Shortly after the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, the press began to run articles with the ostensible goal of painting a more complete picture of the insurrectionists. On January 18, the New York Times profiled Klete Keller, the former Olympic swimmer who participated in the Capitol riot and was later charged with various offenses.
The article paints the 6’6” Keller as a gentle giant. Former coaches and teammates recalled him as a “champion prankster” with “a foghorn laugh” who “lived to be liked.” But those who knew him best described “a melancholy side” to his personality that overtook him once his athletic career ended. “Great person, great soul, great teammate,” said one of his fellow Olympic swimmers, Tom Malchow. “But he just had a hard time finding his place in society outside the pool.” Attempts to build a new career “didn’t pan out.” His marriage collapsed, and an ugly divorce “kept him from seeing his young daughter and two sons for long periods.” Without work and with no place to go, he spent months living out of his car, maintaining a membership at a local gym “so he would have a place to shower.”
Yet the core of the article was not the difficulty Keller has had since he retired from competitive swimming. It was the deep, searing regret he felt over his involvement in the riot. The profile opens with a dramatic scene. One of Keller’s former coaches, Mark Schubert, called him after learning he had been part of the mob and was surprised when “the decorated swimmer he had known as a merry prankster . . . dissolve[d] into tears.” “He apologized to me,” Schubert said. “He kept repeating, ‘You’ve done so much for me, and I let you down.’ He kept saying over and over, ‘I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.’” The article closes on the same apologetic note. Another former coach, Jon Urbanchek, who spoke with Keller the day he appeared in court, recalled that he “cried throughout their 15-minute conversation.” He said Keller “never thought about what could happen. . . . He was at the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong people.” The first and last image for the reader is of a sobbing, remorseful Keller, whose role in this riot is shriveled to almost nothing, more accidental than intentional.
And while the article is long on apologies and personal history, it makes no mention of the nearly 140 officers assaulted during the riot, including one who, according to the chairman of the Capitol Police officers’ union, suffered “two cracked ribs and two smashed spinal discs” and another who was “stabbed with a metal fence stake.” Nor does the profile remind the reader of Brian Sicknick, the police officer who suffered two strokes and died within a day of being attacked at the Capitol; the two officers, Jeffrey Smith and Howard Liebengood, who later took their own lives; the woman who was shot and killed inside the Capitol; the woman who was trampled to death on the steps outside; or the members of Congress who barely escaped the melee. In fact, the only mention of the riot treats the victims as abstractions: “crowds . . . assaulted the Capitol,” and a “mob [was] bent on disrupting . . . democracy.”
Thus, on the front page of the paper of record, we are treated to a lengthy profile of a criminal defendant that trains the reader’s sole attention on a wholly sympathetic portrayal of the accused, minimizes his legal and moral culpability in the crime, downplays the seriousness of the offense, and ignores the injuries suffered by the victims. To put it gently, this is not the norm for crime reporting, most of which simply repeats information supplied by the police. One person stabbed another in a restaurant after an argument over ten dollars. Somebody shot someone else after an argument in a hotel. The accused are stick figures. Trying to understand the people described in these snippets is like trying to describe the taste of sand.
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But if the profile of Keller is not crime reporting, what is it? The Capitol riot was widely described as an attack on “the people’s house.” In a very real sense, Keller committed a wrong against all of us, and his profile in the New York Times invites all of us to join in reclaiming his good name and his place in society. The profile of Keller is a public plea that society judge him and his behavior in a spirit of forgiveness.
We tend to think of forgiveness as a purely private affair, but the New York Times profile shows that it can also be a social act. Personal and social forgiveness have much in common, but they are not the same thing. Both begin with a wrong. Some wrongs are primarily personal (I cheat on my wife) and some are primarily public (I cheat on my taxes), but most are both. The mob at the Capitol, for instance, injured specific people (a personal wrong), but it also attacked the integrity of the democratic process (a public wrong).
Just as society can be wronged, it can be forgiving. We all know people we would describe as unforgiving. They detect slights where none were intended; can’t let go of a grievance, no matter how minor; tend to dismiss or discount explanations, no matter how compelling; and set conditions on forgiveness that are out of proportion to the harm they suffered. Likewise, we all know people we would say are forgiving, which generally implies just the opposite. And though we are not accustomed to thinking in these terms, a group—no less than an individual—can be unforgiving in much the same way. It can dwell obsessively on objectively minor infractions, cast out wrongdoers despite compelling explanations, hold onto grievances long beyond any morally defensible justification, and make a wrongdoer jump through endless, unreasonable hoops as a condition to forgiveness. A forgiving society, by contrasts, adopts the attitude displayed in the New York Times profile of Keller—an attitude of benevolent, empathetic compassion undergirded by the foundational belief that the person is not an alien or a monster, but one of us, a flawed soul who strayed, as all of us might stray.
Some people balk at the idea of social forgiveness because they think it will bring well-deserved punishment to a premature end—or worse, that it will preclude punishment altogether. But social forgiveness does not exclude accountability any more than personal forgiveness does. If I injure someone, she might forgive me unconditionally, but she also might insist that I first make things right. She might demand an apology, for instance, or that I otherwise make amends. In the same way, society might forgive a wrongdoer unconditionally—but it’s more likely it will insist that they first make things right. It might insist, in other words, on accountability.
In an unforgiving society—that is, in our society—this accountability is often vindictive and vengeful. It seems designed to mark the wrongdoer as unworthy and to permanently cast him out. In a forgiving society, accountability aims for something different. It aspires to understand. A forgiving society will not judge another until it struggles to understand both the act and the actor in all their complexity. To judge in a forgiving spirit does not mean closing our eyes to unpleasant facts or pretending they do not exist. It demands that the wrong be neither minimized nor exaggerated, neither sensationalized nor diminished. When reflecting on the crime that landed them in prison, people behind bars have often said to me, “What happened, happened.” The crime exists as a brute, unalterable fact that they cannot undo and will not forget. But they, and all of us, can endeavor to understand it, which means struggling to make sense not simply of what happened, but why. The effort to understand why one of us has done something horribly wrong—and to accept that, while the wrong may cost them their liberty, it will not deprive them of their membership in society—is the act of social forgiveness.
Frankly, this is not as difficult or strange as it sounds; we do it automatically for the people we know and love. When someone close to us blunders, no matter how badly, we mentally supply an explanation based on what we know of their past and their struggles. This explanation helps us to make sense of behavior that might otherwise be incomprehensible or wholly at odds with the person we know. Perhaps our explanation is correct, perhaps it is not, but as a rule, we do not suppose that those close to us act for no reason at all. We take it as a given that there is some explanation. And we supply this explanation because we believe that those close to us are one of us. They are not monsters who do horrible things for no reason. This is what Keller’s friends and coaches did, probably without conscious thought. They were saying, in so many words: You have to understand, he’s not who you think he is. He just got caught up in something that he never intended. This is the language of social forgiveness. They are not saying Keller should escape responsibility for what he did; nothing in the profile suggests that any of them believe that. It’s just that he should be judged as one of us and not part of a mythical “them.”
For me, social forgiveness acts as an orientation or an attitude. It is not a set of rules, and does not determine how a group should respond to a particular wrong. Instead, it is the state of mind that a group brings to those who have committed the wrong. It operates alongside a formal process (like the criminal legal system) even as it shapes it, providing a background sense for the moral worth of the person who strayed and exerting a powerful influence on everything that society does. It affects the language used to describe them, the charges they might face, the procedures used to adjudicate their guilt, and the kind and quality of punishment they receive. To approach a wrongdoer in a spirit of forgiveness means that their treatment will always be leavened by the certainty that they were and will always remain a member of society—one who will be welcomed back into the fold once their punishment, if imposed, ends.
Social forgiveness differs from personal forgiveness in one critical respect. Personal forgiveness is a private gift that a victim may grant or withhold as she sees fit. But social forgiveness is a public good that determines how a transgressor will be treated by society. And like any public good, it is doled out unevenly. Researchers have identified three behaviors that most reliably activate what social psychologist Michael McCullough calls “the forgiveness instinct”: apology, self-abasement, and compensation. Presented with these behaviors, our attitude toward a transgressor softens noticeably. We become less vengeful, less apt to view them as outsiders, and less eager to see them punished.
Consider how these features play out in the profile of Keller. While it makes no mention of compensation—I haven’t seen anything to suggest that Keller, or any rioter, has offered to pay for the damage they did and the pain they caused, though everyone convicted in the riot is fined $2,000 for damage to the Capitol—the New York Times article supplies a textbook example of apology and self-abasement. At least according to his coaches, Keller apologized unequivocally, with no attempt to deflect responsibility or place blame onto others. And his is not the reluctant apology of the unrepentant (“I’m sorry if my actions upset you”). At the same time, the image of his uncontrollable sobbing in two separate conversations functions as a display of self-abasing behavior.
All of this sends powerful signals to the rest of society. To begin with, Keller’s behavior reaffirms his attachment to the values and norms of the group. By acknowledging that he has done wrong, he declares his commitment to play by the rules in the future. This serves as both a plea that he not be cast out as a pariah and a reassurance that he poses no threat. By his actions, in other words, he says: I am one of you, I can be trusted despite this lapse, I am not dangerous. This portrait is then reinforced by the editorializing of his friends and coaches. The people “who know [him] best” found it “nothing less than bizarre” to see him at the Capitol and made a determined effort to diminish his culpability. Keller, they said, “didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” “never thought about what could happen,” and was simply “at the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong people.” These statements defang Keller’s behavior by draining it of its purposefulness. And his wracking torment—the picture of sobbing—activates the sense of empathy that many people feel when faced with the suffering of others. Empathy, as McCullough and his colleagues have shown, is a primary pathway to forgiveness.
As much as his apology and abasement help Keller in his quest to be forgiven, they are not the only things that work in his favor. There is, perhaps above all, the matter of his race. Keller is white, and a picture of him appeared in the article. His whiteness likely lends his plea at least an implicit boost. Researchers have long found that white people tend to associate blackness (but not whiteness) with criminality and to believe that Black people are more prone to violence than white people. As psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt and her colleagues have observed, the “mere presence of a Black man . . . can trigger thoughts that he is violent and criminal.” In short, some people are apt to view Keller empathetically simply by virtue of his race.
Another factor besides Keller’s race—though not totally unrelated to it—is his social stature. He is not simply an average Joe, an arbitrary middle-aged white man. He swam in three Olympic games and won two gold medals alongside the storied Michael Phelps. In the United States, there are few titles that are more universally honored than “Olympian.” Even the titles that often confer the most status and respect in today’s society—physician, first responder—do not conjure the same image of talent, dedication, sacrifice, and patriotism. In these fractious times, even soldiers may not stir the same feelings, particularly as news came out of the many veterans who participated in the riot on January 6. Perhaps more than anyone else, Olympians are revered as American heroes—or, as the New York Times put it, “the personification . . . of American greatness and success.”
This rarefied perch makes Keller’s story irresistible. The media loves an Icarus tale: How could someone who flew so high fall so low? But more than that, Keller’s status magnifies the impact of his tearful, heartfelt apology. Psychologists have found that people tend to be particularly impressed with apologies by male, high-status people and are more apt to forgive their transgressions than those of people who do not enjoy the same social status. Though Keller no doubt behaved the same as many other rioters, his apology touches many people much more deeply precisely because it comes from a place of privilege.
Then there is the benefit that Keller enjoys from the people who vouch for him. As a former elite swimmer, Keller had an entire retinue of well-educated, well-spoken ex-teammates and coaches. They could be counted on to flesh out Keller’s profile, disclose his tragic backstory, and give voice to his great regret. Through their recollections, Keller becomes more than a caricature. He becomes a complex human being, as flawed, frail, and damaged as the rest of us. But it is important to recognize that their recollections are carefully curated—either by the journalist or her sources—to create a favorable impression. The journalist either did not speak to Keller’s ex-wife (she of the contentious divorce) or elected not to quote what she said, and seems to have made no effort to figure out why he was denied contact with his children for so long.
My ambition for a forgiving society means I hope every criminal defendant receives the same nuanced, compassionate assessment afforded to Keller. Indeed, I want this for everyone who has committed a great wrong and been cast out for what they cannot change. Everyone whose inexcusable violence led bewildered friends and grief-stricken family to mutter that same tired trilogy—wrong place, wrong time, wrong people. They too are part of us, and they should all be judged in the same spirit of compassionate forgiveness as Keller.
But they won’t be. Researchers have consistently found that many people dragged into the criminal legal system regret what they have done and, like Keller, want to apologize to their victims and be forgiven. As journalist Elizabeth Bruenig put it, they seek a world where they are not compelled to “permanently inhabit [their] failure.” Yet few indeed can ever hope to see their regret empathetically displayed to an audience of tens of millions. Fewer still can hope that it be communicated by such well-respected spokesmen. Perhaps none at all can hope, in their wildest dreams, that their regret will be unsullied by ugly reminders of the pain they helped inflict. And almost none start with the built-in advantage that comes from being a white Olympic champion. The pedestal on which Keller stands is a monument to the grossly unjust politics of social forgiveness.
And this injustice will endure until we change our approach. It will endure until we accept that those who commit grave wrongs are not the demons we imagine them to be. Until we acknowledge that they too are one of us. Once we embrace this truth, we will have taken the first and most important step toward the creation of a forgiving society. Only by approaching each person in a spirit of forgiveness rather than condemnation—and treating them as a member of society rather than an outcast—will we begin to unwind the punitive turn of the past sixty years.
Because the privileges of race and class are so deeply embedded in U.S. life, I recognize that someone like Keller will receive what is stubbornly withheld from so many. But that is not his fault, and society should not deny him forgiveness simply because it will probably deny it to others. Our goal is to extend it to those others, not withhold it from him. Justice is never served by being unjust, and cruelty is not made less cruel simply because it balances out cruelty inflicted elsewhere. The road to a forgiving society demands that we widen the reach of justice, not ration it.
Keller pleaded guilty in September 2021 to a single count of obstruction of Congress. In exchange for his guilty plea, six other counts against him were dismissed. After he was arrested and charged, Keller cooperated with the government’s investigation. At his sentencing in December 2023, prosecutors asked the judge to sentence him to 10 months in prison, less than the 15–21 months called for by the federal sentencing guidelines. The judge declined and sentenced him to 3 years of probation, which included 6 months of home detention and 360 hours of community service. “If ever there was a case that screamed out for probation, this is it,” the judge said.
This essay is adapted from a forthcoming book to be published by Beacon Press.
Image: Nurgissa Ussen/Unsplash
