Revisiting Rowan Williams:

No one is sure what Blake meant by mentioning “dark, Satanic mills” as part of what Jesus would have seen and moved among, but the candidates include early industrial sites, Druidic temples and (I’m afraid) Anglican parish churches. The point, though, is that we are being asked to imagine that the incarnate God moved and worked even in the middle of the cruelty, hypocrisy and exploitation that are an inseparable part of every human community’s history. “Jerusalem” is being built, even while all the signs in society around us seem to negate the vision. 

What we need is the rekindling of desire – the sheer passionate longing to see a social order at which the Holy Lamb of God might look without heartbreak. Arrows of desire; the courage and endurance of mental fight; the struggle to keep this imagination alive and burning – this is what we pray for. The poem looks back to an imaginary past and forward to an imagined future, but at its heart is the question: “do you truly want to live in Jerusalem? Because if you do, you need to remember that it is always already here and now; because even where justice and love seem to be defeated, the Holy Lamb of God is present.”

Nick Catoggio:

It seems chaotic, little more than haphazard fan service for his populist base, but there’s a common thread to many of the actions he’s taken. The impoundment nonsense is the latest example of Trump striving to make all federal policy subject to executive discretion and all exercises of that discretion subject to compliance with his wishes. We’re a government of “friends and enemies” now, and the more power he wields in his discretion, the more friends he’s going to have.

Also:

It is insane that a 25 percent tax on imports from America’s two closest trading partners could be imposed on the whim of one man rather than by a vote of Congress, but our feckless legislature spent many years gradually ceding authority to the president in this area and lacks the nerve to dare claw it back. And so, for Trump, tariffs have become a form of unilateral sanctionshe can impose to apply pressure internationally on weaker powers whenever there’s something he wants. […]

Is it any surprise, then, that he would look for ways to gain similar financial influence over adversaries here at home?

Impoundment is the way. If it’s within the president’s discretion to release or not release the enormous gobs of cash Congress sends out the door every year to domestic entities, practically every stakeholder in American society will need to kneel before him to stay afloat. Some people’s “loyalty” is compelled with a stick but others’ is purchased with a carrot. Trump, the man who insisted on putting his name on stimulus checks issued during the pandemic, wants the power to dole out the carrots. You want your appropriation from Congress? Then ask nicely, and explain what you’re prepared to do for him as a “favor” in return.

Wendell Berry:

What we are up against in this country, in any attempt to invoke private responsibility, is that we have nearly destroyed private life. Our people have given up their independence in return for the cheap seductions and the shoddy merchandise of so-called “affluence.” We have delegated all our vital functions and responsibilities to salesmen and agents and bureaus and experts of all sorts. We cannot feed or clothe ourselves, or entertain ourselves, or communicate with each other, or be charitable or neighborly or loving, or even respect ourselves, without recourse to a merchant or a corporation or a public-service organization or an agency of the government or a style-setter or an expert. Most of us cannot think of dissenting from the opinions or the actions of one organization without first forming a new organization. Individualism is going around these days in uniform, handing out the party line on individualism. Dissenters want to publish their personal opinions over a thousand signatures.

… In this state of total consumerism – which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide ourselves – all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken. We do not understand the earth in terms either of what it offers us or of what it requires of us, and I think it is the rule that people inevitably destroy what they do not understand.…Most of us, for example, not only do not know how to produce the best food in the best way – we don’t know how to produce any kind in any way. Our model citizen is a sophisticate who before puberty understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty will not know how to produce a potato. And for this condition we have elaborate rationalizations, instructing us that dependence for everything on somebody else is efficient and economical and a scientific miracle. I say, instead, that it is madness, mass produced. A man who understands the weather only in terms of golf is participating in a chronic public insanity that either he or his descendants will be bound to realize as suffering. I believe that the death of the world is breeding in such minds much more certainly and much faster than in any political capital or atomic arsenal.

(Inspired by Sarah Hendren’s recent, wonderfully loaded post, “On Choosing”)

An excerpt from Mark Schwen and Dorthy Bass’s book Leading Lives That Matter — specifically, the introduction to the section titled “How Shall I Tell the Story of My Life”:

We’ve read about the reasons for choosing one kind of life over another one, about whom we should heed when we are making decisions, and about how and why so many of the things that shape our identities are at one and the same time free and constrained. Leading a life that matters surely involves making good choices.

Though these deep and legitimate concerns about the place of free choice in our lives may explain why “The Road Not Taken” has been “taken” to be about choice, the poem is not mainly about choice at all. It instead explores the shape of the stories we tell to ourselves and others about ourselves over the course of our lives. The poem is also about how and why these stories change. The poem teaches us that there are two things of roughly equal importance in determining the quality of the lives we lead: the choices we make and what we make of those choices. Our interpretations of what we have chosen to do and of what has happened to us often take the form of stories, and these narratives in turn constitute our inner sense of ourselves, which includes feelings of meaning, purpose, and significance. To put this a bit differently, our imagination is just as important as our reason in shaping our identities and in making for lives of significance and substance. The widespread misreading of “The Road Not Taken” may indicate that as a people we do not rightly appreciate the importance of the imagination in shaping our efforts to lead lives that matter.

When we come to Frost’s poem with these latter ideas in our minds, we notice right away that the whole poem consists of two very different stories of the “same” event. The first story is relatively long (the first fifteen lines), quite indecisive about whether the two roads encountered by the speaker on an autumn morning differed from one another at all, and concluded by a resolution to keep one of the roads for some other time. The second story is much shorter (the final three lines), much more resolute about the differences between the two roads, and concluded by a resolution to take that one “less traveled.” The speaker tells the first story sometime soon after the event and then imagines how he will tell the story differently “ages and ages hence.” The speaker knows that his perspective on life will change over time and that he will be a different kind of person in old age than he was when he first came upon the two roads. He (or she) even knows how he will be different: he’ll be surer in his judgments and more dramatic in narrating certain particular choices in his life. Memory, the thread of continuity in his identity, will serve to some extent his sense of himself even as the changing shape of his life’s story will serve to change his sense of the significance of his past. One choice will have made “all the difference,” and his literally “self” serving memory will move him to claim that he once chose a “less traveled” way, even though he was not at all clear about this matter in the immediate aftermath of the moment of choice.

Like the speaker in this poem, all of us revise our own life stories all of the time. Unlike the speaker in the poem, many of us are not as aware of this as we should be. Sometimes we revise our stories depending on our audience. Would not most of us tell the story of an embarrassing experience somewhat differently to our parents, our siblings, our lovers, and our emplyers? But we undertake our work of revision more often for the sake of our primary audience, ourselves. The readings that follow “The Road Not Taken” will help us to understand the complexities and the vital importance of this constant process of “composing our lives.”

And this is their brief, thought-provoking intro to Frost’s poem itself:

The life and work of Robert Frost (1874-1963) spanned the entire first half of the twentieth century. As we noted in the introduction to another one of his poems, “Two Tramps in Mud Time” (Chapter 2), the deceptive simplicity of much of his work has tempted many readers to offer interpretations that are superficial at best or altogether mistaken at worst. To avoid such interpretations here, it is best to begin thinking about this poem by comparing the two accounts of the “same” event that exist within the poem. We have indicated some of the differences between the two stories in the general introduction to this chapter above.

For our purposes in this chapter, we want to use the poem to help us understand the process by which we ourselves revise our own life stories. So we need to ask ourselves what kind of person the speaker is, based upon the kind of story that he tells and the way in which he tells it in lines 1-15. For example, he seems constantly to second-guess himself and his judgments. How else would you characterize him?

When the speaker imagines what he will be telling about the same event many years later, he offers an account interrupted by a sigh (that dash at the end of line 18). Is this a sigh of regret or resignation or fatigue? The feat that the speaker accomplishes is quite remarkable. To see how and why this is so, think of the story you would now tell about why you made a certain decision — for example, about why you chose to attend one college rather than another one. Now try to imagine how that story will be different when you tell it again “ages and ages hence.” Now compare the two. What does that comparison teach you about how you expect to develop over time?

And why not include the poem as well:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Nick Catoggio:

To a human being prone to normal emotions like shame and remorse, his sheer brazenness is powerful evidence that he sincerely believes he’s done nothing wrong—which in turn is evidence that he really might not have done anything wrong. That’s the essence of his messaging strategy around January 6, one of the most successful propaganda campaigns in U.S. history. Through herculean amounts of shamelessness and gaslighting, never apologizing or betraying any sense of regret, the president and his toadies in right-wing media successfully persuaded millions of swing voters that America’s first-ever coup attempt was either no big deal or some sort of frame-up.

[…]

I don’t blame Democrats for not leaning into moral outrage this week, though. Why bother? It doesn’t work. Americans don’t share it, or don’t share it enough. The campaign was a referendum on whether the shame of having a president with a coup plot, two impeachments, and four indictments to his record would bother swing voters enough to prefer a lackluster normie Democrat instead. We got our answer.

[…]

I’m convinced that Americans will end up holding Trump to a lower standard morally, ethically, and civically in his second term than they have other presidents, and not just because his infectious shamelessness has numbed them to his outrages.

It’s because, unlike in his first term, they knew what they were signing up for. You cannot watch January 6 happen, vote for him four years later, and then huff indignantly when he starts his own crypto Ponzi scheme or cuts off security for a critic who’s under credible threat of being murdered by terrorists. Even if you feel a pang of vestigial embarrassment or disgust about it, you can’t complain without looking like a preposterous rube. Trump is being Trump. What on earth did you expect?

[…]

So, certainly, the cowardice they showed this week by not emphatically denouncing the pardons is reprehensible. But on the other hand: What on earth did you expect?

Our problem is not Republicans in Congress or even the Republican in the White House. Our problem, as ever, is the millions of boiled frogs who’ve concluded that shamelessness is a political virtue, not a vice. Blame them for what’s happened, and for what’s to come.

Walter Olsen:

There’s no way around it. The thugs who broke cops’ bones, the creeps who used bear spray against the Republic’s defenders, the ones who express no remorse and say they’d do it all again, the ones judges warned about as at risk for reoffending if freed—they’re all walking free. And they’re walking free for one reason only: because they did it for Trump.

It’s a sad day for America. It deserves lasting infamy. […]

In the days after the order, several federal trial court judges in Washington, D.C. used the orders they wrote dismissing cases, as entailed in Trump’s order, to speak to the history books about what had just happened. As part of such an order dismissing pending charges against one defendant, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly included this passage for the ages about how historical truth can be affirmed even if legal process is stopped in its tracks:

Dismissal of charges, pardons after convictions, and commutations of sentences will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021. What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens. Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.

What role law enforcement played that day and the heroism of each officer who responded also cannot be altered or ignored. Present that day were police officers from the U.S. Capitol Police and those who came to their aid when called: the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, Montgomery County Police Department, Prince George’s County Police Department, Arlington County Police Department, and Fairfax County Police Department. Grossly outnumbered, those law enforcement officers acted valiantly to protect the Members of Congress, their staff, the Vice President and his family, the integrity of the Capitol grounds, and the Capitol Building—our symbol of liberty and a symbol of democratic rule around the world. For hours, those officers were aggressively confronted and violently assaulted. More than 140 officers were injured. Others tragically passed away as a result of the events of that day. But law enforcement did not falter. Standing with bear spray streaming down their faces, those officers carried out their duty to protect. All of what I have described has been recorded for posterity, ensuring that what transpired on January 6, 2021 can be judged accurately in the future.

Molly White:

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also joined in concerns about politicians launching tokens, posting: “The risk of politician coins comes from the fact that they are such a perfect bribery vehicle. If a politician issues a coin, you do not even need to send them any coins to give them money. Instead, you just buy and hold the coin, and this increases the value of their holdings passively.” […]

I think it’s not great that a Senator who personally holds bitcoin can move bitcoin markets by a couple thousand dollars with just a tweet – and it’s not great that someone with a financial stake in crypto is tasked with regulating the sector. – The Subcommittee is stacked with crypto proponents, with pro-crypto Ruben Gallego (D-AZ, recipient of $10 million in crypto PAC funding) serving as the ranking member. Pro-crypto Republicans Bernie Moreno (OH, recipient of $40 million), Dave McCormick (PA, recipient of $35,000), Thom Tillis (NC), and Bill Hagerty (TN) are also taking seats. […]

Meanwhile, various financial firms are eagerly testing the waters with the new, more permissive regulators by filing applications for exchange-traded funds tracking memecoins including DOGE, BONK, and TRUMP. 21 I suppose they made their bed, and now they’re going to lie in it by being forced to review endless applications for the dumbest ETFs possible. If a financial adviser ever recommends I diversify my portfolio by buying shares of a PEPE ETF, I shall take that as my cue to withdraw every penny and place it under my mattress. […]

At least eight people have been arrested in connection to the kidnapping of the co-founder of Ledger, a popular cryptocurrency hardware wallet. David Balland and his wife were kidnapped from their home in France early on January 21 by a group who demanded a large cryptocurrency ransom. The group cut off one of Balland’s fingers, sending it to his associates and demanding ransom from them and family members. However, police were able to locate Balland and his wife on the night of January 22. “That’s 7 crypto wrench attacks in the first 3 weeks of this year. Unprecedented acceleration,” wrote Jameson Lopp, using slang to refer to physical attacks on people known to hold large sums of crypto. Lopp maintains an ongoing list of people who have been attacked in attempted or successful cryptocurrency thefts. […]

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also joined in concerns about politicians launching tokens, posting: “The risk of politician coins comes from the fact that they are such a perfect bribery vehicle. If a politician issues a coin, you do not even need to send them any coins to give them money. Instead, you just buy and hold the coin, and this increases the value of their holdings passively.”

Nicholas Carr:

Near the end of “Minerva’s Owl,” in a rare moment of concision, [Harold Adams Innis] summed up his view: “Enormous improvements in communication have made understanding more difficult.” With that one startling and seemingly paradoxical sentence, he called into question a foundational assumption of modern media and, indeed, modern society: that an abundance of information brings a wealth of knowledge. Information and knowledge, he saw, could be adversaries. […]

The early, idealistic view of the Internet proved an illusion. The system went out of balance almost immediately, its spatial reach subverting its temporal depth. Far from alleviating our present-mindedness, the net magnified it.

Innis would not have been surprised. Information in digital form is weightless, its immateriality perfectly suited to instantaneous long-distance communication. It makes newsprint seem like concrete. The infrastructure built for its transmission, from massive data centers to fiber-optic cables to cell towers and Wi-Fi routers, is designed to deliver vast quantities of information as “dynamically” as possible, to use a term favored by network engineers and programmers. The object is always to increase the throughput of data. When the flow of information reaches the consumer, it’s translated into another flow: a stream of images formed of illuminated pixels, shifting patterns of light. The screen interface, particularly in its now-dominant touch-sensitive form, beckons us to dismiss the old and summon the new — to click, swipe, and scroll; to update and refresh. If the printed book was a technology of inscription, the screen is a technology of erasure.

(Also, this line from Carr is too good to pass up: “To use Google today is to enter not an archive but a bazaar.”)

Of course, a failure to communicate is nothing foreign to human interaction. If the dominant media belligerently amplify the failure, they certainly didn’t create it. But if the medium is both the message and the metaphor (and it certainly is), it’s a steeper, uphill battle than it ought to be for us these days.

For all his insight and brilliance, Innis was a largely pessimistic man, Carr tells us. But he ends the piece with what is basically a shout-out to the one glimmer of hope he finds in Innis: a reverence for the spoken word. “A spoken word may be as evanescent as a tweet or a snap,” Carr says, “but the acts of talking and listening — together, in one place — remain unmatched as vehicles for critical, creative, and communal thought.”

Linger on that word: unmatched.

The face-to-face interaction is simply that — unmatched.

In all of human history, is there an older or simpler truth than this? Surely this is because there really is no other human kind of interaction. We replicate this, as humans, with our interactions online, and often do so wonderfully; but it is still a replication, a shadow. And — though a shadow is not nothing — information that spends any extended period of time absent the interacting body through which character and love and community emerge is bound to degrade. And it is bound to degrade everything — the character, the love, the community, and the information itself.

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

—T. S. Eliot

And yet, still unmatched is this:

To have turned away from everything to one face is to find oneself face to face with everything.

—Elizabeth Bowen

Nick Catoggio:

At the center is Trump himself, a lifelong con artist and recently convicted criminal who plainly feels more kinship with foreign strongmen than with the framers of the American experiment. Around him is a motley coterie of tech oligarchs, boorish yes-men, authoritarian ideologues, and preposterous grifters, all jockeying to assert themselves. Beyond that lies a ring of servile Republican mandarins who dislike him and his politics but are too cowardly to do anything but kowtow. And beyond that extends the great mass of MAGA fanatics, ever eager to validate any impulse he might have.

Part mafia, part circus, part cult, part scam: I’ve written more than 400 columns for The Dispatch, most of them on this subject, but I’ll never do justice to how comprehensively grotesque Trump and his movement are. At noon today he smarmily swore an oath of office to defend the Constitution in the same building that his goons attacked four years ago, to his delight, in hopes of installing him in power unlawfully. If you watched it and your stomach didn’t lurch then you’re well and truly boiled.

These four years are going to be worse than even I expected. And that’s not just the usual pessimism talking.