More thoughts on seriousness

I'm dwelling on this theme a lot lately, because it's in ever-dwindling supply, and the consequences are piling up

Pick your level of post-American life.

Shall we start with the fact that admin officials are shocked, doncha know, that Fitch has downgraded the nation's credit rating?

Every stinking time a debt ceiling crisis is averted, all the legislators involved in hammering out one of their flimsy agreements wipe their brows and proceed with no discussion of the blue whale in the puddle:

. . . the shelving of . . . discussions [about the entitlement programs] raises questions about what, exactly, will be done about the programs. Polling suggests most Americans believe seniors should be entitled to their full benefits without cuts. But Medicare’s trust fund is projected to be exhausted by 2028, at which point the federal government probably would delay or reduce reimbursements to doctors and hospitals under the federal insurance program relied on by more than 60 million people. Unless Congress acts, Social Security benefits for a similar number will also be cut by 20 percent starting in 2035, according to the latest federal reporton the matter. Even as these dates grow nearer, lawmakers have become much less willing to discuss potential solutions.

Government is spending so much more than it is taking in that interest on the debt is going to exceed defense spending by 2028 and be the single largest line item in the budget by 2051.

Let’s look at some recent developments on the cultural front:

Just this morning, there are three WSJ stories that, taken together, paint a picture of an unraveling society:

• A trend that has become very discernible is the unpreparedness of people starting work in fields ranging from health care to the military to hospitality to do their jobs. 

• Gen X, the generation now raising children and adolescents, is dropping away from church attendance / affiliation / involvement, faster than any other age group. 

• Behavior in movie theaters has deteriorated badly, with people flagrantly violating house rules about phones and generally acting like they're at rowdy concerts. 

Here’s a situation in which foreign policy concerns converge with the arrogant zeal with which the current administration wishes to impose post-Western views on human sexuality in African nations:

Since Biden inaugurated his LGBT-first policy, I have visited the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Somaliland. Each country faces serious challenges involving security, Russian encroachment, corruption, education, the economy, terrorism, and/or external aggression. While China builds hospitals, railroads, or highways; Turkish firms build housing developments or operate airports; and Russia sends mercenaries, American diplomats lecture about issues most Africans see as tone-deaf if not cultural imperialism. Rather than further American influence, it makes the United States a subject of ridicule.

Nor do the gay communities in these countries believe the U.S. approach is wise. Conservative African societies historically ignored homosexuality. African gays might bring long-term partners to family events with the explanation that they were simply roommates. It was, as Bill Clinton might say, a policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” By prioritizing the positions of the most extreme LGBT activists, the United States now sparks a backlash that worsens the situation, especially in countries such as Uganda.

It is not just gay people who suffer. Without any sense of irony or self-awareness, Blinken observed in February “the International De unpray of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation.”

“The United States stands with the more than 200 million survivors of female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C) around the world in a posture of ‘zero tolerance’ for the practice,” he said . He declared female genital mutilation to be “a form of gender-based violence and a human rights abuse that threatens the lives and futures of girls and young women in nearly 30 countries around the world, including the United States.”

In this, he is right, but the policy he oversees now explicitly declares genital mutilation to be a human right if conducted for the right progressive reasons.

Let’s check in with the religion level.

The United Methodist Church is losing one fifth of its congregations over the issue of unorthodox sex lives. While those remaining may say “good riddance,” it’s not a positive sign for a denomination that has lost 3.8 million members since 1968.

The Presbyterian Church (USA), which similarly goes in for departures from doctrine regarding sexuality, is down to 1,140,665 active members.

The Episcopalians? They lost nearly 400,000 members between 2012 and 2021.

Well, okay, what is happening at the other end of the institutional-Christianity spectrum?

This development, for one:

“Christian” patriarchy is the future of the Christian right if more people don’t start wising up and pushing back soon. People tend to write it off as a fringe movement without any teeth. That’s a mistake. It’s rapidly growing in influence as it asserts itself as the solution to the global male identity crisis affecting our world. Journalist Christine Emba wrote a brilliant analysis of this problem, and I highly recommend it.

Kaeley Triller Harms, whose Substack I’m quoting from, provides substantiation:

I’ve warned people about Doug Wilson for over a decade. For those who don’t have time to read the documentation, suffice to say that Wilson is a self-ordained Presbyterian minister who essentially created his own denomination. He has a tremendous amount of influence and is linked or in charge of a number of organizations including Canon Press, Cross-Politic, It’s Good to Be a Man, Logos K-12, Greyfriar’s Seminary, New Saint Andrew’s College, the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, Omnibus Curriculum, and others.

Wilson has a lengthy and well documented track record of misogyny and abuse of power. He defended and covered for not one, but two pedophiles under his leadership. He wrote letters to the court on behalf of these rapists asking for leniency. He pawned one of them off on an unsuspecting woman in his congregation and performed their marriage ceremony, asking God to bless the union with children. The pedophile went on to sexually abuse his own child. Wilson wrote manipulative letters to the victims, encouraging their silence and warning them that publicizing their harm would bring shame to their families. One of the deacons from Wilson’s church defended the rapist in court.

Wilson has also published overtly racist materials, claiming that slaves in the American South actually had it pretty good and enjoyed warm relationships with their masters.

Instead of following the biblical mandate to love the lost, Wilson encourages his congregants to wash their hands of them. He has particularly harsh words to describe unbelieving women, making frequent reference to their breasts, and categorizing them in terms such as “cunts, harpies, lumberjack dykes, crones, waifs with manga eyes, and small breasted biddies.”

He recently wrote a book about a sex robot with soft core porn descriptors wherein the protagonist has descriptive sex with a doll.

In short, it takes a severe amount of spiritual blindness to turn a blind eye to the reality that this man is unfit for any degree of pastoral leadership, for which the biblical standard is “above reproach.

. . . Brian Sauve, another chauvinist extraordinaire, . . . has publicly declared that women have no business is pretty much any sphere of public life—not in politics, not in polemics, not in leadership, not even in teaching women’s Bible studies. He put a cherry on top of it all with the bold statement that basically every terrible thing that has ever happened in America is a direct result of women gaining the right to vote. I’m not kidding.

. . . Michael Foster, who, along with his heretic co-writer Bnonn Tennant (who was literally ex-communicated from his church) routinely writes misogynistic crap framed as orthodoxy. This one is personal for me, as both of these men have said overtly sexist things to me personally. Foster told me that my only purpose in this world is to have babies, that my intelligence is of questionable value since the menfolk are the thinkers, that women with college degrees are less valuable on the marriage market, and that women who work outside the home are failing their families.

. . . And let’s not forget Dale Partridge, who literally argues the downright heretical point that women don’t need sound theology as much as men do. He literally believes that the only theology women need to worry our pretty little heads about is to the theology concerning his (theologically errant) view on gender roles.

Not exactly the kind of message that’s going to pack the pews with reachable agnostics, is it?

I realize that those driving the above-enumerated phenomena are the squeaky wheels. But what is the rest of the post-American populace preoccupying itself with?

Either retreat or distraction. Both are ways of dealing with the desperation which underlies our national life now.

One can’t fault those who decide to wean themselves from news, who double their focus on those in their immediate circles, and involve themselves in the most circumscribed kinds of communities. None of what I’ve presented above is uplifting to dwell on, and there’s validity to the argument that individuals, or even networks thereof, can’t move the needle much on any of these fronts.

So we check out shiny objects.

We go to concerts and download recordings. Women and young girls who want to have their ennui and feelings about disappointing personal relationships validated consume the products of the likes of Taylor Swift, Lana del Ray and Billie Eilish. Those who want to wear their rural roots - and the contrast thereof with urban life - like a medal seek out the product of Jason Aldean and Walker Hayes. Boomers and Gen Xers keep Boomer-era acts on the road, gratifying that nostalgic yearning. Christians go in for praise music, which is mainly power pop with lyrics that, well, shall we say, were clearly not written by Isaac Watts or William Cowper. There’s hip-hop and its demographic.

There are sports, porn and preoccupation with food.

But the underlying desperation is palpable. Whether one cares much about it or not, most people have the sense that our societal foundations have crumbled, that the departure from America’s founders’ vision of government’s proper scope and function is going to end in insolvency, that America is ill-equipped to address the array of world-stage threats that breathe down its neck.

When you run into someone who says, “I’m well aware of the huge problems besetting us, but personally, I have a healthy outlook, am productive, and greet each day with vigor and a sharp mind,” hopefully you’ll have enough time to engage him or her in a conversation about what his or her secret is.

And then steer him or her my way. I have some questions as well.