tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32675970630628175672024-02-07T21:15:30.120-06:00 Cup O' Joel Joel Mathis comments on politics, books, and his Netflix queue.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2089125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-8776989781905090422024-01-08T05:00:00.001-06:002024-01-08T05:00:00.143-06:00Tim Alberta's 'The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory.'<br /><div class="image2-inset" style="display: inline !important;"><picture><img alt="" class="sizing-normal" data-attrs="{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/dd779dfa-11ff-408c-a23f-646c834fcfaa_350x528.webp","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":528,"width":350,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":35970,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/webp","href":null,"belowTheFold":false,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null}" height="528" sizes="100vw" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdd779dfa-11ff-408c-a23f-646c834fcfaa_350x528.webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdd779dfa-11ff-408c-a23f-646c834fcfaa_350x528.webp 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdd779dfa-11ff-408c-a23f-646c834fcfaa_350x528.webp 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdd779dfa-11ff-408c-a23f-646c834fcfaa_350x528.webp 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdd779dfa-11ff-408c-a23f-646c834fcfaa_350x528.webp 1456w" width="350" /></picture></div><p data-pm-slice="0 0 []"></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdd779dfa-11ff-408c-a23f-646c834fcfaa_350x528.webp" target="_blank"><div class="image2-inset"><div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>A funny thing happened while reading Tim Alberta's new book. I thought about becoming a Christian again.</p><p>That's maybe not the reaction you would expect to have to <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-kingdom-the-power-and-the-glory-tim-alberta?variant=41012408516642" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">"The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory,"</a> a deeply reported look at how (mostly white) evangelical Christians have deeply compromised their supposed values to embrace the corrupt and vulgar Donald Trump — not just lending him their votes transactionally, but enthusiastically embracing his slash-and-burn style of authoritarian politics. The corruption, grifting and thirst for power on display is all pretty well-documented by now, but it's still galling (again) to read it all in one place.</p><p>Is *this* what Jesus would do?</p><p>Alberta doesn't think so. </p><p>Jesus "talked mostly about helping the poor, humbling oneself, and having no earthly ambition but to gain eternal life," Alberta writes. "Suffice it to say, the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205%3A1-12&version=NIV" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount</a> ("Blessed are the meek ... Blessed are the merciful ... Blessed are the peacemakers”) were never conducive to a stump speech."</p><p>That’s not very Trumpy.</p><p>Alberta brings an interesting set of credentials to this book: Yes, he's a reporter for The Atlantic — part of the hated liberal secular establishment — but he's also the son of a pastor, a devoted Christian himself who (we learn late in the book) is studying at seminary. Alberta is a man who wants the church to be the best version of itself, and that means doing everything it can to glorify God. </p><p>What we have here, then, — as I've suggested in recent newsletters — might be the most unapologetically Christian book for a general secular audience that I've read in ages.</p><p>How Christian? Put it this way: Alberta devotes several passages throughout the book to the <a href="https://libguides.marquette.edu/c.php?g=36796&p=2974240#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Anchor%20Bible,original%20or%20earliest%20available%20form.%22" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">exegesis of Greek words found in the New Testament</a>, the kind of exercise I haven't experienced much since I took Bible classes at a Mennonite college some 30 years ago.</p><p>It's also not the kind of thing I'm sure readers of The Atlantic have been exposed to much.</p><hr /><p>A question I've had about white evangelical Christians in recent years: If they <em>really</em> believe what they profess to believe — that Jesus died on the cross for their sins and was raised to life again, that God is the creator of the universe, that believers will have the ultimate victory in the form of eternal life, that all of this is temporary and fleeting — then why are they acting like <em>this</em>?</p><p>One obvious answer is power. <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/dana-loesch-doesnt-care-herschel-walker-paid-skank-abortion-1749023" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">"I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate,"</a> the conservative Dana Loesch said during the notorious 2022 Senate race in Georgia. "How many times have I said four very important words. These four words: Winning. Is. A. Virtue." </p><p>The only meaningful virtue for some folks, it seems. But power isn't the only factor here.</p><p>* For Chris Winans, the pastor of the church where Alberta's dad spent his career, it's idolatry of sorts. "America," he tells the author about his parishioners. "Too many of them worship America." Lots of Christians see the nation as their primary citizenship and allegiance — as opposed to, say, the Kingdom of God — and act accordingly.</p><p>* Fear, both real and false. "These people were scared," Alberta observes after visiting conservative activist Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom conference. "They were scared, in part, because of economic and cultural instability. But mostly they were scared because people like Reed were trying to scare them; people like Reed needed to scare them. ... The job of a political is to win campaigns. To win campaigns, Reed realized long ago, his most valuable tool was fear."</p><p>* Habits of the mind. Most of the folks in the church pews are there for only a few hours every Sunday, if that. But many of them spend the rest of the week listening to far more hours of conservative talk radio or watching Fox News, marinating in apocalyptic anger that paints Democrats and "RINOs" as enemies instead of people deserving of God's love. That shapes the minds and souls of parishioners accordingly.</p><p>The result? One of the frustratingly hilarious running themes of the book is how often its subjects — some in positions of leadership or influence in church circles, some not — just flat-out contradict the doctrines and scriptures of their religion. They either don’t know or care about the tenets of their supposed faith. "<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205%3A38-40&version=NIV" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">We’ve turned the other cheek</a>,” Donald Trump Jr. says at one point, “and I understand, sort of, the biblical reference — I understand the mentality — but it’s gotten us nothing. Okay?” That thing Jesus said? No longer operational.</p><p>* Or maybe it's just a lack of faith. "You see, the kingdom of God isn't real to most of these people," one pastor tells Alberta. "They can't perceive it." </p><p>Why don't white evangelical Christians act like what they believe is true? Maybe they don't really believe.</p><hr /><p>This doesn’t seem to be good for the church. The number of self-identified Christians in America is shrinking at a steady clip, and while Trumpist politics don’t explain the whole thing, they probably haven’t really helped.</p><p>A book like this isn't just supposed to diagnose the problem. It's supposed to offer solutions. It's here that Alberta struggles a bit — though to be fair, nobody has really figured out how to deal with the problem. He points to conservative Christians like <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/08/08/1192663920/southern-baptist-convention-donald-trump-christianity" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Russell Moore</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/09/opinion/christian-right.html" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">David French</a> who have been cast out of their communities and demonized for their failure to make Donald Trump the lodestar of their faith. He also points to women in the church — a lawyer and a journalist — who have forced institutions like the Southern Baptist Church to account for sexual predation and corruption in their leadership ranks.</p><p>So why, for all the terrible things described here, did I find myself tempted to return to the church while reading Alberta's book?</p><p>I think it's because Alberta seems passionate about a kind of faith tradition that I was once immersed in. The Mennonites I grew up around were in America because they believed that Jesus had set an example of nonviolence that they were duty-bound to follow, and so had fled their European homelands rather than serve in the armed forces. They really believed in stuff like "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."</p><p>And so do I, still. I can't explain it. Absent a faith tradition, those words seem almost illogical. Why would anybody pray for their persecutor? I don't have a good answer. All I know is that this is a violent world, and that the idea of loving your enemies is just so profoundly counter-cultural that it has to mean something, right? (Conversely, that's one thing that bothers me about the current crop of Trumpist evangelicals: If you think God is telling you to do something you already want to do ... maybe it's not God talking.)</p><p>If that's the case, why don't I actually return to the church?</p><p>Well...because I still don't know if what the church says — about the universe, about God, about itself — is actually true. </p><p>I don't have faith. It's kind of a problem. So I am not returning to the church, at this point anyway. I've always left the door open. </p><p>But I <em>do</em> want the church to be its best self. That doesn't mean evangelicals would adopt my politics, or suddenly become progressive on issues like women's rights, abortion and LGBT issues. It does mean that you'd see more Christians acting like they loved their neighbors, even amidst disagreement. And that’s what Tim Alberta seems to want, too.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-64625420721803223122023-10-05T22:26:00.003-05:002023-10-05T22:26:33.630-05:00Margaret Atwood<p> From "The Blind Assassin":</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhB6nXgK8J4lyfMBPh1MJdFkYh60It9QKQ13x9mPy24qFuEy-Fb4ijjkSll-l8IopOXAWMcCzK9JTrqqfYhRfelqXI8dVuoebrb3laliReQks0zCSgVF1C3SNh9Dr1ITxaEojnROlzzH50aSdY364iv5f71heD55giRyAzhu48wZI_tmUgx7U7tWr-PO6_B" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="509" data-original-width="734" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhB6nXgK8J4lyfMBPh1MJdFkYh60It9QKQ13x9mPy24qFuEy-Fb4ijjkSll-l8IopOXAWMcCzK9JTrqqfYhRfelqXI8dVuoebrb3laliReQks0zCSgVF1C3SNh9Dr1ITxaEojnROlzzH50aSdY364iv5f71heD55giRyAzhu48wZI_tmUgx7U7tWr-PO6_B" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-36390335150010033652023-09-19T12:19:00.003-05:002023-09-19T12:19:32.751-05:00The permission structure of anti-Semitism<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/trumps-menacing-rosh-hashanah-message-to-american-jews/675367/?utm_source=feed" target="_blank"> Trump’s Menacing Rosh Hashanah Message to American Jews</a></p><p></p><blockquote><p>This Semitic sorting never ends well, because justifications for abusing Jews have a way of metastasizing. Permission structures for anti-Semitism are rarely restricted to their original target. Once a society starts accepting attacks on entire swaths of Jews—for being too liberal, too religious, too secular, too pro-Israel, too anti-Israel, too whatever—that acceptance will grow. And when Jewish existence becomes conditional on staying in the good graces of a non-Jewish actor or movement, it becomes an impoverished existence—provisional and precarious, forever looking over its shoulder.</p><p></p></blockquote><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-20546141096507013342023-09-12T17:55:00.004-05:002023-09-12T17:55:38.672-05:00CB: Emily Wilson's Homeric bros<p><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/09/18/emily-wilson-profile" target="_blank"> How Emily Wilson Made Homer Modern:</a></p><p></p><blockquote>And it rankles her that men whom she considers self-appointed guardians of the Western canon have questioned a woman’s fitness to do Homer justice. “Any woman who has lived with male rage at close range has a better chance of understanding the vulnerability that fuels it than your average bro. She learns firsthand how the ways in which men are damaged determine their need to wreak damage on others.”</blockquote><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-71615832031309211292023-09-12T09:05:00.002-05:002023-09-12T09:05:29.764-05:00Commonplace book: Ross Douthat's religious conspiracies<p><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/09/18/ross-douthats-theories-of-persuasion"> New Yorker:</a></p><p></p><blockquote>In one column, Douthat offered his own approach to assessing fringe ideas. “To be a devout Christian or a believing Jew or Muslim is to be a bit like a conspiracy theorist, in the sense that you believe there is an invisible reality that secular knowledge can’t recognize,” he explained. “But the great religions are also full of warnings against false prophets and fraudulent revelations."</blockquote><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-81976679550693134802023-09-10T22:10:00.001-05:002023-09-10T22:10:15.968-05:00'Now, as ever'<p>"A declaration made by the poet and scholar Eve Ewing in 2017, at an event in our stores, resounds. 'No more than ever,' she said, 'I am sick of people saying, <i>Now more than ever</i>. ... By saying, 'Now <i>as</i> ever," by looking not to the next new thing but to the last enduring thing, we are more likely to grasp our unique and not not so unique challenges..."</p><p><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/ebook/9780691229669/in-praise-of-good-bookstores" target="_blank">Jeff Deutsch, In Praise of Good Bookstores</a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-51020719947181439002023-09-10T15:02:00.001-05:002023-09-10T15:02:10.232-05:00My coffee shop<p>There are sunflowers on the counter. </p><p>And a customer’s pottery </p><p>And another customer’s prints on the wall. </p><p><br /></p><p>And families</p><p>And students</p><p>And the manager’s dog</p><p>And readers like me. </p><p><br /></p><p>And it all fills my soul. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-31159221379847926112022-07-02T18:38:00.002-05:002022-07-02T18:38:29.112-05:00Public service announcement<p><a href="https://joelmmathis.substack.com/" target="_blank"> My blogging activity has moved to Substack. </a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-12898744243862773312022-06-26T16:59:00.000-05:002022-06-26T16:59:21.318-05:00The pro-life right's Trump problem building a 'culture of life'<p>The folks celebrating the Dobbs decision this week are, shall we say, an optimistic lot. Some of them genuinely believe that taking away the right to abortion is something that will someday be celebrated by the larger society -- that while it might be controversial now, it sets the stage for a broader societal reconsideration of what "life" means and who we protect.</p><p>"I believe we will defeat abortion in the long run, just as the abolitionists defeated slavery," <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/end-abortion" target="_blank">Tim Carney writes for the Washington Examiner.</a> "I believe that in our children's lifetimes, American society will agree that abortion is an intolerable evil and American society will welcome every child, expected or unexpected."</p><p>Maybe. I am pro-choice, but the possibility has occurred to me that sometime in the near future I'll be judged a monster for that position by, well, people like me who are just trying to do their moral best.</p><p>But Carney and his fellow travelers have a problem that stands in the way of achieving their goal: Donald Trump.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>There can be no doubt about a couple of things:</p><p>* Donald Trump made the Dobbs decision possible -- inevitable -- by appointing the three conservative justices who gave conservatives their 6-3 supermajority on the Supreme Court.</p><p>* Whatever you think about that, Donald Trump is a villain.</p><p>Because he is a villain, and because he made the Dobbs decision possible, there is a large segment of the American public living right now who will never accept that decision because it's impossible to suss out whatever good that goes with it from all the bad things that Trump has done.</p><p>The lying. The sexual assault. The racism. The assault on democracy. The brazen griftery. The sheer narcissistic irresponsibility of his handling of the pandemic. Trump left the country in worse shape than he found it.</p><p>For many Americans, the abortion decision is inextricable from that legacy. Indeed, it's inextricable for Carney, too. </p><p>"Former President Donald Trump has caused massive and lasting harm to the Republican Party and the conservative movement in ways not fully comprehended today," <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/i-have-very-complicated-feelings-about-donald-trump-right-now" target="_blank">he wrote in a follow-up column.</a> "It's hard to believe Trump was bad, on net for the country, when he delivered this great good. But it's also hard to embrace a man so foul as a force for good." </p><p>Carney's conclusion is to give up figuring it out, saying we'll have a better perspective in a generation or so. </p><p>Maybe that's the cost the pro-life movement had to pay to get the legal regime it wanted.</p><p>But that's roughly the same timeline he gives his movement for achieving this transformation of American attitudes. For that to happen, Americans will either have to A) untangle the abortion issue from Trump's legacy and consider it discreetly or B) silence their doubts about Trump.</p><p>Neither seems likely, at least to me.</p><p>Perhaps that will change if the right puts forth a kinder face, and prioritizes something other than "owning the libs" as the highest priority of online conservatives. They could start by actually doing things that make it easier to parent and raise kids in America (though as I've mentioned previously, that probably won't be entirely sufficient).</p><p>Even conservatives who want that to happen, though, recognize such a development is unlikely.</p><p>Throughout his career, <a href="https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/roe-is-reversed-and-the-right-isnt" target="_blank">David French writes today</a>, he's been guided "by two burning convictions—that Roe represented a grave moral and constitutional wrong and that I belonged to a national Christian community that loved its fellow citizens, believed in a holistic ethic of life, and was ready, willing, and able to rise to the challenge of creating a truly pro-life culture." </p><p>The problem? "I believe only one of those things today."</p><p>It's not the second part that he believes.</p><p>French doesn't explicitly mention Trump in his piece, but the former president's ghost clearly haunts his misgivings. "The Dobbs ruling has landed in the midst of a sick culture, and the pro-life right is helping make it sick," he writes.</p><p>I can't really argue the point.</p><p>The next few years are going to determine whether the pro-life right really can build a "culture of life," or whether the Dobbs ruling really will be as misery-making and awful for women as its critics suggest. The persistent popularity of Trump suggests the latter. The pro-life movement's Trump problem isn't just that his influence colors how people will remember the Dobb decision a generation or two hence -- it's also that his vice-signaling approach, so popular among Republican voters, stands in the way of engendering the "culture of life" that Carney, French and their allies want so desperately to build. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-77599021418967871012022-06-25T16:23:00.000-05:002022-06-25T16:23:56.791-05:00Signifying heroes and villains, good intentions and bad<p>One of the bigger struggles I've had during the Trump Era has been with how to identify people -- the folks with whom I disagree, the ones who are doing things I sometimes even find harmful -- who are nonetheless acting in good faith.</p><p>There are personal reasons for this. No need to get into the details publicly, but there are persons I was once close to, despite our profound differences politically, because I thought we at least shared a commitment to speaking as truthfully as we could, to seeking the Truth -- even if we defined that somewhat differently.</p><p>Then Donald Trump came along and I found out I was mistaken.</p><p>I've lost a few friends in recent years. And yet: I refuse to believe that <i>most</i> people are cartoon villains. (Again, the Trump Years have tested this.) The vast majority of humans -- I really, firmly believe -- understand themselves to be acting for the right reasons and noble motivations. It would not resolve our differences to understand people as they see themselves, and we don't have to accept those self-judgments as definitive, but I still think it's important to try. Even now. At least for the sake being somewhat more realistic in our assessments, and not least because the people we now define as our enemies are also our fellow citizens, and the opposite of figuring out how to live with them is too terrible to think about. </p><p>This brings us to abortion, naturally.</p><span></span><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>We are in Day Two of the post-Roe era, and the recriminations are filling my Twitter feed. One woman -- a writer who grew up among evangelicals, then rejected that upbringing -- wrote an essay in which she declared something to the effect of: <i>They hate women. They may not think they do, but they so.</i></p><p>I understand why she writes this. If you're a person whose rights are being taken away, you're not inclined to see the taker's best intentions, their most self-flattering regard for their own high ideals. She's pissed. Understandably. She's on the receiving end of what the Supreme Court has done, and it certainly <i>feels</i> like being hated. </p><p>But also I think she paints with too broad a brush. <i>Hates women</i>? Maybe some of them. But most evangelicals -- or maybe just many, who knows -- legitimately believe that unborn children are persons with rights and that those rights are not negated just because thatunborn person relies on another person's body to survive for a few months.</p><p>That's not my position. But understanding that does change my understanding of what pro-lifers are trying to achieve. What reads as oppression on the receiving end reads as liberation -- or at least, the saving of loves -- on the other side. If you're interested in knowing the truth of a situation, youll get closer by paying attention to what people think they're accomplishing rather than relying on your own feelings about it.</p><p>On the other hand: On Twitter today, a semi-prominent pro-lifer said that much of the backlash against the Dobbs ruling could be attributed to a total devotion to "sexual libertinism."<br /><br />Oy.</p><p>Trying to read that comment from this person's point of view, I suppose it's true that many women want simply to make their own choices about sex and reproduction and that the ability to make such choices constitutes "sexual libertinism." But that doesn't account for allthe women who worry about the reproductive issues that may arise within a monogamous context: Ectopic pregnancies, septic pregnancies, miscarriages, the ability to afford to raise a kid, or even -- especially -- the heightened legal and state scrutiny that's a likely to accompany the new regime. Even for pro-life women who happily choose to become mothers and welcome a child into the world, the consequences of Dobbs might well be intrusive.</p><p>You don't have to be the Marquis de Sade to recognize those fears.</p><p>The flip side of trying to understand your rivals as they see themselves is that they should try to do the same for you. And the result of that attempt should be -- if they're really committed to seeking the truth of a situation -- that they will understand the limits of their own seemingly good intentions.</p><p>I'm thinking now of America's invasion of Iraq. Our leaders told us we'd be greeted as liberators, and then were bewildered and angry and drenched in blood when it turned out otherwise. Where was the gratitude? We failed in Iraq, failed disastrously, because we refused to consider how the effects of our good intentions would actually be received by the intended-upon. We thought we were trying to make things better. We brought horror. And we were shocked not to get credit for meaning well.</p><p>That's how you end up a villain.</p><p>And that points, ultimately, to the limitations of my own attempts to find good faith in my opponents. Sometimes there is none. And sometimes -- and the issue of abortion is definitely one of those times -- no amount of good faith can change the fact that different conceptions of the good are simply irreconcilable with each other. Good faith is not necessarily, irrelevant, but close enough. Somebody will be the villain in somebody else's story, no matter how much they wish otherwise. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-41777671356684458132022-06-24T16:30:00.002-05:002022-06-24T16:30:57.532-05:00On the end of Roe, and the 'culture of life'<p>Roe v. Wade ended today, and I'm more torn about this than someone with my politics should be.</p><p>Oh, on the whole I think the decision is bad. I'm pro-choice -- ultimately, carefully and sometimes by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin -- because I believe that women's health and freedom really are implicated in the abortion debate.</p><p>But...</p><p>I grew up among pro-life Christians. I know them, know their hearts. I know -- though I disagree, ultimately -- that many of them truly believe they are saving babies from murder, and if you thought you were saving babies from being murdered, wouldn't you be rejoicing today?</p><p>My old friends are rejoicing.<br /><br />I am not.</p><p>Some of this is self-preservation, I suppose. I am married to an ardently pro-choice woman who -- in the brief moments we had to visit earlier today -- vowed resistance. And I'd be lying if I said my marriage didn't influence my politics on this issue. I don't think that's a bad thing. What's the point of joining your life to someone else's if you're not willing to let their perspective nudge and maybe even enlarge your own?</p><p>So here's the thing: I don't expect today's decision to actually produce a "culture of life."</p><p>That's the kind of thing I've seen some well-meaning conservative folks talk about today. It's not good enough to merely outlaw abortion, they say. The next step -- using all the tools at their disposal -- is to create a nation where every pregnant woman welcomes every act of conception and, ultimately, every child into a world ready to support them in thriving and surviving.</p><p>It's noble, I'll grant that. And maybe impossibly utopian. I doubt (for instance) you'll ever completely rid the world of demand for abortions.<br /><br />But also: I'll believe it when I see it.</p><p>The pro-life movement has had 50 years to build a culture of life, to prepare for this moment and to entice women into making different choices. And they ... haven't. Maternal death rates have risen in America in recent decades. Black maternal death rates are even worse. And the states that have fought most vigorously to outlaw abortion are also often the states that have managed to avoid or delay the Medicaid expansion that would help the poorest would-be mothers immeasurably. <br /><br />Maybe that will change now.</p><p>I doubt it.</p><p>And if I'm wrong, I'll still have a few horse-and-cart questions about why they waited so long.</p><p>The committed pro-life people I respect most liken abortion to the Holocaust, and Roe v. Wade to Plessy v. Ferguson. The possibility sometimes haunts me. <i>Am I the baddie? </i>There's a possibility that I -- and millions of people like me -- will one day be judged moral monsters. That's distressing.</p><p>For now, though, I know that many if not most Americans opt -- in their hearts, and sometimes even at the polls -- for the impossible middle ground on this topic: Finding abortion unsettling, and yet fearful of losing the option entirely. That's where I'm at. Which satisfies almost none of my friends on either side of the issue.</p><p>The end result is this: I can't join my pro-life friends in rejoicing, even if I understand why they do so. I suspect today's decision will increase the sum of human misery in America. I hope I am wrong.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-55676115955629223752022-06-14T12:58:00.002-05:002022-06-14T12:58:59.771-05:00A realization about memory, courtesy of a trip to a small Kansas town where I did some of my growing up<p>My memories are not sepia-toned, or black and white. They're living color, and feel very much a part of my <i>still here and kicking</i> life -- not present, exactly, but not so distant, either. They're high-def, even if they didn't occur in the high-def era. But for young people who didn't experience the stuff I experienced when I was young, it's impossibly ancient. And someday -- sooner than I'd like to think -- all that will be left is the sepia-toned representations. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-21182277825805802182022-05-14T18:59:00.000-05:002022-05-14T18:59:17.551-05:00On BuffaloIt's going to get worse.<br /><br />It's bad enough already. Today, a young man walked into a grocery store in Buffalo -- in one of the city's blackest neighborhoods -- and started killing people. He live-streamed the massacre. Police say it was "<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3267597063062817567/2118227782580580218#">straight up racially motivated</a>."<br /><br />Assuming this bears out, we can add Buffalo to the list of racist massacres in recent years. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3267597063062817567/2118227782580580218#">Charleston</a>. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3267597063062817567/2118227782580580218#">Pittsburgh</a>. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3267597063062817567/2118227782580580218#">El Paso</a>. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3267597063062817567/2118227782580580218#">Christchurch</a>. Etc, etc, etc. The blood of black and brown people keeps being spilled by white people who somehow delude themselves into thinking they're acting in defense of something. They do this because they believe lies -- that white people are being "replaced" by immigrants and minorities, that white people's lives have more value (or that black and brown ones have less, take your pick), that these poor people who were grocery shopping were the tools of their oppression.<br /><br />God help us. God damn this evil.<br /><br />It's hard not to sense that we're closer to the beginning of whatever this racist evil is than to the end. It’s going to get worse. And that’s terrifying. <br /><br />And here’s the thing: I don’t trust myself to write with any sort of wisdom when I’m filled with rage and sorrow and fear. I don’t trust myself to act, because the 21st century — not to mention all the other centuries — is filled with some fairly obvious examples of people and nations lashing out in rage and sorrow and fear in ways that created so much more harm, and so much more evil. <br /><br />But it’s impossible to call a timeout. History keeps moving.<br /><br />For the last few years, I’ve been asking myself if we’ll know when democracy ends. I don’t think so. We’ll still have some of the forms of democracy, elections, even if the substance looks less and less like what we’ve known until one day it just won’t be what we’ve known.<br /><br />Now, another question. It’s one I hate to ask or say in print, because I’m afraid of being shrill, afraid that by putting the words down in digital ink and then putting them out there for the world to see, I’ll inadvertently help summon the awful thing. But I’m going to ask it anyway, because I don’t think it can be avoided.<br /><br /><i>Will we know if a civil war has arrived?<br /></i><br />I don’t know. I don’t want it to happen, and I suspect most people reading this don’t want it to happen either. And yet. It may be that we’ll have the forms of civil peace, even if the substance looks less and less like what we’ve known until one day it just won’t be what we’ve known.<br /><br />I think about what my friend <a href="https://theweek.com/articles/960957/worstcase-scenario-americas-immediate-future">Damon Linker</a> wrote after Jan. 6: <br /><br /><b>I think it's an error to assume that any civil war that might arise would need to resemble the one that tore the country apart from 1861 to 1865… Another model of civil violence is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles">The Troubles</a> that rocked Northern Ireland for 30 years beginning in the late 1960s, with factions aligned with the (Catholic) Irish Republican Army, which sought unification with Ireland, squaring off against those allied with the (Protestant) Unionists (backed by English troops), who wanted the territory to remain part of the United Kingdom. There were some conflagrations in this conflict that resembled traditional military battles. But most of the time the republican side waged its side of the war through acts of terrorism at home and abroad, while their opponents used brute force to crack down on the roiling insurrection.<br /></b><br />“Acts of terrorism at home and abroad.” <br /><br />What does that sound like, if not Buffalo? Or Pittsburgh? Or Charleston? Or El Paso? Or Christchurch?<br /><br />What if — and God, I pray this is not true, but I am terrified that it is — our civil war has already started? The young man who shot up a Buffalo grocery store seems to think it’s true, at the very least. <br /><br />It feels like a sin, honestly, to type that. Because maybe it hasn’t, or maybe it has and will peter out on its own, but maybe either way just talking about it adds to the momentum of it. Maybe the best way to deny the power of the gunman’s beliefs is to not let him draw us into war? Or perhaps that’s just a form of sticking our heads into the sand. I don’t know. God, I do not know. <br /><br />What I do know (and forgive me for repeating myself) is that I do not want this. You don’t either. Civil war of this sort — if it happens, if it’s happening — will be enacted by a very few people. Most of us, I truly believe, just want to live peacefully with our neighbors, and let them do likewise. It only takes a few dark-hearted men to upend that script however.<br /><br />If it happens — if it’s happening — we and our children and their children will feel it for generations. There will be more deaths, and more suffering. And as we know all too well, civil wars don’t necessarily, truly end. Their legacies drift through the ages, hardening the survivors against each other in an endless cycle of blame and recrimination. <br /><br />What we do now will reverberate.<br /><br />God help us. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-33764520383572333302022-05-08T11:40:00.001-05:002022-05-08T11:40:33.245-05:00The fight is the thing<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXpGxce27mHJx6g5BZ5nEUWuNkQ-4YrdsrPhezdZ8WO9mTvjxmjkddWZUpMgIMFF0O1rhksrien6757M-HnUSkR0D71uhAFiuZ6RRy-qTZwUDe89pmcxIgno9DysIMoIOQATGwu8pbZN7ZI4YoG7u_U1dO3C4Qzd2BM_TUzUD5n2D3KGwUKFoPkJsPJg/s1920/pexels-pixabay-37323.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXpGxce27mHJx6g5BZ5nEUWuNkQ-4YrdsrPhezdZ8WO9mTvjxmjkddWZUpMgIMFF0O1rhksrien6757M-HnUSkR0D71uhAFiuZ6RRy-qTZwUDe89pmcxIgno9DysIMoIOQATGwu8pbZN7ZI4YoG7u_U1dO3C4Qzd2BM_TUzUD5n2D3KGwUKFoPkJsPJg/w400-h225/pexels-pixabay-37323.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /></p>A couple of interesting pieces in the last day or so, one from David French and Liz Bruenig. They're both writers I admire - though, perhaps, I don't always fully agree with them - because they're more interested in staying true to their principles than in relentlessly defending their respective tribes. Which means that it often seems that they don't really have tribes - at least not on Politics Twitter.<p></p><p>Anyway, let's start with French. He's talking about a recent <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/05/how-i-evolved-on-tim-keller" target="_blank">First Things essay</a> that criticizes evangelist Tim Keller's "winsome" approach to public discourse as outdated and suggests a more, uh, <i>muscular</i> approach is needed because secular culture has become so hostile to Christianity.</p><p><a href="https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/a-critique-of-tim-keller-reveals?s=w" target="_blank">Here's French</a>:</p><blockquote>Yet even if the desperate times narrative were true, the desperate measures rationalization suffers from profound moral defects. The biblical call to Christians to love your enemies, to bless those who curse you, and to exhibit the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%205&version=CSB">fruit of the spirit</a>—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—does not represent a set of tactics to be abandoned when times are tough but rather a set of eternal moral principles to be applied even in the face of extreme adversity.</blockquote><p>And <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/american-kids-no-rights-culture-war-roe/629791/" target="_blank">here's Bruenig,</a> talking about how parenting is increasingly just another culture war prop. </p><blockquote>America is a much harder place to be a child than it has any excuse to be, and a much harder place to have and raise a child than it has any possible reason to be: It’s hard to find a politician who’ll disagree with either proposition, and harder yet to find one with any intention of doing anything about it. When it comes to the crucial business of caring for children and families, our country is an international embarrassment.<br /><br />Politics is downstream of culture, and this is perhaps the greatest defeat of all: Having and raising children itself now seems poised to become a culture-war issue, daily losing its discursive resemblance to an ordinary life event and gaining all the markers of a personal consumption choice that makes a statement about who you are and which side you’re on. The GOP seems all too happy to nudge the process along with caricatures of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/jd-vance-childless-left-culture-wars/619705/">childless libs</a> and the specter of armies of “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/04/05/teachers-groomers-pedophiles-dont-say-gay/">groomers</a>,” broadly labeling scores of left-wing educators, activists, and parents as pedophiles. The fact that Republicans are up two-to-one versus Democrats among households with kids in Marist’s latest <a href="https://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/NPR_PBS-NewsHour_Marist-Poll_USA-NOS-and-Tables_202204271123.pdf">pre-midterm survey</a> suggests that they’re enjoying some success in this push to become the Party of Parents, and on it goes.<br /><br />What a terrible thing to witness, and how distant from anything like a victory. Nothing beautiful survives the culture war.</blockquote><p>These are different pieces from different writers on different topics. But they share a theme. For many participants, across the political spectrum, <i>the fight has become the thing</i>. Politics becomes not a way to pursue one's principles in the public sphere, but an excuse for battle -- and one that eventually subordinates the ostensible principles to the urgency of the fight. And as Bruenig suggests, making the fight the thing often does little to create the better world we supposedly want. It just leaves us angry. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-52138861732289233602022-05-02T08:00:00.001-05:002022-05-02T08:00:00.244-05:00Some personal news...<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghGwa8l23MCby-Sarn8-Cx_b03qRlnbLs8-XyOmzTpLkP6pFsEIBVcNhap_Ahk3ayUwHR_3wBta86G8EwbsLTM0lUqpzjh6vggYrb7T0MuO-kb5dLKt5JcSOM9fOVH85mjQ-3ik705NtocF2cjB37Fd-TI7L3Stg3ACGT9kwj3qqrOT6gpJTsWb9KeSA/s507/Screenshot%202022-05-01%206.14.04%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="507" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghGwa8l23MCby-Sarn8-Cx_b03qRlnbLs8-XyOmzTpLkP6pFsEIBVcNhap_Ahk3ayUwHR_3wBta86G8EwbsLTM0lUqpzjh6vggYrb7T0MuO-kb5dLKt5JcSOM9fOVH85mjQ-3ik705NtocF2cjB37Fd-TI7L3Stg3ACGT9kwj3qqrOT6gpJTsWb9KeSA/s320/Screenshot%202022-05-01%206.14.04%20PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some personal news: Today is my last opinion column for TheWeek.com. The website is pivoting away from opinion toward the newsier style of its UK sister site.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-852d936b-7fff-b743-686c-f6b9322034a3"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m sticking around (at least for now) to write some of that stuff — I’m a freelancer with bills to pay — but it will obviously be a very different endeavor. I will miss the old version of TheWeek.com, and I will miss writing for it. This has been one of my favorite gigs ever, an incredible privilege to work and write alongside some really smart people. My imposter syndrome has raged endlessly. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not sure if I’ll try to stick somehow in the opinion-slinging business. I’ve been blessed to do that in one form or another for 14 years. (Longer, if you include my first “Cup O’Joel” blog at Lawrence.com nearly — Good God! — 20 years ago.) I love doing it. But I’m also aware the world might not </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">need</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a middle-aged white guy to keep grinding out takes. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Punditry often involves the appearance of certainty. Sometimes that’s warranted. Sometimes not. And sometimes it means putting an elbow to other people’s real concerns and feelings about the issues of the day. I’ve tried to be humane and humble as a writer, to see the world beyond my own limited perspective while </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">still</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> advocating for what I think is right and criticizing what I think is wrong. I know I have often failed. But I still believe the aspiration is worthy. And I’m beyond grateful to have had the opportunity.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thanks to all my editors: Ben Frumin, Nico Lauricella, Bonnie Kristian, Jessica Hullinger, Bryan Maygers, Jeva Lange and Jason Fields. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thanks also to Damon Linker, who a few years ago suggested that I get in touch with Ben Frumin to try out for the site. It changed my life, and let me do my dream job for a few years. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thanks to my wife and son, who often adjusted our family life around my odd work schedule. (I’ll finally have Sundays off!) I love you both tremendously. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And thanks, of course, to all of you who’ve read me, responded to me and shared my work. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have been so blessed. </span></p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-53769342846422889992022-02-25T18:55:00.000-06:002022-02-25T18:55:08.755-06:00Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War by Samuel Moyn<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56269282-humane" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1608076401l/56269282._SX98_.jpg" /></a><a href="https://bookshop.org/books/humane-how-the-united-states-abandoned-peace-and-reinvented-war/9780374173708">Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/250478.Samuel_Moyn">Samuel Moyn</a><br /><br />
It's been a long time since I've read a book that made me feel so defensive.<br /><br />Even now, having completed Samuel Moyn's "Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War," I can't decide if the problem is me or Moyn. Moyn's central idea here is that the United States has made its wars more palatable for public consumption -- particularly with an emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties, but also by focusing ever more on the international laws of war -- and in so doing has made it easier for the country to find endless wars with little or no public restraint. "American concern with war has become focused on ensuring it is humane -- not whether it drags on and on, or even should be fought in the first place," he writes.<br /><br />I agree with part of Moyn's assertion. We're a country that goes to war pretty easily. Sometimes there's a debate, as when the United States invaded Iraq. Mostly, there's not: America fights or facilitates violence in places like Syria and Yemen with barely a peep of interest from the public and only the scantest attention from major media organs. And I also believe that America's increasing use of drone strikes has helped make our wars more invisible to that public, letting us spread death to alleged terrorists around the world in a fashion which invites blowback, but which is easy to ignore because U.S. soldiers are safely immune from the immediate threat of reciprocal violence. How can somebody in the Middle East take revenge against a pilot based in Las Vegas?<br /><br />And yet, I really struggle with Moyn's notion that the people who try to keep war within certain bounds after it has been declared -- lawyers mostly, those who have developed the laws of war and then applied them vigorously -- have somehow enabled war. Moyn argues that as the focus on fighting wars "legally" ascended, the power of antiwar forces in American life receded. "Compared with the antiwar forces of the past, humanitarians were a far preferable foe, occypying more common terrain," he writes. Observers were right to ask if the military's "self-humanizations since My Lai entrench violence more than they regulated it." Is the choice really between arguing against war and arguing against using torture at war? It seems like I ought to be able to do both, right? Can't I be a pacifist, yet also argue against targeting civilians while the war is underway? Am I really assenting to war by criticizing its conduct? Maybe there's room for "both-and," but it's difficult to argue against Moyn's contention that it hasn't worked out that way. In his telling, the lawyers who represent Gitmo defendants might be honorable, but they're also patsies. I find that hard to swallow.<br /><br />Another source of frustration: Moyn seems to wish that opponents of U.S. wars would focus more on legal arguments that those wars have often violated the United Nations' ban on wars of aggression. I find that idea naive (particularly since Moyn points out repeatedly how the laws of war have often been bent and broken with little repercussion) as is the idea that war can be stamped out. As I've written elsewhere, I've long lived at the edges of pacifism -- but I also believe there will always be wars and rumors of war. Am I betraying my own stated principles to believe in "don't kill civilians, don't torture detainees" the best second-best I might get? Am I a hypocrite? Or is Moyn being impossibly utopian? That's what I suspect is true, but again: Maybe I'm just being defensive.<br /><br />If I find "Humane" to be frustrating, I also find it useful -- unexpectedly as a quick primer on Leo Tolstoy and his pacifist activism, but also the rise and development of international humanitarian law. He also provides a useful thread of how major powers have tended to observe the laws of war loosely, and usually not at all when fighting non-white peoples. American forces, for example, have often found easy justification for brutality against Native Americans, Filipinos, Vietnamese an "War on Terror" combatants. The rules are supposedly for civilized people only. <br /><br />Still, it was perhaps unwise of me to read Moyn while tensions are on the rise -- the weeks I spent with this book coincided with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I'm angry and scared about matters of war and peace right now, anyway. Today, I watched a video of a Russian tank running over a Ukrainian civilians' car with the driver still inside. If war has become humane, it is difficult to see the evidence this week.<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-15427004014295736182022-02-25T11:23:00.000-06:002022-02-25T11:23:21.688-06:00On Ukraine and pacifism<p> My tendencies toward pacifism -- I'm not sure I have the right to call myself a total pacifist -- stem from a few influences. My dad was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, one of the few young men in his community who was accorded that status by the local draft board. And when I was an adolescent, my family moved into a Mennonite community, and I eventually attended the local Mennonite Brethren college, and the Menno tradition of Christian pacifism left its mark on me even after I left the church.</p><p>Russia's invasion of Ukraine this week has made me realize that there was a third factor in all of this: For my entire life, the United States -- the country where I live, and thus the context for my dovishness -- has pretty much always been <i>on offense</i>. We go to other countries and make them feel the "shock and awe" of our tanks and bombs and missiles, but we have never been in the position of so many Ukrainians right now, making life-or-death choices to defy a murderous onslaught. Even after 9/11, the United States packed up its kit bag and made war in Afghanistan and Iraq. We've never really been on defense. Weirdly, living in a militaristic country that fights all its wars "over there" made it easy to be a pacifist.</p><p>That's not Ukraine's situation. And it's difficult not to be humbled -- assuming these stories are real -- by the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/25/europe/ukraine-russia-snake-island-attack-intl-hnk-ml/index.html" target="_blank">Snake Island </a>folks or the guy who died <a href="https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1497136374369116171" target="_blank">blowing up a Russian bridge</a> to stop the invasion's advance. These were people who lost their lives in a probably futile attempt to protect their families and communities from having to live under the violent thumb of tyranny. That's not very pacifist. I think I'm OK with that. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-47681058869380766542022-02-03T20:19:00.000-06:002022-02-03T20:19:02.848-06:00Common Book: The haze of war<p>"After a war, there were always recriminations about its consequences. But when it started, the haze of militarism, pride, and virtue obscured the possibility of moral choice—or even awareness that, in the end, you could lose." - Samuel Moyn, <i>Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War.</i></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-8896003245174405802022-02-01T11:09:00.002-06:002022-02-01T11:09:20.204-06:00Ralph Gage, RIP<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgXfKzFSp_9MDJs4lgPTRz-UmRzcJ6sCPsSSYIjp4DLRY4JoQMRyYLQmX8jAJ4bPOkh9UdPXIUg4mtI7miu7YOwXNdQnMl-stP-jSkbUU9iIu_VWepgAP7LvA_AX0wJ8whb-taKFUZ--ZJXvRR0FpI5hIML6_WHhVuismPlsgppMHueDUghtW4vAiyAhA=s607" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="607" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgXfKzFSp_9MDJs4lgPTRz-UmRzcJ6sCPsSSYIjp4DLRY4JoQMRyYLQmX8jAJ4bPOkh9UdPXIUg4mtI7miu7YOwXNdQnMl-stP-jSkbUU9iIu_VWepgAP7LvA_AX0wJ8whb-taKFUZ--ZJXvRR0FpI5hIML6_WHhVuismPlsgppMHueDUghtW4vAiyAhA=w400-h330" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">On my last day at the Lawrence Journal-World, I burned all my bridges.</span><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-5758d00c-7fff-f80e-535f-1c3ac89f264a"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The whys and wherefores don’t really matter; indeed, they’ve basically turned to dust. What matters is that I had seen the end coming, had arranged to move onto a lucrative new job elsewhere in media, and then — once everything had been put into motion — got my feelings hurt. I reacted badly. I went around the newsroom, shook hands, made it plain that I was full of rage, gathered up my belongings and rather ostentatiously marched out the front door. It was impetuous, and probably stupid. I was 34, married a bit more than a year, had a few nice awards under my belt and considered myself somewhat ambitious. I was still young enough to think I had a future. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What I didn’t count on was a series of cascading failures: The economy, the media industry, my health. I really didn’t have a clear-eyed view of my own foibles, for that matter, and how they could bring me down.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When my health went, in 2011, I was already at the end of my rope: I’d lost my job in Philadelphia the year before — it still hurts to write that — and was broke, with a wife and young son to support and no idea how to do it. A sudden brush with death brought me to my lowest point. It felt like nothing could ever be good again.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s when Ralph Gage reached out to me.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ralph was a longtime veteran of the Journal-World. He was a journalist and then managing editor, general manager and eventually chief operating officer of the company. He was known in the newsroom for having a gruff personality. He could be </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">scary</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, frankly. When I burned my bridges at the paper, I figured he was one of the people I had burned. But while I was in the hospital, he reached out to me on Facebook — checking to see if I was OK, if he could offer any support, rooting me on as I recovered.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was humbling. I never expected to hear a good word from him again — and, to repeat, I probably didn’t deserve to. He didn’t owe me any kind of grace. He gave it freely.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And he gave it again when I returned to Lawrence from Philly, eight years after I’d left. He wrote to several people who had the ability to give work to freelancers, vouching for me and asking them to send some assignments my way. I didn’t ask for it. He didn’t have to do it. And that support was meaningful.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had the good fortune to make a bit of peace with a number of people that I thought I’d broken with. It’s such a relief to let go of grudges, to free yourself of the burden of anger. I’m great at carrying that anger, to my eternal detriment. I don’t think Ralph intended to serve as an object lesson in the power of grace — I don’t think I ever let him know how much his kindnesses meant to me. I’m not sure I would’ve known how to have that kind of talk with him. Now I won’t get a chance: </span><a href="https://www2.ljworld.com/news/general-news/2022/feb/01/longtime-journal-world-leader-general-manager-ralph-gage-dies/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He passed away this weekend.</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I’ve tried to learn from his actions toward me — to be more careful about recognizing the human beings whom I deal with, to remember that they’re more than the sum of their interactions with me, have more facets and needs and wants than I’m capable of perceiving. To consider their pain instead of using it as an excuse to return anger for anger. I am not good at this stuff yet. I might never be. All I know is I didn’t expect to learn those lessons from Ralph. Life is funny. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">— 30 — </span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-18905020569304968292022-01-01T16:58:00.001-06:002022-01-01T16:58:54.286-06:00Bag O' Books: 'Freedom,' by Sebastian Junger<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55711668-freedom" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Freedom" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1621441582l/55711668._SX98_.jpg" /></a>The central tale of this short book involves a long hiking trip -- a series of trips, actually, as we find out in the afterword -- that Junger took with some combat friends, along the railroad tracks of Pennsylvania, camping along the way, darting into towns for quick meals at diners. Along the way, some ruminations about freedom, which in some cases literally means "unencumbered": Junger has a lot to say how mobile hunter-gatherer tribes are more free -- and freer from hierarchies of wealth and rank -- than the place-bound farmer-city society that we call society. (He also notes that such freedom has its limits: Even the "most free man in the world" ultimately needed to connect to society.) There are detours into the relationship between testosterone and dominance, the similarities between the Taliban, the Irish of the Easter Uprising and the steel mill strikes of the Industrial Era. A short book with an even simpler message: "If you can't run a mile with all your gear, you've got too much gear."<br /><div><br /></div><div><i>* Book 1 of 2022.</i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-63270122546985541902022-01-01T08:00:00.001-06:002022-01-01T08:00:00.217-06:00My bucket list for 2022<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgk4SbTaGzTFHOvc7gQQ1gObVXyc0A-96ZQqUrDZzCGSFx8luMWgG_2Ueh7zbRSip1wk7b3qqElZ1kzvY3ttCzuWMuzj4bUBFr4icjA3RdhxHQjVuCXZsljsSJvS5YS1-sbNEZT8uwELSH6WHOxUBsFWDUmC-GnPaN4NyCkx1vF8BNydFnSPv3HviJ0Zw=s5722" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3376" data-original-width="5722" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgk4SbTaGzTFHOvc7gQQ1gObVXyc0A-96ZQqUrDZzCGSFx8luMWgG_2Ueh7zbRSip1wk7b3qqElZ1kzvY3ttCzuWMuzj4bUBFr4icjA3RdhxHQjVuCXZsljsSJvS5YS1-sbNEZT8uwELSH6WHOxUBsFWDUmC-GnPaN4NyCkx1vF8BNydFnSPv3HviJ0Zw=w400-h236" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "segoe ui", roboto, oxygen, cantarell, "helvetica neue", ubuntu, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e8e8e8; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">Photo by </span><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "segoe ui", roboto, oxygen, cantarell, "helvetica neue", ubuntu, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e8e8e8; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: start;"><a href="https://www.pexels.com/@suzyhazelwood?utm_content=attributionCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pexels" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Suzy Hazelwood</a></span><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "segoe ui", roboto, oxygen, cantarell, "helvetica neue", ubuntu, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e8e8e8; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;"> from </span><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "segoe ui", roboto, oxygen, cantarell, "helvetica neue", ubuntu, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e8e8e8; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: start;"><a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/typewriter-1750268/?utm_content=attributionCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pexels" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Pexels</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>No resolutions. But a few things I'd like to do.</p><p><b>* Finally read Robert Caro's "The Power Broker.":</b> Kind of astonishing I've made it this far into my career without checking that box. I've read and loved literally every other book that Caro has published. This one intimidated me, though. I've already ordered a paperback version through the local bookstore, and ergonomically I wish to hell there was an e-version. But there isn't. </p><p><b>* Travel.</b> I've barely left the state of Kansas the last two years, except to go to Arkansas to visit my wife's parents. I'd like to go someplace that's not where I usually am. One possibility: Getting on Amtrak's Southwest Chief and head west. Never been to Albuquerque. But I'd also really like to return (home?) to Philadelphia, which we'd planned to do the summer of 2020. You know how that went.</p><p><b>* Find my "thick community."</b> <a href="https://joelmathis.blogspot.com/2021/12/missing-thick-community-still.html" target="_blank">Nuff said.</a> </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-56235759896268730972021-12-29T16:46:00.005-06:002021-12-29T16:46:57.602-06:00Missing 'thick community,' still<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEheYeT_e3aKQhqtjMuMCJ2-iR0nO3BBJimQPONo2kPHQ_LIYbnHTmv0XsACfrwDdf3rnQjLLuuCW8cpZ4585KjFBXSEhj10YRaiRPAEvlBzRXhzqyjDQEcHThKZHwh4FIUDLqs7sc-tJ1HMjdKxFz1Seqq2cMtuxVtdROuPwAwkYhpwW2b0QZcuf_uiGw=s6720" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4480" data-original-width="6720" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEheYeT_e3aKQhqtjMuMCJ2-iR0nO3BBJimQPONo2kPHQ_LIYbnHTmv0XsACfrwDdf3rnQjLLuuCW8cpZ4585KjFBXSEhj10YRaiRPAEvlBzRXhzqyjDQEcHThKZHwh4FIUDLqs7sc-tJ1HMjdKxFz1Seqq2cMtuxVtdROuPwAwkYhpwW2b0QZcuf_uiGw=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Monstera from Pexels</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div>Bonnie Kristian is my editor at The Week. She's also a columnist for Christianity Today. <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/december/2022-resolution-t-s-eliot-advice-to-church-institutions.html" target="_blank">Her latest starts</a>:<br /><blockquote>This is a season for taking stock of who we are, how we live, and what we are building. It is the best season, perhaps, to ask ourselves the question of poet T. S. Eliot’s choruses from The Rock: “Have you built well?”<br /><br />In 1934, Eliot <a href="https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/choruses-%C3%B4%C3%A7%C2%A3the-rock%C3%B4%C3%A7%C3%B8">penned</a> The Rock to fundraise for 45 church buildings near London. Appropriately, his frequent theme was building—not only churches but also the church as a thick community, an institution, a people seeking knowledge of God, a sanctuary from alienation and futility.<br /><br />“The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without,” Eliot said. So, how are we building?</blockquote>The phrase "thick community struck me, and reminded me of something I wrote about a year ago this time: "<a href="https://joelmathis.blogspot.com/2020/12/in-2021-i-need-to-rebuild-my-personal.html" target="_blank">In 2021, I need to rebuild my personal community.</a>"<blockquote>Even before the pandemic, I was a freelance writer who works from home and who attends church once or twice a year. It didn't feel great! I could go days without leaving the house, even, unless I made a real effort. Oh, I have a few friends I see now and again, and sitting outside the coffee shop with a socially distanced group of men has saved my sanity over the last few months, but the truth is it has been awhile since I was enmeshed in the networks he describes here. I feel their absence.<br /><br />To be sure, I'm not sure how to reclaim those networks for myself. But I've come to realize I need to try, somehow.</blockquote><p>I haven't made great progress. I go to the coffee shop regularly, but mostly I just sit there alone.</p><p>Truth be told, I miss the church community I had 20 years ago -- miss it ferociously. When I left the church, I did a fair approximation of re-creating it among a group of people roughly my age who were regulars at the downtown coffee shop. But those folks have largely moved on. And I find myself missing the richness of my life during those years. Outside of the family in my house, the people I talk to most are online -- on Twitter or colleagues that I message throughout the day. I know I'm missing something important, something I love. I know I'm missing "thick community," and I don't have the foggiest idea how to rebuild it.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-73464689357345372732021-12-29T08:00:00.001-06:002021-12-29T08:00:00.218-06:00An additional note on turning the other cheek<a href="https://joelmathis.blogspot.com/2021/12/jesus-desmond-tutu-and-donald-trump-jr.html" target="_blank">Yesterday I wrote:<br /></a><blockquote>Our instinct is never to turn the other cheek, but to repay injury with injury. The people among us who try to live by a "turn the other cheek" ethic are basically saints. And too often, their example can be misused by those who would happily inflict injury but naturally wish to avoid consequences for their actions.</blockquote><div>I think referring to such folks as "saints" might accidentally create the impression that they exist on a higher moral plain than the rest of us. They don't. The people who live by nonviolence -- Gandhi, MLK, Desmond Tutu -- were pretty rigorous about the reasoning behind their approach, and disciplined enough to see it through in the face of great injustice. There's no reason the rest of us can't do the same. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-90658681777162118122021-12-28T19:06:00.002-06:002021-12-28T19:06:21.805-06:00Jesus, Desmond Tutu, and Donald Trump Jr.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj9BBJaV1KT8G7_tIPjThjkSXL2lmuiKx_PAHcuzQYUBvNqI-om_5rZGrGxKpRAjkitAF-mwSMW0qMIdAmZ1bxL8e_NjZ2ZF4XZOAgvpBRlTre_jvj4zkNS_fAzcihfEZ72iamARpEA8eNJ9OIyeGq5TnbqsrrNNldX668hp2JN6mrjHS18qI1XwfZ6OA=s5184" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj9BBJaV1KT8G7_tIPjThjkSXL2lmuiKx_PAHcuzQYUBvNqI-om_5rZGrGxKpRAjkitAF-mwSMW0qMIdAmZ1bxL8e_NjZ2ZF4XZOAgvpBRlTre_jvj4zkNS_fAzcihfEZ72iamARpEA8eNJ9OIyeGq5TnbqsrrNNldX668hp2JN6mrjHS18qI1XwfZ6OA=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #e8e8e8; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "segoe ui", roboto, oxygen, cantarell, "helvetica neue", ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">Photo by </span><span style="background-color: #e8e8e8; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "segoe ui", roboto, oxygen, cantarell, "helvetica neue", ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: start;"><a href="https://www.pexels.com/@brettjordan?utm_content=attributionCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pexels" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Brett Jordan</a></span><span style="background-color: #e8e8e8; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "segoe ui", roboto, oxygen, cantarell, "helvetica neue", ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;"> from </span><span style="background-color: #e8e8e8; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "segoe ui", roboto, oxygen, cantarell, "helvetica neue", ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: start;"><a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/wood-typography-photography-connection-9717956/?utm_content=attributionCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pexels" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Pexels</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>So here's the deal: I'm not really a Bible-believing Christian anymore. But ... I think I'm a Bible-believing agnostic? Weird thing to say, I realize, but the point is that while I'm not really sure I have a grip on metaphysics I know my moral outlook is very much shaped by growing up in the church, and particularly my association with the Mennonite Church.</p><p>So that's why I found it so interesting that Donald Trump Jr. came in for some mockery and criticism this week. Here's what he said: </p><blockquote>“If we get together, they cannot cancel us all. Okay? They won’t. And this will be contrary to a lot of our beliefs because — I’d love not to have to participate in cancel culture. I’d love that it didn’t exist. But as long as it does, folks, we better be playing the same game. Okay? We’ve been playing T-ball for half a century while they’re playing hardball and cheating. Right? <b>We’ve turned the other cheek, and I understand, sort of, the biblical reference — I understand the mentality — but it’s gotten us nothing.</b> Okay? It’s gotten us nothing while we’ve ceded ground in every major institution in our country.”</blockquote><div>Emphasis added. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/gospel-donald-trump-jr/621122/" target="_blank">Peter Wehner</a> took note of the comment at The Atlantic.</div><blockquote>...the former president’s son has a message for the tens of millions of evangelicals who form the energized base of the GOP: the scriptures are essentially a manual for suckers. The teachings of Jesus have “gotten us nothing.” It’s worse than that, really; the ethic of Jesus has gotten in the way of successfully prosecuting the culture wars against the left. If the ethic of Jesus encourages sensibilities that might cause people in politics to act a little less brutally, a bit more civilly, with a touch more grace? Then it needs to go.<br /><br />Decency is for suckers.</blockquote><p> Ed Kilgore piled on at <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/12/donald-trump-jr-rejects-jesuss-turn-the-other-cheek.html">New York:</a></p><blockquote>We have grown accustomed to the irony of conservative Christians all but idolizing a politician who is the most heathenish public figure of our generation, inordinately proud of his power over women in particular and supposedly lesser beings generally and incapable of confessing a single sin or weakness or defeat. But it’s still a bit jarring to hear this chip off the old block openly calling for an ethic of hatred, resentment, and vengeance against his imagined persecutors.</blockquote><div>Wehner and Kilgore are right, but incomplete. It's easy to mock Donald Trump Jr. for his callow approach to Christianity, but honestly: Isn't he just saying the quiet part out loud? If America is nominally a Christian country -- most of us still claim the religion, however tightly or loosely those affiliations are held -- can we be said to be a society that "turns the other cheek?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Think about where <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205%3A38-48&version=NIV" target="_blank">that phrase</a> originates:</div><blockquote>“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.</blockquote><div>That's a <i>radical</i> command. It's one that almost nobody -- least of all self-proclaimed Christians -- follows.</div><div><br /></div><div>If we were that kind of society, we might not have a death penalty. If we lived by a "turn the other cheek" ethos, we might not have troops spread out around the globe, ready to deliver violence at a moment's notice. If that's who we were, we wouldn't have grown men continuing to use John Wayne as a model of masculinity. And honestly, I'm not sure I know if it's possible to build a society on a "turn the other cheek" ethos. What I do know is that we're not in danger of finding out anytime soon. Donald Trump Jr. is just expressing the way we already live.</div><div><br /></div><div>What does it look like to live in that fashion? <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/28/opinion/desmond-tutu-america-justice.html" target="_blank">Michael Eric Dyson</a> gets at the possibilities in a reflection on the legacy of Archbishop Desmond Tutu: </div><blockquote>When people claim the political utility of forgiveness, they help stabilize a culture addicted to the satisfaction of petty vengeance, establishing in its stead a measure of justice supported by big-picture moral values and social visions.<br /><br />“Thus,” Archbishop Tutu argued, “to forgive is indeed the best form of self-interest, since anger, resentment and revenge” undermine the common good. South African leaders borrowed from Black American kin in their fight against apartheid. Nelson Mandela promoted armed resistance against murderous white rule, while Archbishop Tutu advocated nonviolent resistance against white supremacy. As the head of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Archbishop Tutu believed that the only way to achieve a thriving democracy was for its citizens to come clean about their sins. He argued that Black forgiveness would remake South African society and pave the way for true justice.</blockquote><p>This kind of work is -- let's be honest -- unnatural. Our instinct is never to turn the other cheek, but to repay injury with injury. The people among us who try to live by a "turn the other cheek" ethic are basically saints. And too often, their example can be misused by those who would happily inflict injury but naturally wish to avoid consequences for their actions. (Oh, all the people who love to quote Martin Luther King Jr. without following his example!) </p><p>So: I have no respect for Donald Trump Jr. But he's an easy target. In our lives, in our politics, in our actions, most of us think -- even if we're not really willing to say -- that the biblical reference gets us nothing. He was just being honest about it. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3267597063062817567.post-74487099316957418532021-12-28T16:37:00.000-06:002021-12-28T16:37:08.003-06:00Losing that 'boundless sense of optimism'<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgmmV-2MM8Y9MWty2cu99XOT6q32ZLoE_ZAALGw9aXb4Ii5sBIyLd5pXXxgYfwGZYjkFR_Ci035V2l-FKUVl-iqW24BgYqvmT_7Yj1Tro9RYHrSRbmLeJCyEXioBCHQ4Esxgw_hOcu9346VpvQ14T6Vqf-NC8e1yLyBqrcS_MyFc1Tfl8oLEiZlzECTQQ=s5684" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5684" data-original-width="3789" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgmmV-2MM8Y9MWty2cu99XOT6q32ZLoE_ZAALGw9aXb4Ii5sBIyLd5pXXxgYfwGZYjkFR_Ci035V2l-FKUVl-iqW24BgYqvmT_7Yj1Tro9RYHrSRbmLeJCyEXioBCHQ4Esxgw_hOcu9346VpvQ14T6Vqf-NC8e1yLyBqrcS_MyFc1Tfl8oLEiZlzECTQQ=w266-h400" width="266" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #e8e8e8; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "segoe ui", roboto, oxygen, cantarell, "helvetica neue", ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">Photo by </span><span style="background-color: #e8e8e8; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "segoe ui", roboto, oxygen, cantarell, "helvetica neue", ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: start;"><a href="https://www.pexels.com/@cottonbro?utm_content=attributionCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pexels" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">cottonbro</a></span><span style="background-color: #e8e8e8; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "segoe ui", roboto, oxygen, cantarell, "helvetica neue", ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;"> from </span><span style="background-color: #e8e8e8; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "segoe ui", roboto, oxygen, cantarell, "helvetica neue", ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: start;"><a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/blue-and-white-floral-textile-4874507/?utm_content=attributionCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pexels" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Pexels</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><a href="https://wisdomofcrowds.live/a-dead-end-year/">Damir Marusic</a> reflects on the emotional damage done by two years of pandemic:<br /><blockquote>Maybe as the variants get less deadly and we get better at managing sporadic outbreaks of novel mutations, something approaching the previous normalcy will re-emerge. But that’s not really what we mean when we say “getting back to normal.” We want to have our innocence restored, to once again believe in a kind of permanence to our lives. I think that’s gone for good, though. That longed-for permanence is similar to the sense of ourselves we have before we experience the death of a friend. We implicitly believed we were somehow indestructible. Not immortal, but that the same rules didn’t exactly apply to us. A friend’s death shows us that in fact they do. It’s the same with COVID.<br /><br />It’s a lesson we can, with time, choose not to dwell on but can never unlearn. It’s a part of growing wiser. Eventually we move on, having internalized these hard lessons. Eventually, we straighten up out of our crouch and re-engage with the world. <b>We may memory-hole much of the emptiness that characterized the last two years of our lives, but we won’t regain that sense of boundless optimism born of a belief in stability that we had before.</b></blockquote><div>Emphasis added. The bolded lines caught me up short because they described precisely the same sense I had about 10 years ago, after I'd lost my job and then had a close brush with death all in the span of a year. When I came out the other side -- to the extent that I did -- the thing I mourned most, aside from my lost health, was the death of that "boundless optimism." Somewhere in the back of my head, I think I'd believed that things would always work out somehow, because they always had. (Believe me, I know what a privilege -- perhaps callow -- it was to have ever possessed such a belief.) After my year-plus of calamity, I no longer felt that to be true: Sometimes things don't work out. Sometimes the losses are permanent. </div><div><br /></div><div>There's been a lot of talk the last few years about the trauma we're all experiencing. But Marusic's reflections prompt another possibility: Quite inadvertently, we've all been given what amounts to a midlife crisis at the exact same time -- come face-to-face with our mortality, a lesson that we can't ever quite unforget. We're more aware of our boundaries, our limits, a sense that time is running out because it <i>always is.</i> It's natural that eventually, for most of us, "boundless optimism" fades with age. That's life, and life experience. But it's a tragedy for so many of us to have experienced as younger people, because so much of what is created and made by human beings comes from the ferment of energy and joy that isn't yet haunted by death. I wonder what we're losing, that we've lost, that we can't see because it was never made.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0