Helga Marsala:

The point is that memory is a sacred fact, tragically dense, identitary and yet open. And it is marked by boulders and pauses for meditation, by beauty and horror, by symbolic writings and images. It should then be left the time and space of sediment, of transformation, of testimony. With all the inconvenience that sometimes comes from that. Hans Piffrader’s imposing bas-relief tells a thousand things, and tells them – even if it is not a masterpiece – with the finesse and passion of the creative gesture. Things that still today invite reflection. No longer propaganda, but document. A corpus that the present has the duty to question and look in the face, continuing to make itself history, to take the burden, to drag forward the echo of the facts, the effort of analysis, the exercise of resistance.

Luke Bretherton (emphasis added):

The life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, rather than Western culture or a particular intellectual tradition, are the condition for the possibility of movement into new kinds of relationship with God and neighbour. Any such journey of conversion demands that we orient ourselves to living in time and the experience of flux and transition that is part of what it means to be a finite and fallen creature rather than a god.… Seeking to encounter Christ where the Spirit is blowing here and now rules out a nostalgic division that poses the past as good and the present as intrinsically bad. All forms of life are entangled with idolatry and structural sin. The spiritual, moral, and political struggle is to find ways to identify with Christ and participate in the work of the Holy Spirit and thereby dis-identify with the past and present idols and cultural systems of domination that shape us.

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.