Posts

Are debate kids ruining America?

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  I've been reading excerpts from the biography of Trump advisor Stephen Miller, and the description of his high school years seems familiar to me. He was interested in politics early, and while I don't know if he was on the debate team, he was oh so surely a debate kid. I was a debate kid for two years in high school, and I enjoyed the hell out of it -- the only reason I quit was because my dad made me, so that I could have an after-school job that also required me to work on Saturdays, which is when debate tournaments were held. The style of debate we used in Kansas (I don't know if it still works this way) required two-person teams to show up ready to debate either side of an argument. There were a couple of ways to win -- just present so much evidence (basically, in the form of cited articles) that you'd overwhelm the other team, or to present so many arguments that the other team couldn't keep track of them all. We used "flow charts" to track the argu

One of the biggest challenges for me in 2020...

 ...is being properly righteously angry about events while at the same time not letting the anger get away from me so that I become somebody I don't want to be.

I am trying to figure out how to talk to my pro-life friends about Trump

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  A common refrain at this week's Republican National Convention was that Donald Trump "is the most pro-life president we've ever had." No matter where you stand on the topic, I think there's a fair case to be made that's the truth. He has appointed judges who emboldened state legislatures to take a fresh run at knocking down Roe v. Wade. The right to abortion may never be entirely stricken from precedent, given how Chief Justice John Roberts likes to operate, but it seems likely to be greatly narrowed into near-oblivion over the next few years. We'll see. I grew up in small town Kansas. I attended an evangelical Mennonite Brethren college. A number of people I care about -- and love -- are passionately anti-abortion. This makes things uneasy between us: I don't much love abortion and I think the decision carries moral weight, but I think there are substantial issues of women's freedom and autonomy involved. So I end up on the pro-choice side of

I was thinking today about the Iraq War...

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...and there was a lot of discussion, back then, about whether folks in the Middle East were ready for American-style democracy. These days, I'm not sure America is capable of American-style democracy.  Anyway, a lot of RNC talk this week about how we're the greatest, most exceptional nation in the world -- and yeah, some good things have happened here. But the chest-thumping is straining and tedious, particularly during a deadly pandemic we can't seem to control, and a way to drown out the sound of people asking for help. I'm worn out by the constant need to assert American greatness. Would love it if we tried a little harder for American goodness. 

The best way for me to do sustained reading these days...

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  ...is to deactivate my Twitter account.  I don't mean log out. I mean deactivate it entirely. It's easy enough to reactivate, so the practical difference between logging out and deactivating probably isn't that great. But, psychologically, it slows down my tendency to check in and then keep scrolling, scrolling. This afternoon, I deactivated my account and read two chapters of David Blight's biography of Frederick Douglass, and a few chapters of MOBY DICK. My head feels better for slowing down.

Coronavirus Diary: Too much, and not enough reading

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I realized today that by trying to read every book at the same time, I'm not making a huge amount of progress at any reading. So. Back down to two books or so -- one fiction, one non-fiction -- and try to make a go of it from there.

Losing our past to the coronavirus

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  This place was once my home away from home. I don't mean that casually. In my late 20s and early 30s, when I was still single, I would often stop by in the morning for a cup of coffee before going to work. I'd grab a quick bite to eat at lunch, then sit here with a book for 20 or 30 minutes with a second cup of coffee. And many evenings, after grabbing a quick supper, I'd sit here in the evening for more reading and another cup. (This was back before I realized that all the caffeine was messing up my sleep.) This was my Cheers. I knew the names of all the regulars. They knew me. Some of my longest friendships were formed here -- before the pandemic set in, my family was having regular suppers with a woman who was a barista at this shop for more than a decade. When I stopped going to church in the mid-aughts, this was where I spent my Sunday mornings. La Prima Tazza is still alive. But right now it's not the same, obviously. There is no lingering over a book in the fro