No Shirt, No Shoes, No Narrative, No Service

I rarely join in the Truckers Roundtable. The Truckers Roundtable is the group of drivers who sits at the restaurant counter and systematically go through a series of recitations. It is a narrative ritual with strict guidelines. Far more talking takes place than listening. Next time you're in a truck stop sit close to the counter and listen for a bit.

Often it begins with a story about how the driver cleverly outwitted a state trooper or a 'diesel bear' (a commercial vehicle enforcement officer). In this part of the narrative, the lawman is backed down either by the driver's superior knowledge of transportation law and court procedure or by sheer force of will and an awesome execution of crafty intelligence. Then the narrative moves into how brainless a dispatcher he has, what an asshole his boss is, how he has been cheated out of numerous opportunities and great loads, how hopeless 'the new breed' is (anyone who is starting out in the business), how everything from diesel prices to Boston traffic is Obama's fault, and how wonderful it was back in the day. I'm sure your workplace has similar narratives playing in the background.

I can't join the Roundtable because my narrative is all wrong. I drive for a great guy and have a wonderful dispatcher who does pretty much anything I want or need her to do. The cops with whom I have had dealings were, for the most part, good folks whose interest in the public good outweighed whatever ego issues they had to deal with. I remember what it was like starting out and how scary it was to face down rush hour traffic in Los Angeles for the first few times and how every time I tried to back up that damn trailer it wouldn't go anywhere close to where I wanted it to go. When I can I try to help, and when I can't I can at least shut my mouth and stay out the way. And, yes, I think Obama is a helluva president and a good leader in spite of the hysterical banshee cries from both left and right.

So I sit off to the side and eat my meal in solitude, check email, weather, routing and facebook on the laptop, and chat with Beth on the phone.

The groups we belong to, the churches we join, the parties with which we affiliate, the social networks we are part of - all these are defined and shaped by narratives - stories - which tell us who we are and where we come from and what we stand for and what is right and wrong and up and down, what is worth having and worth losing. Our narratives tell us how we got from there to here and where we may be headed next. Our narratives, although often unidentified, are at the heart of lives as families and persons.

Persons and institutions who can identify and adapt and modify their narratives survive and thrive. The ones who will not or cannot or do not don't. It is really kind of simple, but never easy. Change your story, change your life. The closer our narratives correspond to the real nature of our lives and our world, the better off we are, in the same way that a road map must accurately reflect the terrain to be any good.

Early last week Mike Huckabee went off the reservation for a moment and got off-narrative by saying some very complimentary things about the president and how he has handled the deluge of crises presented to him and his administration in the first two years of his term. But by late in the week, Huck was back on-narrative, that narrative being O.W.N.M.W. (Obama Wrong No Matter What). The president again was a mysterious, exotic 'Other,' somehow different from us real Americans, pro-Mau Mau uprising and anti-Boy Scouts of America. The Guv is no fool - he knows his fortunes as a politician and a broadcaster are tied to OWNMW, a narrative shared, interestingly, by those on both the far right and the far left.

Sticking to the narrative has made some people very powerful and very rich. It has turned the once clever and interesting into cowards and bullies, often with moronic results, including Newt's Patriotic Penis, Michelle Bachman's errie, trancelike recitations about Democratic malfeasance, NPR's bizarre dismissal of Juan Williams for committing the sin of candor, and the strong-armed institution of the right-wing agenda in Wisconsin disguised by the narrative of Budget Control. Say what you want about Boehner and McConnell and Walker - these guys are absolutely on narrative 24/7/365 and are unrelenting.

Before you indignantly remind me there is a similar narrative called O.R.N.M.W. (Obama Right No Matter What), I know... I know ... . Guilty as charged. That's not the point.

The point is this: slavish devotion to the narratives on either side of the spectrum has turned politics in this country into theater in which real discourse has vanished and we are left screaming at each other. The result is stalemate. The public is lost. The dominant narratives become calcified and dogmatic. Politics has always been a contact sport, but now it has become as clownish as WWE. Unfortunately real people with real needs are getting their teeth kicked in as the tangling narratives spill over into budget cutting measures which will accomplish exactly nothing.

Perhaps some new narratives are emerging. After the extremist narratives implode and their heralds make themselves obsolete through sheer ridiculousness (take a look at Glen Beck's declining market share, for example), better and stronger stuff will come out of the ashes. Every time Obama offers up a new narrative that is conciliatory, proactive and forward-looking, the pundits on left and right react like the panicked passengers in the movie 'Airplane!' when the stewardess tells them they have run out of coffee.

Maybe the next chief will get a better ear - maybe not. I sense we are all growing deaf to the dominant narratives, and scanning the landscape, hopefully, for new voices and new narratives, new ways of telling the story and framing our hopes and pointing us toward the future.