On Buffalo

It's going to get worse.

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 "straight up racially motivated."

Assuming this bears out, we can add Buffalo to the list of racist massacres in recent years. Charleston. Pittsburgh. El Paso. Christchurch. 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.

God help us. God damn this evil.

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.

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.

But it’s impossible to call a timeout. History keeps moving.

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.

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.

Will we know if a civil war has arrived?

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.

I think about what my friend Damon Linker wrote after Jan. 6:

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 The Troubles 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.

“Acts of terrorism at home and abroad.”

What does that sound like, if not Buffalo? Or Pittsburgh? Or Charleston? Or El Paso? Or Christchurch?

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.

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.

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.

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.

What we do now will reverberate.

God help us.

The fight is the thing

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.

Anyway, let's start with French. He's talking about a recent First Things essay that criticizes evangelist Tim Keller's "winsome" approach to public discourse as outdated and suggests a more, uh, muscular approach is needed because secular culture has become so hostile to Christianity.

Here's French:

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 fruit of the spirit—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.

And here's Bruenig, talking about how parenting is increasingly just another culture war prop. 

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.

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 childless libs and the specter of armies of “groomers,” 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 pre-midterm survey suggests that they’re enjoying some success in this push to become the Party of Parents, and on it goes.

What a terrible thing to witness, and how distant from anything like a victory. Nothing beautiful survives the culture war.

These are different pieces from different writers on different topics. But they share a theme. For many participants, across the political spectrum, the fight has become the thing. 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. 

Some personal news...

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.

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. 

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 need a middle-aged white guy to keep grinding out takes. 

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 still 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.

Thanks to all my editors: Ben Frumin, Nico Lauricella, Bonnie Kristian, Jessica Hullinger, Bryan Maygers, Jeva Lange and Jason Fields. 

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.  

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. 

And thanks, of course, to all of you who’ve read me, responded to me and shared my work. 

I have been so blessed.