The Sovereign’s Body: How to Reclaim Sacred Courtly Language after an Assassination Attempt

Dear Friends,

Short version:

I pray today for Trump’s and the US’s health. Uncertainty is real. Take courage. Do what we can. Seek calm action. The assassination attempt makes it necessary to be calm, avoid the apocalyptic, and reclaim sacred and courtly language about US politics that sacralize *neither* candidate. Neither party knows how to do this, so the rest of us need to get to reclaiming a sustainable sacred language for politics after an assassination attempt.

Longer version:

Folks keep coming out of the woodwork to ask for my posts about politics. I’m flattered and humbled and have no idea what to say (which thankfully has never delayed the yapper commentariat class, as my teenagers put it).

Here are some zero-draft thoughts about politics — and political style in particular — in our, in Pankaj Mishra’s title, Age of Anger:

0. I join all of us in condemning the assassination attempt and I am now praying for the healing of Trump, all of his followers, and the USA. We don’t know the motivations of the shooter, but the attempt was categorically evil as are the conditions that led to it as well. The assassination attempt may spark future cycles of political violence, and alas motivate Trump to seek vengeance; worse still, had the attempt been successful, the memory of Trump would rise up an immortal martyr, leaving a void for angrier, smarter, more vengeful strongmen to claim his mantle and his name. That did not happen, thank divine providence. Were he assassinated, our nation might be facing waves of political violence right now. We may still face this. I pray neither follows and for our healing.

1. No one knows what is going to happen, yet there are precedents for times like these: take a moment to calmly observe and stand in dignity with that uncertainty. (Before noting worrying precedents, such as the assassination attempt before Reagan’s second term: more on that in a second.)

2. Each of us plays a small but non-negligible role in determining what happens next. So take courage.

3. It is useful to have, and then practice, a theory of at least reluctant participation in normal civics, especially when everything feels so abnormal. (If only folks had a theory of why they should vote, and why the reluctant Biden vote is the best option: oh yeah, it’s all right here.)

4. Normal civics: there’s a fine line to weave between commitment and action. Aim for the Aristotelean mean that lies between but is, in fact, the opposite of the fool (believes everything) and cynic (believe nothing): seek to be an engaged skeptic instead?

For example, on the one hand, if we outright believe in our candidate — like passionately think they are the answer to our problems — most people will agree (consider campaign Obama versus technocratic Obama), we are doing politics wrong. On the other hand, if we cannot see any difference between two less desirable options — like if we mistakenly believe that all options are evil and thus refuse to choose — then our refusal to engage means that hotter heads will prevail. Both corrupt the system. Instead we need to weigh available actions and then take them.

5. So what can we do generally? Seek to temper belief and then take careful action. Weigh your options up and down the ballot, commit to vote for the less bad (not less evil) option, engage with others, then get out the vote, vote before the election, and then, after the election, seek reconciliation, and then spend the next four years doing all we can to check all elected and unelected local, regional, and national powers.

6. Let’s talk about political violence without wild reaction. Political violence does, I believe, have very small margins of utility — and I refuse to shut my eyes to the roles it has played in resisting and pushing for change: for example, it is appropriate to resist if the police have a knee on your neck; it is appropriate to resist if the king is slaughtering his own subjects; if your home is invaded (cf, history of US interventionism abroad), you are justified in resisting politically! But not all resistance is equal, and the most effective forms of resistance are nonviolent peaceful resistance that use bodies, parodies, and artistry to shame the abuser. Still, let me be really clear: almost all outright political violence makes a bad situation worse. If you too are having fever dreams about the state of our nation, don’t forget: things get worse before they get even worse if we act out on those nightmares. Violent revolutionaries, by the historical record, do not make things better. Those who stormed the Capitol were extremists deluded by toxic nationalism. So is anyone who would attempt an assassination. Evil must be condemned (but not imitated in the idoltry of ideological rejection).

7. How do assassination attempts change things?

Kantorowicz’s argument that the soverign in medieval Europe has two bodies is fairly well known: in a bad paraphrase, a physical body (that can be assassinated) and the voice (whose mantle others can carry on). Let’s consider how these two — sovereign’s bodies and voices — come together in what we might call the political style of sovereigns today. Robert Harriman outlines four political styles in his book by the same name. To paraphrase, he effectively says that, in the US, we practice two of those four styles: (1) the republican style (which informs democracy with its public oratory, debate and then consensus, and general civility) and (2) the courtly style (which is matched by “high decorousness, hierarchy, and fixation on the body of the sovereign”).

From republican to courtly: an assassination attempt during an election season is compels the public to shift from the normal and appropriate forms of republican style (debating merits and values, platforms and policies at best civilly) to the stultifying and ritualistic courtly style, where almost nothing critical can be said of the endangered body. Consider that there is almost no public criticism against veterans with Purple Hearts, for example. Now generalize this to a living candidate with blood on this face. The assassination attempt has effectively made it much harder to speak out negatively and publicly about Trump on the grounds that he, having survived his brush with an opponent turning their scapegoat into a sacrificial lamb, is now sacred to the public touch.

8. Anti-Trumpers (such as myself) have a new problem and a new opportunity. The problem: the courtly style of the sovereign’s body makes it harder to criticize Trump in a republican style, at least so long as the survivor glow is still about him. This problem is further exacerbated by the fact that, especially in election seasons, where electability matters, perception becomes reality. So in other words, to be perceived as attacking a victim is genuinely bad — and it is often very bad.

8A. Furthermore, Trump supporters are now claiming that anti-Trump rhetoric, especially those that are apocalyptic and cataclysmic, are responsible for creating the conditions of political violence. I think that the narrow version of this critique is trenchant and correct; I also think that the broader version of this critique amounts to cyclical projection and shameless victim blaming. Let me explain: the narrow version is that any apocalyptic language about the reelection of Trump IS, in fact, wrong and counterproductive: the US as a political nation likely will survive a second Trump presidency, although many subpopulations, the state of our nation, and the general will likely be worse for it. Extreme anti-Trumpers are justifying the Trumper perception that critics of him are hyperventilating and making the situation worse; so do not be extreme in style.

8B. At the same time, the broad version of anti-Trump language is absolutely wrong and tantamount to accusing the neighbor that calls the fire department responsible for creating the fire: identifying a problem does not mean one created it — and it is appropriate to call out problems publicly but it is not useful to do so in a way that makes those problems worse. If a Trump supporter feels like they have been left behind because of changes in our (deeply unfair) society, and Trump seems the only anti-system candidate likely to make the system different, then, when they hear anti-Trump rhetoric that sounds angry and violent, they, however wrong, will likely feel justified in claiming that anti-Trump positions are responsible for encouraging violence against Trump. And especially in elections, perceptions are reality too.

Trump is, by the record and empirically, bad for our democratic-republican system. He denies norms and inconvenient facts. He surrounds himself with toadies. He fans the flames and exploits of his extremists followers. His political rise is both a symptom and a cause of larger non-democratic, non-conservative forces corrupting the US, but they are not limited to him. (Trump is demonstrably anything but a values conservative.) Saying this calmly and carefully is true and necessary, even though saying this in normal republican style (think Harriman, not the party), as I am here, is likely to make the supporters of the sovereign’s body think I am defaming a saint.

And they are not wrong to see the contradictions here: Biden appears sane, supported by sane people, as well as increasingly senile. His own brush with the end appears natural and inevitable, yet he has a perception paradox as well: His own perception of himself as, for eighty years now, the scrappy comeback kid from Scranton seemingly makes it very hard for him (perceptions are reality) to step down from power after one term, open the convention, and support a successor. He should and, in my view, he must before it is too late. So they both have perception problems but let’s not equate the two: it is a different thing for Trump to not step down from power when the normal rules, the norms, and the will of our democratic society say he must, and for Biden to not step down from power when it is within the rules (and even explicit convention) for him to remain in power, even though implicit norms suggest he should step down. Biden genuinely believes he is the only one that can beat Trump, and thus he must stay in the fight. Implicitly, he too sees himself as a kind of sacrificial lamb for the greater good (even though he has to promote himself in that act, and struggles to do even that). It takes some resolution to see the sacred strivings of Biden. Meanwhile, everyone with a screen saw Trump appear the near sacrificial lamb at the hands of his evil would-be assassin. Neither use of the sacred or religious language is good or sustainable. No one can or does know if Biden is correct about being the best to beat Trump, but at least a moment’s reflection will suggest that it is not correct to think that Trump is a sanctified and justified because he survived an assassination attempt — but people will surely feel that very strongly for a long time. In short, neither the Biden nor the Trump use of sacred language is good. Both are bad options, and bad uses of courtly style, but the difference in their undesirability remains strong and stark. We can still make decisions and act calmly on them.

So the next steps I see are two fold: one tactical, one philosophical:

First, tactically, use evidence, be calm, do not invoke the apocalypse in our civic discussions against Trump. Firmly set aside the apocalyptic or catastrophic style, even and especially when our nightmares and political environment may justify them. Anti-Trump rhetoric, if it is to have meaning, must run itself through a strict anti-apocalypse filter, lean into calm evidence, and aim to practice finer republican style (again, think Harriman, not the party), or at least try to reclaim whatever margins of republican style after the courtly shift of the assassination attempt anyway. There are many, many worrying concerns to have about a second Trump administration, but none of them should justify further anger, disgust, or violence in the eyes of his defenders or his violent opponents.

Second, philosophically and more broadly, anti-Trump rhetoric also has an opportunity to reclaim courtly style. We can do this in part by reclaiming something the left, in particular, is so bad at — the religious language of the sacred. In other words, just as the press is focusing on the blood on the ear, the raised fist, and the American flag in the background, anyone who sees the situation clearly must also acknowledge that there is something sacred about the American flag — not in a way that justifying totalitarian devotion, but in a way that raises our higher spirits and prompts us to aspire to be better than we are. There is something sacred not about Trump but about anyone who would seek to serve their nation through political service. In other words, we have it backwards: politics is a kind of sacred act, defamed into the public scrum that reproduces antagonism. It compels us to pay attention to others, not just to our would-be sovereign, but to first take account of the least of these mere mortals among us all, and to the lesser country that we are, and then to take hope and aspiration to become something much more than we are: to be better, to be calmer, to be kinder (not nicer), to live more fully amid difference, to believe in whatever it is that compels us to behave better.

Unless the anti-Trump style can reclaim a sense of the sacred and the transcendently moral, we are likely to be left with a courtly style in election politics that will reverence not the angelic in each of us but the nearly martyred bodies of our would-be sovereigns. No thanks.

Let’s be better. Let’s get to work, fellow courtesans. If it is now a moment for courtly style, then let’s reclaim the holy work of civic politics — a holiness that belongs to more than this or that would-be martyr. Reread the longer paragraphs above: does nothing move us? May we all bear the flag today. May we all pray for a better future and a wiser present. Wave and pray not because both of our major candidates appear to courting death’s door but because the USA and its place in our wider world — you, me, and the rest of us — are worth not fighting for but living, arguing, and striving for.