mass delusions.
I suspect it is the suddenness of the cascade of craziness that has made it difficult for many to process the implications. The shock and — more to the point — the disbelief that characterized my initial reaction when I saw the woman hit by the car, may explain the wildly divergent views about what time it really is. It’s just hard to accept unexpected and traumatic changes to our comfortable assumptions.
The essential mistake the legacy Republicans make is persisting in their belief that Trump is the cause and not merely a symptom of the current crisis.
“The strategy of going back to the old days by destroying Donald J. Trump is doomed to failure because **even if it succeeds** the factors which stoked the 2016 rebellion still obtain and even more so. Restoring the economy, cooling the ideology and limiting corruption are all that can work.” — Richard Fernandez
Either people like Richard Fernandez are right or David French is. We can’t have it both ways.
Does anybody really know what time it is?
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Thank you for this careful and thoughtful discussion. Your response in emergency situations is a really helpful starting point: how people respond in emergencies varies so widely, but isn’t there an expected range of response? Some (few) people, by training, aptitude or personality are able and willing to respond immediately and appropriately in emergencies. Most of us have varying ranges of ability and aptitude and willingness to respond, highly dependent on the situation. I pray daily for courage to not give in to fear.
I’ve read several studies, if you will, of analysis made of survivors in extreme emergencies and what characteristics and behaviours contributed to survival. One in common in all of the characteristics and situations is the willingness to accept the reality of the event and to act decisively and immediately toward preservation. Applying this example to what I believe faces civilization (in the clothing of this era’s conservatism,) there seems to me to be some very few leaders who are willing to go past the institutions of civilization to accept the attacks on fundamental principles (of political theory and economy) and to decide to defend them. They are fussing around the front doors of the institutions because the enormity of the attack on the principle is so hard to accept. They aren’t willing to say what principles are challenged. David French is wrong as well as craven.
When you can or won’t say what principle is involved in an argument, you’ve lost the argument. How many individuals are now even willing to say that the biological reality of life – that women give birth after being impregnated by men – is a non-negotiable fact of life? The destructive rise of euphemisms is such a distraction – and gives cover for people to ignore reality. As @markalexander’s quote from Scalia points out – charity is now entitlement. Willing giving has been transformed into silent taking. There are too many examples. I believe legacy Republicans know Trump is a symptom but I think they just want to outlast him (and anyone like him) and be the among the last to pass the bad paper. (NB: for this purpose I’m ignoring those who just hate him. Period full stop hate him and are driven only by that emotion.)
The reality is that radicals want to destroy democracy in the US and have succeeded in many facets. Humiliating and destroying Trump will not change that objective. DeSantis and any other leader who speaks on behalf of freedom will receive the same treatment. But willing leaders have helped the less willing and less able to have courage before. They lead from the front.
Indeed.
On that note, Trump-Hating “Reagan Republican” Lockdown Larry Hogan was on PBS (of course) lamenting that the Republican Party he knew is gone because it has grown skeptical of costly, open-ended foreign wars without a well-defined American strategic interest and no longer kneels at the altar of corporate America..
Good Lord, people, it’s not the freakin’ 1980s any more. The Cold War is over. Russia isn’t a threat to us. China is. And Corporations are on the side of woke Democrats leftists.
In some change theory, there is a place called “The Neutral Zone” that shows up roughly when the first crisis/change happens and before people are ready to move forward. It’s an awful place to be, because it’s disorienting, messy, and directionless. I think it exists and people often get stuck there, because they are too attached to the past and grieving losses, or afraid to move forward due to the uncertainty. I think that’s where the country finds itself, and it isn’t fun.
I’ve had people respond negatively when I say this, but I believe it is a privilege to live during the end of civilization.
If you believe in God’s providence, then you were born for this history-making time and place. Like the man born blind who Jesus heals (today’s Gospel reading), such events are meant, ultimately, to glorify God.
To say we are “chosen” doesn’t mean we’ll enjoy what we were chosen for. Like your traumatic event witnessing the death of the woman on the road, Keith. Or, the suffering of my own kids with their medical conditions. And maybe ask the Jews about chosenness. . .
I’m definitely in Chesterton’s camp of “happy pessimist.” I believe the US is way closer to the end than those I call the “status quoists.” We’re not just witnesses to history. We’re participants.
Well, you pretty much put into 8 words much of what it took me the better part of 1000 words to say. This is true, and I wonder, how much has our entertainment culture instilled in us a spectator mentality about our own lives?
This is why LOTR occupies my thoughts a lot:
Sam is my hero.
Elephants Are Not Birds
I got that series for our grandchildren!
I had a grandfather Sam (he died in 1932). And son #3 was born on grandfather’s BD. Which was a perfect excuse to name son #3 Samuel … after Samwise Gangee. And he’s lived up to the name
Very much agree with your statement.
I cannot say that I feel that being here now is a privilege. But I admire you, that you have arrived at that “take” on civilization imploding.
I’m more like “Would somebody please get me out of here!”
Understood. I sometimes tell God I’m ready whenever He is.
You’re overall point is very well-taken, Keith, and I have many thoughts on it but your lead up is too personal not to be caught up in that part of your post. I witnessed a teenage girl get hit by a car about 15-16 years ago and it was probably the most horrific experience of my life. It was New Year’s Eve and she was clearly going to a party with friends. The sound was horrible and haunting. I was on a tram and couldn’t immediately respond and then there was a lot of chaos and at the time communication was hard because my Polish wasn’t so good. She was running to try to catch a tram before it pulled away and crossed on red. I remember clearly seeing a boy she was with trying to put his arm in front of her to stop her. I still think about the guilt him and the driver must have. I often think about how quickly so many lives can be changed. I often pray they’re not so riddled with guilt many others aren’t negatively affected. Not that he was but a concrete effect in my life is that I will never text and drive. A split second can change everything.
I won’t claim to know what precise time it is, but I am fully confident it is not David French time. I used to respect him as a writer and one of the first pieces I wrote for Ricochet was an exhortation for him to not run for president, split the vote with Trump, and guarantee a victory for Hillary. How naïve I was then to assume he would have been bothered by such a result!