23/24: first round of reflections and looks forward
Not necessarily random, but certainly not bursting with thematic cohesion
1.) It’s been a good year writing-wise. Precipice has enjoyed a steady stream of new subscribers (mega-thanks, and welcome to the community). I’ve continued to contribute to Ordinary Times, and this fall came on board as a contributor to The Freemen News-letter, where I’ve written about everything from the nature of gratitude to John Locke’s footprint on the Boston Tea Party to the spiritual significance of two scenes from classic Universal Pictures horror movies. I’ve also kept my hand in local / print-media activity, with a steady stream of articles for AIM Media’s various magazines and newspapers.
2.) I played a fair amount of music, mostly in various configurations of the jazz ensemble I’m presently in, Moment’s Notice. A resolution-esque determination I have for 2024 is to woodshed daily on my gorgeous Gretsch arch top. I’ll confess to sometimes going many days at a time without touching it. I’d love to claim busy-ness as the culprit, but the reality is that periods of waning in my zest for life have increased. That has to stop. I know the clock is ticking on my ability to grow as a guitarist. Both of my thumbs are arthritic, as are several other points on my body that at least indirectly impact my playing. And when I do enter a productive shedding session, after I run through some scales and etudes, I find my groove and have a blast.
3.) The daily Commentary podcast this week has been devoted to the contributors (John Podhoretz, Christine Rosen, Seth Mandel, and Abe Greenwald) offering their best-of lists in various categories. On Tuesday, they discussed movies. I confess I haven’t seen any of the ones any of them listed, but I’m now inspired to do so. I’m just not much of a modern-movie guy (or modern pop culturally generally, for that matter). Left to my own cinematic-consumption devices, I gravitate toward TCM. But I was gratified to see them all put Oppenheimer at the top of their lists. I know it to be a serious work. And, if I recall correctly, not one of them mentioned Barbie, which, unfortunately, is the one movie that got me into a theater this year. Everything about that movie makes me want to vomit. Hollywood, seeing that it’s quickly exhausting the appeal of shows and endless sequels about comic-book characters, moves on to a Mattel doll that first came out in 1959. And of course they had to load up the script with sociocultural underpinnings heavy on resentment of the quite natural relations between men and women apparent throughout our species’ history.
4.) Yes, I know that, the simultaneous silliness and militancy of modern feminism, dating back to Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique and the 1966 founding of the National Organization for Women, notwithstanding, the West and humankind generally was due for some reflecting on the undeniably patriarchal nature of family structure and man-woman relations generally. But it was done with a coldness and fierceness that has led not only to millions of post-Americans being cool with the extermination of the fetal citizens among them, but the twenty-first century phenomenon of incels, basement dwellers, game-and-porn addicts and underachievers comprising a sizable portion of the male population. And then there’s the trans scourge.
5.) I feel genuine dread about 2024 on the political level. Every day confirms my intention to stay home in both May, when my state has its primary, and November. One of our major political parties is going to offer as its nominee the most vile, infantile, vindictive and solipsistic person to ever enter US politics. I know that at the local level, on city councils and such around the country, good-hearted, civic-minded Republicans are going to try to keep their focus on the scope they’ve chosen for engaging in the practice of governance, but cowardly acceptance of the Very Stable Genius’s inevitability has infected even their lane. And the other party is completely given over to imposing tyranny in the name of unwarranted climate alarmism, “electeds-of-color” city government “holiday” parties, permission of Jew-hatred on the campuses of elite universities, and taking of Citizen A’s money to meet the particular needs/wants of Citizen B, all while the government’s debt and deficit situation is such that interest on that debt now ranks fourth behind Social Security, Medicare and defense as an expenditure. So we have two completely idiotic parties that are going to take ugliness and any kinds of shady tactics they can get away with to levels we’ve never seen in the coming year.
6.) Catherine Herridge of CBS News, long respected as one of the most sober voices in broadcast journalism, says she’s concerned about the US facing a “black swan” event in 2024, due to the confluence of an ongoing heightened threat level, the Israel, Ukraine and Pacific rim situations, and the fragmentation - make that atomization - of post-American society. I share her concern.
7.) I wish the fact that, having said yes to Jesus Christ, I’m going to spend eternity in my Lord’s kingdom provided me more solace than it does. I just haven’t surmounted the hurdle of seeing the grimness of the juncture that human history has brought us to. This is something else I want to work on in 2024. I’m scared and disgusted and that in turn makes me feel like I’m doing my faith walk wrong. I know lots of seasoned Christians who, while not impervious to the kinds of concerns I’ve expressed here, are solid in their hope. I want to spend more time with them and learn how they keep their faith so strong.
8.) I may have more reflections / looks forward in the next few days. I’m not guaranteeing it, as I’ve covered all the bases I can think of here for the time being.