The Blue Estuaries by Louise Bogan

Source of book: I own this.

 

Earlier this year, I spent some time reading in my Library of America collection of 20th Century American poetry. One name I discovered this time was that of Louise Bogan. I wasn’t particularly familiar with her or her works, although perhaps I should have been. 

 

Bogan was the first woman to serve as Poet Laureate, and was respected both as a poet and as a member of a literary circle of her time, which included William Carlos Williams, Edmund Wilson and Theodore Rothke (with whom she had a brief and wild affair). 

Bogan’s poetry is interesting in that it is mostly traditional in an era when experimentation and nontraditional forms were all the rage. She was a contemporary of Ezra Pound, but her poetry usually has rhythm and rhyme and form. I personally have an affinity for formal poetry, although I certainly enjoy more modern styles as well. 

 

The Blue Estuaries is a collection of poems dating from 1923 through 1968, which is most of Bogan’s early and middle period poetry. It is surprisingly difficult to find collections other than this one, and this one was only available in paperback. Perhaps, like too many female poets (and writers generally), she fell victim to the mostly-male gatekeepers who failed to promote and publish her after she was gone. 

 

When reading this collection and noting my favorites, I found that I had tagged the poems I featured in my previous post - I guess I still liked them. Because of this, I recommend clicking through the link above and reading the poems that I featured there. I won’t duplicate them here, but they are well worth reading. 

 

Choosing poems is always a difficult job. Usually, I love most or even all of the ones I read by certain authors, and I certainly could have chosen any number of poems from this book. I would imagine that different ones will speak to me differently at different times. The ones I liked enough to feature here are ones that stood out to me for some reason or another. 

 

This poem opened Bogan’s first collection of poems, written when she was only 26. Only 26, but already a parent and a widow - life had not been easy for her. Perhaps that is why this poem has such a disillusioned and cynical tone, with little hope that the enlightenment the youth seeks will be of comfort to him. The writing, however, is beautiful, with perfect word selection and sounds that reinforce the meaning. Definitely read this one aloud. Robert Frost particularly praised this poem, by the way. 

 

A Tale

 

This youth too long has heard the break
 Of waters in a land of change.
 He goes to see what suns can make
 From soil more indurate and strange.

 

He cuts what holds his days together
 And shuts him in, as lock on lock:
 The arrowed vane announcing weather,
 The tripping racket of a clock;

 

Seeking, I think, a light that waits
 Still as a lamp upon a shelf,—
 A land with hills like rocky gates
 Where no sea leaps upon itself.

 

But he will find that nothing dares
 To be enduring, save where, south
 Of hidden deserts, torn fire glares
 On beauty with a rusted mouth,—

 

Where something dreadful and another
 Look quietly upon each other.

 

This next one is likewise bleak, but in a different way. Bogan transforms what an earlier - or more naive - poet might have viewed as a charming meeting of nature and art into a rather menacing conflict. I suspect Alfred Hitchcock would approve. 

 

Statue and Birds

 

Here, in the withered arbor, like the arrested wind,   

Straight sides, carven knees,

Stands the statue, with hands flung out in alarm   

Or remonstrances.

 

Over the lintel sway the woven bracts of the vine   

In a pattern of angles.

The quill of the fountain falters, woods rake on the sky   

Their brusque tangles.

 

The birds walk by slowly, circling the marble girl,   

The golden quails,

The pheasants, closed up in their arrowy wings,   

Dragging their sharp tails.

 

The inquietudes of the sap and of the blood are spent.   

What is forsaken will rest.

But her heel is lifted,—she would flee,—the whistle of the birds   

Fails on her breast.

 

Continuing in this contrarian vein, Bogan questions the hagiography of memory. Perhaps an influence on this perspective was her own traumatic childhood. Her mother would abandon the family for months at a time, while out on an adulterous love affair or mental breakdown. Bogan herself suffered from depression and, in her letters, questioned whether either she or her mother should have had families. I believe by the time she wrote this one, her unhappy second marriage had ended in a bitter divorce. 

 

Memory

 

Do not guard this as rich stuff without mark
 Closed in a cedarn dark,
 Nor lay it down with tragic masks and greaves,
 Licked by the tongues of leaves.

 

Nor let it be as eggs under the wings
 Of helpless, startled things,
 Nor encompassed by song, nor any glory
 Perverse and transitory.

 

Rather, like shards and straw upon coarse ground,
 Of little worth when found,—
 Rubble in gardens, it and stones alike,
 That any spade may strike.

 

Memories, to Bogan, are as likely to be rubble of little worth than jewels to be celebrated. 

 

I have mentioned many times that I love sonnets. There are a lot of them in this collection, and they vary quite a bit in subject. Most, like this one, are in the Italian form, not the Shakespearean. In this particular verse, Bogan rails against those who would stifle freedom of thought. Though she may be silenced, or her body imprisoned, yet her mind would be free, and seek the chaotic storm rather than conformity. This resonates with me so much. 

 

Sonnet

 

Since you would claim the sources of my thought

Recall the meshes whence it sprang unlimed, 

The reedy traps which other hands have timed

To close upon it. Conjure up the hot

Blaze that it cleared so cleanly, or the snow

Devised to strike it down. It will be free.

Whatever nets draw in to prison me

At length your eyes must turn to watch it go.

 

My mouth, perhaps, may learn one thing too well, 

My body hear no echo save its own,

Yet will the desperate mind, maddened and proud,

Seek out the storm, escape the bitter spell

That we obey, strain to the wind, be thrown

Straight to its freedom in the thunderous cloud.

 

This next one is a delightful image, and an outstanding example of the way poetry can tie together elements. It also is one of a handful of poems you can hear Bogan herself read, from an album that came out in 1965. 

 

The form of this one is really fascinating, once you see it. And it took me several read throughs to see it. Check out that first stanza, which turns the repeated word of “single.” Surrounding that, you can see a portrayal of the tree and its shadow. Moving out from single are the paired words “shadow,” and then “weather/together.” And also the continuity when the shadow and the tree and the door are in line, before time moves the shadow along. 

 

The second stanza becomes more formless, with the sense of rhyme and meter comes adrift. At the very end, Time and Tree draw us back to earth. This is the kind of poem that fascinates those of us who love the way form and meaning are intertwined. 

 

Division

 

Long days and changing weather

Put the shadow upon the door:

Up from the ground, the duplicate

Tree reflected in shadow;

Out from the whole, the single

Mirrored against the single

The tree and the hour and the shadow

No longer mingle

Flying free, they're burned together

 

Replica turned to yourself

Upon thinnest color and air

Woven in changeless trees

The burden of the Sea is clasped against the eye

Though assailed and undone is the green upon the wall and thе sky

Time and the tree stand there

 

This next one is another sonnet, in a similar form, but definitely a different mood and subject. It also uses a different version of the various acceptable rhyme schemes for the sextet portion of the poem. 

 

The turn in the middle, from the description of nature clinging to life even as autumn proceeds, to grief that lingers is a bit of a cold shock. What kind of poem is this? The leaves cling rather than fall, the cones and fruit should separate, the grain escape the sheaf. Even the fires should die out, but they continue to burn. 

 

And grief, whose time should have passed, insists on lingering. 

 

Simple Autumnal

 

The measured blood beats out the year's delay.

The tearless eyes and heart, forbidden grief,

Watch, the burned, restless, but abiding leaf,

The brighter branches arming the bright day.

 

The cone, the curving fruit should fall away,

The vine stem crumble, ripe grain knows its sheaf.

Bonded to time, fires should have done, be brief,

But, serfs to sleep, they glitter and they stay.

 

Because not last nor first, grief in its prime

Wakes in the day, and hears of life's intent.

Sorrow would break the seal stamped over time

And set the baskets where the bough is bent.

 

Full season's come, yet filled trees keep the sky

And never scent the ground where they must lie.

 

Here is another thrilling yet somewhat menacing nature poem. Bogan has a way of writing these throughout the collection. A nature that is not your friend or a comforting metaphor, but with a bit of an edge. It is perhaps fitting that I am posting this as the mountains near my home are experiencing monsoon weather and some pretty crazy thunderstorms.

 

Dark Summer

 

Under the thunder-dark, the cicadas resound.

The storm in the sky mounts, but is not yet heard.

The shaft and the flash wait, but are not yet found.

 

The apples that hang and swell for the late comer,

The simple spell, the rite not for our word,

The kisses not for our mouths,–light the dark summer.

 

This next poem is another subversive one in tone. It is less about disillusionment and a lot more about giving the middle finger to sanctimonious and self-consciously “transcendent” theology and the poetry it has inspired. As one who was fed a bit too much “pie in the sky when you die” and “don’t burn in hell” stuff as a kid, I get it. One fun thing about this poem was set to music by composer William Bolcom as part of a song cycle of poems by female poems. 

 

I Saw Eternity

 

O beautiful Forever!

O grandiose Everlasting!

Now, now, now,

I break you into pieces,

I feed you to the ground.

 

O brilliant, O languishing

Cycle of weeping light!

The mice and the birds will eat you,

And you will spoil their stomachs

As you have spoiled my mind.

 

Here, mice, rats

Porcupines and toads,

Moles, shrews, squirrels,

Weasels, turtles, lizards, - 

Here’s bright Everlasting!

Here’s a crumb of Forever!

Here’s a crumb of Forever!

 

I love that poem. So. Much. 

 

While most of Bogans poems are in more traditional forms, there are definitely some that are modernist. Here is an example of one, that may also have been a sly dig at the Imagist movement (and thus Ezra Pound and his imitators.) 

 

Poem in Prose

 

I turned from side to side, from image to image, to put you down,

All to no purpose; for you the rhymes would not ring -

Not for you, beautiful and ridiculous, as are always the true inheritors of love,

The bearers; their strong hair moulded to their foreheads as though by the pressure of hands.

It is you that must sound in me secretly for the little time before my mind, schooled in desperate esteem, forgets you - 

And it is my virtue that I cannot give you out,

That you are absorbed into my strength, my mettle,

That in me you are matched, and that it is silence which comes from us. 

 

This next one is short, but a wicked bit of wit. 

 

To An Artist, To Take Heart

 

Slipping in blood, by his own hands, through pride,

Hamlet, Othello, Coriolanus fall. 

Upon his bed, however, Shakespeare died,

Having endured them all. 

 

Particularly among the later poems, I find a growing tendency toward thoughtful introspection, of which this poem is a fine example. Contrast with the earlier “Simple Autumnal.”

 

Zone

 

We have struck the regions wherein we are keel or reef.

The wind breaks over us,

And against high sharp angles almost splits into words,

And these are of fear or grief.

 

Like a ship, we have struck expected latitudes

Of the universe, in March.

Through one short segment’s arch

Of the zodiac’s round

We pass,

Thinking: Now we hear

What we heard last year,

And bear the wind’s rude touch

And its ugly sound

Equally with so much

We have learned how to bear. 

 

One more nature-related poem caught my eye. This one doesn’t have an obvious rhyme scheme, but has definite meter and form. 

 

July Dawn

 

It was a waning crescent

Dark on the wrong side

On which one does not wish

Setting in the hour before daylight

For my sleepless eyes to look at.

 

O, as a symbol of dis-hope

Over the July fields,

Dissolving, waning,

In spite of its sickle shape,

 

I saw it and thought it new

In that short moment

That makes all symbols lucky

Before we read them rightly.

 

Down to the dark it swam,

Down to the dark it moved,

Swift to that cluster of evenings

When curved toward the full it sharpens.

 

That line: “In that short moment/That makes all symbols lucky/Before we read them rightly” is devastating. Did she know how good it was when she wrote it? 

 

I’ll end with a very personal poem, one that I read and re-read several times when I discovered it. It is simply incredible, an example of how much poetry can cut to the soul when at its best. After I first read it, I put the book down and just said wow. 

 

Song For the Last Act

 

Now that I have your face by heart, I look   

Less at its features than its darkening frame   

Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,   

Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd’s crook.   

Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent ease

The lead and marble figures watch the show   

Of yet another summer loath to go

Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.

 

Now that I have your face by heart, I look.

 

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read   

In the black chords upon a dulling page   

Music that is not meant for music’s cage,

Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.   

The staves are shuttled over with a stark   

Unprinted silence. In a double dream   

I must spell out the storm, the running stream.   

The beat’s too swift. The notes shift in the dark.

 

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.

 

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see

The wharves with their great ships and architraves;   

The rigging and the cargo and the slaves

On a strange beach under a broken sky.

O not departure, but a voyage done!

The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps

Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps   

Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

 

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.

 

Louise Bogan is worth checking out. She had a unique voice, and a bit of an attitude, making for poetry that subverts even as it embraces tradition. 

 

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Source of book: I own this

 

This was this month’s selection for our “Literary Lush” book club. One of the things I enjoy about this club is that I end up reading interesting books that I never would have discovered on my own. This book is one I would not have automatically picked up. Our club did previously read and discuss another book by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones and the Six, which turned out to be the first of several meetings we had via zoom due to the pandemic. 

 

As I noted in my post about that book, I’m not sure Reid is exactly my cup of tea, but I don’t hate her books either. The thing that ties both of these books together is that they are sort of about real people and events, but also not entirely, and everything is very fictionalized and done with a lot of artistic license. 

 

In the former case, it was kinda sorta about Fleetwood Mac, more or less. This one is about astronaut Sally Ride, kinda sorta more or less. 

 

The way I look at it is that Reid took the real life Sally Ride, split her into two characters, and imagined an alternative story involving her. 

 

The real Sally Ride, of course, was a legend. The first American woman in space, and by all accounts one of the most badass astronauts - and physicists - of all time. She then went on to work for nearly a decade at Mission Control, directing dozens of missions. She is the one person to serve on the commissions investigating both space shuttle disasters, and was quite vocal in calling out the issues in NASA’s safety culture, which also suffered from “good old boy” network of looking the other way. 

 

After leaving NASA, she was an educator and researcher for most of the rest of her life, before dying too soon of cancer. 

 

It wasn’t until after she died that the fact that she was a lesbian became known to the public. Yeah, sure, there were some rumors, and close friends knew. But her decades-long relationship with Tam O’Shaughnessy was only revealed in her obituary - and Ride left that decision to her partner. 

 

In some ways it is surprising that she never came out publicly during her lifetime. It was understandable in the 1980s, but by the 2000s, it probably would have been met mostly with a yawn. 

 

All of those facts above are in some way important to the book. Reid weaves the facts into imaginative inspiration. 

 

Before I get into the plot, I want to state a few things first. 

 

This book, like the other Taylor Jenkins Reid book I read, explicitly requires “"that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.” (H/t Samuel Taylor Coleridge) The ending is beyond implausible, both in how it happens and that it happens at all. Just accept that and go with it. Or, like some of our club, you may have preferred a tragic ending, and that is fine too.

 

Second, I personally find Reid frustrating because she can be so good in her research at times, and then just fall absolutely flat on her face in an avoidable way. I know this isn’t that common for authors (as evidenced by many of the books I have read), but if you are going to write about something you don’t personally know a lot about, for god’s sake, just run the specifics by someone who does. And if you don’t have friends who know about a variety of things, maybe make a few more friends? More on that later. 

 

Third, the plot in this book is less about the space plot, and a lot more about the emotional dynamics of relationships. So, if you wanted a space thriller, this isn’t it. 

 

Finally, Reid doesn’t write literary fiction. This is genre-fiction stuff, even if it doesn’t fit neatly into a genre, if that makes sense. It’s light, it’s not that deep, and it is meant to read quickly and easily. Keep your expectations in line, and you will likely enjoy it more. 

 

The basic gist of the story is this: Joan is the stand-in for Sally Ride in most ways. But there is also an element of her in Vanessa, who (spoiler) eventually becomes Joan’s partner. 

 

The two of them meet in NASA’s astronaut program, and both get to go into space, although on different missions. 

 

Also going on is a certain amount of drama between other astronauts, some of whom marry and have kids. And yes, drama. Expect it. 

 

But the main subplot involves Joan and her dysfunctional family. Her parents are kind functional, I guess, but they managed to raise Joan’s older sister Barbara, who is a real dick. Pretty, undisciplined, and irresponsible, she gets pregnant young and unmarried, and ends up pushing a lot of the childrearing off onto Joan, the responsible kid. 

 

Thus, a lot of the story involves Joan and her relationship with her little niece, Frances. Which isn’t a bad thing - there are actually some interesting ideas explored in that plot, which feels a lot more realistic than the rest of it, in my opinion. Perhaps Reid has some personal knowledge there? 

 

That’s probably enough without giving more spoilers. 

 

Reid in my opinion imagines how Ride’s life would have gone had she felt free to express her nature while at NASA. In real life, Ride married a male fellow astronaut, who didn’t know about her prior relationships with women. He apparently was blindsided when they divorced. Such is what people had to do back in the day to survive. 

 

Now, let’s talk about the problems of researching a story. 

 

By definition, this book contains a lot of nerdy stuff. For example, astronomy, which Reid (who apparently grew up in a city where stars weren’t particularly visible) admits in the author’s note knew little about. She could find the Big Dipper and that was about it. 

 

So, she learned a lot, and her hard work shows. I actually loved the parts about astronomy, because not only did she get the details right, she explained them in ways that should send people outside to stare at the sky. 

 

On a personal note, some of the things Reid mentions in the book just happened to match the tour of the June sky I gave to some of our book club members on a summer backpack trip - for some, it was the first time they had actually seen the Milky Way, the Summer Triangle, and a number of other constellations. There is nothing quite like staring at the sky at 9,000 feet. It never gets old for me. 

 

The other area of nerdiness, though, was more hit and miss. 

 

I might have mentioned this previously on this blog, but my dad was an air traffic controller and an amateur pilot. So I grew up around aviation. Our family was also pretty into the space shuttles and other NASA projects. A family friend worked at JPL for a while, and he took us kids to watch Discovery land at Edwards Air Force Base on the first mission after Challenger blew up. My own kids have seen Endeavor at the California Science Center, and a bunch of other stuff at air and space museums from San Diego to Seattle. 

 

So I know my stuff here fairly well, and my kids and nephew have followed in the family tradition of being air and space nerds. 

 

So, believe, me, I cared about the details in this book. 

 

So many of them were good, too! The T-38s used for training. The KC-135 as the “vomit comet” of the era. (Now, a 727 owned by a private company and contracted out to NASA serves.) Even the details of training for spacewalks and other stuff is well done. It’s simplified, of course, but it is fine. 

 

Unfortunately, there is one scene which is so totally ludicrous that what I really want to do is go back in time and re-write that part for Reid. My version would fulfil all of the story-related things that Reid wanted to do, but in a totally realistic way. 

 

The scene in question is very much secondary to the plot. It serves solely as a device to develop the relationship between Joan and Vanessa. 

 

In the book, Vanessa, who was a commercial pilot and mechanic (not uncommon) before joining NASA, decides to take a flight with Joan, where Joan gets to point out all the astronomy stuff. So, Vanessa borrows a Hawker 400 from a friend, and they take a quick flight from Houston to Glacier National Park to look at stars. 

 

And yes, at this point, all the people who know anything about aviation are banging their heads on their desks. 

 

Sigh. Let me break this down a bit. The first thing that Reid clearly doesn’t understand is how pilot licenses and type ratings work. 

 

We can probably infer that Vanessa has more than the usual recreational licenses, such as an IFR and multi-engine rating, and has progressed to a commercial license, allowing her to fly passengers for pay. So far, so good. But those ratings only allow you to fly certain kinds of aircraft. Smaller ones just need a bit of work with an instructor on type, not a full FAA certification. So Vanessa could probably have borrowed a friend’s single engine or light twin aircraft, provided she had her training and competency on type.

 

Other aircraft, though - the bigger and more complicated ones - require at “type rating,” which means quite a few hours in a simulator, multiple check rides, and a sign-off from the FAA. And also regular recurrent training and testing. It is no easy task to maintain a type rating unless you are flying that aircraft for your job. All commercial aircraft, whether airline or corporate, have type ratings. While there is no legal restriction on how many type ratings a pilot can have, practical considerations mean that airline pilots typically have only one at a time, and few corporate pilots hold more than one or two. It’s just too much time and expense to keep multiple ratings up at a time. 

 

Furthermore, while small aircraft usually can be flown by a single pilot, there are very few jets even now that can legally fly single pilot. 

 

In 1984, that list was……the Citation II, in a particular variant. That’s the list. The Hawker 400, a bigger jet, is not on it. 

 

[Side note: the crash a few years ago that killed the leader of the “Godworthy” religious anorexia cult was of one of these jets, with only a single pilot. Just because you can fly one single doesn’t mean you should. In this case, a relatively inexperienced pilot lost situational awareness. Not good.] 

 

So, flying an aircraft that required two pilots? One that Vanessa probably wasn’t qualified to fly unless she was flying it for pay before joining NASA and kept her type rating despite the grueling NASA work hours? Anything else?

 

Oh yeah, flying a Hawker costs about $4000.00 an hour. 

 

So that little trip from Texas to Glacier, which would take 4-5 hours of flight time each way minimum, and require one fuel stop each way, would have cost a nifty fifty grand. I doubt Vanessa had that kind of money, even if she did have a rich fuck friend who would let her borrow the Hawker for the weekend. 

 

Soooooo…..let me fix that for you, Taylor. 

 

Let’s start with a better destination. You don’t have to leave Texas. Big Bend National Park may be a 9 hour drive from Houston, but less by air. You would still have to drive about 50 miles from the airport to the park, but same thing with Glacier. You want that dark sky anyway, not runway or city lights. 

 

Instead of a fancy-ass corporate jet, let’s instead go with something a lot more fun to fly for a jet jockey like Vanessa. There are two excellent choices, depending on what kind of rich fuck her friend is. If he or she is a doctor, he would have a Beechcraft Bonanza. (And probably eventually gets killed in it, because that’s how it goes.) If he prefers fun to luxury, he has a Mooney, which would be my choice. 

 

Either of these could go Houston to Big Bend without refueling, either would show off Vanessa’s flying skills - you actually notice airmanship more in a small aircraft - I’ve been up in a number of them and I know. Both make a whole lot more sense for a couple of women out on a little trip for fun. Relatively affordable, still fairly fast, and able to get you to your preferred destination. 

 

See? I just fixed it for you, Taylor. Next time you write about airplanes, hit me up. 

 

So, that covers my main point of irritation. 

 

Let’s talk about some things I really liked. There is a conversation between Joan and Vanessa about God in the middle of the book that is very thoughtful. 

 

Joan, like me, comes from a kind of Fundie family, with at least one parent who believes in a 6000 year old universe. As Joan notes, since we know objectively that it is more like 13 billion years old, and the earth 4.5 billion, you can’t square the doctrine with reality. But that isn’t the only way to think about the Divine. Joan doesn’t see religion and science as necessarily at odds.

 

“But why not? Why, when they tell you that God created man out of thin air and then you learn about evolution, why does the whole thing not crumble for you?”

“Because there are so many ways to define God and there’s still so much unknown about the universe. I could never say that science has obliterated the possibility of God. Certainly I don’t see that happening in my lifetime. And I think that something would be lost if it did. Or maybe I should say that I hope that if it did happen, it would only be because something even more incredible was discovered.” 

 

There is more to how Joan believes and feels, and I tend to agree. The quest for scientific knowledge and understanding - the exploration of the nature of the universe - and the pursuit of God are really one and the same. 

 

Fundamentalists aren’t actually looking for God. They are looking for the power to force their cultural and political beliefs about humans on everyone else. A literal Adam and Eve aren’t necessary for a belief in the Divine. In fact, arguably a majority of Christians throughout history have understood the creation myth as a metaphor, a way of understanding deeper truth. 

 

But a literal Adam and Eve are necessary for the Fundamentalist/Evangelical belief about the subordination of women. THAT is the actual point. 

 

It makes no difference to my own quest for God and understanding of the universe whether the universe is 6000 years old, or 13 billion years old. Just like it matters not to me whether there was a literal tree and a literal talking snake (there wasn’t, and nobody actually believes that man fucked a frog.) Because my quest for the Divine is rooted in curiosity and wonder, not a need to subordinate women and people of color. 

 

Joan goes on to describe a way of seeing the universe as inseparable from the Divine (which is actually more of a biblical concept than most of us were taught), and that as parts of the universe, we partake in the Divine ourselves. (Again, more in line with Christ’s teaching that God and the Kingdom are already with us, if we just choose to see it.) 

 

This underlying belief system leads Joan to a similar place as that described by Isaac Asimov, in one of the best things he ever wrote, the short story The Last Answer. 

 

“You’re saying you don’t believe in a God who would hate, right? And if that God does exist, you’ll remain defiant.”

“Yes, that’s…yes.” 

 

And that is yes for me too. 

 

Later in the book, Joan also expresses one of the things that haunts me about my fellow humans. 

 

“Happiness is so hard to come by. I don’t understand why anyone would begrudge anyone else for managing to find some of it.”

 

You see this in everything coming from the right wing right now. They are furious at the happiness other people - the ones they hate and find unworthy - have found. LGBTQ people finding love, peace, acceptance? Can’t have that. Brown-skinned immigrants finding safety and a better life? Nope. Minorities and women finding good careers? Unacceptable. 

 

Even in the case of my birth family, my mother seems to continue to resent my wife for finding a happiness that has eluded my mom. I just don’t get it. 

 

I mentioned that I liked the subplot involving Frances. I actually have a friend who ended up adopting her nephew under somewhat similar circumstances. Professionally, I know plenty of people who have chosen single parenthood that way: by adopting or at least taking in a niece or nephew who needs care. I greatly admire these people, and am happy that these children are able to be where they are actually wanted and loved. 

 

There is a line from Vanessa to Joan that I think is perfect. 

 

“At the end of the day, Frances is not my kid. She’s my niece.”

“Yes, but also, who cares what word you use? Some aunts are completely irrelevant, and some aunts have been there since the day their niece was born. I had one grandmother I never saw and one who, when she died, I cried for three days. The word isn’t what matters. It’s the specific relationship. She knows that. And that’s what matters.” 

 

In our current shitty political and religious situation, so many of us have had to build “found families” for ourselves and others. Our own genetic relatives in many cases are not safe, not kind, not decent, not loving or accepting. At some point, you have to reject the hate, and find your tribe.

 

The word isn’t what matters. The DNA isn’t what matters. It’s the relationship. It’s the love. And many of us are coming to know that more and more over time. 

 

As I noted, don’t expect these ideas to be explored too deeply. It isn’t that kind of a book. But it isn’t pure fluff either. 

 

The best part about books like this is the interesting discussion we have at our club meetings about the books. Everyone brings a unique perspective, and the book always seems more compelling once you hear what everyone liked or hated. 

 

James Dobson's Evil Legacy Part 1: Making Parents and Children Adversaries

Part 1: Making Parents and Children Adversaries

 

Well, notorious Sodomite*, eugenicst, white supremacist, false prophet, and child abuse proponent James Dobson has finally died. 

 

Whether he knows it or not, there are tens of thousands of us, of multiple generations, who were gravely damaged by his toxic false teachings. We are glad to see him go, and, if we don’t wish actual Eternal Conscious Torment on him, a purgatory where he feels every bit of pain he inflicted on all of us sounds about right. I strongly doubt the universe contains enough millstones for him. 

 

There are so many possible things to write about, and I may get to some of them in the future. 

 

Should I write about the fact that his entire “ministry” was a religious whitewash of the Eugenics movement? That his mentor (atheist Eugenicist Paul Popenoe), from whom he borrowed his ideas whole cloth, was a major influence on Hitler and the Nazis? 

 

Or maybe I should write about his role in convincing white Protestants that you had to vote for right wing Republicans or you weren’t a “real” Christian? The line from Dobson to Trump is perfectly straight. 

 

I might write about how he built his “ministry” on fanning the flames of fear of white Evangelicals about the civil rights movement (racial equality), the feminist movement (gender equality), and Vietnam war protests (objections to imperialism and a morally indefensible war that we inevitably and predictably lost in the end.) 

 

I could write about the way he convinced parents like mine that God commanded them to commit ritual child abuse in order to break the wills of little children. 

 

I could write about him beating his small dog with a belt - that was in one of his books. And also the defense of domestic violence in another book.

 

Perhaps I could write about how I had to consciously unlearn literally everything he taught about marriage and sex in order to have an actually good marriage? 

 

I already wrote about his pure evil and malignant racism in advocating for the US to send all the immigrants and refugees back, build a wall to keep them out, and change our laws so we never have to accept an immigrant or refugee again. 

 

As I said, so many topics. He was an evil, anti-christian man, whose damage to children, families, Christianity, and our nation is almost too enormous to even begin to fathom. His every inclination was toward grinding the faces of the vulnerable - children, minorities, women, LGBTQ people, immigrants, refugees, the poor - while claiming doing such evil was the very will of God. 

 

I may write about some of these later. But for now, I want to start with this one:

 

James Dobson is responsible for making parents and children into adversaries.

 

*Sodomite: See Ezekiel 16:49-50

 

***

 

It is always difficult writing about my parents. Families are complicated, humans are complicated, and little divides neatly into black and white. It is mostly shades of grey, or at least black and white so mixed up that it looks grey. 

 

In my particular case, things are complicated by the fact that I have been estranged from my parents for the last five years. On the one hand, seeing my childhood from outside of the relationship has helped me clarify some things, understand some things, and reconsider events in the light of later developments. 

 

On the other, I know I am going to have a tendency to read too much into the past given the present. It is one thing to know from my memories that my parents loved me when I was a child, but another to square that with their willingness to throw me away now. 

 

My family history is also very complicated, with many different threads interwoven, so teasing out causation is a mess. 

 

Thus, I want to start with a look at some of these issues before I can even get into the main point of this post. I hope a few readers can stick with it long enough to get there. 

 

***

 

If you had asked me ten years ago if I was abused as a child, I would have said no. 

 

I would have been wrong about that, but I was not yet at the point of admitting to myself that some of what my parents did was in fact abusive. 

 

Part of the problem was that I was still trying to have a relationship with my parents, particularly my dad, and to admit to myself they were at times abusive would have been to have to admit to them (when asked) that they were, which probably would have led to the end of the relationship at that time. In fact, it was when I started pushing back that my parents cut me out of their lives. 

 

Another part of the problem was that it is easy to think of abuse as a binary. A family is either loving or it is abusive, good or bad, happy or miserable. 

 

And that is wrong. 

 

Most abusive relationships aren’t abusive all the time. Or even most of the time. I should have known this, working in domestic violence for the last quarter century. But applying it to one’s own childhood isn’t easy. 

 

My childhood was mostly happy. My parents were probably better than most when I was a child. They made a conscious effort to do better than their own parents did, and sometimes they succeeded. 

 

On the positive side, they did work to be loving and involved parents. It is the memories of my childhood that kept me hanging on to hope of a good adult relationship with them for more than 20 years after I moved out. 

 

Things began to change for the worse in my teens, when my parents got involved with Bill Gothard’s cult, and started dialing up the attempts to control. And this didn’t stop after I grew up and moved out, but was just extended to my wife and children. 

 

But that said, there have always been good times, good memories, good things that my parents did that I have tried to emulate for my own kids. 

 

And yet, there was always a level of abuse present too, primarily driven by the teachings of one James Dobson. 

 

Another complication here is my parents’ background. They were both missionary kids in an era when missionaries were expected to neglect their children, send them off to boarding school as soon as possible, and let them fend for themselves. 

 

In my mom’s case, she also had the difficulty of a mentally ill mother, and a distant father who didn’t like her and didn’t want her around. (Seriously. My dad had to buy my mom’s parents bus tickets, or they would have declined to attend their wedding.) 

 

So, lots of trauma, probably PTSD, and god only knows what else. 

 

Bottom line, however: my mom is mentally ill. 

 

She has never been a fully functional adult. She has never been emotionally healthy. She has never, in my memory, had a truly equal, mutual adult friendship. They all have been based on her finding an emotionally unhealthy “friend,” so then she can be the confidant and feel needed. In this sense, one of the manifestations of her illness is her “hypervigilant” narcissism. The constant need to be needed, and her vindictiveness when denied that craving. 

 

I probably need to write at some point about two results of this. One was the projection of her childhood trauma onto me (as a first-born male like her father) and projection of herself onto my sister (as a third-born female like herself), coloring every family conflict with her own pain. 

 

The other was that, probably as early as age 12 or 13, I realized I was a more functional person, more of an adult, than she was. She was incompetent at many basic tasks, played constant favorites with my sister, and seemed totally oblivious to the reality of our family dynamics. This made it extremely difficult for me to stomach having to obey her without talking back. This led to most of my parent-child conflicts as a teen. 

 

One question, then, is how much of this conflict was the result of mental illness, and how much the result of Dobson’s terrible childrearing advice? Were my parents attracted to Dobson’s teachings because of their mental health issues? Did Dobson’s toxic teachings exacerbate their other issues? 

 

In addition to the entirely predictable conflicts as the result of bad parenting advice and untreated mental illness, there was also my dad’s response. He had to be the only adult in our family, and he ordered his life around attempting to prevent my mom from having negative feelings - he had to clean up the emotional vomit afterward. 

 

So, as a fellow male (and the second-most functional person in the family), I was expected to also devote my life to coddling my mom’s feelings (and my sister’s feelings), at the expense of my own emotions and needs. 

 

As I said, it's complicated. 

 

My dad has issues too, also from unresolved childhood trauma. During my teens, he told us about his suicidal ideations (which of course freaked me out, being the one who would have to be the only functional adult, and I wasn’t even an adult yet.) And, rather than get professional help, my parents self-medicated by embracing even more authoritarian parenting, particularly directed at me. 

 

And here is another complicating factor: my parents didn’t do everything Dobson advised. For one thing, they were never freaked out about my turning gay because I didn’t perform masculinity a certain way. (An obsession of Dobson’s.) I had no idea until recently that he said this, for example. 

 

My parents encouraged me in my love of violin, flowers, cats, poetry, and other “feminine” signifiers. True, I am cishet and always have been (of course), but Dobson and other patriarchists were pretty freaked out about boys being too “feminine.” So I am very grateful to my parents for that. As children, we were raised in a fairly gender-neutral manner. It wasn’t until later that my parents went down the full gender essentialism path. 

 

There were other ways they didn’t fully follow Dobson. Neither was fully committed to the constant corporal punishment necessary to truly break me. (If that were possible - I suspect not.)

 

In fact, if left to herself, I think my mom might never have used corporal punishment. And if my dad were not looking for a way to feel in control of his own life, he might not have gone that direction either. 

 

Finally, there is no way of talking about my birth family without acknowledging the sibling favoritism that poisoned everything, and is at this point in our lives thoroughly pathological. 

 

My sister was and is the golden child, the one who could do no wrong, the one who is now as an adult, allowed to abuse the rest of the family with impunity. As I have come to realize after learning mainstream ideas about psychology, she is a full-blown malignant narcissist with significant sociopathic traits. Even without Dobson, I likely would have ended up as the black sheep of the family, the scapegoat for all our problems. Dobson made things worse, though. 

 

I hope this gives a more nuanced view of my childhood, with all the threads for good or bad that made it far from the worst childhood, yet with enough problematic seeds sown that would eventually lead to adult estrangement.

 

***

 

Now, back to the main idea. As I wrote about more generally regarding Religious Authoritarian Parenting, the root problem is the goal. Breaking a child’s will is just evil. It is morally wrong. 

 

It also isn’t in the Bible - it is an idea made up by Dobson and other Authoritarians who came after him. 

 

It also has no good effect on children or on the society they will inhabit. For the child, it leaves them emotionally damaged, traumatized, and mentally unhealthy. This is well documented. For society, creating a class of humans conditioned to unquestioning obedience to the “right” authorities is the road to fascism and brutality, not empathy and a good society. 

 

I have written about these issues, and likely will write more. 

 

What I want to focus on here is the way that Dobson viewed the parent-child relationship as antagonistic and adversarial. 

 

It is parent versus child, only one can win, and it must be the parent. The child needs to learn that he will always lose, and should thus give up without a fight. Breaking the will. 

 

This is such a horrible way to look at what should be a loving relationship. Who would want to live like this?

 

Having had kids myself (three of which are adults now), I really don’t understand viewing family this way at all. 

 

Dobson taught that children were naturally tyrants, evil creatures determined to defy their parents, practically parasites who needed to be hit early and often in order to learn their place. 

 

Ugh. It just makes me sick even writing that. 

 

It is this view of the parent-child relationship that continues to drive our family dysfunction. 

 

Nobody would accuse me of being a permissive parent with out-of-control kids. But what I have found works best is to see them as fully human, in need of love and support, and capable of being the most important part of the resolution to problems. They don’t need increasing attempts at control, but help in figuring stuff out. And less of that help as they mature and are able to do more for themselves. 

 

Going back to some things I mentioned above, I need to mention that, although a lot of the talk about Dobson centers on corporal punishment. And there is good reason for that. But I also think it tends to distract away from the deeper problems inherent in Authoritarian Parenting. You could take out the spanking and it would still be damaging. 

 

However, while I am not going to go into detail in this post, what my parents did to me went well beyond spanking. In fact, the spanking itself stopped probably around age 10, when I started refusing to cry. (It was very important in Dobson’s teaching to bring the child to tears - the sign of true emotion which could lead to surrender of the will.) I just dissociated and simmered with rage. 

 

I am deeply sorry that I didn’t come to this realization before using corporal punishment on my own kids. I am ashamed of that, and if my kids read this, I am sorry and wish I had done better. 

 

In retrospect, spanking did nothing positive for me, but just made me determined to get out of the family as soon as I could, so I could make my own decisions. 

 

That said, honestly, I don’t think the spanking was the biggest issue. I don’t remember much about it when I was really young. I’m sure I did some bad things that deserved some consequence. And for the few cases of spanking that I do remember where I went over the line into something actually problematic, I don’t remember feeling the rage. I understand and understood consequences, and don’t feel traumatized about consequences per se.

 

The rage came because for the overwhelming majority of the times I remember being spanked, it wasn’t for doing something morally bad, but for talking back to my mom. In other words, I was frustrated at her (for the reasons I have noted above) and didn’t think she was being fair to me. So I hit back verbally. 

 

After the spanking stopped - probably in part because I wouldn’t cry - things shifted into violence and threats of violence instead. I’m not going to go into detail here, but these were things that would have gotten my parents arrested if they had done them to a spouse rather than a child. 

 

And, once again, the universal trigger was that I pushed back at my mom. She frustrated me, I talked back, I experienced violence. 

 

That brings me to another issue. The violence and anger in our family was near-universally directed at me. 

 

The family lore holds that my brother got spanked a lot as a toddler, but by the time my memories start, he mostly was able to avoid trouble. 

 

And, as I mentioned, my sister was the golden child. The violence and anger was never directed at her. Even if she was clearly in the wrong. There was infinite understanding for her feelings, and only anger at mine. 

 

For all of those complicated, interconnected reasons, I became the target of the anger and violence in the family. I became the scapegoat. The one whose will most needed breaking. The one to be treated as an adversary, not a friend. 

 

To be sure, this was not constant. Or even most of the time. Anger wasn’t the default mood of our family. 

 

But it seemed to increase as we got into Gothard, who gave my parents new weapons of psychological manipulation to keep me in line. As I grew up, I got better in some ways at just keeping my head down. At least until I could move out, which was a huge relief. But I also asserted my independence more, particularly after I turned 18 and felt my mom’s right to direct my life should have completely ended then. (And also that my dad should have switched from control to trying to support me in my own decisions. I am still furious that I was denied a chance to attend normal college, for example.) 

 

After I moved out, the violence ended, because I would absolutely have hit back at that point. But the psychological manipulation and abuse didn’t end. It just took on new forms. It would take an entire post to get into the details of how my mom and sister’s enmeshment have kept the cycle of scapegoating going, but I do not think it is a coincidence that my parents cut me off after I told them I would no longer be around my sister. 

 

I had naively hoped that when I grew up, I would be able to live my own life, make my own decisions in line with my own conscience and reason. And that my parents would allow me to do so. After all, they did things differently than their parents. 

 

But that was indeed naive. Dobson had already reframed the parent-child relationship - at least mine - in terms of war. Since my will had not been successfully broken as a child, the war continued. The last shot fired was my mom using my 48th birthday to threaten me with hell because I wasn’t “walking in truth.” 

 

Which of course means following false prophets like James Dobson. 

 

Looking back, this is why I feel that the issue of spanking is mostly a side issue. 

 

Obviously, I think the whole “dispassionate ritual hitting” thing to be deeply problematic. But my real trauma comes from the deeper underlying issue. 

 

It was the why. To break my will. Because I was the adversary.

 

That is why the later psychological abuse has actually haunted me so much more. The threatening to turn me over to the Devil because I expressed my frustration at my sister’s ill-trained and bad-mannered dog. Telling me that failing to obey immediately without talking back was turning my soul over to Satan. Telling me Gothard’s lie that God didn’t speak directly to children, but instead spoke through their parents, thus making parents the very voice of Almighty God. And yes, threatening me with hell because I don’t share all of my parents’ beliefs. 

 

It was the fact that, rather than being on my side, my parents all too often saw me as an adversary, an antagonist. My emotions were the enemy. My needs were selfishness. My own conscience and strong sense of justice and morality were suspect, and needed to be overcome.

 

Let me share one incident, which occurred after I turned 18, if my memory is correct. As a violinist, I have issues with my jaw. It is an occupational hazard of holding an instrument with one’s chin and neck, turned to one side. 

 

We were at the dinner table and my mom, who seemed to find everything about me annoying back then, yelled at me to stop clicking my jaw when I chewed. As if I could do that - fix my jaw by sheer willpower. 

 

I was frustrated and had enough, so I left the table and went to my room. I didn’t even say anything. Just left.

 

My dad was out of the room for the incident, but when my mom told him, his response was to come to my room, get in my face, and threaten to evict me from the home. Yep, that was the response. 

 

I still remember, as in so many similar incidents, the waves of nausea that washed over me. The anger, the threats, the fact that I couldn’t even just walk away from abusive behavior without triggering a fight. 

 

In this case, I eventually was able to explain, and he backed down. The reason this incident sticks in my head, though, is that it is the ONLY time in my teens (and since, honestly) when I remember my dad taking my side against either my mother or sister. It has been more than 30 years since, and he has taken their side every single time. 

 

 In fact, what has instead happened is that I have gotten blamed for every family conflict. 

 

My sister tells vicious lies about my wife and slings false accusations? Well, the real problem is that Tim talks back says mean things. And on and on. 

 

This is where our estrangement makes it difficult to be objective. In the end, it turned out that my parents didn’t love me as much as they needed to control me. Their loyalty wasn’t to me, it was to their political ideology, taught to them by Dobson and Gothard and others. Because I do not obey their demands, I remain the adversary to be threatened into submission, not a beloved child. It was more important that I know my place as the family scapegoat (and expect my wife to take that role too) than to have a relationship with me.

 

So, it is hard for me to look back and remember the feeling of belonging and being loved that I know I felt most of the time, without wondering if any of that was real? Since my wife, my kids, and eventually I myself was so easily thrown away, was all that love just pretend? Was it a performance?

 

What was the real truth of my childhood? I don’t know anymore. 

 

***

 

I want to end with a few final things. 

 

First, I have been asked why I write negative things about my family and parents. My parents think I am just being mean and insulting. They also think that I am just “virtue signaling” to get attention from my “likeminded friends.” 

 

Some of this is projection: Dobson and Gothard sure taught a lot about how to “virtue signal” to fellow right-wing white Fundamentalists through things like moral panics about modern culture (and of course gay people) and clothing, music, and movie choices. Kind of like the “Baptists don’t dance or raise their hands” sort of thing. It’s all about virtue signaling, not actual virtue. 

 

And my parents haven’t had anyone in their lives who isn’t a fellow right-wing Evangelical (other than me and my family) since they retired. It’s all “likeminded” friends who share their theology and political views. 

 

But there is another factor, and that gets to the heart of why I write.

 

During my childhood, my parents greatly enjoyed the attention they got from having “good” children, with the constant praise of how good of parents they must have been. I’m sure all that affirmation was a hell of a drug. 

 

Along with that came questions about “how did you do it?” 

 

The problem is, they always gave the wrong answers. 

 

There were indeed things they did well that in fact did likely contribute to us being “good” children. (I believe my brother and I were and are genuinely good people; my sister, not so much - she is a full-blown malignant narcissist with significant sociopathic traits - but she faked it well until you actually got to know her.)

 

My parents did teach us good moral values. (Then complained when I retained those values and called them out for abandoning them.) 

 

My parents did infuse our childhood with a lot of love, particularly before I hit puberty. Even after that, my dad still did a lot of good things, which is why I tried so hard for so long to maintain a relationship with him. 

 

My parents spent a lot of time with us, something I have tried to do with my own kids. I think that may have been the biggest thing: my parents invested in us in time and effort, and those efforts paid off. I am grateful for all of that. 

 

But it wasn’t those things that they claimed were the reason we were good kids. 

 

I will also add, having been a parent now, that kids deserve more credit for being good than parents do, honestly. Good kids are good in spite of us, not because of us. And that’s what I say when asked about my own kids. They are good because they are good, and I really have no idea how to parent, other than to love and spend time with your kids. 

 

But my parents didn’t list the actual good things they did, or acknowledge our own role in our character. 

 

Instead, they listed things like spanking, homeschooling, and eventually, following Dobson and Gothard’s authoritarian parenting prescriptions. 

 

So why do I write? Because my parents gave credit to the bad and neutral** things they did, and I am deeply offended that I am being used as an advertisement for those bad things. 

 

Spanking did not make me a good child. It just frustrated me and made me angry and told me that my parents didn’t want to listen to me or meet my emotional needs. 

 

I was good in spite of the spanking. 

 

Homeschooling did not make me a good child. I was a good child before I was homeschooled, and would have been a good one no matter what education I received. Just like my friends, many of whom went to public schools. 

 

If anything, my sister probably would have turned out better had she been forced to deal with the real world earlier in her life. (She actually still avoids the real world - no job, isolated lifestyle, alienates any who befriend her…) 

 

And I am very furious that any credit whatsoever should go to James Dobson or Bill Gothard for anything about how I turned out. Their influence on our family was toxic and evil and led eventually to the destruction of our family. 

 

And I want the world to fucking KNOW THAT. 

 

It is high time that the world understood how evil James Dobson was. And how much he damaged millions of children of multiple generations. 

 

I do not anyone to think that Religious Authoritarian Parenting is morally okay. I do not want anyone to think that it creates “good kids.” I do not want people to be deluded into thinking that it is anything other than abusive and evil and harmful. 

 

Sure, my parents are angry because I exploded their delusion of being good parents. I haven’t “turned out,” and instead have called them out. I’d say I’m sorry, but I really am not. I kept quiet for decades about all of this, hoping to have a relationship with them. It really wasn’t until about 11 years ago - three years after my mom went way over the line in trying to control my wife that I even started writing about politics and religion. Had that breach never occurred, I probably would never have written about family. 

 

But that’s what happens. Loyalty is a two-way street. You cannot expect my loyalty if you refuse to be loyal to me and my family. 

 

And that is why I write about this. James Dobson and the other false prophets I call out should not be allowed to enjoy a positive reputation. And certainly not given credit for my choice to be a hardworking, moral, decent human being. 

 

**Neutral things: I consider homeschooling to be a neutral thing. It wasn’t a bad choice for me, actually. I think I enjoyed school and life more without the level of busywork and waiting for other students to catch up. My parents did a good academic job for me (although I was the one who had to homeschool my siblings for high school math and science…) and I can’t say much negative about homeschooling itself as I experienced it.  Really the big issue was that homeschooling was the gateway, via HSLDA, James Dobson, and eventually Bill Gothard, into the White Christian Nationalist movement. And also, homeschooling is a very bad choice for many others. Mileage may vary. 

 

***

 

And a final thought: 

 

How did James Dobson get children so wrong? Why did he see them as evil tyrants, adversaries, and wills to be broken? Why didn’t he see them as Christ saw them, as young humans in need of love, and uniquely in tune with the Kingdom of God?

 

Why couldn’t he look at them with actual love and appreciation? Kids really are great, after all! (Especially mine…) 

 

I have wondered about this. One of my conclusions is that Dobson really disliked children. There are people like that. More than you would think. Our society is pretty unfriendly to kids and has been for a long time, and that isn’t a coincidence. A significant portion of the population has a viscerally negative reaction to how kids actually are: noisy, immature, impulsive, in need of occasional rest, occasionally overwhelmed and emotional. (And all of the good things too, of course - kids are both frustrating and adorable, sometimes at the same time.)  

 

What I have found is that kids can tell if you like them or not. And they react accordingly. I have confirmation of this from a number of friends who are teachers too. The teachers that struggle to keep classroom order are usually the ones who probably shouldn’t be teachers at all, because they dislike their kids. I also knew full well as a teen that my mother did not like me. Instead, she saw her father in me, and reacted to me accordingly. 

 

Likewise, there are plenty of people who shouldn’t have kids, because they do not like kids. And their kids know it. 

 

Dobson was one of those. 

 

But I think there is something else too. I think Dobson was incapable of seeing people as people. People to him were resources to be exploited. (Since his death, people who worked for him have started coming out of the woodwork to confirm this…) 

 

Ultimately, what was needed (in his view) was pawns in the culture wars, reproductive units in the eugenics wars, lots of soldiers marching lockstep against encroaching modern ideas like racial diversity, acceptance of sexual diversity, the equality of women, and social justice at home and abroad. 

 

The “family” - the white Christian family of course - was just another weapon in this war. 

 

Dobson couldn’t look at humans like Christ did, and be filled with compassion. He saw either enemies or pawns. 

 

Perhaps African American professor and author Anthea Butler put it best in her article for MSNBC on Dobson:

 

“He was a psychologist who didn’t seem to comprehend what it means to be human.”

 

I’ll end with that, because I think that cuts to the heart of how Dobson personally harmed me and my family. His teachings trained my parents to become unable to comprehend my humanity, to see me as fully human (and thus equal to them), and to comprehend what my humanity needed from them as parents. 

 

Usually, I end these with a wish that a false prophet find better mercy than he extended to others. 

 

I wish I could here. But I cannot. Instead, let me quote from Albert Burneko. 

 

James Dobson was a nasty dude. He liked to beat children and dogs with a belt and to rain misery and punishment on the vulnerable; we know all of this about him because he said as much in public, repeatedly, over a long and rancid public life. He enlisted a whole bunch of Ideology—patriarchy, social conservatism, utterly fake upside-down Christianity—in service of those basic motivations, not only to justify his own appetite for and personal acts of sadism and domination, but to cast punishment and predation as far out into the world as he could manage. He studied psychology and the Bible so that he could borrow their authority and instrumentalize them to do widespread cruelty more effectively. He was oriented to evil, at vast scale, by continual lifelong choice. It was his calling, and he made it his job.

 

What a guy like James Dobson does, and what James Dobson did for his whole adult life, is offer people—white men primarily, but not exclusively—a rhetorical framework for doing evil and feeling good about it. 

 

He blew softly on a stupid and seething population's resentments, its will to power, its lust to punish those who complicate their desires by having lives of their own, and watched those appetites stick up like the hairs on your arm, or glow like charcoal in a fire. It feels good. He tempts you with the promise that every cruel, fearful, punitive impulse you have aligns with The Way Things Are Supposed To Be, and that it is even your grim duty is to indulge them. In this respect, James Dobson was very much like Satan.

 

In this way Dobson warred against virtually every concerted movement in his lifetime working toward making this country kinder, more just, more equitable, or more merciful. He also fought against efforts to protect the environment and responsibly steward the world's natural resources, because he was a nasty guy motivated by the thrill of doing evil with impunity and for no other reason whatsoever.

 

The world is a much worse place as a result of his life's work; it would be a better place had he never been born. If he did not want people to rejoice at his death, maybe he should not have spent an entire lifetime working for and justifying their pain and suffering. He preached that there is a hell, and that the wicked go there. He lived his life as though he did not believe it, or anything else.

 

Like so many other evil, hateful, cruel men, Dobson preached a belief in a literal hell, with eternal conscious torment for the wicked. 

 

Like these evil men, Dobson clearly never believed the shit he was spewing. Because by the terms of his own theology, Dobson followed not merely the spirit, but the very letter of how to go to hell. He literally did everything Christ said led to that. And was proud of it. 

 

In what I think is arguably his finest book, Small Gods, Terry Pratchett envisioned an afterlife where everyone got the afterlife they believed in - the afterlife they would inflict on others. 

 

The villain in the book is Vorbis, the head of the Quizition, obsessed with authority and happy to torture and abuse anyone who stands in his way. 

 

He is the fictional character who comes most to mind when I think of Dobson. As Brutha, the simpleminded, devout, and kind hero of the book realizes:

 

[T]he worst thing about Vorbis isn’t that he’s evil, but that he makes good people do evil. He turns people into things like himself. You can’t help it. You catch it off him.

 

This is Dobson’s legacy. He made millions of good people like my parents do evil. Unfortunately, like the evil of Vorbis, the evil of Dobson lingers on, the foul stench of evil he put in the hearts of his followers.

 

It takes a long time for people like Vorbis to die. They leave echoes in history.

 

So, in this case, my hope for Dobson is this:

 

May he spend eternity not surrounded by the sycophants who worshiped and followed him during his lifetime. May he never see another smug white Evangelical again. 

 

Instead, may he forever be surrounded by those he abused and taught others to abuse. 

 

May he be fully dependent on the LGBTQ people he hated and vilified. 

 

May his existence depend on the charity of the immigrants and refugees he was so eager to send back to die in their home countries. 

 

May he truly feel the pain so many of us former children endured at the hands of his evil teachings. 

 

May he feel the true pain of poverty and the weight of the boot he wished to grind the poor with. 

 

May he fully understand how he devoted his life to evil and making the world a worse place for nearly everyone else. 

 

And, may he eventually be judged by the Almighty according to his deeds, which were evil almost beyond belief.