Charisma Hunger

An open letter between two friends about what makes neutral desires poisonous.

The authors at In-N-Out in Daly City, CA

Yi Ning Chiu

and

Sara Billups

connected several years ago online, chatted on the phone a couple of times, and met in real life earlier this spring at a burger chain outside of San Francisco.

We have the same literary agent, think about some of the same ideas, including West Coast progressivism and the current state of evangelicalism, and wanted to try our hand at writing open letters about it all.

If you like this format or want to read more, please let us know in the comments!

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Yi Ning,

I wonder about my almost constant feeling of needing to do something. To get anything done. To do things that matter personally and as a part of my country. I have come to hate productivity but I can’t escape it.

Americans have this sense that we’re supposed to be something — MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. I think Russia’s government has this sense too, even though their economy is much smaller than the US.

The economy is not great in Russia, but Russia still has a huge impact on the world because they believe they have a destiny of greatness. Putin is likely pissed that more countries don’t take them more seriously. One could argue that the whole Ukraine war began because Obama didn’t take Russia seriously, and a lot of Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine is because Russia was aggrieved and wanted attention. Atrocities followed.

Since the Cold War, America has been a superpower — statistically truly great, or whatever — and part of it is our population’s sense of privilege that we should be “great”. There are deep historical roots here — America felt like the new Israel for the protestants escaping Europe, and what seemed like God-given right to be a beacon on a hill was born. Russia believes they’re the third Rome — the ancient civilization that took over the true Orthodox church from Constantinople after it fell. ¹

But in the US, we used to be able to collectively harness our energy — railroads, highways, the WPA, the space program. Industrial might brought down Hitler. Now there’s a malaise. We’ve been fighting the same political battles and not doing anything for a long time. This deadlock and malaise are symptomatic of what Ross Douthat calls decadence in his recent Interesting Times interview with far-right publisher Jonathan Keeperman.

For Keeperman, who appears to have testosterone poisoning, America is not fertile or virile anymore. This guy’s answer to the question of decadence is that the country got so affluent that we’re all fat and watching TV. Where are the yeomen?

It’s a weird masculine thing to say, but a good question: why can’t we harness our energy and do stuff anymore in America? Even the kind of political divisiveness over the last years is a symptom of lack of umph. Kennedy said we’re going to the moon and we figured it out, it wasn’t a partisan thing. Obamacare finally passed, and in 2016, 91% of Americans had coverage.

Trump is getting stuff done. A lot of bad stuff. For some people, just seeing evidence of change is enough. A lot of others are quickly souring in their opinion, including those of us who, say, need a paycheck.

So that question—why can’t we harness our energy and do stuff anymore in America? —is serious: the new masculinity movement, this charisma hunger is looking for people who can do big things.

An aside: The word charisma probably should remind me of the holy spirit, but it usually reminds me of the magazine “For Holy Spirit Living” from the 70s that’s still around today. It sounds like a conference name from decades ago, too, something like—Charisma ‘88!—it must have an exclamation mark!

So, why do Americans feel like we have to do great things? The way of Christ, for example, is to be meek. Instead of a virile masculinity that tears down to build back a country that dominates, is there a Christian vision to advocate for?

When it comes down to it, this new masculinity a-la vanilla protein powder and Ayn Rand, it’s actually Nietzsche-ian. He, too, believed that there is a minority of humans who have greatness, who are set apart. In this view, Elon Musk deserves power because he is special-er. Nietzsche called it the Übermensch, over-men. The 1% made greater. They have the right to rule, dominate, and destroy the weak. ²

This is how Trump’s ascent makes sense! The dismantling of equity will let these dudes be their brash full selves. If they win, there could be institutionalized disregard and destruction of the weak.

Anyone serious about Jesus can’t go that route. The Christian way has to hold up the least of us. It has to be something that can inspire a compassionate vitality. It has to do with flourishing. Ezra Klein’s talk of Abundance is moving in the right way.³

This Christian view of abundance directly contrasts with the 1% Übermensch. In this other way, if we all had enough, we would be super-abundant. What’s more democratic than that?

Sara,

For me, conversations about right-wing culture or this “new masculinity movement” feel self-indicting.

I may be a left-leaning voter who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area (which means most of my ideas probably sound deranged in their progressivism even to progressives in other parts of the country); even so, I identify with many of the impulses you describe above. The idea that America is “supposed to be something,” as you put it, is a sentiment I rarely articulate but am usually animated by. I question plenty of things about America, but I never question its centrality to my imagination or to my sense of the future.

I think the assumption of our significance is true for most Americans, regardless of where we fall on an ideological spectrum. On the right, I see this in the eugenicist pronatalism championed by people like Elon Musk, who are preoccupied with breeding American greatness in the most literal sense, and in the belligerence this administration has shown towards its trading partners and allies.

On the left, which is to say among my own people, I see this assumption manifest as a preening self-righteousness, a conviction that our brand of progressivism is a valuable export, that we should not deprive other nations of our liberality. Which…lol. I am personally sympathetic to this view, and would very much like for my nation to be a good example when it comes to civil rights and humanitarian aid, but it takes deliberate stupidity to ignore the wary, ambivalent response to American attention and what it says about our self-perception versus how the world understands us.

I think it is very hard for American activism to be anything but narcissistic. This is what frustrates me most about our current politics: whether people are trumpeting a nostalgic, white-nationalism-coded vision of law-abiding neighborhoods populated by big families performing traditional gender roles, or branding themselves as members of a #resistance that is aligned with the most disenfranchised, Americans seem self-conscious of the role we play in what we have all cast as an apocalyptic political moment. If we consider this an apocalyptic moment, the views we espouse hold more value than ever. The moment is important, and so are we, because we are its central characters.

Maybe this is an ungenerous reading. I’ll talk about myself first, then, before I talk about other people: I think this heightened political moment has often led me to overvalue my own progressivism, to overestimate the importance of America as an aspirational entity for people watching us abroad, and to forget that America, even with its enormous visibility and influence, is not the world. I forget that my views are provincial. I forget that even what I love about America—its literature, its music, its moments of racial conciliation, its work towards certain forms of enfranchisement and justice—may not need to be constantly shared, and that there are times in which the rest of the world may crave a respite from our presence.

You wanted to identify a Christian response to the moment, so I suppose this is mine. On its face, I agree with zero percent of what Keeperman says in his interview. At a deeper, more troubling level, I recognize myself in his assumption that his correctness is a given, that American strength and dominance are unequivocally good things, that greatness is his birthright. My Christian response to these things is confession. Confession with the hope of repentance.

Yi Ning,

After

Chuck DeGroat

’s When Narcissism Comes to Church came out in 2020, I got freaked that I, too, am a narcissist. Honestly, it freaked me even more than the prospect of being a Karen—the Central Park bird watching incident happened two months after its release, in the same month George Floyd was murdered. “I wear too much vintage, too many neck hankies to be coded as a Karen. Hey, I march in protests when my schedule is clear,” I would reassure myself. Then I sat with what had happened in America, in my life, and well before my time, a welcome flood of self-indictment about inherent and unchecked racism arrived. So did sexism, I held as a woman toward myself in my former view of women in ministry.

But a narcissist. I’m worried about the idea of being a narcissist. Like you said, it scales from the personal to the national conversation on the left and right. Trump and the opposition to Trump. Anti-natalists and natalists, NIMBYs and YIMBYs.

I talked to my therapist friend Morgan about narcissism in Michigan as we walked through campus on our D.Min graduation day. “So, you know, professionally speaking, how would you define a narcissist?” Nothing she said sounded like me at first blush. I was relieved. Instead of lacking empathy, I may be overly empathetic (lately such a politicized word, but that’s for another letter). Textbook narcissists can be arrogant and resist criticism, and I usually welcome criticism if it’s from someone I trust.

Then we got to the narcissistic traits of self-importance and a craving to be known, and I realized that here, I am implicated. Hell, we probably all are. Anyone who has to promote a book will face these parts of themselves, and you better believe I did with Orphaned Believers.

Charisma hunger is the yearning of the masses for a hero. I suppose I have some kind of craving to be interesting. Classic enneagram 4. Those vintage t-shirts and neck hankies are a signal that I’m different, aka just like everyone else in my West Coast liberal vintage mom jean era. But deep down, as promoting the first book surfaced, I am hungry to be liked and loved. To be known and remembered.

You naming things you love about America made me uncomfortable, in a way, I suppose I want to be uncomfortable. (See! Bring on the criticism!) I think the feeling is because it’s counterintuitive to talk about a positive legacy when we’re in what feels a lot like a democracy death spiral. But I want to think about this! I do!

I roll my eyes at things like gratitude journals, but I know if I kept one, I’d be the better for it. If I were to write three gratitudes for America? Off the top of my head: religious pluralism, the right to protest and dissent, and social safety nets. (This is currently relevant, having just gone through a hellish journey of getting my mom on Medicaid, only for it to be threatened.) Does this make me a patriot? Should I be more patriotic than ever now that these things are threatened?

Sometimes I think about the difference between being a patriot and a nationalist. It started in undergrad in the 90s, when I was into Ani DiFranco like a lot of college co-eds. I knew all of Ani’s lyrics, but was repeatedly surprised at a line in her seminal feminist song “Not a Pretty Girl” where she says “I am a patriot, I am fighting the good fight.”

If a patriot is a person who “vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors,” then it really is me, I suppose. The question: Who is the enemy of America? It’s maybe easier for a Karen or a narcissist preacher to pass as a patriot. But I wonder in truth what one is supposed to look like.⁴

If I really am patriotic in a “true” sense, not the vital dude sense, what am I supposed to do about it? The narcissist in me wants to figure it out and scale it. The tired part wants to close my laptop and crawl under the sheets.

These guys, the ones who want to make America great like a new Israel, have the mic. Keeperman says there’s a “full-scale vibe shift” happening. Again: They believe that they’re chosen.

Sara,

I have a memory in which I am operating as a photo negative of Keeperman. I am serving on the DEI committee of an already progressive nonprofit and getting ready to argue with one of its executives about the racialized pay disparities on our team. My reasoning is unimpeachable, but they refuse to address the problem. I keep asking them to reconsider, but nothing happens.

As we continue to interact, I feel my demeanor changing: not only do I want to make my case, I want to demolish my opponent. I want them to feel foolish and embarrassed for holding to a position that I find reprehensible. The intensity of this feeling makes me uneasy. I have a clear picture of myself in that moment as someone so convinced of her own righteousness that she will try to break another person’s will in order to achieve her vision.

On the train ride home that day, a thought passes through my head which is so sharp and uninvited that it seems like a divine rebuke:

I feel the urge to dominate another human being, and that urge is the seed of every form of oppression.

I still think the material facts of my behavior were okay; institutionalized racism in the workplace should be corrected. I would still advocate for the changes I was advocating for then, whereas I would probably not advocate for anything that Keeperman and other “new masculinity,” right-wing thinkers are advocating for now. Still, I don’t see us as having nothing to do with one another.

I bring up this memory because it is a distressing reminder that my ideological opponents and I share the same corroded spiritual inheritance. The impulse to dominate is universal, and it is an accident of history that I’m not in a position to act on that impulse and bring it to its fullest expression.

I think the urge to dominate is especially germane to our conversation about “charisma hunger” and patriotism because I think you and I are trying to nail down what turns neutral desires into something poisonous. “Charisma hunger” is obviously problematic on multiple fronts—all we have to do is look at megachurch pastor meltdowns to receive an object lesson in what happens once that hunger is tapped—but I think this hunger only becomes lethal when it dovetails with a desire for power. A culture moved by charisma hunger sounds like a bunch of people on the search for compelling role models, which seems kind of wholesome. A culture moved by charisma hunger, and persuaded of its right to political and economic dominance, sounds like a group of people prepared to make some bad decisions.

How are we supposed to respond? I don’t think anyone has a complete answer, but some ideas began to crystallize for me after reading Vinson Cunningham’s Great Expectations. The novel is a fictionalized account of Cunningham’s time working on the first Obama campaign—a charisma hunger vortex, to be sure—while grieving the death of his pastor, reflecting on his relationship with his father, and preparing to become a parent for the first time.

The entire narrative, which is both sharp and gracious in its appraisal of a charged, optimistic moment in American political life, felt melancholic to me because it simultaneously acknowledges our craving for figures who will lead us into the future while admitting that these figures will never be able to do what we ask. It plays with the idea that all of us are vulnerable to failings that no ideology can successfully isolate or excise.

Cunningham ends his novel as his character is entering new parenthood. To me, this was the story’s softest, most lethally delivered gut punch: after all that disillusionment with your flawed heroes, your departed spiritual leaders, you realize that it could be your turn to be venerated, and your turn to disappoint someone else.

My thoughts go in this direction because, as someone who isn’t a policymaker or pundit, my beliefs manifest most clearly in the relationships I have with the people in front of me. I ask all the time—Lord, what kind of world am I creating for them, with the tools I have, with the impulses I indulge?

Yi Ning,

The pointing the finger back at the reader with a twist: parents! Now you get to let your kids down! Honestly, as the parent of a 15 year-old and a 12-year-old, I know all about screwing up.

Still, the thing I want the most in the world is the thing my parents wanted most. All the mistakes, narcissism I see in my dad, all the wrong turns. The rapture anxiety, the '80s midwestern play at suburban opulence, they messed up repeatedly. But on one thing they were clear: love Jesus, Sara. It wasn’t so much a command that was well-modeled at all, or even most times, but it grounded me.

We had a lot of love, they would say, and we were trying. It wasn’t a burden for them to nurture my faith; I’d like to believe they thought it was a gift. Even if they were swayed by maligned forces, by culture wars, I do think they wanted to give me the gift of faith. I guess I long for the same thing: that I can bring my kids up as people who love Jesus, to find joy in their wandering and returning. And that when I disappoint people I love, I’ll be able to repair. I don’t know if I can do this and not be influenced by the politics and cultural matters of today, or if it really matters. I can’t escape it, being a product of my time, and I don’t think I want to.

Sara,

Yeah, I feel towards America similarly to how I feel towards my family. I can trace my most dangerous neuroses to its influence. I am also indebted to it for giving me the tools I have for making sense of myself, of the world, of God—and for all the beauty I have known as a result.

I love America not because I presume its innocence or superiority, but because it is mine. I can’t restage my upbringing; I can’t learn another native tongue or culture; I am irreversibly American. I think I feel about this situation the way Langston Hughes does when he says “I, too, sing America,” and like Samuel Huntington does when he says America “can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope.” Maybe we are aligned with Ani DiFranco’s notions of patriotism.

So, chosenness: I completely understand why some Americans want to appropriate the narrative of Biblical “chosenness” and anoint America as the new Israel. I share the desire to position my nation for divine blessing! I also want my nation to have a cosmic purpose! While I have no patience with the idea that America is a “new Israel,” which has no relationship to anything I’ve ever read in Scripture and carries scarily anti-semitic implications, I can see the attractions of wedging ourselves into this narrative.

Yet divine blessing and purpose in the Bible is usually associated with divine humbling. Israel’s chosenness is what leads it to be admonished for its injustice, for its failure to adhere to the Lord’s standards for mercy and righteousness.

This is interesting because this targets the exact problem we were discussing earlier. The qualities that weaponize patriotism, that make it violent and myopic, are the qualities that the Lord will not tolerate in his people. His nation is oriented around care for its most vulnerable, most disenfranchised, least likely to advance its expansion: it almost seems like a self-defeating way for a group of people to exist.

Is there anything more disastrous to every variety of American ego than to intentionally embrace weakness? And is there anything that sounds more curative than for us to be chastened? In any event, this is what I’m currently seeking. My prayer for myself, in these last few years of political and cultural catastrophe, could be summarized as “Lord, search us.” I’ve arrived at this prayer in a roundabout way, first wanting God to merely confirm my own sense of significance, then realizing the catastrophic costs of self-importance, then realizing that the Scriptural narrative is not a denial of divine attentiveness to human affairs, but a reorientation of what we think it means to have the Lord’s hand resting upon us, steering us towards a Promised Land.

Vintage t-shirt ✔️ neck hankie ✔️ green juice ✔️

Yi Ning,

On a light note: I’m currently coded as kale and green juice drinking Seattleite, but I want to be coded as an In-n-Out eating normie.

On an earnest note: I typically cringe when I see people quote stuff they read back to a writer, but I have to do it here. Because this is the center of what we’re circling around, what you wrote—“I feel the urge to dominate another human being, and that urge is the seed of every form of oppression ... The impulse to dominate is universal, and it is an accident of history that I’m not in a position to act on that impulse and bring it to its fullest expression.”

Your prayer, “Lord, search us” is a companion to my recent prayer, “God, help.” I sometimes mean, “God it’s too much. Do something.” But I also mean — God, bring it to light, calm us down, let us come clean in a room full of friends.

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You can subscribe and read more of Yi Ning’s work on

Please Don't Go

and Sara’s on

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.

1. All the Roman Empire meant, the greatest empirical religious culture ever seen, has been passed over like a baton. Both have these quasi-religious identities that make them believe they deserve greatness. They are chosen. Even a bullet grazing the ear cannot stop them.

2. That’s how the Holocaust happened. It’s a dangerous way of thinking, and Keeperman’s vision is that the problem with DEI and inclusion is actually that it binds the Übermensches.

3. We’re planting raised beds this weekend. Mostly tomatoes. Tomato plants have to have the right inputs to have healthy outputs. If we do things to give humans the inputs we need, the population is healthy and maximizes their creativity. When we’re safe, fed, and have purpose, then there’s an abundance where we can give. They create more energy than they consume. Creativity yields abundance. The fish and the loaves.

4. Because “patriot” in my head only looks like one of those dudes who stormed the Capitol. It looks like Keeperman’s idea of vitalism, “a celebration of individuality, strength, excellence, and an anxiety about equality and democracy … as leveling forces and enemies of human greatness”.