Damian

Alan Jacobs:

The other day I wrote about the absolute cataract of essays and articles these days proclaiming the death of something — something, anything, everything: capitalism, liberalism, Trumpism, tradition, conservatism, the novel, poetry, movies … the list goes on and on.

Today I’m wondering how much this habit of mind arises from an economic system built around planned obsolescence and unrepairable devices. If we are deeply habituated to throwing away a bought object when it is no longer performing excellently, then why not do the same with ideas? Hey, this thing I believe in no longer commands universal assent. Let’s flush it.

And for that matter why not take the same approach to people? If you’re in Canada and having suicidal thoughts, then you just might have a counselor suggest medically-assisted suicide. You’re hardly worth repairing, are you? Let’s just ease you into death and get you off our books.

This must be what the Fixx meant when they sang, “One thing leads to another.” Naturally, I’m all in favor of blogs being platforms for thought experiments and extemporaneous rambling, but still, I think this one could stand to be reeled in a bit before it starts to resemble the conspiracy meme. I’m pretty sure clichés, hyperbole, and rhetorical laziness in general predate the “economic system,” and I don’t think the increased availability of euthanasia is primarily due to financial considerations. Sometimes, things just have a superficial resemblance without all being causally connected. That’s boring, though. Maybe I’ll change the title of this post to “Apophenia and the Death of Judicious Thought.”

Michael Kraus:

The Halloween franchise as a whole stands as a monument to the human capacity for rationalization, our need to explain the terrifying things that happen to us. To borrow Allyson’s words, it’s a way to make us feel better. The same impulse can be found in how we respond in the real world to real-life tragedies and horrors, always looking for that fundamental why. But the totality of the series, at the end of the day, only serves to strengthen the legacy of Carpenter’s indelible original, and makes it more timeless and impactful, even now, forty-five years later. For only 1978’s Halloween, the first, the best, has the awful and powerful wisdom to know that sometimes, there is no why. No reason, no order. Sometimes, bad things just happen. What could be scarier than that?

I saw this tweet last week:

It’s THIS IDEA that is the villain, not any faction: the idea that you can receive a moral blank check to murder children and hurt innocent people. It’s always wrong, and what’s worse, once people believe a moral blank check exists, they start looking for ways to manufacture one.

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) October 13, 2023

It was being held up for scorn, as an example of a left-wing, anti-Israel appeasement mentality. Stancil is certainly an orthodox leftist idiot, a fact I confirmed by scrolling through his Twitter feed to find this tweet again, but I hardly think this sentiment is particularly egregious. In fact, it’s just a paraphrase of what Solzhenitsyn, an unimpeachable source, said about ideology. Multiple things can be true at once. Why did the Hamas attack happen? There are plenty of particular answers — anti-Semitism, territorial disputes, religious differences, geopolitical maneuvering, an endless cycle of retribution. There are also particular answers to every similar atrocity you could ask about — Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, ad infinitum. At some point, though, you may wonder if anything has truly been answered, or if evil is a convenient name for something that exists prior to, behind, and beyond all of our attempts to rationalize it. Maybe no amount of understanding or anticipation will ever banish it for long.

To the best of my knowledge, only once have I ever heard a Taylor Swift song. I was standing in a clothing store a couple years ago while the Lady of the House searched for a pair of hiking shorts on sale. As I became aware of the music, I was struck by how, well, childish it sounded. I mean, the melody was just so monotonous and straightforward, like “Baby Shark” or something. Eventually I was able to make out enough of the lyrics, at which point recognition dawned. I had seen them quoted often enough in my online travels to know who the singer was. I don’t remember now what they were; I have successfully expunged them from my memory. It is possible that I may have heard other songs of hers in a grocery store or something without realizing it, but that stands as my only interaction with the iconic artist of our age.

It’s nothing in particular about her. Likewise, I’ve never heard anything by Kanye West or Drake, Jay-Z or Beyonce, Miley Cyrus or the two Justins (Bieber and Timberlake). I heard Lady Gaga once and had a similar sense of bewilderment as with Ms. Swift. However, I did manage to navigate the age of boy bands like the Backstreet Boys and N’Sync and former Disney princesses like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera by stuffing my ears with wax.

I’ve also avoided most of the popular movies and TV shows of the last couple decades. At least two people have called me a barbarian for never having seen an episode of Seinfeld. Likewise for Friends, Sex in the City, and ER. Even in the age of prestige television, I’ve never watched any of The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, or Game of Thrones. I did try to watch some of Mad Men but lost interest after two or three episodes. As for the big screen, well, I only recall being in a theater twice in the last couple of decades, once because I was taken along, and once because of my lingering enjoyment of Halloween.

As that last data point shows, I’m not motivated by snobbery or rarefied taste. I think it has more to do with being what Lin Yutang called a Great Recluse, or what the scholar Aat Vervoorn called a “Zhuangzi hermit,” i.e. a hermit immersed in society, hiding anonymously in plain sight. I’m just too caught up in woolgathering to be much interested in staying au courant.

Rich Lowry:

The Pennsylvania senator is the poster boy — if self-indulgent sloppiness is your thing — for the Senate dropping a dress code that required senators to dress in business attire when appearing on the Senate floor.

Fetterman briefly complied with the rule by making the sacrifice of putting on a suit and tie after he was first elected. Then, he reverted to his standard uniform that makes it look like he just arrived after sitting on his couch, surrounded by empty pizza boxes, watching football games all weekend.

There’s business casual, then there’s Fetterman’s garb. It wouldn’t be acceptable at many fraternity events around the country. Philadelphia Eagles fans dress more carefully on game days. If he showed up at almost any service or working-class job in America dressed this way, his supervisor would give him a stern talking-to and insist that he have more respect for himself, his colleagues, and his customers.

An employee of mine had a stroke a few years ago. If you didn’t know about it, nothing about his speech or mannerisms would make you wonder, “Did that guy suffer some brain damage?” He’s pretty close to normal, but it still affects him. He misplaces things more often than usual, forgets some details, and sometimes has what he calls “brown-outs,” especially in extremely hot weather. He can handle a warehouse job, but it would be cruel and unusual to force him to hold the responsibilities of a U.S. senator.

In Fetterman’s case, I think the amoral sociopaths around him who put him in this position deserve the contempt. The man clearly isn’t fit to function in that environment. We can only hope he improves enough to one day realize how little those ghouls care about anything other than using him as a rubber stamp. Lowry should have focused his ire there rather than take the opportunity to indulge in some petty snobbery. In the abstract, sure, it’s important to dress appropriately for special occasions. In practice, though, many of us manage to live complete lives without ever encountering such occasions. I’m not just saying it because I, too, favor athleisure clothing year-round. I remember seeing articles in the recent past complaining about women wearing yoga pants in public, which struck me as equally stupid. Not everyone wears business attire from 9-5.  Schedules and activities vary widely. A lot of this kvetching strikes me as a yearning for a bygone world where social roles were more clearly defined and regimented.