WSJ: What Our Obsession with Belle Burden’s ‘Strangers’ Says About America
How America Communicates (or Doesn’t)
Here is an essay about how one memoir showed me that we dig in rather than explore the greys in life. Women must remember how we wield power, and tap it, integrate it, realize it. Sometimes we react to injustice or betrayal by treating any foray into gradations as if it’s an existential threat to progress. I happen to think the opposite is true.
The question we should ask ourselves is, How did we arrive at this new place? Not the place of a saucy divorce intrigue, a border skirmish between the well-heeled, a tell-all page turner. That is an old place.
But this charming new place where highly educated women relish the chance to band together in righteous indignation. Against men. To get tipsy on shared outrage. To share the joy of The Oppressed. Even if it's no longer true.
Did these ideas rise up organically? Were these ideas lying on the ground like ripe fruit? Or were they taught, poured into them like liquid truth.
But this "truth" has been swept away, and the righteous indignation remains. Why?
This is the important question.