One Handful of Ideas

• Only Catholics have defined God without obscurity or narcissism. The Protestant, beginning their gaze towards God by looking inward, rarely learns to see God as a being separate from their desires Who, on His own, grants us precisely what we need. Instead, God is always working miracles, whether that’s saving one from a life of sin or a bad morning. Indeed many Catholics need a nuanced vision of God’s will, one that does not propose a God that moves individual blades of grass or every nuerotransmitter, but we must admit Protestantism has set loose these misunderstandings. One must compare what Protestants are often calling miracles with what the Catholics believe are. The miracles of the Catholic faith are typically rarer and very often have nothing to do with one’s will, per se, only their faith. Often enough, they’re a sign that one is doing the right thing, but not necessarily that one is going to receive exactly what they have asked for.

 

• Liberals speak of liberation but are always rushing towards conformity. In an age supposedly ripe with free thinkers, personifying an unfettered freedom never before seen in all of humanity’s days, liberals are the main people clogging up bigger cities with traffic, businesses, and activity. They are all vehement and aware, fighting the past’s oppressive shadow, and yet so many rush into the same places to live. Of course this is natural, one has to be around those like them, but it presents a contradiction which should lead any intellectual to consider just what the nature and purpose of conformity is.

 

• Of all the things feminists do understand, the least of these is a man’s weaknesses. Listen to one talk about the way a man is turned on. It is like he came with buttons and all he need do is simply not press them. Indeed there is a deeper misunderstanding of human motivation, but when that misunderstanding is placed in the context of a man’s emotions and faults, the feminist ends up proposing solutions that a man can never integrate into a larger composition of himself. Consequently, when a man or woman says women shouldn’t wear certain clothing, all the feminist says is men need to not look in that direction; when someone says he is all too easily turned on by the way a woman dresses, men are advised to simply not be turned on. A shame that any Christian woman should resign herself to these replies, as if temptation were simply a thing a person vanquished by will alone — nevermind Grace, and to hell with edifying beauty or goodness or truth outside of the self.

 

• And one last thing I’ve been thinking about which can be connected to all of these things, but I’ll leave it to the diligent thinker to do so: liberals have a proclivity or something more than mere habit of seeing in policy and decisions only their best potential outcome. Sure this can help someone who feels unforgivable, down-trodden, abandoned, or condemned to feel there is a chance for them to in some way redeem themselves or better their station, but even in that case, it is dishonest to posit only the positive for such a desperate soul. Part of our betterment is acknowledging just how awful things can become. I was once told that this mindstate is precisely that which an addict ought to avoid — but I cannot see an addict avoiding the fact of potential mishaps without becoming someone who simply becomes addicted to something else. The depressed mind must focus not on the bad or the good — neither alone — but on what it takes to overcome the bad, which is an mixture of the good and bad, which is hope. As Christopher Lasch said before, hope is the admission of potential good that may be achieved at great, great costs. It is the awareness that good things can and may happen, but probably not without valiant and diligent effort. For all their desires to help the marginalized, liberals make the mistake of forgetting this and leave them, and all others under their care, vulnerable to great harm. We are witnessing this almost everywhere because most politicians are liberal now, however they identify. This fact was covered in detail in an article in one of my favorite publications, The Hedgehog Review. They see immigrants as harmless, and so Germany has installed cement blocks to prevent vehicular homicide attacks which are decorated for the season while an immigrant was aquited of murder and deported in California; the market’s freedom is vaunted above even the good of that which succeeds in the market, so porn offers a lucrative and addictive product while feminist continue condemning slut shaming and the objectification of women, even though the best examples of the latter are always billboards for women they dress just like; feminists also promote abortion, citing a woman’s need for autonomy and securing freedom to seize economic opportunities as most everyone and their child can’t foresee a stable future economically. They view all of their decisions only in light of the outcomes they expect, which are always good; they ignore much of the failures of their own policies that have already succeeded. They are ill-prepared to counteract the evil in humanity, and so they neglect it or try to assuage it without much conflict.

The Patron Saint of Common Sense, The Bull-Moose

Truth has a way of overlapping. I’ve always had a fondness of the way that a song or one writer and another writer at a completely separate point in time or place say the same thing, more or less. Recently I thought about the following quotations:

We cannot insist that the first years of infancy are of supreme importance, and that mothers are not of supreme importance; or that motherhood is a topic of sufficient interest for men, but not of sufficient interest for mothers. Every word that is said about the tremendous importance of trivial nursery habits goes to prove that being a nurse is not trivial. All tends to the return of the simple truth that the private work is the great one and the public work the small. The human house is a paradox, for it is larger inside than out.

~G.K. Chesterton: ‘Turning Inside Out’, Fancies vs. Fad

And

Just as the prime work for the man must be earning his livelihood and the livelihood of those dependent upon him, so the prime work for the average woman must be keeping the home and bearing and rearing her children. This woman is not a parasite on society. She is society. She is the one indispensable component part of society. Socially, the same standard of moral obligation applies both to her and to the man; and in addition she is entitled to all the chivalry of love and tenderness and reverence, if in gallant and fearless fashion she faces the risk and wearing labor entailed by her fulfilment of duty; but if she shirks her duty she is entitled to no more consideration than the man who shirks his. Unless she does her duty, the whole social system collapses. If she does her duty, she is entitled to all honor.

— Theodore Roosevelt, “The Parasite Woman”, The Foes of Our Own Household

Both present the unmentioned fact verboten in the modern world: the home is a place not only worth keeping, but a place for being; it is a place where life must spend a copious amount existing, lest life should become something far less than livable.

What a delight also to read that the two had met and Roosevelt spoke highly before and after of Chesterton. I am curious to know what Chesterton’s thoughts were, but this shall suffice:

In England Mr. Roosevelt was particularly glad to make or renew the acquaintance of Mr. Balfour, Mr. Kipling, Lord Roberts, Lord Kitchener, Sir Harry Johnston, and Captain Scott. Long and delightful were the hours spent in retreat at “Chequers Court,” Mr. Arthur Lee’s country house, in conversation with thinking and doing men like these. He passed an especially happy day with Sir Edward Grey on a long tramp through the New Forest. It was noted that he had no time for expatriated American men, or American women married to English titles. Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Bernard Shaw did not meet. I wish I were free to give the Colonel’s opinion of the Englishman; it may be said, however, that it fully reciprocates the dramatist’s scorn and pity. Curiously enough, however, Mr. Roosevelt desired to meet Mr. Gilbert Chesterton.

—The World’s Work, Volume XX, May to October 1910

http://platitudesundone.blogspot.ca/2012/07/theodore-roosevelt-and-gkc-again.html

The following bits are quoted on the same blog, but the source is here:

They were instantly recognizable by their initials alone—men of outsized personalities. In the Edwardian era, it would be hard to imagine two more intelligent and gifted conversationalists than Theodore Roosevelt and G.K. Chesterton. Indeed, America’s 26th president greatly admired this British man of letters—particularly Chesterton’s literary study of Charles Dickens (first published in 1906).[3] And for Christmas 1908, TR had given one of Chesterton’s most memorable collections of essays, Heretics, as a gift to his friend Captain Archibald Butt.[4]

TR and GKC first met during a dinner in London two years later—at Roosevelt’s request. One evening in the spring of 1910 they dined together in London. It is easy to imagine their maître d’ would have seen instantly there was little need to renew the candlelight at their table. Resplendent conversation supplied everything needed by way of spark and fire.

Given TR’s famously powerful presence—he was called “T. Vesuvius Roosevelt”—and people left his company needing to “wring the personality out of their clothes”—his tribute to Chesterton after their meeting was all the more telling.[5] Speaking with a friend after their dinner had concluded, the former president said Chesterton was a man of undeniable genius—a peerless font of brilliant conversation.[6]

 

Fast-forward to November 1919, and we learn more details of TR’s dinner with GKC. They were supplied by journalist Strickland Gillian in an article for The Lyceum Magazine. Confirming Slosson’s account, Gillian began: “When Colonel Roosevelt returned from his African expedition, and was given a dinner by the London journalists and authors, he was asked whom he would like to have by his side to talk with during the evening. He promptly replied, ‘Gilbert Chesterton.’” Gillian then added, “afterwards, in speaking with a friend, [Colonel Roosevelt] exclaimed, ‘What a supreme genius Chesterton is! I never met a man who could talk so brilliantly and interestingly.’”[12]

 

Nor was TR the only Roosevelt who relished Chesterton’s writing. The long poem, “Lepanto,” was a favourite of TR’s eldest daughter Alice, who could (and often did) “recite all nine stanzas at a rapid clip.” In later years, reciting this poem with her granddaughter Joanna was a source of particular delight for Alice Roosevelt Longworth—something that drew them together.

Kermit Roosevelt, the son who had accompanied TR on his celebrated African safari, also had a great appreciation for Chesterton. Years later, this led to something of a social and literary coup, for Kermit and his wife succeeded in enticing the famously reticent poet Edwin Arlington Robinson to accept a dinner invitation—something he rarely did. The occasion: a gathering in honour of GKC. The bright company of those in attendance also included Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Robinson, who was also known by his initials, EAR, was said to have become quite talkative that evening. Indeed, he told a friend afterwards that he had “talked incessantly.”[8]

Comfort Came Against my Will

To some degree, at least. As I came home from Mass on All Souls Day, an influx in some of my convictions dawned on me. With all of the things that have been going on in the Church, I’ve felt more of what pushed me to the faith: one does not have to be happy to belong, and indeed belonging might often feel a lot like being misplaced. So I was dealing with even more feelings of being out of place than usual. It seems like Pope Francis and his Satellite Swiss Guard are out there in numbers defending mistruths and gaining steam. Many days it is hard to tell where the direction of the Church is truly pointing.

So Thursday night, I had felt that good old feeling of righteous indignation, but coupled with the feeling that there really is no other way to feel and it is a shame some do not feel this way. To be more specific, as I got into bed to read a pamphlet a sedevacantist friend gave me, I started to realize that after a certain point, people get really tired of believing that it is them who have the problem, and all the folks willing to smile through their teeth in order to be taken for kind, all those that promise mercy but whiff an attempt at dialogue with traditionalists, all those who say the Church is true in all ages and must also in this one change are those who’ve rightly discerned what is true and good. Eventually, people start to deny this reality and assert that they are in fact right.

That is what is behind the animosity with which all people, rightly or incorrectly, called conservative feel — those white nationalists who don’t want to hate themselves for their skin or apologize for either pulling themselves out of poverty or simply working hard on their own to become successful. The rejection of the liberal agenda that turns into pride in what one believes is also behind the traditionalists inside and outside of the Church, for they have the sense to suspect that the world was not made to be confined to the principles set out in the last 60 to 100 years, that good things bloomed in ages now buried in man-laid dirt. They have, in a word, their senses. And so, they don’t want to believe that they are the chief problem to be dealt with by giving up everything they know. To whatever extent that is true, it is how the feel. It is why Trump won, it is why some White Nationalists feel more invigorated than they’ve felt in quite a while, it is why people don’t feel sorry for immigrants in any capacity.

Speaking with regard to traditionalists in the Church, Joseph Shaw of Latin Mass Society says this: “The progressives have no idea what forces they have unleashed. What they have done is pushed these good people into a corner. They have reached their non-negotiable principles.”

Similar commentary exists on the appeal of Trump. Regarding his plain speech and his victory, Matthew Walther says this: “This was not because voters are irresponsible or childish or too stupid to know what’s good for them. It is because they know all too well that they are human and would appreciate not being treated otherwise.”

The forgotten and marginalized for simply not fitting the mold formed by the anti-normative, anti-mold-fitting progressives are engendered by the labor of the very liberals that have hated them for so long.

Hearing this fact elucidated by voices outside of the amorphous and emotive one in my head was indeed comforting. Things may indeed turn around for America and for the Church. One should hope they will. In the meantime, it is time for these types of folks to clear their head, clear their throat, and clear the air.

Tru Azz Conservatism

From a source I have fallen away from reading lately, The American Conservative, here relayed as the positions of the anti-federalists:

They insisted on the importance of a small political scale, particularly because a large expanse of diverse citizens makes it difficult to arrive at a shared conception of the common good and an overly large scale makes direct participation in political rule entirely impracticable if not impossible. They believed that laws were and ought to be educative, and insisted upon the centrality of virtue in a citizenry. Among the virtues most prized was frugality, and they opposed an expansive, commercial economy that would draw various parts of the Union into overly close relations, thereby encouraging avarice, and particularly opposed trade with foreign nations, which they believed would lead the nation to compromise its independence for lucre. They were strongly in favor of “diversity,” particularly relatively bounded communities of relatively homogeneous people, whose views could then be represented (that is, whose views could be “re-presented”) at the national scale in very numerous (and presumably boisterous) assemblies. They believed that laws were only likely to be followed when more or less directly assented to by the citizenry, and feared that as distance between legislators and the citizenry increased, that laws would require increased force of arms to achieve compliance. For that reason, along with their fears of the attractions of international commerce and of imperial expansion, they strongly opposed the creation of a standing army and insisted instead upon state-based civilian militias. They demanded inclusion of a Bill of Rights, among which was the Second Amendment, the stress of which was not on individual rights of gun ownership, but collective rights of civilian self-defense born of fear of a standing army and the temptations to “outsource” civic virtue to paid mercenaries.

A lot of what I’ve read about Distributism echoes much mentioned here. Distrubitism seeks to distribute power as widely as possible, discouraging it’s coalescing into a central authority or bureaucracy. I am willing to bet if the right followed the tract initiated by the Anti-federalists above, the country would look a lot different, be a lot fairer, and most people would lean right as well.

More to the point of what I said on an earlier date about conservatives being definable as those willing to admit and respond to life’s tragic character, the article puts this fact in another light, namely the recognition of the law of unintended consequences.

 

…there is the conservative disposition, one articulated perhaps most brilliantly by Russell Kirk, who described conservatism above all not as a set of policy positions, but as a general view toward the world. That disposition especially finds expression in a “piety toward the wisdom of one’s ancestors,” a respect for the ancestral that only with great caution, hesitancy, and forbearance seeks to introduce or accept change into society. It is supremely wary of the only iron law of politics—the law of unintended consequences (e.g., a few conservatives predicted that the introduction of the direct primary in the early 1900’s would lead to increasingly extreme ideological divides and the increased influence of money in politics. In the zeal for reform, no one listened). It also tends toward a pessimistic view of history, more concerned to prevent the introduction of corruption in a decent regime than driven to pursue change out a belief in progress toward a better future.

You Think It’s Easy, But You’re Wrong

The real difference between a conservative and a liberal is not so much how traditional a person is. A correlation exists, yes, but many liberals are happy to maintain certain traditions in their own life and suggest broader populations enjoy those same or other traditions. Many liberals support traditions but call them culture, and they are especially suggestive of supporting these cultures when they belong to minorities or disadvantaged people.

Many conservatives are not religious, and many who are still find themselves saying they see nothing wrong with this or that group being afforded the “rights” they believe they deserve to have.

So the difference must be made along some other characteristic. Best I can tell at the moment, that characteristic is a optimistic belief about human nature. Liberals affirm such a belief. Now many will tell you they admit and know of a lot of evil and wrongdoings. They know that human beings are capable of grave harm, they know people shoot up masses of people, rob, lend for profit (yes, usury is still a sin), start wars, and so on. But that is not the same thing as believing human nature has a certain inclination towards evil. For this reason, I’d say even many conservatives are liberal. Christianity has become a means by which such optimism has been passed on and embraced. Christ has redeemed us, by His blood we are saved, God has already forgiven us and so on and so forth. Christianity, for these, means that one has no reason to suspect human beings are capable of such grave evil that they may do it as easily as waking up in the morning. Again, admission is not the benchmark. Plenty Christians admit to much evil, but at root, they believe human beings are inclined to behavior for the better.

And of course many people who are not Christian are optimistic about human nature. Some because they’ve been privileged enough to see so many examples of positive behavior, others because they have no faith in anything and consequently cling to the idea that people are capable of good and mostly want to do good. Still others accept such an idea because it’s popular and they’ve never really experienced enough to contradict it.

The motives are still more, but the point is that these people are liberal and find a value in being optimistic about human behavior, the interaction of corporations and the public, the policies of our governments and their application by large bureaucracies, the ongoing involvement of our military in the conflicts of other countries, deregulating the market as well as human behavior in general. I don’t wish to inform any litmus test for all that a liberal thinks, but these are major points of contention between them and conservatives.

A conservative, however, regards human behavior with significant prudence and caution. It is not so much that they are even pessimistic about human behavior. It is not a matter of being pessimistic or optimistic — it is about being either when there is cause, that moderate quality being perfectly worded by the virtue of hope which is an admission of good constantly thwarted by and at odds with evil. Those with hope know the latter tragically often wins out. As a result, they don’t become blind to it and suddenly disregard evil in hopes of encouraging more good simply by being optimistic all the time, nor are they foolish enough to think that anything good comes from succumbing to despair. These people are rarely those who come off as cheery and easily excited. They’re more often balanced and even tempered. They are weighing the good against the bad in any given situation.

Because they must always weigh things, they hold on to their traditions. They believe that something once good may never happen again, so it is best to maintain a form to once again produce the substance. This is one reason the Sunday obligation is more or less common sense and why daily mass is encouraged. Secularly, this is why people suggest to addicts and the lethargic routinizing their days.

Now, the distinction between conservatives and liberals that I have pointed out cannot be compared to any current understanding of how we are politically divided. I would argue that many people who I’d say are conservative identify as liberal. Nonetheless, liberals often support the things they do because they believe there can come no harm from them. Divorce, the right to marry, abortion, greater progress in the sciences and technology, workers rights, etc. are all agreeable to the liberal because these things bring overall good and only a negligible amount of bad. This is the precise way of looking at gentrification that I’ve heard from anyone not bewildered and distraught by it. Neighborhoods improve, they argue. I’ve also heard it from people about legalizing drugs. All of these things the liberal mind views as an expansion on human liberty that works for the better.

Hopefully I’ve made it clear how I would differentiate a liberal from a conservative. At the end of the day, a conservative may support many of the same things as liberals, but the reasoning is different. For this reason, we cannot, again, understand these frameworks based on how the terms are applied demographically in our current society.

Now the distinction may seem arbitrary to some, but given the name of this blog, I think a little more credit is due to conservatives. Over the last few years, perhaps since I saw Sicario, I’ve really been struggling — more like King David as he wrote psalms, not as an actor with drugs and fame — with the fact that I simply do find the more darker and tragic art more fulfilling. I won’t walk any present audience through that journey, but I can say that at the current moment I feel evermore with the day that tragic art and recognizing as well as embracing the tragedy in life is what people need to do. Maybe at all times, but, if not, especially now. The tragic provokes change while the joyful embraces the current reality. This acceptance of life’s inherent harrowing, heartbreaking, and hapless tendencies comes with a temperament and outlook that I’ve come to associate with conservatives. The whole nation has leaned left and lost this temperament and outlook. We think so highly of science, politicians, the wealthy, technology, capitalism (meaning economic actors acting without intervention), plenty of other systems too, and every other ideal we pursue. It is daunting to see the amount of faith people put in everything from an iphone to a BLM march. It doesn’t seem to make any difference what we’re cheering for, because we’re obsessed with the cheering. Causes vary, but in the end we’ve lost that prudent, patient approach. For the fact, we are thanked by conditions that worsen in all the expected ways and a few we didn’t foresee.

One of Joseph Sobran’s pieces raised the project of asking the Liberal, firstly, what kind of society would they be a conservative in — in what kind of society would a liberal believe we’ve settled in to a good place that we oughtn’t mess with too quickly. I don’t think anyone can say “Ah yes, our current society, of course,” but anyone who gives an answer to the question would inevitably hinge that ideal society’s perfection on it’s flexibility and ability to change, progress, and update. Broadly speaking, this means we can never say we want a society in which the average person really does have their say because the average person cannot effect the sweeping changes that the progress-minded want to see. More personally, it means we will always struggle with one another and our world like actors and singers trying to get used to a fleeting brush of success.

How to blame yourself

What keeps me angry all these years is my refusal to believe that I am alone. To believe and then accept that one is alone is the seed of contentedness for many people. You begin to hold yourself responsible for your actions alone, you don’t get angry at other people because you’re indifferent to them, and you mostly learn to look after your own happiness or peace. I’m not capable of that. And every whiff I catch of it in my nose makes my soul cringe.

Which means I am often cringing because of conservatives and liberals both. Both might give the impression of accepting responsibility and encouraging individuals to do the right then at various points in time, but the fact that they both essentially defend the same individualism and only oppose different institutions should suggest they don’t know what they’re talking about.

While conservatives seem to suppose that people act responsibly and control themselves because conservatives believe in a certain moral system, usually Christianity, they are altogether at a loss of how to recognize why Liberals might have concern about institutional reform in various areas in our society. Conservatives emphasize the individual so much that the individual is essentially provoked to isolation. Isolation of the soul, that is; conservatives still suggest that community, family, and religion — all of which draw the individual outward — are good things. But at the end of the day, these things have suffered because they haven’t been properly, which is to say theologically, understood or supported. The focus conservatives put on the individual’s self-determination precludes any successfully broader defense of the necessities in life. If a person becomes bankrupt, homeless, addicted to drugs, terminally ill because of a condition they could have treated on their own, an immigrant or refugee, a high school dropout, etc., it is because the individual didn’t do enough. I won’t deny this is always to some degree true, but it’s a terrible starting point if your intentions are remote to improving society. If your intentions are to blame people for any and everything they do, then it’s a response consistent with your motives. But then one should wonder why conservatives aren’t harder on the wealthy.

Regarding Liberals, they are often blind to how society can also effect virtue for the better; they often miss how telling people they are free to do certain things can quickly become blaming them alone for their response, and as a consequence people become more atomized as well. Pro-choicers who hear of a woman being raped and having her child speak with confusion and animosity, claiming that was her choice and she shouldn’t go around saying it’s right just because it’s what she wanted. For years now, certain people will say that a guy looking at a woman dressed a certain way is himself seeing her in a sexual manner, for it is him who has the choice of how he looks at women. Speaking to a driver, Uber’s former CEO told the guy off because he was complaining about how little rideshare drivers are now paid. The former CEO said that some people don’t want to better themselves in life. Tell me you wouldn’t expect to hear that from a conservative.

Between the two major political parties essentially casting off concern for certain people (likely, in my thinking, because it is simply too difficult to sympathize with certain people, which depends on who you disagree with or what you despise), American society has ultimately fallen into thinking that people who do what they consider wrong have done it because they chose to. It would do us all one better to see that the individual is always bound to society, or at least to God. To do so would be to always take into consideration the effects that institutions and people around us have on the choices we make. I mean, God is doing that, although he expects us to do the right thing still. But his judgment is final, whereas ours should be responsive and corrective in hopes of sparing one another God’s harshest judgment.

Dancing on Ceremony

After watching the episodes of The Office leading up to and ending with Jim and Pam getting married, I have gotten the thought that what is wrong with Liberals is their willingness to dance on ceremony. Liberals seem to dance on ceremony like it was a grave, like they are free from imaginary chains that held them down.

 

The first episode of the pair where Jim and Pam are married deals with particular coldness the only character in the show thus far who might be considered socially conservative, Pam’s grandmother Sylvia (“Meemaw”). Pam and Jim warn the office staff about her before the wedding and hope to ward off any slip of the tongue that might inform her of Pam’s pregnancy. At this point, because Pam and Jim aren’t married, this would prove scandalous in the eyes of Sylvia. When Sylvia finally does find out because Jim misspeaks during a toast, her disappointment is met with Michael’s jokes and excuses, all suggesting Sylvia, this antiquated modicum of a remnant of an artifact of the past, is being uptight and should accept the fact that her granddaughter is pregnant before getting married. It would be have been fair and fine if Sylvia were disappointed and dealt with it, and was even comforted by Pam — if Sylvia got her chance to speak up about why she felt that way, instead of walking out of the dinner before the wedding, and shooting out some garbage defense of what America used to be that any citizen informed by the breadth of MSNBC’s wisdom could write, it would have seemed like she was a real person rather than the shell of the past which the future and progress has successfully emptied of being. As her and Michael talk, she is only coaxed into attending the wedding with a lie.

At that point, I had only begun to feel like the liberal bias in the show was showing. ANd I was content to ignore it. But the rest of the show really does trample some of the romanticism built around Jim and Pam’s, well, romance — their love. The attempts at and successful hookups are the main culprit. But their effect is obvious.

Through a mistake of Pam’s, she ends up feeling like her dress is ruined and that she looks terrible. She then calls Jim to meet and talk. Jim does some shit to his suit. They’re “even” now. And then they head out for a little trip to Niagra Falls as everyone awaits the wedding to begin. When they return, Dwight cuts off that old hag decaying into the dilapidation of decrepitude behind the organ — probably there only to play it, which is a no longer necessary task since these young hep cats got themselves an aux cord and an ipod — and puts on a modern pop song. To this song, everyone dances down the isle. The day is brought to fruition as people dance on ceremony. The vows don’t even show in the episode. All the audience gets is a taste of the many blunders that befell Jim and Pam.

Pardon me, but this all just felt forced. And because it felt forced, I was at least forced by extension to consider what motives there were in writing the episode the way they did. I don’t know if the writers were just happy to finally be getting Jim and Pam wedded off so other characters and plots can receive attention, I don’t really recall if this was the point when the writers’ strike was starting and the show got so unfunny I had to stop watching it. All I know is that they seem to make it plainly obvious that the pressure leading up to a major ceremony is unwarranted and you should just go with it, you should even dance on it to ensure you enjoy all the mayhem that may occur.

If this seems innocuous, it is because we are inundated in a culture that laughs at the past without understanding it. The arrogance is abundant in all the hysteria over statues as well. This is an age which has many and more of the comforts of the past, but no need to refrain from brash judgment like they might have.

This inherent problem is one liberals must face. It is one that can only be faced standing still, observing, ready.

Maladies of Wealth

When it comes to a broad range of vices, the rich outperform everybody else. They are much more likely than the rest of humanity to shoplift and cheat , for example, and they are more apt to be adulterers and to drink a great deal. They are even more likely to take candy that is meant for children. So whatever you think about the moral nastiness of the rich, take that, multiply it by the number of Mercedes and Lexuses that cut you off, and you’re still short of the mark. In fact, those Mercedes and Lexuses are more likely to cut you off than Hondas or Fords: Studies have shown that people who drive expensive cars are more prone to run stop signs and cut off other motorists.

The rich are the worst tax evaders, and, as The Washington Post has detailed, they are hiding vast sums from public scrutiny in secret overseas bank accounts.

They also give proportionally less to charity — not surprising, since they exhibit significantly less compassion and empathy toward suffering people. Studies also find that members of the upper class are worse than ordinary folks at “reading” people’ s emotions and are far more likely to be disengaged from the people with whom they are interacting — instead absorbed in doodling, checking their phones or what have you. Some studies go even further, suggesting that rich people, especially stockbrokers and their ilk (such as venture capitalists, whom we once called “robber barons”), are more competitive, impulsive and reckless than medically diagnosed psychopaths. And by the way, those vices do not make them better entrepreneurs; they just have Mommy and Daddy’s bank accounts (in New York or the Cayman Islands) to fall back on when they fail.

Indeed, luxuries may numb you to other people — that Louis Vuitton bag may be a minor league Ring of Sauron. Some studies go so far as to suggest that simply being around great material wealth makes people less willing to share. That’s right: Vast sums of money poison not only those who possess them but even those who are merely around them. This helps explain why the nasty ethos of Wall Street has percolated down, including to our politics (though we really didn’t need much help there).

 

So the rich are more likely to be despicable characters. And, as is typically the case with the morally malformed, the first victims of the rich are the rich themselves. Because they often let money buy their happiness and value themselves for their wealth instead of anything meaningful, they are, by extension, more likely to allow other aspects of their lives to atrophy. They seem to have a hard time enjoying simple things, savoring the everyday experiences that make so much of life worthwhile. Because they have lower levels of empathy, they have fewer opportunities to practice acts of compassion — which studies suggest give people a great deal of pleasure. They tend to believe that people have different financial destinies because of who they essentially are, so they believe that they deserve their wealth , thus dampening their capacity for gratitude, a quality that has been shown to significantly enhance our sense of well-being. All of this seems to make the rich more susceptible to loneliness; they may be more prone to suicide, as well.

Being Rich Wrecks Your Soul. We Used to Know That.

For Your Consideration

I have just read a rather entertaining article over at Current Affairs proponing sortition — random selection — as an alternative to elections. Highly suggested read. The main problem I have with sortition is that, like jury duty, it would be difficult for many people to accommodate the requirements of being in congress. I’m sure plenty would love to do it, if they had the time. But many more would probably feel they needed to just stick with their job. This of course might be irrelevant, for I’d still expect randomly selected congresspersons to get paid. Still, leaving their job for months or years couldn’t really go over well. This is an idea worth considering though.

Certainly, there are arguments to be made in favor of elections. There’s something that feels right about having a legislature elected by public vote. This is, after all, the gold standard for democracy around the world: a previously corruption-ridden state “becomes” democratic as soon as it holds free, fair elections. We have a general sense that a legislature, because elected, must therefore “represent” the people who voted for it. But in what sense does it represent them? Demographically? We all know that isn’t true. Take our current Congress, which is 80% male, 95% college-educated, and 50.8% millionaires. The population it “represents” is 50% male, 30% college-educated, and 5% millionaires. That’s not even close.

Well, you might say, the legislature doesn’t need to be an exact demographic mirror of the population, so long as it matches them ideologically. If your Congressman (or Congresswoman, but probably Congressman) puts forward the kinds of policies that you yourself would wish to see advanced, why does it matter whether you and he happen to have wildly different backgrounds? That would be an excellent argument, if Congress usually put forward policies that Americans agree with. Alas, it does not. One Princeton study estimates that, statistically speaking, the preferences of 90% of the American electorate have a “near-zero” impact on policymaking. And a number of highly-publicized legal reforms with a broad popular mandate, such as closing the gun show loophole, have never made it anywhere near the President’s desk. How is that possible in a “representative” Congress?

The obvious answer is that Congress is not representative of the population in any meaningful sense. (Of course, many of the reasons why this is so are obvious: high educational and financial barriers to entry, out-of-control campaign spending, grossly disproportionate donor and lobbyist influence, party-controlled nominations, obsessive focus on reelection prospects, etc., etc.) But ah, you might say, that’s not what’s meant by “representative.” A legislator isn’t someone you expect to think like you: he’s someone you empower to think for you, because he is specially qualified for his job.

But consider the fact that this is nonsense. First, nobody actually believes that our legislators are especially qualified people. (We might note in passing that over 40% of Congress are lawyers, reportedly viewed by the public as the least useful profession in America, in terms of positive contributions to societal well-being.) And the idea of outsourcing our thought processes to them is horrifying in the utmost.

The spirit of democracy would be much more prevalent. Sortition could do wonders for self-government, that old idea that people really know what the hell they’re doing with their own lives and actually do it.

I recently revisited a quotation from Spe Salvi, Benedict’s encyclical which played a major part in my conversion to Catholicism, where he mentions faith not as a suspension of disbelief or the neglect of fact, but an understanding of something less than apparent. Indeed he references the scripture, which puts it best, that faith is the “evidence of things unseen.” Now, sight doesn’t just mean invisible. It also means unknowable.The belief in such a thing then creates something real at the moment. Hope works the same way.

I bring this up because we do not know where our society is headed, despite the transhumanists and scientism’s faithful believing it’s on the up and up and we’ll all be satisfied by increasingly easily attained pleasures. We do not even know for certain that we’ll be working at the same place next year.

But we certainly do have hope that certain things will happen. That is because hope is not a characteristic of faith but an article of the human heart. When we have hope, we have something to work towards, as evidenced by a builder who makes plans ahead of time.

The article is quite risible in places, and downright disillusioning in others. But I primarily wish to note that it’s a humble hope. It gives a name and support to something we could consider working for. That’s important for us to do.

Making America Half-hearted

Following Trump’s example, we have seen Kathy Griffin and now Johnny Depp both make an outrageous comment or act in public then apologize. The apologies strike me as heart-felt as Trump’s apologies for comments he made during the election. It’s an entirely sad state of our society that is characterized by public figures who behave as impulsively as a teenager. They seem to have no idea of the consequences, or they simply don’t care about the consequences. Opprobrium be damned, it got a good chuckle and some attention, so why fret public backlash that’ll last maybe a week and a half tops?

I warned of this sort of thing before Trump’s election. I told people, especially one friend who was very supportive of him during his election and I believe still is, that he would delegitimize his office, making it something less than a position of reposed leadership. To be sure, I mainly thought his formal actions as a president couldn’t be trusted, that he’d let pride cause something regarding policy to go wrong. So far, there hasn’t been much of that, because he’s not running his own presidency. Anyone who thinks the same man to joke about his daughter’s appearence and gloss over sexually derogatory comments he then claims are common to locker rooms is also figuring out how to tackle child trafficking and negotiate foreign policy must believe one of the two is his real self, for he cannot be both. His temperament and pettiness during the campaign wasn’t washed away with his inauguration. If anything, his public speaking has drastically changed in tone because of those around him getting him to dial it down a notch. Yet the same ignorance can be heard when he speaks.

Trump’s deficiency in moral fiber will be something we have to live with for a while. I hope the rest of his presidency contains less focus on his or other easy points to attack with debased humor. I hope he also grows up once and for all.