Alan Jacobs

People that now panic about incipient caudillismo and the dangers of a nationalist demagogue didn’t care when Bush expanded the security state, trampled on the Constitution, or launched an unnecessary war of aggression, and people that yawned at the steady expansion of government and creation of new unfunded liabilities under Bush are now supposedly alarmed by Trump’s lack of fidelity to the cause of limited government. They correctly identify many of Trump’s flaws, but refuse to acknowledge the fact that the party was already killed (or at least severely wounded) years ago during the disastrous Bush era. It was that period of incompetence and ideologically-driven debacles that shattered the GOP, and for the last seven years the vast majority of die-hard Trump foes have refused to recognize that and have chosen to learn nothing from it. They lost to Trump, but the part they can’t accept is that they deserved to lose because of their role in enabling the GOP’s past failures. Now they’re touting their abandonment of the wreckage they helped to create as if they deserve applause for running away from their own handiwork. If it weren’t so serious, it would be quite comical.

Texas, of course, comes by its sense of being a place apart honestly: From 1836-1845, it was its own country, the Republic of Texas, and it has long feasted on hyperbole. But these days Texas does feel increasingly like a caricature of a caricature.

here

I’ve been thinking lately, I’m not sure why, about my earlier novels, and I’m quite surprised how little I recall of them. I don’t know whether it’s liberating or worrying. Even The Names, which was set in Greece. Much of it, at least in terms of the travel in the novel, came out of personal experience. And even that seems very distant to me now. And Point Omega, my last novel — of course I know, essentially, what was going on there. But I could not have a serious discussion about it, I don’t think. Not at this point.

— Don DeLillo

I heard as good a story as I know this week about old Phelps the Provost of Oriel — you probably remember him, with the beard and the black straw hat. Jenner was a fellow of Jesus, a high-minded dissenter and fanatical tee-totaller. He was dining at Oriel and the Provost asked him to take wine with him:

Jenner: Sir, I would rather commit adultery than drink a glass of that.

Provost: (in a low, stern voice) So would we all, Jenner; but not at the table, if you please.

— C. S. Lewis, letter to his brother Warnie, 5 November 1939

Ever since I started work on the Dialogue on Democracy that I wrote for a while, and may pursue again, someday, I’ve been reading stuff by and about neoreactionaries, which has led me more than once to Scott Alexander’s Anti-Reactionary FAQ. I was looking at it again today, and had, quite strongly, a thought I have had before: Alexander is a first-rate mind and a consistently interesting writer, but his understanding of history is shockingly weak. But then, the same is true of every single prominent neoreactionary, though none of them, as far as I know, has cited The Oatmeal as a source for historical analysis. So we have this extended argument that has been going on for years now, much of which is based on the interpretation of historical events, not one participant in which has engaged with serious professional historians.

And I think that’s because serious professional history simply doesn’t lend itself to support of particular contemporary political proposals. There are just too many variables. Ask whether crime rates have gone up or down in the past hundred years and you’re immediately landed in a morass of questions: How good is the data for any given place, any given time? Do we have a consistent definition of “crime”? (Hint: No.) How many different cultural environments, political systems, economic conditions are we comparing, and how much do those variables affect the comparisons?

A mess like this is enough to make a smart person quote The Oatmeal and be done with it.

What suffering do you plan to inflict today, Arsenal? Enough.

Other clubs are worse, but only you so deftly raise hopes, then crush them.

Wounded may return, but only to lose their way as Özil lost his.

Adrift in a fog of mind, you draw us also there. We too are lost.

Enough! Coffee and birdsong call me. Let morning be; no BFG.

The message powerfully communicated in this book is entirely clear: when using the term "evangelical," it is now imperative to consider the entire world. Whatever system is used for counting, more evangelicals now live in Nigeria and Brazil, when taken together, than in the US. More evangelicals are now found in each of those two countries—and also in each of China, Kenya, South Korea, India, and Indonesia—than in any of the European homelands from which evangelicalism emerged. And today the most evangelical nations in the world, when measured by proportions of national population, are not the United States, England, Scotland, or Canada—but Vanuatu, Barbados, the Bahamas, Kenya, the Solomon Islands, South Korea, and the Central African Republic.

— Mark Noll

If the police kill, lie about it and take the law into their own hands, no one can be confident in calling for help during a crisis, nor can we rely on them to testify credibly in court. This is a systemic problem and is not merely a problem of individual bad actors.

— Amy Campanelli, the Cook County public defender, quoted in this powerful NYT story