All you nihilists

I don’t see the point in arguing about politics. Most people will believe what they want, regardless of what evidence they are shown. I don’t write this column to try to change anybody’s mind, because I can no more change anybody’s mind than I can squeeze a dirt clod into a diamond.

That’s not to say that minds don’t change. If that were true, there wouldn’t be any divorces. Most of us change our minds all the time. Sometimes because we find out things we didn’t know before. Sometimes because we grow up a little. We used to like to pour peanuts down the barrel of an RC Cola; now we prefer Four Roses Small Batch Select, neat.

I used to love election years. Now I loathe and dread them.

People, and nations, evolve. They are living things, which means they are also dying things. Which is to say nothing lasts forever: “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Which gives us license to live for—and in—the moment.

Which means if it gives us pleasure to burn down the world, then why shouldn’t we burn down the world? We might even be doing potential future generations a favor. This is what nihilism is: the idea that nothing matters (and so what if it does?).

Yevgeny Vassilievitch Bazarov is a nihilist. He’s one of the main characters in Ivan Turgenev’s 1862 novel “Fathers and Sons,” a young medical student who professes to have no faith in anything but the natural laws of science. He considers himself part of a wave that will “clear the site” of traditional values and institutions. He dismisses art, literature, music and patriotism as sentimental notions to comfort weak minds. He doesn’t believe in love and romance, and thinks that any man who allows himself to be influenced by a woman is idiotic.

But, maybe because Turgenev has his thumb on the scale, we understand that Bazarov—instead of being the brave, unflinching thought pioneer he holds himself out as—is a lazy punk who can’t be bothered to be gracious, friendly or conventionally polite. For him, the fact that society expects this kind of behavior is reason enough for him to avoid it.

Turgenev gets back at Bazarov by making him fall in love with austere, rich widow Madame Odintsova, who is fascinated by nihilism and wants to meet Bazarov precisely because he has “the courage to believe in nothing.” Bazarov is confused and alarmed by these feelings, but cannot ignore them though his whole identity is caught up in his idea of himself as someone who saw the folly of emotional life.

When his beloved—a sophisticated widow—rejects his advances, Bazarov retreats to his parents’ home. He cuts his finger while assisting his country doctor father with the autopsy of a typhoid casualty and contracts the disease.

As Bazarov lies dying, Madame Odintsova arrives, an expensive German doctor in tow. Science cannot save Bazarov, but before he goes he breaks down and tells her she’s beautiful and begs her for a kiss. We sense that she is somewhat disappointed her nihilist hero has been reduced to emotional blubbering, but she kisses him on the forehead before she leaves.

Turgenev wrote “Fathers and Sons” (also known as “Fathers and Children,” a more literal translation, if you want to shop around for a copy) as a direct response to the growing nihilist movement in 19th-century Russia, formed in opposition to an older generation of Westward-looking “liberals” and “Make Russia Great Again” isolationists. I don’t know whether he expected anyone to change their mind after reading it.

I have known a lot of people like Bazarov, and think we all sometimes wish we had the super-power to see

through all the complicating emotionalism that fogs up issues. But, speaking for myself, I know I’m only human.

And I believe in things. Not in the sort of American Exceptionalism that holds this is a nation particularly favored by God for no good reason other than He loves us better. But I do think that the circumstances of this country’s founding and the facts of our vastness and diversity have produced a pretty good model of how people ought to try to live together. We can learn from other places, but there aren’t a lot of other places where I’d rather be.

I don’t think, like Tucker Carlson apparently does, that Moscow is a better city than New York.

I do think we have problems that are specific to our culture and are difficult to frame (much less solve) because so many of us are emotionally invested in the idea of ourselves as certain kinds of people. We’re tribal, we distrust the Other, and the best way to manipulate us is to appeal to our fears and insecurities.

You’re either scared of Biden or scared of Trump. Maybe you’re scared of both of them. In any case, most of us are voting in self-defense, not because we believe in any of the twaddle they’re selling.

I’m not scared of either of the old guys. Short of civil war between Blue and Red factions (not an impossibility, though I do think that most keyboard warriors out there would be comical in a real fight) or the blessed relief of a giant meteor impact, I figure me and mine will be fine.

But what disturbs and disheartens me is the wholesale abandonment of principles and ethics in the pursuit of power, coupled with the increased credulity of common folks.

I don’t know where all the grownups have gone.

Maybe I’m being nostalgic, but remember a time when people were serious about some things, when a huckster selling high-tops that look as though they’d been sprayed gold by a rattle can would be considered ridiculous rather than dangerous. A time when a crisis was more than an opportunity to frighten potential voters into acting against their own best interests.

I worry about the reflexive cynicism that informs public life, and about the nihilistic tendencies of those who want power for power’s sake, or to further their own particular dreams of glory. I worry that there is no ultimate author, no Turgenev, who might spin this chaos into poetry.

I want people who will believe in things, and who will sometimes change their minds.

So I voted this week. I thought about it. And it was cheering to see the poll workers, all those earnest and striving souls, checking IDs and leading citizens to their duty. It still means something.