“Let’s go.” “We can’t.” “Why not?” “We’re waiting for Godot.”
That is the most famous dialog in Samuel Beckett’s most famous play, “Waiting for Godot.” It is an enigmatic bleak puzzle about human existence, acceptance of misery, abject immoral surrender of initiative and hopelessness.
Also, I believe, it is a screed against tolerating abuse of power, privilege and inequity. Not nice.
For me, the Godot play is wrenching and painful to watch yet provocatively motivational. So is much of the public discourse now in America’s winter of discontent.
We all witness emanating from the mouths and keyboards of public figures and influential people a constantly increasing barrage of profanity, obscenity, rudeness, crude slurs, insults, threats, shaming of institutions, organizations and even families of those doing their jobs, and to be polite about it, blatant brazen misstatements.
Much is premeditated. As is testifying at a hearing with a notebook of scripted ad hominem attacks punctuated by discourteous gestures.
Courtesy, civility, cooperation and consensus about verifiable truths are increasingly scarce in the performative repertoire of public figures, including influential leaders at every level of government and corner of the political spectrum, and among those who exercise their rights to petition government.
This misguided conduct is disgraceful, impairs government and rends the fabric of democracy.
Whatever happened to the art of witty self-deprecating put-downs? Such as 73-year-old President Ronald Reagan’s debate quip about 56-year-old Vice President Walter Mondale: “I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
Remember the beau gestes that decorate the history of America from 21-year-old Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale’s celebrated last words, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” to indelible symbols of American courage and resolve like Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe’s defiant one word reply, “Nuts!” during World War II’s Battle of the Bulge, when German forces demanded the surrounded, outnumbered, severely undersupplied, freezing in bitter cold, 101st Airborne division surrender.
Consider the classy model of strength and grace in defeat demonstrated by U.S. Sen. Adlai Stevenson II conceding that President Dwight D. Eisenhower won the election both times Stevenson ran for the highest office American voters can bestow. In 1952 on national television he said, “The people have rendered their verdict, and I gladly accept it” and “That which unites us as American citizens, is far greater than that which divides us as political parties.” Quoting Abraham Lincoln’s reaction to losing an election, Stevenson said, “He said he felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. That he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.”
Erika Kirk touched us when she forgave the alleged killer of her late husband, conservative activist Charlie Kirk. “I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do” and “The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us,” she said.
Among relevant historic precedents is the deft skewering by Boston lawyer Joseph Welch of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whose bombastic fear mongering demagoguery seems all too familiar.
In televised hearings, McCarthy defamed and attempted to destroy the career of a young associate at Welch’s firm who worked behind the scenes in defense of their client the U.S. Army. Welch asked McCarthy, who was chairing the famous hearings, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” This simple rebuke deflated the blowhard and is widely credited with breaking McCarthy’s power.
Decency, decorum, discipline and dedication to serve the public interest are the hallmarks of our honorable profession. These have long been attributes of good lawyers like Joseph Welch because it is both the right way to treat others and the smart way to get things done.
One does not need to be a lawyer to act like a public citizen and behave like someone you would want your children to emulate. No one should want to be like those sorry people in Beckett’s play. As important, we don’t have to be. That’s the point.
After all, theater, indeed all of the liberal arts and humanities, enable people to reflect upon who and what we were, are and want to be. That is especially so with the apex subject of law, which is exquisitely intertwingled, draws upon and is in debt to all the arts and sciences.
Law stands out among the liberal arts for providing “the how” we can come together with respect and understanding of our differences to strive to be better.
In these trying times, it is imperative for lawyers whether working on private and public stages to be exemplars of good behavior. Our professional organizations and law schools can and do help illuminate how to elevate and advance the national conversation about contentious disputes and heartfelt differences.
Virtue can be taught and learned. This is where the profession can well serve the public interest. After all, every lawyer, whether judge, practitioner or academic is a teacher, for good and sometimes not so good.
We need to do our best to contribute to the needed civic education about how our constitutional government is supposed to work, to hand off the good behavior baton to future lawyers and sound the alarm about unprofessional, indeed un-American behavior.
The obstacles impeding changing nasty public discourse are daunting. It is easy to be distracted by other continuous disruptive demands on our time. The crescendo of bad behavior numbs the body politics’ sense of surprise and concern. As time passes more people accept public figures acting poorly as inevitable, normal, even entertaining, and a model to imitate.
Exacerbating all of this is the isolation and misinformation generated by our digital AI-driven world that divides us by disconnecting us from each other and reality.
We are not trapped like flies on sticky paper, immobilized by dithering doubt about or ability to move like the Beckett characters waiting for Godot. We see progress is possible every day in the way lawyers work.
We also can be energized and exhilarated preparing new lawyers to sustain and enhance what is honorable about the profession and beautiful about our constitutional democratic form of government.
If not us, then who? If not now, then when?