Alan Jacobs

There’s one rhetorical tic to which Trump supporters are addicted that I desperately wish I could banish from the earth. It’s when they say that Trump is “no saint” or “admittedly imperfect” or “not a moral paragon” or “not without flaws” — that kind of thing. I see some such formulation almost every day. To speak that way is to imply that Trump’s critics demand perfection or at least sainthood. But our criticism of Trump is not that he has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, it’s that he is a person of exceptionally terrible character: He is a petty, vindictive, mercurial, willfully and grossly ignorant, self-serving, congenitally dishonest, paranoid narcissist. We just want a President who, to borrow a phrase from P. J. O’Rourke, is bad within normal parameters.

From now on, this is how I will think of my dear friend John Wilson: as “John Wilson of Messrs Bumpus.”

We’re at the copy-editing stage of my next book, so it’s too late to add anything, but goodness, I wish I could squeeze in this from Lucy Ellmann:

Some time ago I pretty much decided to read only books written before the atom bomb was dropped, when everything changed for all life on Earth. The industrial revolution’s bad enough, but nuclear weapons really are party-poopers.

I don’t stick strictly to this policy, but I often find it more rewarding to read what people thought about, and what they did with literature, before we were reduced by war and capitalism to mere monetary units, bomb fodder and password generators. And before the natural world became a depository for plastics and nuclear waste.

Anger and alienation have resulted, and they’re fine subjects, but there are times when you’d like to remember some of the higher points in the history of civilisation as well, and the natural world before we learned to view it all as tainted. The intense humour, innocence, sexiness and play of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, for instance – could this have been written after Hiroshima? Could Gargantua and Pantagruel? Don Quixote? Emma? I don’t see how. Thanks to the offences of patriarchy, a lot of the fun has gone out of being human, and I like books that look at life in less constricted ways.

I love this statement because of its provocations — provocations that should be assessed with some care. For one thing, I don’t see that the variety of books has especially diminished since Hiroshima — I mean, Chicken Soup for the Soul and The Shack and a whole bunch of adult coloring books have appeared since the end of that war — and if we’re missing the distinctive (and very funny) kind of “sexiness” in Tristram Shandy I think that has a lot more to do with the sexual revolution and its unanticipated consequences than with the atom bomb. 

But the idea that before the industrial revolution, with its accompanying “war and capitalism” and reduction of persons to “mere monetary units,” the natural world was perceived in a radically different way — that’s promising. Though I think the main thing that should be said about pre-modern nature is not that it was untainted but that it was scary as shit. Which is just as much worthy of our interest and reflection. 

We could debate such matters all day — and should! Because there’s no question that the past really is another country, though they don’t everything different there. Trying to understand the continuities as well as the discontinuities is what reading books from the past is all about. 

Anyway, my book is going to be great on all that stuff. Make sure it’s the only book published in 2020 that you buy in 2020, okay? Otherwise, stick with the old stuff. You’ll be glad you did. 

It seems to me that most of those who don’t think Christianity is true believe that it will soon disappear from the world, or all but disappear; that the solvent of liquid modernity really is universal and will inevitably come to all the places where Christianity is now strong, from Nigeria to South Korea. Most of the Christians I talk to about such matters are naturally more hopeful, at least about the Global South. (They tend to be resigned to the marginalization of Christianity in the West.)

But what strikes me about all such expectations (hopes, fears) for the future is how short-term they are. But that’s appropriate for one of those groups only. If you think that Christianity will soon be dead then there’s no reason to think about its long-term future. But if you think Christianity will be around as long as this world lasts, then what’s your excuse for short-term thinking? 

For Western (especially American) fundamentalists that excuse has tended to be: We’re in the end times. Jesus is coming soon. People obsessed with end-times thinking see Christianity as having an even shorter lifespan than the more skeptical atheists do, though that’s only because they’re expecting the whole shebang, “the great globe itself,” to go up in flames. But if you don’t see any reason to believe that Jesus is returning in the immediate future — though of course no one knows the hour — then wouldn’t it be a useful exercise to stretch your imaginative capacities a little bit? Whatever frustrations we Christians are experiencing right now would surely look rather different, and considerably less significant, if we thought in terms of what Mikhail Bakhtin called great time. Someone should write a book called Christianity: The Next Ten Thousand Years. 

Oh, don’t worry, y’all, I’ll be a pro. (Remember, this is my 15th book, or thereabouts. Not my first or even my dozenth rodeo.) There are two moments in the process of publishing a book — when I first have to open MS Word, and when the Author Questionnaire arrives — when I tell myself I’m going to retire from publishing and just blog for the rest of my life. But then I give myself a shake and a big tumbler of whiskey and recover both my professionalism and my gratitude for this opportunity. 

But you say I would indeed await his coming with joy, if I were holy and without sin. I should answer, what relief do you find in fear and flight? It would not redeem you from sin if you were to be filled with terror for a thousand years. The damned are eternally filled with fear of that day, but this does not take away their sin; yea, this fear rather increases sin and renders man unfit to appear without sin on that day when it comes. Fear must pass out of the soul and there must enter in a desire for righteousness and for that day. But if you really desire to be free from sin and to be holy, then give thanks to God and continue to desire to be more free from sin.... There is no one so well prepared for the judgment day as he who longs to be without sin. If you have such desire, what do you fear? You are then in perfect accord with the purpose of that day. It comes to set free from sin all who desire it, and you belong to that number. Return thanks to God and abide in that desire.

— from Martin Luther’s sermon on the Second Coming of Christ (1522)

In response to this post, Christopher Evatt wrote thoughtfully and incisively (I post with his permission): 

Beyond what you mention, I think equating "protection of white, Western cultural heritage" with white nationalism or white supremacy is foolish. It plays into one of many false binaries afflicting our current society - that in order to oppose racism, one must reject Western culture in toto. In the process it gives up far too much. I'm a classical pianist, and most of my work involves performing the music of dead European composers. In that sense, one could say that I have devoted much of my life to the protection and preservation of white, Western cultural heritage. (Of course, the words "white" and "Western", while meaningful to some extent in present-day American society, elide a lot of finer distinctions otherwise.) But I'm certainly no white nationalist or supremacist because of that. There's no way I'm going to give up Bach or Beethoven to cosplaying Nazi-wannabes. Just because some people want to use the masterpieces of Western culture to claim superiority for themselves despite not having contributed anything to culture themselves doesn't mean we should declare appreciation of Western culture as inevitably linked to racial supremacy. I know it's human nature to swing the pendulum all the way to the other end in reaction to some form of excess (and to be fair, Morris' piece is among the better of the ex-evangelical genre of writing to which it belongs), but that's all the more reason why we need to be cautious in our reactions, against all the incentives our present politics and culture hold out to us.

Annalee Newitz:

What would “internet realists” want from their media streams? The opposite of what we have now. Today, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are designed to make users easy to contact. That was the novelty of social media — we could get in touch with people in new and previously unimaginable ways.

It also meant, by default, that any government or advertiser could do the same. Mr. [John] Scalzi thinks we should turn the whole system on its head with “an intense emphasis on the value of curation.” It would be up to you to curate what you want to see. Your online profiles would begin with everything and everyone blocked by default.

Where I come from we call that an “RSS client.”

My preferred pronouns? None. You should use nouns only when referring to or addressing me.