Cultural
A key moment creating modernity
One of the key moments in the creation of modernity occurs when production moves outside the household. So long as productive work occurs within the structure of households, it is easy and right to understand that work as part of the sustaining of the community of the household and of those wider forms of community which the household in turn sustains. As, and to the extent that, work moves outside the household and is put to the service of impersonal capital, the realm of work tends to become separated from everything but the service of biological survival and the reproduction of the labor force, on the one hand, and that of institutionalized acquisitiveness, on the other. Pleonexia, a vice in the Aristotelian scheme, is now the driving force of modern productive work.
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue
Lotteries in perspective
The Lottery: The Poor are Playing, and the Wealthy are Winning – Focus for Health
Progress?
[W]e tell ourselves that we’re advancing because “grandma gets an iPhone with a smooth surface,” but meanwhile she “gets to eat cat food because food prices have gone up.”
Another Percy thought-experiment?
A letter to Dear Abby: I am a twenty-three-year-old liberated woman who has been on the pill for two years. It’s getting pretty expensive and I think my boyfriend should share half the cost, but I don’t know him well enough to discuss money with him.
Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos
Remember (or know, if you can’t remember) that Lost in the Cosmos is a very strange book. I don’t know whether this was a real “Dear Abby” letter.
But it should be.
Sex
When biologists claim that sex is binary, we mean something straightforward: There are only two sexes. This is true throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. An organism’s sex is defined by the type of gamete (sperm or ova) it has the function of producing. Males have the function of producing sperm, or small gametes; females, ova, or large ones. Because there is no third gamete type, there are only two sexes. Sex is binary.
…
For the vast majority of people, their sex is obvious. And our society isn’t experiencing a sudden dramatic surge in people born with ambiguous genitalia. We are experiencing a surge in people who are unambiguously one sex claiming to “identify” as the opposite sex or as something other than male or female.
Colin Wright, A Biologist Explains Why Sex Is Binary
When individualisms clash, who wins?
This short paragraph is dense, but rewarding:
The legislation also demonstrates one of the oddest results of the modern emphasis on the radical freedom of the individual. In such a world, all must theoretically be allowed to have their own narratives of identity. But because some narratives of identity inevitably stand in opposition to others, some identities must therefore be privileged with legitimate status and others treated as cultural cancers. And that means that, in an ironic twist, the individual ceases to be sovereign and the government has to step in as enforcer. The lobby group of the day then decides who is in and who is out, with the result that, in this instance, the gay or trans person who wants to become straight or “cis” (to use the pretentious jargon), cannot be tolerated. His narrative calls into question that of others. We might say that his very existence is a threat. To grant any degree of legitimacy to his desire is to challenge the normative status of the desires of others.
Carl Trueman, Prohibiting Prayer in Australia
Political
Election 2024 Aftermath
[W]e’d be foolish not to see the risk of civil disorder and legal shenanigans as high no matter who loses in 2024. Downtowns were boarded up on the eve of the 2020 race not against angry and aggrieved Trump voters. Rural riots are hardly a thing. It was in deeply blue areas that local officials feared mass violence if the election didn’t turn out the way Democrats wanted.
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You can’t analyze realities you refuse to see. Take a recent podcast with the Democratic campaign guru Joe Trippi that borders on the neurotic. He’s alarmed not because 75% of voters say they fear for the future of democracy, but because Republicans are saying this, since in his mind only Democrats are allowed to feel democracy is under threat (from Republicans, of course).
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., If Trump Wins in 2024, Then Who Threatens Democracy?
A new avatar for populism?
If you are someone who wish Trump would go away, Frank Luntz has some excellent, well-researched advice on what it will take (and thus implies what kind of candidates you should support).
Spoiler alert: populism isn’t going away any time soon, but Trump needn’t be its avatar.
Ennui
A Jules Feiffer cartoon in the Village Voice once depicted a man suffering from liberal ennui. The man shifted uncomfortably in his chair and explained how he was bored all the time, had no appetite, no interest in life, no sense of humor, no capacity even for outrage.
The punch line? “I need Nixon.”
William McGurn, Donald Trump’s Enemies Need Him, of a September 1974 cartoon.
As a grown-up, I’m sure you can imagine the current-world analogy.
Greg Abbott goes beyond jackassery
The law-and-order party has a law-and-order problem.
I’m not talking about the Republican Party’s tolerance for, and even unconditional defense of, Donald Trump’s many legally dubious acts—though that is certainly bad.
I’m talking, instead, about something far broader in the party and the culture from which it derives its political energy. We saw it in the way conservative media outlets and personalities back in 2020 treated 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse as some kind of folk hero for shooting three men, killing two, during civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after he made a point of driving, heavily armed, to the site of the protests from his home in neighboring Illinois.
We see it in strong support among Republicans, not only for permissive gun regulations, but also for laws allowing private citizens to carry military-grade firearms in public places, whether concealed or not.
And we see it in its most alarming form yet in Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s promise to pardon Army sergeant Daniel Perry, who was convicted of murder last week for killing 28-year-old Garrett Foster at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Austin in 2020.
Together these trends—but especially Abbott’s stance on Perry’s murder conviction—show us a party staking out a position incompatible with life under the rule of law and within a civil society. In its place, the GOP appears to favor a return to the unlawful disorder of the wild west, where vigilante violence and factional allegiances took the place of establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, and promoting the general welfare.
The jury’s conviction of Daniel Perry was amply supported by the evidence. No stand your ground law should cover a hot-head going and looking for trouble, then shooting someone dead before it even arrives.
The serial jackassery of Gov. Abbott is one reason why, netting the negatives out from the positives, living in Texas doesn’t appeal to me.
A successful third party
[I]t is worth remembering that there already has been a very successful third party: the Republican Party, which skyrocketed to power very shortly after its founding in 1854, with the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, winning the White House in 1860. By contrast, the Libertarian Party, founded in 1971, has topped out at 3.3 percent in presidential elections—and that was in 2016, when the party’s ticket comprised two moderate Republican former governors (Gary Johnson and William Weld) running against two corrupt and contemptible New York Democrats, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Kevin D. Williamson, Meet the Whigs
For all its piety and fervor, today’s United States needs to be recognized for what it really is: not a Christian country, but a nation of heretics.
Ross Douthat, Bad Religion
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Tipsy Teetotaler ن 