Angel Adams Parham:

It was disorienting to read [Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option] as a Black American Christian. My people had never been at the centre of power. The Republican Party had not felt like home to most of us since the middle of the twentieth century. And the arc of the arrow of Dreher’s argument, of being pushed from cultural dominance into marginalization and defensiveness, was foreign to me. It was hard not to sniff some deeper insecurity at play in this paradigm that resonated with many white Christians while overlooking a vast swath of American Christian experience. Was Dreher really motivated by a concern for holiness, or was he peddling nostalgia for what looked like the good old days from his limited vantage point?

It was fascinating to see Dreher lift up faraway models of Christians coping amid intensifying hostility—Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in Russia—while jumping right over his American neighbours in the Black Church. I deeply admire the Christian witness as it has found (and continues to find) its shape and subversive power in communist and post-communist contexts. But it felt as though Dreher (and the subsequent proliferation of hand-wringers like him) was keen on stripping all American believers of an inheritance of Christian integrity under hostile circumstances. This is not just bad history; it betrays a culturally selective understanding of gospel power.

Alexei Novalny:

So there I was, scowling, wearing a heavy winter jacket, and wielding a wooden shovel with snow frozen to it. The only thing that amused me, and at least partly enabled me to accept this reality, is that on these occasions I feel like the hero of my all-time favorite joke. It is a Soviet joke, but has a certain relevance today.

A boy goes out for a stroll in the courtyard of his apartment block. Boys playing soccer there invite him to join in. The boy is a bit of a stay-at-home, but he’s interested and runs over to play with them. He eventually manages to kick the ball, very hard, but unfortunately it crashes through the window of the basement room where the janitor lives. Unsurprisingly, the janitor emerges. He is unshaven, wearing a fur hat and quilted jacket, and clearly the worse for a hangover. Infuriated, the janitor stares at the boy before rushing at him.

The boy runs away as fast as he can and thinks, What do I need this for? After all, I’m a quiet, stay-at-home sort of boy. I like reading. Why play soccer with the other boys? Why am I running away right now from this scary janitor when I could be lying at home on the couch reading a book by my favorite American writer, Hemingway?

Meanwhile, Hemingway is reclining on a chaise longue in Cuba, with a glass of rum in his hand, and thinking, God, I’m so tired of this rum and Cuba. All this dancing, and shouting, and the sea. Damn it, I’m a clever guy. Why am I here instead of being in Paris discussing existentialism with my colleague Jean-Paul Sartre over a glass of Calvados?

Meanwhile, Jean-Paul Sartre, sipping Calvados, is looking at the scene in front of him and thinking, How I hate Paris. I can’t stand the sight of these boulevards. I’m sick and tired of all these rapturous students and their revolutions. Why do I have to be here, when I long to be in Moscow, engaging in fascinating dialogue with my friend Andrei Platonov, the great Russian writer?

Meanwhile, in Moscow, Platonov is running across a snow-covered courtyard and thinking, If I catch that little bastard, I’ll fucking kill him.

Although, of course, I am no Andrei Platonov, I have the quilted jacket and the fur hat, and I, too, am writing a book. Next, I’ll finish the chapter about how I met Yulia.

William T. Cavanaugh:

If the universe is not a joke but a comedy, not a tragedy but a drama in which love has the final word, then something like the God revealed in Jesus Christ might be worth considering.

I’m aware that a line like this doesn’t pass muster with most Christians I know. Fifteen years ago it wouldn’t have passed muster with me. It’s too soft and wishy washy.  “Surely,” we are taught to say, “the almighty God of the universe isn’t the kind to say ‘Maybe you could, perhaps, given your situation, think about possibly considering me?’” But I think that that’s exactly how Jesus spoke to people. It just wasn’t as wimpy as the caricature we use to excuse it and to avoid having to embrace the true humility that God expressed — and constantly expresses — toward us. There is probably a good reason, after all, why the kenosis of Philippians 2 tends to invoke the charge of heresy if you (*gasp*) take it too far. 

What I crave, and what I think the world is dying for, are people who will take it seriously… and take it far. 

Noah Smith:

This alternative explanation for AJR’s famous result has never been rejected, and it’s so important that the Nobel committee saw the need to issue a disclaimer about it in their prize announcement…

This is a pretty startling thing to have to put in a Nobel Prize announcement, isn’t it? It basically amounts to saying “Well, this result doesn’t actually prove the researchers’ hypothesis, and in fact the hypothesis probably can’t be proven, but we’re going to give it a Nobel anyway because it’s strongly suggestive.” If you want economics to be more of a science and less of a branch of philosophy, that’s not the kind of thing you want to have to write!

Mark Leibovich, in something of a “hall of faith cowardice” for the Grand Old Party:

He welcomed their contempt, he told me, because that would make his turning them into supplicants all the more humiliating.

“They might speak badly about me now, but they won’t later,” Trump said. They like to say they are “public servants,” he added, his voice dripping with derision at the word servant. But they would eventually submit to him and fear him. They would “evolve,” as they say in politics. “It will be very easy; I can make them evolve,” Trump told me. “They will evolve.”

Like most people who’d been around politics for a while, I was dubious. And wrong. They evolved.

[…]

After Trump won the nomination in 2016, “The party defines the party” became a familiar feckless refrain among the GOP’s putative leaders. House Speaker Paul Ryan vowed to me that he would “protect conservatism from being disfigured.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told the radio host Hugh Hewitt that “Trump is not going to change the institution,” referring to the GOP. “He’s not going to change the basic philosophy of the party.”

In retrospect, this was hilarious.

Hilarious, of course, because it was pure bullshit. As I’ve been learning, over and over and over again for the last decade-plus, it’s all been steeped in bullshit from the beginning. They were just better at controlling it and hiding it (even from themselves) before someone truly shameless came along and showed them — or showed the rest of the world, anyway — just how little control, and even less integrity, they really have.

One of the reasons I like reading Kevin Williamson is that he gives a breath of, uh… not fresh air, but very honest air, anyway. (I’ll save “fresh air” for Wendell Berry, or stuff like this.) He’s as solid an avenue as you’ll find for vicariously venting frustration at the general lack of integrity in politics. And his humor lacks for nothing.

Another reason I like reading him is that I find a lot of chances to see where I part ways with him, and perhaps with “conservatism” — not only as it has become but how it has always been, at least during my lifetime. And that’s been important in finding my feet, and my voice, in the current era.

For example, here is Bill Kristoll, saying it the way I really try to say it:

Trumpism is a horror show, and the Trumpists who strut upon its stage, full of sound and fury, are pretty horrifying. So one’s inclined to praise those normal Republicans who avoid joining in the most ghastly performances of the horror show.

Not that these respectable “normie” types have had the nerve to actually oppose Trump. That would apparently be a bridge of courage and principle too far. Some may privately disdain him. But they are almost uniformly supporting him for a second term as president.

These normie Republicans, their admirers point out, have tried to minimize their participation in some of the worst features of Trumpism, even as they back Trump. They aren’t personally crazy, and often aren’t personally cruel. Those who want to believe in a constructive future for the GOP place great hope on them.

But they don’t deserve much praise, and they aren’t worthy of much hope. Because they refuse to be honest about the craziness and cruelty in the candidate and movement they support, they end up legitimizing and strengthening the craziness and the cruelty.

These fellow travelers provide false comfort that you can retain a modicum of dignity and decency as you go along with Trump and get along with Trumpism. In doing so, they strengthen Trumpism. […]

In the context of Trump’s Big Lie, smaller lies from more apparently reasonable actors matter. They help legitimize Trumpist lies about massive election fraud. They help lay the groundwork for another Big Lie this November.

… [N]ormie Republicans shouldn’t be let off the hook. The normie Republicans are not upholding democratic norms in the face of Trump. Instead, they’re normalizing Trumpist lies and demagoguery. And so they’ve chosen to be part of the problem, not part of the solution.

And here is Williamson yesterday, saying how I really feel (emphasis mine):

One of the dumbest complaints I hear 1,838 times a day goes roughly like this: “You say Trump is a would-be tyrant, a moron, a monster of moral depravity—which means that you’re saying that the people who support him, half the country, are idiots and moral miscreants and fools.” 

Yes, that’s right. That’s exactly what I am saying. 

I don’t know if the difference here has anything to do with “parting ways.” It may be a subtle difference at times, but I try really, really hard (with notable and frequent failures) to stick with Bill Kristol’s somewhat softer approach. (In this case, at least; I don’t read much from Kristol, so I don’t know how representative this is. I read Williamson enough to know that it is very representative.)

Like I said above, I enjoy this. And I laughed out loud in the middle of a breakroom filled with people when I read it. When you see craziness, it really helps to just call it craziness.

But I’m also torn.

Williamson provides both the temptation to give in to the harsher condemnation…

My case is that these people should be ashamed of themselves, that a self-respecting society wouldn’t allow such a specimen as Lindsey Graham to vote, much less to serve in the Senate. I understand that hurts some feelings out there in the dank, wooly wilds of the “real America.”

So what?

And also a decent reason to refrain from it…

There is a great paradox at the heart of American life: Americans are, in many capacities, amazing people. … Visit an American community in crisis, and you’ll see remarkable neighborliness, cooperation, and good citizenship. Philosophy, religion, medicine, military affairs, science, music—Americans excel in an astonishing number of fields.  The American scientist, the American artist, the American businessman—impressive figures, all.

The American voter? A howling moonbat. I’d lend Ozzy Osbourne my truck on a Saturday night before I trusted one of those lunatics with any measure of real power beyond what is absolutely necessary.

Williamson’s point is to argue that we have a citizenship problem more than we have a leadership problem. (Echoing his colleague Nick Catoggio’s infinitely repeated point: “We don’t have a Trump problem; we have a Trump voter problem.”) And I don’t for a second deny my desire to simply nod and agree. But he also does a pretty good job convincing me of the opposite of his point. Namely, that we do in fact have, more than anything else, a leadership problem. Williamson does, after all, end his piece with an example not from Wendell Berry or even Virgil but from Cato — you know, the prominent Roman statesman and leader.

On the whole, and as usual, I can’t deny much of what Williamson says. But there is — I think, I wonder — a case to be made, and in fact is being made by Williamson (pace Williamson), that humans, not just Americans, have always been “politically stupid cretins and moonbats.” (And this can be as much a grand comedy as a grand tragedy. Just think of philosophizing cavemen and revolutionaries in slippers.)

If so, should this make us despise our neighbors and ourselves more? Or should we be particularly pissed at the “public servants” who aspired to leadership who have proved even more cretinous and selfish and opportunistic and vile than any of us or our neighbors — even the ones who stupidly support those “public servants?”

In other words, is our citizenship problem really much different than it has ever been?

Damned if I know.

---

But speaking of parting ways. It’s funny that Williamson mentions Obama’s “You didn’t build that” speech, since that is exactly what I had in mind last week with the kinds of absurdity that drove me toward the door. Right after Obama said it, I remember spending a baffling three hours on the way to Boston listening to a van full of self-professing Christians condemn the “Marxist, communist, community organizer (who probably wasn’t even born here — wink, wink, giggle, nod)” for reminding the country that most of us do in fact drive on roads and bridges that we didn’t build ourselves. That phrase got a lot of mileage in the Republican Party, and with every single Christian I knew. I have never understood why it got even an inch, especially with the proud spiritual descendants of a people who were given “a land on which you had not labored, and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards that you did not plant.” To Williamson’s point, these are often very good people, and often very thoughtful people, but you’re up against some cosmic principalities and powers if you expect them to extend that thoughtfulness to politics.

And also to Williamson’s own point, Williamson himself, I think, wants to have his cake here and eat it too. He tells us that we should all be grateful for the Republic that we were lucky enough to born into because we didn’t build it — and he’s right, we should, because we didn’t. But for some reason if a Democrat dares to remind the cretonous wombats driving south over the Piscataqua River Bridge “By the way, you didn’t build this” — well, that’s clearly just “collectivist” nonsense and we don’t need to stand for it.

Whether it’s bridges or “the republic,” it is good to be reminded of the things we enjoy which we did not build. The fact that we so irrationally and stubbornly reject this when the Other Team says it is part of The Problem. And the amount of dopamine that gets released doing exactly that is largely why I left. Or in this case, why I kindly part ways.

Thomas Nagel (via Jesse Singal):

Whether we succeed or fail in what we try to do nearly always depends to some extent on factors beyond our control. This is true of murder, altruism, revolution, the sacrifice of certain interests for the sake of others — almost any morally important act. What has been done, and what is morally judged, is partly determined by external factors. However jewel-like the good will may be in its own right, there is a morally significant difference between rescuing someone from a burning building and dropping him from a twelfth-story window while trying to rescue him. Similarly, there is a morally significant difference between reckless driving and manslaughter. But whether a reckless driver hits a pedestrian depends on the presence of the pedestrian at the point where he recklessly passes a red light. What we do is also limited by the opportunities and choices with which we are faced, and these are largely determined by factors beyond our control. Someone who was an officer in a concentration camp might have led a quiet and harmless life if the Nazis had never come to power in Germany. And someone who led a quiet and harmless life in Argentina might have become an officer in a concentration camp if he had not left Germany for business reasons in 1930. 

W. G. Sebald:

The rain clouds had dispersed when, after dinner, I took my first walk around the streets and lanes of the town [Southwold]. Darkness was falling, and only the lighthouse with its shining glass cabin still caught the last luminous rays that came in from the western horizon. Footsore and weary as I was after my long walk from Lowestoft, I sat down on a bench on the green called Gunhill and looked out on the tranquil sea, from the depths of which the shadows were now rising. Everyone who had been out for an evening stroll was gone. I felt as if I were in a deserted theatre, and I should not have been surprised if a curtain had suddenly risen before me and on the proscenium I had beheld, say, the 28th of May 1672 — that memorable day when the Dutch fleet appeared offshore from out of the drifting mists, with the bright morning light behind it, and opened fire on the English ships in Sole Bay. In all likelihood the people of Southwold hurried out of the town as soon as the first cannonades were fired to watch the rare spectacle from the beach. Shading their eyes with their hands against the dazzling sun, they would have watched the ships moving hither and thither, apparently at random, their sails billowing in a light northeast wind and then, as they manoeuvred ponderously, flapping once again. They would not have been able to make out human figures at that distance, not even the gentlemen of the Dutch and English admiralties on the bridges. As the battle continued, the powder magazines exploded, and some of the tarred hulls burned down to the waterline; the scene would have been shrouded in an acrid, yellowish-black smoke creeping across the entire bay and masking the combat from view. While most of the accounts of the battles fought on the so-called fields of honour have from time immemorial been unreliable, the pictorial representations of great naval engagements are without exception figments of the imagination. Even celebrated painters such as Storck, van der Velde or de Loutherbourg, some of whose versions of the Battle of Sole Bay I studied closely in the Maritime Museum in Greenwich, fail to convey any true impression of how it must have been to be on board one of these ships, already overloaded with equipment and men, when burning masts and sails began to fall or cannonballs smashed into the appallingly overcrowded decks. On the Royal James alone, which was set aflame by a fireship, nearly half the thousand-strong crew perished. No details of the end of the three-master have come down to us. There were eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen the commander of the English feet, the Earl of Sandwich, who weighed almost twenty-four stone, gesticulating on the afterdeck as the flames encircled him. All we know for certain is that his bloated body was washed up on the beach near Harwich a few weeks later. The seams of his uniform had burst asunder, the buttonholes were torn open, yet the Order of the Garter still gleamed in undiminished splendour. At that date there can have been only a few cities on earth that numbered as many souls as were annihilated in sea-battles of this kind. The agony that was endured and the enormity of the havoc wrought defeat our powers of comprehension, just as we cannot conceive the vastness of the effort that must have been required — from felling and preparing the timber, mining and smelting the ore, and forging the iron, to weaving and sewing the sailcloth — to build and equip vessels that were almost all predestined for destruction. For a brief time only these curious creatures sailed the seas, moved by the winds that circle the earth, bearing names such as Stavoren, Resolution, Victory, Groot Hollandia and Olyfan, and then they were gone. It has never been determined, which of the two parties in the naval battle fought off Southwold to extort trading advantages emerged victorious. It is certain, however, that the decline of the Netherlands began here, with a shift in the balance of power so small that it was out of proportion to the human and material resources expended in the battle; while on the other hand the English government, almost bankrupt, diplomatically isolated, and humiliated by the Dutch raid on Chatham, was now able, despite a complete absence of strategic thinking and a naval administration on the verge of disintegration, and thanks only to the vagaries of the wind and the waves that day, to commence the sovereignty at sea that was to be unbroken for so long. — As I sat there that evening in Southwold overlooking the German Ocean, I sensed quite clearly the earth’s slow turning into the dark. The huntsmen are up in America, writes Thomas Browne in The Garden of Cyrus, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia. The shadow of night is drawn like a black veil across the earth, and since almost all creatures, from one meridian to the next, lie down after the sun has set, so, he continues, one might, in following the setting sun, see on our globe nothing but prone bodies, row upon row, as if levelled by the scythe of Saturn — an endless graveyard for a humanity struck by falling sickness.

As a Christian, I will never buy the idea of Trump as God’s appointed man to right the American ship. (Most people I know don’t buy this either, or have thus far resisted it, publicly anyway.) Nor will I buy into the need to make less obtuse but no less dishonest excuses in that direction. (Most people I know do this a lot.) But for all I know, God could be using Trump to show us all just how fuckin’ stupid we are.

You guys thought you were rational, civilized, above the fray? Tee hee. Hold mine beer.

We’ll know have a better idea soon enough, I suppose.