Texting with my son.
Manorial Technocracy
This morning I have a post up at the Hedgehog Review on “Our Manorial Elite.” The core idea, as you’ll see if you click through, comes from Cory Doctorow, or rather a historian friend of Doctorow’s. “[Bruce] Schneier calls [our current arrangement] ‘Feudal Security,’ but as the medievalist Stephen Morillo wrote to me, the correct term for this is probably ‘Manorial Security’ — while feudalism was based on land-grants to aristocrats who promised armed soldiers in return, manorialism referred to a system in which an elite owned all the property and the rest of the world had to work on that property on terms that the local lord set.”
What the rabble who stormed the Capitol building have unwittingly done is to consolidate (a) the social power of the enormous transnational tech companies and (b) the intimacy of those companies’ connection with the United States government. Given the recent usefulness of Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon to the currently dominant political party, what are the chances that a Democratic Congress will pass legislation curbing their power, or that, should some such bill emerge, a Democratic President would sign it into law?
So let me bang this antique drum one more time: You need to own as much of your turf as you can. I explain why and how, in detail, in this essay. Avoid the walled gardens of social media, because at any moment they could appeal to digital eminent domain and move the walls somewhere else, and if they did you’d have zero recourse.
Now, to be sure, even when you “own your turf” you don’t really own your turf — as the people who run Parler have recently discovered: they didn’t just lose their access to Apple’s App Store and Google Play, and their data storage account with Amazon’s AWS, they lost their text message and email service provider. I was reminded of just how vulnerable my own digital presence is last year when there were plans to sell the .org domain to a private equity firm. That situation has been avoided for now, thanks in large part to the efforts of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but there are no guarantees going forward. When I’m on the open web, I own my data — which is a big deal, since the owners of the walled gardens also own your data — but I don’t own the power to share my words and images with others.
I hold no brief for Parler, which I am glad to see shut down — it has been a foul thing by any reasonable measure — but as I note in my Hedgehog post, the big social media companies are making up their rules as they go along, and in so doing setting the standards for other, smaller companies to follow. So are the other big companies: As Glenn Greenwald points out, the planning for the assault on the Capitol wasn’t done on Parler, it was done on Facebook — yet we don’t see Apple banning Facebook from its App Store, do we?
The smaller, the more vulnerable. If I were to say something controversial enough, my own hosting company, the wonderful Reclaim Hosting, could give me the boot. It’s not at all likely, of course, but my point is that it’s possible. I could be fired by Baylor, Google and Apple could shut down my accounts, I could probably be cut off by my ISP. I think the only thing left would be a landline phone, which, if I’m not mistaken, we in the USA still have fairly strong rights to use. But I don’t have a landline. (Maybe I should remedy that?)
It’s possible, then, for any of us to be not just shamed or dragged on social media but really and truly digitally shunned — to be completely cut off from every possibility of electronic discourse and community. I don’t see how you can’t be concerned about this possibility. So even a lawyer for the ACLU — which has in recent years explicitly refused to support speech that it doesn’t approve of — says, “I think we should recognize the importance of neutrality when we’re talking about the infrastructure of the internet.”
Until that neutrality in enshrined in law, we are all at the mercy of our manorial technocracy. But if we stay outside the walled gardens, we are safer and more free. I would encourage all of you to ditch Twitter, ditch Facebook (including Instagram), ditch all of them and learn how to live once more on the open web. The future of our democracy just might depend on it.
a time of reckoning
This essay by my dear friend James Davison Hunter is absolutely essential for our moment:
It is important to remember that times of crisis are always times of reckoning. Whether one admires [MLK] or agrees with his politics is not the question. In his day, public opinion was overwhelmingly against him, and even against today’s idealized and sanitized version of King, there are those who disparage the man and his achievements. The question, rather, is whether we have the requisite moral resources to reckon with our nation’s internal flaws and external challenges. King modeled a disposition, a voice, and a moral authority that could credibly compel such a reckoning in his own day, but in ways that made it possible for opponents to imagine a way forward together.
Although incomplete, his life and witness, his words and deeds, brought about constructive change in large measure because they were grounded in metaphysical and theological sources that transcended tribalized identities, prejudices, and shibboleths. King’s critique of America was radical, more radical than many today remember. But so too was his humanism. Dissent and solidarity were welded together — and could coexist precisely because they came from the same place. Both were rooted in an equally radical theological anthropology that demanded justice, refused ideological purity tests, and recognized the yearnings, fears, flaws, weaknesses, capacities, and aspirations that all human beings share — and, finally, obliged each of us to forgive our foes.
The particular moral resources that animated King and the clergy that surrounded him are certainly less available to us today. Their renewal is not impossible, but it is far from likely. But this only heightens the urgency of the question: What moral resources are available to us to come to terms with the crises we face?
That last question is the essential one. If you’re not meditating right now on your answer to it, you’re not serious about the challenge that faces us. James’s essay points us in the right direction. I am so grateful for his work and his witness.
The Year of Hypomone
A twofold something I already knew but that I re-learned this past week:
- During a crisis one turns instinctively and desperately to the internet for news;
- During a crisis the worst thing one can do is turn to the internet for news.
But you know what? It did me no good. I got mixed messages, unreliable reports, rapidly changing stories; and I heard repeatedly from fools and knaves. If I had waited a day, or two days, or three, I wouldn’t have had all the emotional upheaval and I wouldn’t have missed anything significant. What possible difference could it make to me to learn about the Capitol Disgrace on Wednesday or on the following Monday (which is my usual news-reading day)? The only answer: None. None at all.
And all this has been going on in the aftermath of a year, a true annus horribilis, in which I also realized that “Everything I care about and have written to defend has crumped, is crumping, will crump.”
All that as prelude. The chief point is this: I received a gift today, in the form of a post by Ian Paul. That post is about the Greek word hypomone (ὑπομονή), which means “patient eudurance,” “the capacity to hold out or bear up in the face of difficulty, patience, endurance, fortitude, steadfastness, perseverance.” The associated verb, hypomeno (ὑπομένω), means “to stay in a place beyond an expected point of time, remain/stay (behind), while others go away”; “to maintain a belief or course of action in the face of opposition, stand one’s ground, hold out, endure, remain instead of fleeing.”
Love, St. Paul says, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” — panta hypomenei (πάντα ὑπομένει). That’s 1 Corinthians 13:7, and I think I’ll make it my verse for 2021. My prayer for myself is that I will have the patient endurance, this year, to maintain my beliefs, my core commitments, “in the face of opposition”; to stand firm and defend what I care most about “beyond an expected point of time … while others go away.” I declare 2021 The Year of Hypomone.
for the record
First time I’ve seen anything like this in my eight years in central Texas, and I strongly suspect that if I live here the rest of my life I won’t see anything like it again. (Photos cropped but not filtered or otherwise edited.)
Walking around in my neighborhood I keep hearing, from down in the arroyo, the gunshot crack of snow-burdened branches breaking.
essential reading for skeptics (and others)
Some of my readers will have friends and family members who believe that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump and that the recent invasion of the United States Capitol was therefore justified — or perhaps that the Capitol was actually invaded by leftist activists. Some of my readers may hold these views themselves. So I’d like to share some recent reporting, analysis, and commentary that may be helpful. All of what follows comes from conservative, Christian, and Republican sources — in some cases the writers are all three.
The links below are not, except for the last couple, opinion pieces. They report.
First and most generally: There are many “fact-checking” sites out there, but if you are a political conservative you can’t beat the one from The Dispatch. That link goes to their complete archive, but here are some especially important ones related to the election itself:
- Did Pennsylvania Have More Mail-In Ballots Recorded Than Were Requested?
- Did a Dominion Technician Manipulate Voting Data in Gwinnett County?
- Did a Georgia County Use ‘Sequestered’ Machines to ‘Break the Dominion Algorithm’?
- Did Detroit Poll Workers Scan the Same Ballots Over and Over?
- Did Joe Biden Receive Millions More Votes Than There Were Eligible Voters?
- Fact Check: Debunking Donald Trump’s Claims About Voter Fraud
Further, from the front lines:
- John McCormack of National Review reports on what it was like to be in the Capitol last Wednesday (may also be behind a paywall, sorry)
- Newly elected Republican Representative Peter Meijer, who was also there, on what he experienced — and what his party should learn from it
- This collection of videos from Parler, taken by people participating in the invasion of the Capitol, answers many questions about who the participants were and what they were doing
Rebutting enabling lies does not mean whitewashing the opposition. It does not mean surrendering your values or failing to resist destructive ideas. It does mean discerning the difference between a problem and a crisis, between an aberration and an example. And it means possessing the humility to admit when you’re wrong. It means understanding thatAnd the rebuttal has to come from within. The New York Times isn’t going to break this fever. Vox won’t change many right-wing minds. But courageous Christians who love Christ and His church have a chance. Amen, brother David — who also made a wonderful and powerful case, on a recent episode of The Dispatch’s podcast, for welcoming those who have recently come to see that their trust in Donald Trump was misplaced.no emergency is ever too great to stop loving your enemies and blessing those who persecute you.
It is extremely discouraging for me to see so many Christians, and so many churches, losing all sense of their mission and purpose — and at such a crucial time. Political conflicts and anxieties are at the forefront of American minds right now, but in another few days the catastrophic effects of the coronavirus will loom into our general view again. (They never should have left it.) I find myself thinking about all the ways that many American churches have soldiered on bravely through the miseries of the past year — and about all the ways that other churches have stoked political conflict, denied the truth about disease and elections alike, angrily demanded their rights … and ignored their mission, which is, after all, to seek and save those who are lost.
I’ve moved away from the business of evidence and fact-checking, but I’ve done so for a reason: None of us is likely to practice due diligence in finding out the truth if our hearts are not properly oriented, if we’re not primarily actuated by the double love of God and our neighbor. If we are so actuated, we’ll find ways to pursue our mission even in the darkest hours.
My patron saint in all these matters is the Reverend Pat Allerton, about whom I read in a recent piece by Harry Mount in the Telegraph:
In the first week of the first lockdown, as the Church of England shut its doors, the Reverend Pat Allerton, vicar of St Peter’s, in London’s Notting Hill, had a brainwave…. ‘I had an idea to take a hymn and a prayer to the streets of my parish, to lift spirits and bring a bit of joy. So, on the 26th March, I went out to the Portobello Road.’Allerton is not happy about his government’s restrictions on church services. He thinks they are shortsighted and unfair. But still, there’s the Gospel to be preached, people in need to minister to. So he gets to it.He was cautious about the effects of hitting the streets with a loudspeaker, blaring out Judy Collins’ “Amazing Grace” on Spotify. ‘I thought I might be told to do one,’ he says jauntily. ‘But I was amazed by the response. People were really moved. They clapped and invited me back! They probably regret that now. I believe God was coming alongside people, letting them know He’s there.’
Over the following weeks, Allerton did 64 walking services around London, helped by the amazing weather. Each service – with a hymn, a prayer and a 60-second sermon – took seven minutes. He invited people – up to 50 at a time – to join in from a window or doorway. ‘So many people commented on social media, saying things like, “I’m not religious but I’ve got goosebumps. There are tears coming down my face.” God’s presence was touching people.’
My own pastors have been getting to it for the past ten months. Preaching the Gospel, baptizing newborns, confirming young people, burying the dead, comforting the grieving — all of which are ways of preaching the Gospel. My wife Teri has certain pre-existing medical conditions that would make it very, very dangerous for her to contract covid, so we haven’t even dared the recently instituted outdoor socially-distanced Eucharistic services. No problem: our associate rector Neal McGowan recently brought the Eucharist to us. And would do it again any time we asked. Meanwhile virtual Morning Prayer continues, a six-times-weekly blessing and encouragement.
No protests, no insurrections, no complaints, no cries of persecution, no demands for rights: just ministry in the name of Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth, the Life, the one who came to seek and save those who are lost. Christians who focus on that cannot go wrong. And caring enough about the truth to get our facts right is actually part of that ministry.
UPDATE: If you really want to get deep into the evidential weeds, this 124-page legal complaint against Sidney Powell by Dominion Voting Systems is jaw-dropping — and heavily, heavily documented. I don’t know how you could read this and still believe any word that comes out of Sidney Powell’s mouth, including “and” and “the.” (Hmmm, maybe I shouldn’t put it that way.) It’s also a thorough record of a much broader pattern of lies and deceptions, and reckless disregard for the truth, by others. The ironically-named American Thinker seems to have gotten the message: “It was wrong for us to publish these false statements. We apologize to Dominion for all of the harm this caused them and their employees. We also apologize to our readers for abandoning 9 journalistic principles and misrepresenting Dominion’s track record and its limited role in tabulating votes for the November 2020 election. We regret this grave error.” (Not sure which nine principles were abandoned.)
looking backward
I’m blogging too much, focused too much on the things of the moment, but I think the circumstances just may warrant it. It’s certainly hard for me to concentrate on anything other than the current political calamity. And since soon a new term will start and I’ll be back in my old books, here comes another round:
In my reflections on Donald Trump when he was running for President in 2016, I made one significant error: I didn’t think he would nominate responsible judges and Justices. I thought he would hand out judicial appointments like candy to friends and toadies. But it turned out that the judiciary couldn’t capture his attention, so he farmed out the decisions to others who acted on sound conservative principles. (Given how many of the very judges he appointed ruled against his recent frivolous lawsuits, precisely because they were honest conservative jurists rather than toadies, I wonder if he’s belatedly reassessing his priorities.)
But I think my more general assessment, made in June of 2016, has, except for one point, stood the test of time:
We all know what Trump is: so complete a narcissist that the concepts of truth and falsehood, right and wrong, are alien to him. He knows only the lust for power and the rage of being thwarted in his lust. In a sane society the highest position to which he could aspire is apprentice dogcatcher, and then only if no other candidates presented themselves.
If you put a gun to my head and told me that I had to vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, I would but whisper, “Goodbye cruel world.” But if my family somehow managed to convince me to stick around, in preference to Trump I would vote for Hillary. Or John Kerry, or Nancy Pelosi. In preference to Trump I would vote for the reanimated corpse of Adlai Stevenson, or for that matter that of Julius Caesar, who perhaps has learned a thing or two in his two thousand years of afterlife. The only living person that I would readily choose Trump in preference to is Charles Manson.
The one point that I can’t now affirm is that last one, but only because Charles Manson is dead.
A few months later I published an essay about the Christian defenders and celebrants of Trump, in which I described the pastors who claimed that God had revealed to them that Trump was The Chosen One — perhaps in the mode of King Cyrus of Persia — and looked toward the possibility that his presidency might run onto the rocks:
These leaders have replaced a rhetoric of persuasion with a rhetoric of pure authority — very like the authority that Trump claims for himself. (“Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”) Consequently, their whole house of cards may well collapse if the Trump presidency is anything other than a glorious success, and will leave those who have accepted that rhetoric bereft of explanations as well as arguments. Presumably the most fervent supporters of Trump will argue (as Trump himself will argue) that his failures have occurred because others have betrayed him, have rejected the man that God raised up to rescue America, but this will require the replacement of the Cyrus analogy with another one yet to be determined. We can only hope that no one compares a failed Trump to an American Jesus betrayed by American Judases.
These claims to divine revelation have certainly been perpetuated by Eric Metaxas, who claims to have all the evidence he needs right there in his heart to prove that the election was stolen, and who has asserted, in classic “name it and claim it” style, that, no matter how things appear, “Trump will be inaugurated.” I’m sure that as I speak Metaxas and the other Jericho March leaders are writing Donald Trump Superstar and are debating whether the role of Judas is to be played by Mike Pence or Mitt Romney. I’m betting on Pence. (Update: I changed my mind.)
More soberly, in that same essay I wrote this, wrapping up my reflections on the Christian True Trump Believers:
If all this sounds like a strange fantasyland of narrative, an imaginative world of what members of the Trump administration have taken to calling “alternative facts,” that’s because it is just that. The larger, and longer-term, effect of accounts like this is to encourage Christians to abandon the world of shared evidence, shared convictions, and shared possibilities, and such abandonment is very bad news for Christians and for America.
And lo, even as I foretold, it has come to pass.
For alternatives to all this nonsense, I'd encourage you to reflect on two essays: one by Michael Gerson that I quoted yesterday, and a cautionary message, both prescient and wise, written by my friend and colleague Frank Beckwith five years ago.
scale, cont'd.
The other day I published, at the Hedgehog Review site, a little dialogue on scale, and the common human inability to understand the scale at which many of the events that affect our lives happen.
Something happens almost every day to confirm the points I make there, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a better illustration of the problem than the behavior of the people who assembled in anger at the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday. I heard an interview with one protestor who shouted that the protestors were there because they knew they were being lied to and cheated by the deep state, by the lamestream media, by the Democrats, by RINOs — and they knew it, he said, because of “what we’ve seen with our own eyes.”
What did he mean? I can’t be sure, but I suspect that there are two chief elements to his claim.
- He has almost certainly attended Trump rallies and seen massive crowds cheering the President on (something that Trump himself has often commented on, contrasting the large size of his crowds to the meager attendance at Joe Biden’s drive-in-movie-style rallies); likewise, I would bet that, wherever he might live, in his neighborhood the pro-Trump lawn signs stretch as far as the eye can see, with nary a pro-Biden sign to be found.
- He has almost certainly seen video clips which, their posters falsely claim, show voting fraud in action. Those clips have been tweeted and retweeted, shared and faved, held up as evidence again and again by people disinclined to do any fact-checking.
To him, then, it is simply not possible that President Trump lost the election. The evidence of his own eyes tells him that the President won in what Trump himself called, in a since-removed tweet, “a sacred landslide election victory.”
What that man does not understand is that everything he has seen — even under the wholly untenable assumption that the viral videos show actual fraud — amounts to no more than a drop in the American electoral lake. It’s statistically insignificant; it’s not even a rounding error. He simply does not understand how big his country is, how many people vote in its elections.
And the point of my post was: That kind of understanding is extremely difficult to achieve. We are simply not cognitively wired to think on that scale. Which is why my little dialogue raises the possibility of a “School for Scale” to teach us. Because if we, all of us, don’t get a grip on these matters, we, all of us, will continue to perpetuate massive and massively consequential misunderstandings of our country and our world.