#this is such a consistent issue even within leftist spaces

[seraphimfall]

too many people theorizing about intersex people, and not enough people genuinely listening to intersex people discuss their experiences and/or how to support them.

like, seriously.

[a-very-tired-jew]

Which Group to Belong to?

A consistent issue that myself and other queer Jews seem to have struggled with since 10/7 is this question of which group do we belong to? What do I mean by this? Many of us queer Jews belong to Leftist Progressive Queer spaces. We've been members of them for a long time. However, our identity is not solely a queer individual, but also a Jewish one. Many of my friends and acquaintances will tell you that they are a cis gay man, a transbian, an agender enby, and so on...but every Jew in these spaces will tell you some form of "I'm an (identity) Jew". Myself? I'm a pansexual nonbinary Jew. That is how I've always identified. My identity is not limited to either one, nor is it solely limited to them. However, in my own personal experience I have noticed that this dual identity does not completely mesh with the rest of the people in these spaces who come from a culturally Christian background or other such oppressive religion that doesn't recognize them. Judaism is perceived solely as a religion that is comparable to the thing many left behind to become their true self.

Yet you can still be a queer Jew without the religious trappings if you find them not pertinent to you at the time or even oppressive. We do have incidents of bigotry and hatred in our community towards LGBTQ+ individuals that may lead them to leave behind the religious aspects and/or community. They may never come back or practice again. But they are still a Jew. So the question is, where do we belong? The queer communities give us the support that we seek as queer individuals, and the Jewish community gives us support as Jews. But we are both, one does not exclude the other, and each one is more specialized to support us in a particular way than the other is. However, many of us are now having to deal with the loss of the former as these spaces become more and more antisemitic. As they spew more and more hatred towards our ethnicity and our people. As they demand a pound of flesh from us while shouting blood libel in our faces. These are often people we cried with with, had moments of sheer joy, and all the little moments that make up the beauty of life. Now tainted because they can't see us as anything more than a "genocidal Jewish Zionist monster". I have seen some Jews sacrifice their identity to simply be a queer individual and withstand the wave of hatred. They're one of the Good Ones after all, and thus the hatred is not towards them. But that's the problem...as soon as they're no longer perceived as Good then the hatred will be directed at them. Sacrificing the Jewish part of themself to simply be accepted is the same thing many of us did prior to coming out. We hid and/or sacrificed our queer self to be accepted by the larger heteronormative community. We withstood that hate in silence until we could no more, and then we spoke out. To see this behavior replicated within spaces that should know better is absolutely appalling. We shouldn't have had to sacrifice and hide ourselves when we were younger and we shouldn't have to now.

[iatrophilosophos]

Gonna jump off of this tangentially bc there's another thing here re: right wing health politics

The right is engaging with concepts that are fundementally more reflective of what I consider to be reality than a lotta left *and postleft* positions on various health issues. They start from a dogshit place and they end in a dogshit place and I have a fundementally different value system, ontology & epistemology; i in no way think we need to "hear them out"; and there's like... a lot of topics they engage with w/ internal consistency where most other contingents dont

Take rfk's funky treatment farms thing & specifically the anti MAT stance. Anti-MAT in abstinence-based conservative addiction programs *makes more internal sense* than most arguments for MAT coming from liberal & left contingents; because MAT a b s o l u t e l y just functions as safe supply for plenty of people. If you want people off drugs full stop, you should be anti-MAT. I'm not pro abstinence-only and I am pro drug access but I feel like I'm dealing with the same basic reality here, as opposed to the myth that methadone doesn't hit/doesn't count/whatever.

I think this is also true re: porn addiction. For all intents and purposes, within social demographics that are anti-porn, porn addiction is a consistent concept that is *more* reflective of addiction as a sociological condition than the dx SUD. I don't think it's a flawless analysis of sex, desire & pornography or anything but it does offer a bare-faced recognition of some dynamics that leftist contingents often bury. SUD overmedicalizes use and obscures sociological factors contributing to people being unable to navigate their relationships with substances in whatever way is desirable to them; it removes agency from drug users; and its logics result in ineffective interventions on both institutional and grassroots stages (e.g. detox&dump). I honestly feel like smashing my head against the wall whenever I see someone try to dunk on some dingus who's saying porn addiction is real because it's a habit people aren't able to easily abstain from that ruins relationships and social connections by going "ummmhhh akshually ☝️🤓 porn only ruins relationships because you are intolerant of porn 🤪" because they're so...fucking...close...to getting it...and yet.

And that's not even touching the fact that the Main *highly effective* right wing health propaganda strategy is just...telling people they aren't stupid and they're right to distrust their doctors, two things that Are True. "You aren't stupid" is such a powerful phrase coming from a perceived medical authority that the next words out of their mouths can be directly abusing and derriding their audience and it STILL works.

The difference between right & left wing alternative & DIY health space is also exceptionally stark, where left&postleft herbalism is full of grief circles and mental health and flower essences and right-learning herbalist groups on fb&whatever are full of people seeking help for every day health complications out of financial necessity and/or medical distrust.

And like...Do Not Get Me Wrong, I'm not trying to say "the left needs to try harder to appeal to middle america", i ain't even a leftist, nor do I have actual affinity with right wing alternative health, nor do I think what they actually discuss re: those health complications with their fucking colloidal silver and bad information practices has much if any merit. I'm more trying to illustrate how damningly authority-brained even purported anarchists are when it comes to medicine and how little backbone is demonstrated when it comes to criticism of either the current medical establishment OR the concepts of a professional medical class that are presupposed in discourse, where access to that class supercedes the tools and knowledge it's actually composed of.

And it's like hard right bc like I been saying there's no good manual there's just a buncha mostly bad/only partially applicable/etc sources to sort through and a bunch of attempts to be made to actually utilize and refine it, but like, the only way to really start is to get incredibly critical and talk about health and medicine a lot and actually like, try to find an ANSWER (or pieces od it) instead of access to a service

And a lot of it is cope. It is easier to hold an ideology where "our side" just needs to "win" and we get to maintain that comfortable imperial core status of access to basic-needs-as-services (or perception as such bc honestly, who has good medical access? Not most ppl i know) instead of reckoning with the fact that, as we like to say, nobody is coming to save us and the only answers for most ppl are gonna be the ones they can come up with...because actually working this shit? I mean i love it its my main personality trait but for a lot of people its fucking boring and hard and feels bad because pressing questions want pressing answers, and a lot of us don't have pressing answers. Sure, there are people out here who have a reasonable starting place with what to do in keeping people with at least some conditions alive for at least an amount of time, hopefully enough time for further answers, but to actually get to that point it's a lotta deep dives into stuffy noses and ear infections and mild cases of Whatever. I can do all the grandstanding I want about how much value there is in grasping a little bit more security and autonomy, but I also recognize for a lot of people it feels like peanuts, it doesn't seem fast enough, it doesn't seem good enough. And they're RIGHT. But it's a start, it's what we have, and i hope to fucking God it's really on the way to something.

I think a thing that i find deeply frustrating from every political & philosophical perspective is a deep lack of engagement with medicine. I think at the very root of it is a sense of professional/expertise/authoritative domain. Most people do not talk about how to make medicine happen, they talk about creating conditions conducive to producing an effective medical class +/- production appartus. Anarchists are just as guilty of this as communists as reformerists: you can't tell me that most of the people who gesture at projects like four thieves, open insulin, boobs not bombs (don't get me started), and various street medicine projects aren't also just invoking the image of a detached force of competent agents.

I'll be a hater until the end of time but sometimes it is kinda hard to blame ur average disabled civvie's knee-jerk "what about my meds" because the question is conspicuously absent or relegated to ignorant grandstanding so, so often. Anyone actually critically examining the projects we often cite as easy, publicly available examples will quickly note that they *do* have deep flaws and vulnerabilities. Medicine is conspicuously absent from the texts we cite, pearlman doesnt talk about it, postciv! doesnt talk about it...because these works, no matter how much love I have for them, are really not actually concerned with disabled people all that much.

Most anticiv ppl i know are disabled/medication dependent ourselves & working on it, it's just like really fucking hard, and really hard to generate Texts(tm) while also doing the thing. It's a weird, long, slow process that I'm getting progressively better at & have been for years, but it's also something that happens in conversations and relationships and it's hard to iron out and commit to paper when honestly, synthesizing an effective, sustainable, bioregionally feasible medical MO in current times IS a field in its infancy AND one that looks radically different for every cohort because we are located in different places and starting from a point of different needs/conditions of priority.

Acting like the people who prioritize this just Have It on lock and will get it figured is doing everyone a disservice--it's a paper thin posture that disabled ppl are gonna see through, and it's reinforcing the idea that the average person in the imperial core doesn't need to have any concept of what they'd do with, idk, kidney stones or conjuctivitis or Whatever because they can Just See A Professional About It, even though we ***know*** that that idea doesn't hold up for tons of people NOW, let alone as collapse continues.

[fernsbyisntreal]

Realising just how non Jew-friendly most people are, even within queer and leftist spaces. Obviously I knew antisemitism was a big problem but until I started converting to reconnect with my ancestors I did not realise the scope of it.

I've got queer friends who actually said they find some antisemitic jokes funny. I know leftists who stop whenever you talk about Judaism. I was having a nice conversation with a woman at the bus stop and as soon as she found out the purpose of my trip was to go to the synagogue the conversation fizzled. Even my progressive family members have made dodgy comments that they just simply didn't realise were not appropriate to make.

When it comes to progress and inclusion, Jews still don't count. And that, unfortunately, is the way it has always been.

This won't stop me, I know my people, in all my years I have never found somewhere I feel more at home, even though most of the synagogue is triple my age, even though I'm still nervous to talk to a lot of them. It's the only place I consistently leave feeling better than when I walked in. I just wish the community was bigger near me so I could feel that love more

I don't even feel the need to come out to them, I'm pretty visibly queer but it just doesn't feel like something I have to do. It's not because I think I'd get backlash either. There's a gay couple who attend and nobody has an issue, and honestly maybe if I dated more or something it would come up but none of it feels necessary because I can feel the love in these people. I've heard their politics and their jokes and everything and it just feels safe

[ishouldreallybeelsewhere]

okay so that loki video essay thing was going well, and then like a day into writing it i lost the hyperfixation so it's never gonna be finished. i still think it's alright, completely unedited, entirely a train of thought, i hope you like commas and pacific rim, it's only 2.8k

btw if something doesn't make sense, i was writing this while watching some video essays, and also haven't read it

Introduction

Loki is a show, well you know that, but a show that does everything right, until it doesn’t (crazy, I know). If you’re here, I assume you’ll already know a fair bit about it, but if you don’t, here’s a quick refresher. Spoilers for everything MCU.

Loki begins in 2012, technically, just after the Avengers go back through time from Endgame to meet themselves and grab the infinity stones. Unfortunately, the plan goes awri, and Loki ends up in possession of the Tesseract, the mind stone. With this, he teleports to a desert in [a place] and is quickly arrested and apprehended by the Time Keepers for ‘Crimes Against the Sacred Timeline.’ Sounds a bit cult-y if you ask me, and given that you’re stuck here, you will ask me. Essentially, his actions (taking the tesseract) were not supposed to happen. They created a branch, a new timeline, and, according to the TVA, if left unchecked, the timeline could cause a multiversal war that would result in the end of time. This is, to put it simply, a very interesting premise, and the first two episodes do a wonderful job of exploring the TVA and searching for the mysterious Loki variant who causes chaos and mischief, all while evading the time cops.

What is the TVA? Well, it’s the Time Variance Authority, which clears up nothing to those who haven’t seen the show. I would let a clip explaining it play, but I think I’d get a copyright strike, even though I’m fairly sure it’s within fair use. Regardless, the TVA is an organisation supposedly created by the Time Keepers, space lizards who brought together all of time into a singular sacred timeline. Had they not done this, time itself would have ended, how they did this is unexplained, and likely either impossible, or they are greater than gods in their power. Loki is immediately doubtful, but can’t deny that they must hold some power, because not only does his magic not work in the TVA, but infinity stones are useless too. Time is also stranger there too, more an idea as opposed to a set part of their reality. Many theorise that they reside within the quantum realm, which makes sense, as that is how one travels through time, at least in the marvel universe, but we can’t be sure until we get an explanation. Of course, I’m writing this long before I’ll see the finale, so who knows, perhaps I’ll have to rewrite it.

Now I’ve said all that without explaining what the TVA actually does. It’s pretty simple, similar to Stephen Hawking’s (???) ideas of the multiverse, every decision you make has the ability to make another timeline, one that is not part of the sacred way of time, and therefore must be pruned by the TVA before it grows enough to cause another multiversal war, despite multiverses being well-established in the MCU, but I know that’s different. Or perhaps the Time Keepers are lying (spoiler, they are, just not exactly in that way). Anyway, when someone makes a decision or takes an action that creates a new timeline, the TVA arrives. Minutemen arrest the ‘Variant’ responsible, despite their lack of intentional crime, and prune the new timeline, which we are told destroys it. Then Variants must stand trial for their crimes, in which they can either plead guilty or not, but really, that doesn’t make much difference, as they’re unable to make a case, let alone get away as innocent. Before they reach the court, however, Variants are dressed in TVA jumpsuits, have to sign off every word they’ve ever said, and a snapshot of their temporal aura is taken, for some reason. Yeah, it’s not really ever explained why they have to go through all that, like, why don’t they just prune them all, or just send them straight to court. It seems like they’re putting on a big show for nothing. Of course, if you have to go through all that, you probably won’t have time to think about the whys of your situation, which I’m sure the TVA uses to their advantage.

Now, we’re heading into real spoiler-y stuff, just in case anyone here hasn't watched episode three. If you haven’t, why are you here? Go, finish the whole series, and then come back. Alrighty. Now that everyone’s seen it all (apart from me at this point) we can continue.

Everyone working at the TVA is a Variant, and they don’t know it. The Time Keepers are said to have created everything within the TVA, every analyst, Minuteman, and whatever the other roles are. But that’s not true. They’re all variants who’ve been taken from their own timelines and had their memories wiped. This gives an explanation for the courtrooms, and the process to get into them. Robots will be melted from the inside out if they go through the temporal aura machine thingy, and I have a feeling it’s harder to reset a robot’s memories. Living beings are let through, and their actions in the courtroom could give a good overview of their strengths and intelligence, so it can be decided whether they’ll be pruned or ‘reset’ which we are told is killed, but with the information of them all being variants now available, is more likely having all their memories hidden, replaced with the idea that they’ve been at the TVA their whole lives, and that they were created by the timekeepers. Though why would space lizards create workers in the image of humans instead of like their own lizard-y selves. The TVA as a whole, as we are introduced to it, feels very cult-y. Things such as the videos Variants are shown upon being arrested, the whole ‘Sacred Timeline’ thing, the Time Keepers being viewed as almost gods, and that when one of the TVA’s own minutemen is told the truth (C-20) she is, well, removed. The TVA views Variants as criminals of the highest order. How dare they violate the sacred timeline?!!? Only, no variant knew that what they were doing was wrong, or that it even mattered, but if you’re late to work on a day where you weren’t supposed to be, then you’re removed from your timeline and charged. The sentence? Essentially death, or removal of all your memories and being lied to about everything, which might be worse depending on your stance on that kind of thing.

Anyway, the minutemen themselves are another issue that the TVA has. They respond with violence at every available opportunity, like when a young french child from the 1500s walks into a church, the first thing a minuteman does is reach for his weapon. This is also the scene where we’re introduced to my favourite character, Mobius, but more on him later. For now, I need to stay on track and keep in mind this part of the view has to remain consistent. All I can think of are the nerds I split. It seems I have an inability to stay on topic, however, I’m gonna try so you have fun keeping up with that.

Loki stood trial for crimes against the Sacred Timeline and, like any logical person may in that situation, relentlessly questions the validity of his conviction. The answers he’s provided with he just,, kind of,, disagrees with, which is fair. The concept of the TVA and the sacred timeline as a whole is absurd to him, as who would a god serve?

Part one: Glorious Purpose

Loki, in his own words, it ‘Burdened With Glorious Purpose.’ I’m so glad no one but me is gonna read this draft cuz I managed to spell many of those words wrong. His glorious purpose, in his eyes, is becoming the ruler of all, removing free will and choice from those beneath him, in a twisted attempt to make it easy for all living things. He believes in free will, at least, the free will of himself, and also believes that, out of everyone in the universe, he is the one who is right, the one who can make the world better, that is his burden. Now, you may look at that and think, ‘hey, for a god of mischief, that doesn’t seem very mischievous,’ and you’d be right. It isn’t. He’s evil, like, without a doubt, an evil person in his ideals and views of the universe, however, the change from mischief to villainy was rapid, as it’s shown that he was D.B. Cooper, and, when asked, said it was because he was ‘young and lost a bet to Thor’, which, like, okay, but that was the 60s or something. 50 years aren’t a lot in the face of 1,500, but a lot can happen then

Part something: ethics

So, as you’ve probably gathered by now, I’m a pretentious asshole, and with that comes three years of philosophy classes and a superiority complex, though perhaps that comes from the whole leftist thing. Anyway, as per usual, I got sidetracked. I’m watching a really good video atm, so lots of things are happening in my head right now. Back to being pretentious, I’m going to be talking about ethics, fun, and how that relates to the TVA, the sacred timeline, Kang, sorry, he who remains. Regarding the whole Kang thing, I haven’t read a single Marvel comic since I was a member of the comic book club 4(???) years ago. Gods, I’m so old. Yup Percy Jackson took up too much of my childhood. Sidetracked again! I apologise, anyway, everything I know about Kang the Conqueror comes from Tumblr, so I’m not going to spend any time talking about any parts of the character that aren’t shown in the show. I really want to be writing about Doctor Who right now but I have my notes up so I’m gonna do this. Okay, right. Ethics. I hope I don’t go into free will right now because I will never stop going on about that. Anyway, let's look at the TVA, ignoring Kang, not for simplicity, but to see if the ends do in fact justify the means as Mobius said. And by that I mean, if what employees of the TVA think is true, are their actions justified? Finally got to the point, after how many words? Too many, anyway, let’s start from the start (kinda).

In an actual, proper, organised essay, I think that whole last paragraph was supposed to be 1 (one) sentence long, maybe. I have been writing year nine level essays for many years, despite not being in year nine for many, many years, so, be glad you’re reading something I’m interested in. Back to the topic at hand, please. Sorry I just got distracted again. I shouldn’t have Tumblr open atm. Anyway, what are the TVA’s means? So, I’ve already explained what the TVA is, and what it does, but let’s use a fun example to show what they really do. Imagine you’re a kid (or maybe you are a kid, so imagine you’re a younger one) and you just got home from school. You just made an awesome new friend who believes in you and loves your art. This sparks your interest in art, leading to countless pieces, days and days spent drawing and painting and having a great time. Your art begins to take hold on the world, speaking to people, letting them believe in themselves, thousands upon thousands of people inspired to start their own art, to rebel against the system of capitalism and teach people that there’s more to life than a job. This begins the global radicalisation of the working class, and with that, rebellion and the downfall of capitalism. I’m in a good mood rn, feeling optimistic, so don’t worry about what’s happening. Anyway, with the downfall of human exploitation and eradication of poverty comes a branch in the Sacred Timeline, and as the root of it is you as a child making a friend, your 5-year-old self just committed a crime that, according to the TVA, is worthy of what they believe to be actual death, like, being pruned.

Now, this was a very umm, off-the-top-of-my-head example, and entirely makes no sense, but give me two seconds and I’ll remember my original point. Right. The risk of allowing the downfall of capitalism is the end of all time. Always. Maybe? But, in the eyes of the TVA, kidnapping a 5-year-old, putting them through a dehumanising process to be shoved in a courtroom and being accused of crimes against the sacred timeline, and what was the crime? Making a goddamn friend. As a child. Being supported in art. Doing what you enjoy, destroying oppressive systems that will eventually be the downfall of us all and so entwined with all the problems in the world that any chance of saving it revolves around its deconstruction. I’ve been hunched over too long and my back is really starting to hurt, but the essay must go on. And remember, the domino effect of that friendship never actually happened. The timeline was pruned before it could happen, so the crime is literally making a friend. Very extreme example sorry, but shock makes your point go across faster, and also sparks outrage, which I don’t want to happen, but with doing literally anything comes backlash, like stepping on the wrong leaf, or a butterfly. I hope you guys know that this is unplanned and probably unedited. Okay I need to watch Pacific Rim again. Okay imagine now they kill the child. Right. That’s likely what would happen. Children are weak (usually, Sylvie is just on another level of awesome) [author’s note, Crimson Peak is a horror movie and I’m very upset by that cuz now I won’t be able to watch it]. Alright, so, kill a child, or destroy all of time. Always. Maybe. The way we see the TVA in the first two episodes is through Loki’s eyes, as a cult-like lie with a cool retro/futuristic aesthetic (like Doctor Who, but more on that later). I have been sitting here for 4 hours and I can confidently say my cat is an asshole whose sole purpose in life is to want to come in right when I’m in the middle of a point only to not want to come in but allow me to lose exactly what I was about to say, meaning I’ve gotten next to nothing done. Hi, I'm back. I got distracted by My Little Pony and Pacific Rim. And checkers. Issues with pacing? I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Okay, so, I’m going to say something possibly controversial. When the stakes are the endings of the entirety of time, it’s okay to let a child die, and technically they might not die they’d just be sent to be either devoured the void or saved by a ragtag team of loki variants. Which is not great. That might sound like I agree with the TVA, but trust me, I do not. Not in the slightest. I hate the slimy bastards. (I do love every single character though, like all of them are awesome) The prickly pricks will bury us all!!! I don’t agree with them because I think there is a better way to handle the multiversal problem and the issue that arises regarding the particular cause of the multiversal war. That made no sense. You’re really just gonna have to guess at this point, however, for the solution, we must look into the finale and the reasoning behind He Who Remains’ plan. I said I wasn’t going to talk about him, but I lied (rule number one). Basically, from what I understood of his plan (which wasn’t much, I’m pretty stupid) was that there were two options; option number one was to leave him there, looking over all of time, preventing free will, so that the infinite variants of him that would come from timelines wouldn’t once again attempt to conquer all of the timelines (though if there are infinite ones, how would that work? Just kidding, you’re not allowed to question this). He dictates all. There’s no such thing as free will, and if you dare veer off the path, you will be pruned, and your timeline destroyed. His plan is to hand that power over to Loki and Sylvie, because he’s getting old and has lived long enough. The other option (and the one that’s taken in the show) is to allow Sylvie to kill He Who Remains and let the multiverse unfold, allow free will and chaos to reign, with the possibility and established likelihood of the destruction of time itself. Now, just putting this out here, what if there was a third option? My proposition is based of knowing next to nothing and not having seen Loki in a while, and that is,

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Next stop Mars: 3 spacecraft arriving in quick succession (AP) After hurtling hundreds of millions of miles through space since last summer, three robotic explorers are ready to hit the brakes at Mars. The United Arab Emirates’ orbiter reaches Mars on Tuesday, followed less than 24 hours later by China’s orbiter-rover combo. NASA’s rover, the cosmic caboose, will arrive on the scene a week later, on Feb. 18, to collect rocks for return to Earth—a key step in determining whether life ever existed at Mars. Both the UAE and China are newcomers at Mars, where more than half of Earth’s emissaries have failed. China’s first Mars mission, a joint effort with Russia in 2011, never made it past Earth’s orbit. All three spacecraft rocketed away within days of one another last July, during an Earth-to-Mars launch window that occurs only every two years. That’s why their arrivals are also close together.

Around the globe, virus cancels spring travel for millions (AP) They are the annual journeys of late winter and early spring: Factory workers in China heading home for the Lunar New Year; American college students going on road trips and hitting the beach over spring break; Germans and Britons fleeing drab skies for some Mediterranean sun over Easter. All of it canceled, in doubt or under pressure because of the coronavirus. Amid fears of new variants of the virus, new restrictions on movement have hit just as people start to look ahead to what is usually a busy time of year for travel. It means more pain for airlines, hotels, restaurants and tourist destinations that were already struggling more than a year into the pandemic, and a slower recovery for countries where tourism is a big chunk of the economy.

AP-NORC poll: Few in US say democracy is working very well (AP) Only a fragment of Americans believe democracy is thriving in the U.S., even as broad majorities agree that representative government is one of the country’s bedrock principles, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Just 16% of Americans say democracy is working well or extremely well, a pessimism that spans the political spectrum. Nearly half of Americans, 45%, think democracy isn’t functioning properly, while another 38% say it’s working only somewhat well. The poll’s findings are broadly consistent with how Americans graded democracy before the election. But there are signs that Trump’s attacks on the democratic process, including his repeated argument that the election was “stolen” because of voter irregularities, resonated with Republicans.

Schools plan for potential of remote learning into the fall (AP) Parents of schoolchildren learning from home shouldn’t necessarily count on reclaiming the dining room table any time soon. After seeing two academic years thrown off course by the pandemic, school leaders around the country are planning for the possibility of more distance learning next fall at the start of yet another school year. “We have no illusions that COVID will be eradicated by the time the start of the school year comes up,” said William “Chip” Sudderth III, a spokesperson for Durham, North Carolina schools, whose students have been out of school buildings since March. President Joe Biden has made reopening schools a top priority, but administrators say there is much to consider as new strains of the coronavirus appear and teachers wait their turn for vaccinations. And while many parents are demanding that schools fully reopen, others say they won’t feel safe sending children back to classrooms until vaccines are available to even young students.

2nd major snowstorm in a week blankets Northeast (AP) A major snowstorm pushed through the Northeastern United States on Sunday, less than a week after a storm dumped more than 2 feet on parts of the region. By early afternoon, 5 to 7 inches had already fallen in parts of northwestern New Jersey and southwestern Connecticut. New York’s Central Park reported about 3 inches. The highest total was recorded in West Whiteland Township, west of Philadelphia, where about 9 inches had fallen. The National Weather Service predicted up to 8 inches of snow in New York City and 2 to 4 inches in Washington, D.C. Up to a foot was projected to fall on some areas along the Connecticut coastline.

Biden faces border challenge as migrant families arrive in greater numbers and large groups (Washington Post) President Biden’s more-welcoming message to immigrants is facing an immediate challenge along the Mexican border, where Central American families and children have been crossing in numbers that point to a building crisis. In recent days, U.S. authorities have seen the return of large groups of parents and children crossing the border in the darkness, a replay of scenes that occurred during the record influx of families who arrived in 2018 and 2019, overwhelming migrant shelters and Border Patrol stations. Republican critics of Biden say the new wave is the start of the crisis they have long predicted, invited by the new administration’s eager rejection of Trump’s deterrent approach. Yet Biden also inherited a highly improvised enforcement system from his predecessor that was already under strain and highly dependent on Trump’s diplomatic bullying of Mexico. Late last month, Mexican authorities in some areas of the border stopped taking back families returned by the United States under emergency pandemic health measures implemented last March. With the U.S. capacity to hold adults and children reduced by the pandemic and the temporary closure of the largest Border Patrol facility in South Texas, U.S. Customs and Border Protection began dropping families off at bus stations and shelters last week.

Ecuador’s election (Foreign Policy) Ecuador’s presidential election is set to go to a second round after early returns showed a split electorate. Leftist Andrés Arauz leads the count with 31.5 percent of the vote, while his closest challengers Guillermo Lasso and Yaku Pérez both received roughly 20 percent. As the margin between them is so tight, it’s not yet clear whether Lasso or Pérez will face Arauz in the April 11 runoff.

Brexit growing pains (Foreign Policy) Exports from the United Kingdom to the European Union fell by 68 percent in January, according to a trade group representing British truck drivers. The Road Haulage Association (RHA) attributed the drop to trade disruptions due to the end of the Brexit transition period, although the British government has said border friction has been “minimal.” The news comes as EU and U.K. representatives meet this week to discuss extending post-Brexit grace periods on the trade of certain goods.

‘Al desko’ (Foreign Policy) The French labor ministry says it will soon relax a ban on workers eating lunch at their desks in order to enforce social distancing regulations. France’s labor laws currently forbid employees from eating “al desko” and companies face financial penalties if inspectors catch them flouting the law. The country’s strict labor rights include a 2017 law that allows workers to ignore work e-mails outside of normal working hours. “We French and you Americans have totally different ideas about work,” Agnès Dutin, a retired Parisian, told the New York Times. “It’s a catastrophe to eat at your desk. You need a pause to refresh the mind. It’s good to move your body. When you return, you see things differently.”

Russia considering at least $6.7 billion spending package to ease discontent (Reuters) Russian authorities are considering a new social spending package worth at least $6.7 billion to address discontent over falling living standards before an autumn election, according to two government sources. The package, which one of the sources said President Vladimir Putin was likely to unveil in an annual speech to senior political figures in coming weeks, follows unsanctioned nationwide protests last month that hit the value of the rouble. The two government sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media, told Reuters the spending package was meant to make people feel the authorities are aware of their financial concerns and are doing something to help them.

Myanmar junta imposes curfew, meeting bans as protests swell (AP) Myanmar’s new military rulers on Monday signaled their intention to crack down on opponents of their takeover, issuing decrees that effectively banned peaceful public protests in the country’s two biggest cities. The restrictive measures were ordered after police fired water cannons at hundreds of protesters in the Myanmar capital, Naypyitaw, who were demanding the military hand power back to elected officials. It was just one of many demonstrations around the country. Rallies and gatherings of more than five people, along with motorized processions, were banned, and an 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. curfew was imposed for areas of Yangon and Mandalay, the country’s first- and second-biggest cities, where thousands of people have been demonstrating since Saturday. The growing wave of defiance—particularly in Naypyitaw, where such protests are unusual—was striking in a country where demonstrations have been met with severe force in the past.

Iran: US must lift sanctions before it lives up to nuke deal (AP) Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday urged the United States to lift all sanctions if it wants Iran to live up to commitments under its nuclear deal with world powers, state TV reported, but President Joe Biden says the U.S. won’t be making the first move. “If (the U.S.) wants Iran to return to its commitments, it must lift all sanctions in practice, then we will do verification … then we will return to our commitments,” state TV quoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying, in his first comments on the matter since Biden took office. Biden rejected the idea in a “CBS Evening News” interview taped Friday and airing Sunday. Former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. in 2018 from the atomic deal, which saw Iran agree to limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Biden has said he will seek to revive the deal, but insisted that Iran must first reverse its nuclear steps, creating a contest of wills between the nations.

Israel’s Netanyahu walks out on his own corruption trial (Washington Post) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told judges in a Jerusalem court on Monday that he is innocent of corruption charges before abruptly standing, saying “thank you very much” and leaving with his motorcade. Netanyahu quit the courtroom some 20 minutes after the start of Monday morning’s hearing, which continued on without him. The sessions kick-started the second phase of a precedent-setting legal procedure, which, for the first time, involves the indictment of an Israeli prime minister while still in office and campaigning for elections in the coming weeks—the fourth in two years.

Congo working to stop new Ebola outbreak in country’s east (AP) Health officials in Congo confirmed another Ebola outbreak in the country’s east on Sunday, the fourth in less than three years. On February 3, a woman died in Butembo town in North Kivu province, Minister of Health Eteni Longondo announced. This is the 12th outbreak in conflict-ridden Congo since the virus was first discovered in the country in 1976, and comes less than three months after an outbreak in the western province of Equateur, officially ended in November. The 2018 outbreak in Eastern Congo was the second deadliest in the world, killing 2,299 people before it ended in June. That outbreak lasted for nearly two years and was fought amid unprecedented challenges, including entrenched conflict between armed groups, the world’s largest measles epidemic, and the spread of COVID-19.

[queermediastudies]

Feminist Vampires: Don’t Invite Mainstream Audiences Inside! (Madi Mackey)

Bit, written and directed by Brad Michael Elmore, is the story of a young trans woman named Laurel who moves to Los Angeles and finds herself mixed up in a friend group of female vampires. She is quickly turned into a vampire herself and thrust into their world. Duke, the leader of the girl gang, implements some very strict rules for the group. The most important rule is to never turn a man into a vampire, stating that they can’t handle the power. The film follows the five young women as they navigate their lives as both vampires and members of a bustling Los Angeles night life. The drama comes to a peak when Laurel accidentally bites her brother and has to decide between saving his life and following Duke’s rules.

The film is an excellent example of modern day intersectional feminism. The core group of women is very diverse, representing African American, latina, butch, and transgender identities. They are all women-loving women in some sense, though their specific sexualities are never detailed. They are unflinchingly focused on retaining their power and their sisterhood by refusing to let a man into their groups and forbidding any usage of their mind-influencing powers on each other. However, the film is not perfect, and does not hold up to much scrutiny from a queer perspective. Duke, the previously mentioned leader, is also the only white girl in the group. Their hatred toward men could push the idea that all feminists hate men, further isolating the movement. Finally, the film does not mention class or any struggles associated with the marginalized communities the characters belong to, reducing the film to a post-gender, post-sexuality world. For these shortcomings, I argue that Bit is a great stride in the queer movie industry, but it misses the mark in many categories, and could therefore cause more damage to the trans, lesbian, and feminist communities than the positive impacts of such representation could outweigh, if it were to leave the arthouse and break into the mainstream.

One major theme in Bit is intersectional feminism. As mentioned before, the group of vampires is quite diverse, but this inclusion is only skin-deep. Their dynamic still enforces white, middle-class homonormativity. The girl with the most power is white and cisgender, and all of the girls are able-bodied and middle- to upper-class. Joyrich explains that television industries must continually portray homonormativity to maintain profits, and the same can be said for the film industry (2013, p. 5). Although this is a low-budget film that premiered at an independent film festival, the director, Elmore, stated in an interview that one of his main goals was for the movie to reach a larger audience of at-home viewers (Dunagan, 2019). His yearning for mass reception might have caused him to reproduce homonormativity for the film to be more palatable and, therefore, more profitable.

This is not the only flaw within the production practices for this film. Similar to criticisms regarding Pose and The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, Elmore is a cis white man who took it upon himself to tell a queer story. By doing so, he took production resources and material benefits from its popularity away from the trans, lesbian, and POC communities who live the stories that he is telling (Tourmaline, 2017). Elmore explains that he read multiple theoretical texts and memoirs regarding gender while writing the script, and then had a close, gender non-conforming friend of his approve it before he, “felt more comfortable to show it to people in and around that conversation and community that I wasn’t close to” (Dunagan, 2019). While he did a fair bit of research into the community before creating the film, this isn’t the same as being a member of the community. Cavalcante explains this difference as a split between identifying with and identifying as a character, with identifying as a character always hitting closer to home and being more personal (2017, p. 14). Although Cavalcante makes this distinction in regards to audience reception, I believe it can be applied to production as well, and how Elmore wrote characters he could identify with, whereas a trans or POC writer could have written more personal characters that they identify as. Because Elmore is not trans or a POC, he needed to enforce homonormativity in his film in order to create characters that he identified with, as he has never lived as someone on the margins.

(Brad Michael Elmore, writer and producer of Bit)

Still, the production methods and content of the movie themselves could absolutely be described as queer. Benshoff & Griffin describe new queer cinema as films that have low-budgets, usually remain in the arthouse, and show the inadequacy of labels, instead focusing on the social discourses surrounding gender, race, and class (2004, pp. 11-12). Bit checks all of these boxes, even offering some helpful insights into social discourses. When Laurel, the transgender protagonist, is turned into a vampire, Duke tells her that their number one rule is to absolutely never turn a man. Laurel looks worried and asks, “What about me?” to which Duke responds, “Never even crossed my mind” (Elmore, 2019). Her immediate acceptance of Laurel’s identity expresses a consistent mood throughout the entire movie. Laurel’s transition and identity are never remarked in more explicit terms, and the sexuality and ethnicity of the other women are all treated with the same unspoken acceptance. The only identities that are ever mentioned are class and sex; Laurel asks one of the girls how they afford to live in L.A., and anyone who identifies as a man is immediately treated with contempt.

(watch video until 42:50)

While these approaches to intersectional identity may function well within the underground audience of new queer cinema, they could cause problems if Bit were to hit the mainstream. As Tongson explains, media representations help to produce our material realities; we rely on media to understand identities that we don’t know in the real world (2017, p. 158)). By ignoring the struggles of marginalized communities in the film, Bit raises more questions than it answers for viewers who are unfamiliar with these communities. Their confusion could cause these people on the margins to become cultural interpreters and explain their communities to those who don’t understand. Some see this as an opportunity to share their life experiences and cross cultural bridges; for others, it can become a burden of representation and they may lose a feeling of privacy (Cavalcante, 2017, p. 11). Bit could be seen as a welcome break from tragic representations for people within the trans community. Conversely,  Elmore’s silence on these issues could also lead mainstream audiences to believing that marginalized communities do not face any struggles in modern America, and therefore lose some empathy. 

This mediated understanding of reality could also be greatly detrimental to the feminist movement if it were to hit the mainstream. While I loved the explicitly feminist tone of the film, other audiences could find it off-putting and apply Bit’s ideology to all real-life feminists. The group of women in this film are quite outspoken around their distrust and distaste toward men. This could be applied to feminists, who are already called “man haters” in the real world as an attempt to invalidate their arguments. Elmore could be adding fuel to this fire by depicting feminists as exactly what the mainstream fears them to be.

Simultaneously, this bold approach to intersectional feminism is exactly why I, and many other queer viewers, love this film. My own subject positionality influences my understanding of Bit, just as those of mainstream audiences would make them feel differently about the film. I am a college-educated, middle-class, white, bisexual woman. I am also an outspoken feminist and socialist. All of my converging identities influence my view on this film and the opinions I have on its themes. As a young person who spends a lot of time in feminist spaces online, I felt such a rush while watching this film and hearing them directly saying things like, “Men can’t handle power. They have it already, and look at what they have done with it” (Elmore, 2019). A lot of people online say things about hating men, and I know from my own personal experience that the argument is so nuanced that it is simply easier to say “kill all men” than it is to explain what feminism really stands for and how it is, in fact, not simply man-hating. I love that this film expects the viewer to have this same knowledge, and can therefore say things like this without needing to defend itself and explain all of the nuance behind such a statement.

My status as middle-class and a socialist also have a great impact on my subject positionality and interpretation of Bit. Coming from a middle-class family and city, everything in the movie seemed normal to me. I was able to identify with the characters’ struggles, as they didn’t have anything to do with money or family issues. However, I could see this posing an issue for people who are struggling financially or with their family dynamic. To make up for this, the film has a lot of discourse regarding the redistribution of power and resources. Downward redistribution is a key tenant of leftism, so this movie displays clear leftist ideologies from a socio-political perspective (Duggan, 2002, p.XVI). We can see this in lines like, “How would you like to hold the keys to the kingdom for a change?” when Duke is talking to Laurel about turning, and at the very end of the movie, when Laurel’s brother asks her what they should do next and she responds, “Maybe what everyone with power should do and never does: share it” (Elmore, 2019).

(watch video until 1:30:00)

Finally, watching this film from the subject positionality of a woman greatly influenced my interpretation and reaction. At first, I was appalled by the group of girls and how nonchalantly they killed people, especially men. Laurel was written to have the same feelings of shock and disgust. So, when Duke said, “Our role is secondary. Our bodies are suspect, alien, other. We’re made to be monstrous, so let’s be monsters,” (Elmore, 2019) that was enough of an explanation for Laurel, and for myself, to become sympathetic to their cause. I have been personally affected by the feelings of otherness and being secondary that Duke lists, so this was a perfect line to change my opinion on their actions. However, if a man were to watch this film, especially if he were not to be a feminist, he might not be so sympathetic because he does not have the same experiences and understanding of what it is like to live in this world.

(watch until 41:12)

Bit is a film that crosses many boundaries, while still upholding some homonormativity for the sake of profit and consumption. It was written with the expectation of an audience that is knowledgeable of marginalized communities and social issues, making it thoroughly enjoyable to watch from a queer perspective. However, if the film were to break into the mainstream spotlight, its lack of nuance could cause harmful backlash toward trans communities, people of color, woman-loving women, and feminist movements. 

References

Benshoff, H. M. & Griffin, S. (2004). Queer cinema: The film reader. Psychology Press.

Cavalcante, A. (2017). Breaking into transgender life: Transgender audiences’ experiences with ‘first of its kind’ visibility in popular media. Communication, Culture & Critique, 10(3), 538-555. https://doi.org/10.1111/cccr.12165

Duggan, L. (2002). Introduction. In The twilight of equality? Neoliberalism, cultural politics, and the attack on democracy (pp. X-XXII). Beacon Press. 

Dunagan, R. (2019, August 2). Interview: A talk with Brad Michael Elmore, Director of OUTFEST’s ‘Bit’. Flipscreen. https://flipscreened.com/2019/08/02/interview-a-talk-with-brad-michael-elmore-director-of-outfests-bit/

Elmore, B. M. (Director). (2019). Bit [Film]. Vertical Entertainment.

Joyrich, L. (2013). Queer television studies: Currents, flows, and (main)streams. Cinema Journal, 53(2), 133-139. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2014.0015 

Tongson, K. (2017). Queer. In L. Ouellette & J. Gray (Eds.), Keywords for media studies (pp. 157-160). NYU Press. 

Tourmaline. (2017, October 11). Tourmaline on transgender storytelling, David France, and the Netflix Marsha P. Johnson Documentary. Teen Vogue. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/reina-gossett-marsha-p-johnson-op-ed 

[unless-we-choose-to-reverse-it]

Re: Contrapoints.

So Natalie Wynn, AKA Contrapoints, recently deleted her Twitter. And I’m going to state, up front, that if you are celebrating this fact, you are the problem. Inb4 y’all cancel my ass about this.

And to give the TL;DR up front: this is a post about what “cancel culture” actually looks like. Actual violent abusers being named and shamed is not cancel culture. Sex pests and people who are genuinely fucking hateful being accurately described as such? Not cancel culture. That’s a thing called “I don’t want to associate with these bastards, and I want other people to know that they are bastards.”

But let’s talk about what actual cancel culture looks like. I’m going to put the rest of this under a “read more” so that I don’t put an entire goddamn essay on everyone’s feed.

For those who do not know, Natalie Wynn operates the YouTube channel Contrapoints, focused on discussing leftist politics with a particular focus on gender and sex. Natalie, being a trans woman, has a level of insider knowledge that a lot of performatively woke people online lack, and her work, true to her nom de plume, often deals with the fact that these are complicated issues.

She has a considerable following, and a good deal of her following consists of men who she has essentially saved from becoming alt-right shitlords. Her production values, knack for performance, and willingness to recognize complex issues when she sees them has a certain power with people who are not already involved in leftist circles, and while many of her takes are fairly pedestrian by the standards of people DEEP into left-leaning circles, she is one of the avenues for bringing people into leftist politics from outside. Go onto any one of her most popular videos, and you’ll see the comments filled with people talking about how Natalie made them change their minds. It’s a beautiful kind of thing.

Now, am I loading the conversation a bit because I am a fan of Contrapoints? Yes. Yes I am. Because I believe that her work is valuable to modern leftism. She is a propagandist, and what’s more, she’s a brilliant propagandist. Where so many people attempt to bring people into leftism through shame, she entertains and entices, and presents a force that reactionary shitbags seem incapable of attacking.

But where reactionaries find themselves wanting, the Puritans have plenty of ammo to destroy progressive spaces from within.

Fast forward to a few days ago. Natalie Wynn posts a tweet talking about asking for pronouns. Now, because she deleted her Twitter and I don’t have the tweet in front of me, I cannot quote it verbatim, but to paraphrase, she said that asking for people’s pronouns isn’t always the best idea, since it can make binary trans people feel like they’re being isolated and viewed as “less than” their gender.

Okay, have we read that? Good. Let’s consider that for a second.

This is a genuinely good point to make, and it mostly arose from her own feelings of discomfort re: being a trans woman and finding trans-inclusive spaces uncomfortable on that account. Perhaps the point was not elegantly made, but still.

Non-binary trans folk, binary trans folk who can “pass,” and binary trans folk who cannot; they all have different needs. For some people, asking about pronouns is an affirming thing, something which allows them to articulate themselves fully and prevents them from dealing with people misgendering them. For others, especially those who are interested in a more classically gendered expression, asking about pronouns can feel like misgendering, can feel like people regard you as less than your actual self.

This is a discussion that needs to be had. How can the community balance different needs from very closely linked groups of people? How can we reconcile the needs of people who are openly defiant of gender norms and who want their opposition to that recognized, with the needs of people who are more comfortable with traditionally gendered expression and who want to be recognized as such?

It’s a conversation that needs to be had. Unfortunately, subtlety is dead on Twitter dot com. And on social media in general.

When I talk about “Puritans,” I refer to a specific subset of Extremely Online progressives. Just as the IRL Puritans seemed to disdain any kind of Christian teachings of love, community, and acceptance in favour of control, guilt, and hating thy neighbour, the “Puritans” seem to derive their politics solely from a sense of guilt and control, and relish in attacking those who are not Woker Than Thou.

The average Online Puritan is far more concerned with cancelling other progressives than they are with opposing evil in this world. Opposing reactionaries? Nah, that might actually do something. Let’s just attack other progressives, and then wonder why people don’t seem eager to support our causes. Opposing people who are actually making the lives of LGBT people worse in tangible ways? Pfft, that would take work. Hey, let’s nitpick every form of art that displays anything remotely shitty, because clearly, depicting shitty things in art or consuming art with dark themes means that you actually want to do those things in the real world. Hey, let’s all dogpile this queer creator who is trying to convert alt-right shitlords to the good side of history! Surely, that’ll advance our cause!

Hell, I think there’s something to that comparison, because at the heart of both groups is the idea of the Elect and the Reprobates. An unfortunate aspect of modern western culture is that we tend to believe that people are good or evil at heart. This is a really dumb idea. Good and evil are not things that we are; they’re things that we do. We perform good acts and evil acts upon this world, and when I say “we,” I mean all of us. Sometimes, I see people who otherwise do really good things for the world do something really stupid. Sometimes, otherwise monstrous people do good stuff.

But if we believe that some are Elect and others are Reprobates, then that paradigm is impossible. The Elect cannot sin, and since it is a sin to not believe yourself one of the Elect, then you must enforce this law upon all others. If they sin, they are a Reprobate. Alternatively, you must work hard to explain why what they just did wasn’t actually a sin, so they’re still good, actually!

This, right here, is cancel culture. It isn’t accurately calling out people who have done legitimately evil things. It isn’t attempting to get predatory people out of the community. It’s this dichotomy between the Elect and the Reprobates, and the need to constantly enforce that We Are The Elect and that All Who Do Not Match Up Are Reprobates. No willingness to admit the recovering shitheads who might not fully grasp the issue without some help. No consideration that people who do minor stupid things might just need gentle correction to set them on the righteous path. Nope, none of that. Any sin makes you a Reprobate, and Reprobates Must Be Purged.

I should stop beating around the bush. The Online Puritans descended, because apparently, “we should consider how this makes people feel” means, “asking for a person’s pronouns is personally attacking me.” In other words, Natalie was now a Reprobate.

What followed was Natalie clarifying her point and even attempting to throw her critics a bone, suggesting that she wasn’t as considerate as she needed to be about the ways that non-binary people would interpret her words. The response was unchanging. Other leftists came to her defense, but they were, of course, Cancelled as well, as I am sure to be the second that people discover this post. Eventually, Natalie deleted her Twitter, and the Online Puritans rejoiced at another Reprobate driven off of Twitter like it was any real victory. 

Now, this is not the death of Contrapoints. She still has her channel, and a shitload of people who will continue to watch her content, like me. But a woman who, in my personal opinion, is a force for good in this shithole we call the internet, was essentially driven off of a social media platform because the Puritans decided that she was a Reprobate.

And to anyone who wants to declare me a Reprobate for making this post: go the fuck ahead. I am not perfect, and I am certainly not one of the Elect; hell, I’m no Calvinist, so I don’t even regard those as valid categories. And furthermore: you, the Elect, are as great a danger to progressive spaces as the reactionaries, because you force us to fight on two fronts. You force us to oppose each other, as opposed to standing together for the betterment of the world. And for fucks sake, is it too much to ask that the people who are getting fucked over the most by the current order should stand together in opposition to it?

So fuck it. I stand with Contrapoints. Puritans are cancelled.

[kitchenalia]

this is something that i’ve been thinking about for a few days, and i think i’d like to voice it now:

leftism, as we define it in american terms (and particularly in sort of tumblr-esque terms, but this isn’t confined to tumblr alone), is not synonymous with “moral” or even really “good.” and i’m not talking about “we’re not far left enough as a country.” i’m talking about the fact that leftists can use “i’m a leftist” as an excuse or cover-up for

bad, ineffective, insufficient, or nonexistent plans to address social issues

predatory, abusive, pedophilic, or harmful behaviors

misogynistic and homophobic ideas, laws, spaces, and practices

violence (under the idea that it’s “justified” violence, but there’s little external checking of what counts as “justified” violence) as well as threats and terrorizing people over even minor disagreements

unconditional, unquestioning support of dangerous practices/industries, including prostitution (trying to rebrand as “sex work” and ignoring human trafficking), porn (very closely linked to prostitution), and various other things that will be left unspecified here

ignoring anyone who’s politically inconvenient, even if those people objectively would benefit from various policies and/or have serious health/safety concerns; political purity is considered to be more important than the lives, health, happiness, and security of people

a lack of political direction, plan, or integrity

this applies to politicians, sure, but it also applies to people on the internet, grassroots activists, journalists, etc. and i feel like it’s worsening as an issue. people act like calling yourself a leftist or identifying with communism/socialism/anarchism/whatever is more important than caring about people, checking violence within a given community, or having realistic plans about how to enact one’s political goals.

i’m tired of people pretending like leftism is some holy grail that they can invoke to get out of criticism. you’re not automatically a good person because you’ve put “communist” and “punch nazis” in your twitter bio. you’re not even a good person just because you’re further left than somebody you’re arguing with, especially if you’re somebody whose leftism seems to consist more of memes, “anti-swerf action,” and obsession with violence than it does with helping people, tearing down barriers to education, coming up with practical solutions, etc.

and all of these are major problems especially BECAUSE people on the left are unwilling to call this behavior out for any of the things that it is: hypocritical, abusive, inefficient, or just plain bad. communities need to gatekeep and that includes political/ideological groups

[hypomanicsatanicpanic]

you ever feel like a space that used to be a respite for you is now just...not? I don’t necessarily mean it’s not safe, just that going to a place which was once really productive and comfortable and energizing for you now feels stressful and uneasy? I (likely temporarily) stepped out of an organizing space that I’ve built up over the last year in order to deal with the intense workload around thesis/defense which is happening this upcoming Monday. Anyway, we started at three people and now we have a pretty robust core of about 20. What we’re trying to do is organize grad students into a union at the university where we all work, which is pretty fucking horrendous about how it treats us. This basically meant spending ~20hrs / week finding new students who wanted to organize, meeting with them, agitating, meeting with other unionizing grad students at other schools, managing personality conflicts in the group, etc as well as working on whatever campaigns/ social media stuff we were doing. All while doing grad school full time. It was energizing. We accomplished shit with only very few of us. While it’s explicitly in our bylaws that there is no “group leader,” a lot of things that would usually be directed to a president end up coming to me just because I’m the common person that everyone knows. Most folks in the group have zero other organizing experience; one has quite a lot, and two or three have basically been in the periphery of this one far left org (let’s call it WTF, for Women’s Task Force) in our very conservative small city. Most of us are quite left, though there are a decent number of centrists.   About WTF: basically there’s this one really...problematic? person who is employed by our university who leads WTF (which isn’t affiliated with the university). She, a white cis woman, collects people she can use as symbolic tokens (usually women of color, visibly disabled women, lesbians, and fat women) to use them in promo material, and get them to do errands for, and doesn’t help them gain more power or skills within the group. She consciously excludes transwomen and only allows AFAB nonbinary folxs, and not even those who have a more masc presentation much of the time. WTF is also massively outspoken about Palestine, which is usually a signal that a group may be pretty antiSemitic as well.  She uses her identity markers to shut down others who (legitimately) question her tactics.  WTF, in the 10ish years they’ve existed, has never made any actual policy or political changes in this town. They’ve never actually run a campaign. They basically just show up “in solidarity” with actions other people organize, and host fundraisers for themselves. So having to deal with them is pretty ick, because the people in that organization. WTF is basically bad news. The people from WTF--three women of color and two queer white women--are consistently bad about things which seem to be just fine for literally everyone else in the group. We understand that shit’s stressful as a grad student and that there are a lot of other things we could/ should all be doing in addition to organizing. But the few rules we have are freaking common sense/common courtesy, and not that hard to follow.  When people need to drop off the map for a while, they let others know that they’ll be out for a bit, and then get back in contact when their schedules free up again, so they can be caught up to speed at the next meeting. There’s also meeting notes which you can read to get back in the loop if you thought you’ve missed something: If you think you’re not going to be able to do something, you’re not supposed to commit to it.  If you can’t do something you committed to doing, give others a heads up so they can cover it. Last, since we’re trying to be a space that works for people across the political spectrum (not just like the total of 30 dedicated leftists here), we’re explicitly against callout culture. Meaning that if you have an issue with something someone says in meeting, you’re either supposed to hold it until the group evaluation (where there’s dedicated space for that), OR you’re supposed to have a conversation with the person about the situation, OR you’re supposed to talk to another neutral-party group member so they can have the conversation for you.  The WTF people have committed to following all of these rules and have been consistently bad at actually doing that, as per rules. They’ve consistently just not done the things they committed to, without actually telling anyone, leaving folks in the lurch. They consistently call people out in meetings in a way that alienates newcomers. They’ve consistently misgendered me, despite my asking them to not to, and speaking to them about it after meetings.   About five weeks ago, this started to become a really big problem as we planned a big public recruitment event. I had a few conversations with the people who’d primarily been affected by one of the WTF folks’ failure to follow through on commitments. They asked me to speak to her. So I took several days to plan and rehearse a conversation. She was extremely defensive (ok, that’s fine, whatever), and committed to a whole lot of other shit. My follow up with her was to meet on a regular basis, so we could check in and readjust. We met the week after that, shit seemed fine. The week after that, the day of the big event. she came to the 1:1 meeting we’d set up and basically yelled at me for an hour for promoting white supremacy in the group. I tried to ask her some questions but really it just was her telling me how I’m a white supremacist and by holding women of color accountable to rules which they too had voted for, in a UNANIMOUS VOTE, I’m promoting white supremacy. She suggested I go to WTF subgroup meetings called SURJ (showing up for racial justice), which is basically a reading circle for white people only to “deconstruct their complicitness in white supremacy.” One of my partners went once to learn more about antiblack racism, but was turned away because he’s South Asian, not white. So, nope. Not fucking happening--it’s a completely performative thing IMO. Also the WTF leader person consistently is there and I’m not comfortable around her. They are also definitely under the opinion that “Jews are white and benefit more from oppressing PoCs than other white people.” So not a good/safe place for me.  Maybe I wasn’t supposed to take it as a personal attack, but about halfway through the conversation she said it was specifically about me. So, yeah, a personal attack. She quit the organization and left, leaving us in the lurch for that night. The other thing that really bothered me about this conversation was that she was using her identity as a way to evade any and all accountability for repeatedly committing to things and disappearing. I would have been really happy to talk with her about how to make the space more accessible to her. In fact, we’d had multiple conversations about this. We’d implemented multiple things to help with the issues she’d mentioned...and she’d engaged with literally zero of them. Around that time, before the big event at a group meeting, another WTF member (also a WoC) was on the agenda to talk about “accountability.” Vague agendas are generally fine, so it was like, Of course! We should talk about that. That piece wasn’t really about accountability, it was literally just accusing the group of being a space for white supremacy, telling white people in the group to go to SURJ. Then she also left the group (though she waited until after the big event), though without the “Fuck y’all, I quit” meeting.  I’ve spoken to most other group members outside of WTF about this (both PoC and white folks), they agree that I’m not a white supremacist. Still, it’s probably a good idea to address the issue in more depth in the group. As a white person I really can’t say anything about how WTF members, unlike literally all other people in the group, were using callout culture and accusations of white supremacy to derail conversations, and to block any attempt at getting them to follow the same rules they not only expect others to follow but also that they themselves committed to following. We’ve had like 3 followup conversations in general meetings since then. So far, we’ve scared off 5 people that I’d recruited, as well as 3-4 others had recruited. Multiple opportunities to choose, plan, and launch campaigns have passed while we have these conversations. I can’t point any of this out because when I do, I’m just the white person who doesn’t want to talk about white supremacy.  Basically even though there are supportive people in the group that I absolutely love, I feel like the space has been emotionally polluted for me. I can’t deal with this fucking shit anymore, as much as I think unionizing is important to deal with the fucking bullshit from the university. This has become more of a stress for me than the shitty paychecks that come at unpredictable times; the shitty issues with my old PI/advisor; the really terrible benefits and leave policies; the expensive term fees.  I almost don’t want to go back. Is that terrible of me?

[enkblogs]

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook:

Interested in opinions from the folks on here, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything political.

I think I’m most heavily rooting for Liz Warren, she’s got great politics and in my opinion the most intelligent candidate running. The only person who’s aggressively talking about policy and has actually gotten some great legislation passed under Trump.

Bernie would be the ideal for me, obviously, but I don’t think he’ll be able to get the centrist/Hillary voters, which is sad but it is what it is unfortunately.

My main issue with the two of them is their support for anti-sex work legislation, Warren even more-so. They’re both socially with the times but can’t seem to grasp the concept that sex workers deserve rights which is a shame and I hope they’ll figure things out in time for the elections.

All the other popular candidates are standard corporate shills and I’m not really interested in any of them.

I AM interested in getting Mike Gravel and Andrew Yang on the debate stage, as I think they’re bringing strong progressive ideas to the table and need to be heard. Mike Gravel specifically, we need him to get up there and beat Biden’s ass and hold everyone accountable for their bullshit.

EDIT: Zero interest in any candidate that isn’t firmly in support of universal health care. No exceptions.

Open forum below, just don’t fight.

...and then one of his friends posted this...

One thing i feel needs to be said is I think the struggle to appeal to the center for any leftist candidate is ultimately a waste of effort. 60% of the eligible voting population does not vote, and I don’t think it’s because they occupy some space in the middle, torn between two extremes. I genuinely think the majority of the country, especially working class communities, will eagerly support “far-left” policies like universal healthcare, tuition debt forgiveness, the green new deal, universal enfranchisement, universal basic income, etc. I don’t think there’s any valid reason to temper the political leanings of any candidate to appeal to the “middle”, as if every election depends on wooing them, when the fact of the matter is the left is specifically designed to protect and advance the interests of the, by volume, single largest economic or political group in this (or any country); the working class. I sincerely believe the way forward, towards any meaningful progress, will not come with capitulation to a voting block of centrists, who need to be bent over backwards for to be appealed to, but the rest of America, who have learned to give up on the idea that politics could ever impart meaningful change on their lives.

On a practical level, running the furthest left candidate possible, ideally Bernie (but I would happily vote for Warren) will serve the Democrats better, because it makes sense to me that the most ideologically consistent and uncompromising candidate will do a lot better to energize a voter base than someone who’s entire platform relies on capitulation to the right, as I fear Beto and Buttigieg are banking on to win the favor of the DNC establishment.

I don’t see this shift as Democrats abandoning the center, as much as the necessary consequence of the center abandoning the political process altogether. There just is no more time to find the perfect balance of governance between the left and the right, two forces that are diametrically opposed to one another, between which compromise comes as a universal defeat, when the grim reality is we are rapidly running out of time to make the changes we need to industrial and civil society in order to combat the effects of climate change. The right has no intentions to even acknowledge that these are the circumstances, while the center has no intentions of taking action. But, at the very least, the right offers a course of action to shape society to actual political goals, the implicit promise of the center to is maintain everything exactly as it is right now. I couldn’t imagine a bleaker future if I tried.

Now, that all being said, the ultimate reality of the situation is even if Bernie wins, he still won’t get nearly anything he wants to accomplish done due to congress. Even if there is an accompanying blue wave and Democrats walk away from 2020 with a supermajority, it is very possible that Democrats themselves will refuse to support Bernie’s policies, as the DNC is, in reality, a center-right political organization. And even if Bernie had the support of the DNC, there’s still the problem of the Supreme Court, which has shifted decisively to the right with the appointing of Brett Kavanaugh. When I say I have no faith in electoral politics to do what need be done, for the environment and for humanity in general, it is because the American government was deliberately designed to make the type of swift and immediate action we now require all but impossible. However, I do believe there is an avenue through which these political goals can be achieved, and that is through labor organization. Therefor, I think the single most important issue, that should be on any young progressive’s mind during this election season, is the issue of labor, of unions, of collective bargaining, and of automization. I am extremely critical of Yang, but I do appreciate him bringing the issue of automization to the forefront of his policy rhetoric, because the issue has the potential to single-handedly wipe collective bargaining off the map, relegating everyone who isn’t within the modern bourgeoise completely alienated from the political process. In the face of financial interests, special interest groups, lobbying firms, and flat out corruption, the ability to halt production, to halt transportation, to strike is the last avenue the working man has to impart his will upon the political process. It’s already been nearly strangled to death by the past 50 years of American labor legislation, we can’t let them kill it off for good. It’s really the people’s last shot.

tl:dr tell centrists to bend the knee and organize your workplace

...and I that's the first time I've maybe ever appreciated Facebook discourse

[arcticdementor]

Handle has a new blogpost up for the first time in almost a year, a detailed review of Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option. And it’s a doozy:

The book is an extended exposition of what is at heart a very simple thesis and message.

That premise: “Genuine, traditional Christianity is quickly dying throughout the West, as it has been for a long time. But now things are getting to a critically bad stage. If committed Christians don’t appreciate this, and aren’t ready, willing, and able to make radical changes in the way they live their lives, then The Faith will surely die out soon, perhaps carried forward in name only by what will have become little more than an imposter. Many Christians don’t appreciate this state of affairs, either through ignorance on the one hand, or willful denial and obtuse blindness on the other. The war is lost, and so it’s well past time for Christians to start thinking seriously about the strategic requirements of cultural survival. Hopefully it’s not too late, but it very well might be, especially if Christians don’t stop sleepwalking off the cliff. They will need to come to grips with the sheer precariousness of their situation, and figure this all out, pronto.”

…

On occasion I will also go a little hard on Dreher when he engages in double-mindedness. He sometimes lacks consistency regarding how concerned one ought to be about respectability and normalcy. Dreher also tends to switch modes between writing as if this is an urgent and dire struggle for survival, but then denies advocating for exactly the kind of extreme measures that would be warranted were the situation as dire as he claims. Maybe there’s no one right position on those matters and so Dreher’s style merely reflects a judicious balance between competing interpretations. Whether that’s right or not, I’ll be pointing those occasions out, so that you can judge for yourself.

Now, Dreher’s focuses almost exclusively on the situation for Christians, which is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it allows him to keep a narrow focus on something about which he is more well-informed per the maxim “write what you know”. On the other hand, that exclusivity tends to obscure the real nature of what is going on, as if it were a strictly and peculiarly Christian issue.

It’s not: the premise clearly extends to any kind of traditionalism. That’s true whether it is tied to a particular religion or ideology, or whether it is merely a passively acquired collection of informal elements of social capital and culturally-embedded folkways. Regardless, any form of traditionalism stands no chance against the ‘ideological rectifications’ which characterize the contemporary forces of social change.

For example, there are plenty of secular atheists who want the sex segregation of toilets to continue to be the default cultural practice, and who aren’t on board with the latest PC crusade to impose this innovation on everyone, like it or not.

Eventually, these people are either going to get on board, or they are going to find themselves mixed in with the Christians and all the others in a bigger set of “Culture War Losers”.

…

Reading Dreher can be frustrating in that he so frequently crawls all the way up to an important insight and then … disappointingly chokes on the social undesirability of the conclusion at the last minute. (He may be doing this as part of a strategy to stay above the minimum threshold of public respectability, and there are a few times I suspect that, but my impression is that he’s almost always being sincere.) He’s like one of those sports teams which one can’t stop rooting for because it always gets so close to a win, but which just keeps breaking one’s heart.

But at least he chokes in an ironically predictable way. It is always the direction of “Mainstream, Respectable, Literate, American Christian Nice.” The kind of Nice oblivious to the way it is having its usually noble, pro-social sentiments abused and exploited by its sworn enemies. In this sense, if he has not transcended the very error he is begging his co-confessionists to overcome, then at least he is writing as one who knows them so well from being one of them, in a way that no one else can.

(I have to very much second Handle’s view here.)

…

First, at times, on certain subjects, he seems like the infamous fish that doesn’t know it swims in water, and he lacks conscious awareness that he’s committed to some concept or moral notion that owes more to modern progressivism than anything with an authentic Christian heritage.

And second, despite frequently covering instances of their latest ideological excesses, he still tends to get the tenets and character of current progressivism wrong. Mostly, he is out of date. He buys into the neutrality narrative spun by the old liberal public intellectuals (many of whom are now also balking at the latest developments) for today’s real thing: the bullying power games of contemporary PC and the Social Justice Warriors

This causes him to repeatedly make an error, which is to say that ‘religion’ is being eroded by a neutral, empty, nothing of relativism with an ultimate form of individualist secularism as the end point. Instead, it is simply being replaced by a new ideology that fills the vacuum with its own mythologies, orthodoxies, and an endless efflorescence of sacred norms, rules, and regulated status relations.

This puts someone like me in an odd and unique position. Almost all Dreher’s critics accuse him of crying wolf or being a chicken-little at best, and more usually a looney-tunes-level alarmist kook or worse. Meanwhile, I’m saying that Dreher is underestimating his enemy, painting an overly rosy picture, and not being nearly alarmist enough.

…

Dreher opens the book by saying he experienced the very common kind of political transformation that happens when a man becomes a father and tries to take a shot at traditionalist, wholesome child rearing in the current American scene. The responsibilities and interests of that role tends to lead to a new perspective on social affairs with different areas of emphasis and concern. When one starts to grasp the problems one faces, it is indeed a rude awakening.

It’s a political awakening in the “mugged by reality” sense, when someone in that position realizes just how ideologically naive they’ve been (often in a libertarian direction), and how the deck has been stacked against them, and in so many ways beyond their control and power to mitigate.

Shared public spaces – and the official and informal social rules which govern them – have a character that either supports wholesome families or repels them and forces them into a self-imposed house-arrest. The situation is a zero-sum conflict of interest.

…

He wondered whether the Republican Party was still a political coalition able and willing to defend the interests of religious families, and he concluded that it wasn’t.

Within the GOP, there had long been tension between traditionalist. social conservatives on the one hand, and those who were more interested in resisting leftist economics and statism from a libertarian, individualist, and market-based perspective on the other. The latter group was indifferent or neutral to the social requirements of families, and over time, they seem to have won out.

What about the churches? Worthless. They had become culturally impotent, inert, and beleaguered. But worse, they were now mostly uninterested in counter-culturally challenging the ideological zeitgeist. The Roman Catholic Church under Pope Francis seems intent on surrendering to it almost entirely, And Dreher – once a Catholic himself – has blogged in a way that leaves little doubt that regards Pope Francis the same way that Dante judged Pope Boniface VIII – “a wicked man who leads his flock astray.”

But it’s by no means only a Catholic problem, and Dreher is not shy about insisting that all denominations of “his people” suffer from the same malady. He writes:

Even though conservative Christians were said to be fighting a culture war, with the exception of the abortion and gay marriage issues, it was hard to see my people putting up much of a fight. We seemed content to be the chaplaincy to a consumerist culture that was fast losing a sense of what it meant to be Christian.

Well, ok, but what kind of “fight” did Dreher want or expect? What would he have liked to have seen? More sermons? I have a feeling that if counter-culturalists of any stripe organized to put up real fights, Dreher would recoil in outrage.

…

Few want to admit what is plainly true: full participation and the social integration of ‘normalcy’ is now deeply incompatible with a traditional lifestyle. And, like it or not, there is no alternative but to surrender on the one hand, or retreat and withdraw on the other. If you want your kids to grow up a certain way, believe in and cherish certain things, then there is no other option but to separate them from general society and surround them with a highly-selective peer group – really an entire sub-society – which will give you the support you need.

…

No one wants to admit to the embarrassment of being on the losing side of a power and status conflict. It is humiliating to concede that one is being shoved-out and compelled to leave by stronger, higher-status victors. And the opposition is likely to encourage the delusion to keep down their adversary’s guard and avoid triggering their early warning detection systems.

That’s all understandable, but if it doesn’t change, it’s going to be why 99% of Christians are going to fade away.

…

Dreher’s best contribution to the modern conceptual toolkit is his “Law of Merited Impossibility”: “It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it.”

It began as a description of the untrustworthy rhetorical style by which elite progressive public intellectuals would argue for some social reform. It’s a slippery slope argument. Opponents would reasonably and accurately point out that the reform logically belonged to a class containing much more objectionable measures, and would open the door to them. All of those measures are bound together by a similar ideological value, but one that admits no articulable limiting principle, or provides any line of demarcation between the arguable and the awful. Thus, acquiescing to the nose in the tent would sooner or later mean letting in the whole filthy camel.

Which is what principled progressives really wanted, or at least found unobjectionable. They knew there was no such limiting principle, and that disliked subsequent changed would follow. But they understood that admitting as much honestly and publicly would be politically foolish, as the camel’s filth remained too unpopular, at least, for the moment.

…

So they misled and tried to forestall these arguments by claiming their opponents were avoiding the merits of the narrow issue at hand. They then switched rhetorical gears, mocking those rivals mercilessly for fear-mongering and concocting absurd scenarios. They would say that all sensible people knew those scenarios were extreme exaggerations, which would never come about, and which were something the progressives weren’t even arguing for and, besides, everyone understood those things to be politically “impossible.”

Then, the minute the narrow reform was implemented or some political or judicial victory was won, it was suddenly ok to start publicly working on accomplishing those impossibilities without skipping a single beat.

…

In the final part of the introduction, Dreher outlines the structure of the book, and lets the reader know he isn’t going to get behind any specific proposal or suggestion. He is going to continue to raise the alarm, present some examples of Christians giving it a shot, and hope that it inspires people to get together and try to solve the problem.

Like, say, cutting themselves off from the mainstream and running for the hills.

Oh, whoops, Dreher doesn’t want to say that. That’s because it is one of two major ‘critiques’ of his thesis which are made by nominal Christians who really don’t want to admit they’re now going to have to choose between their Christianity and comfortable lifestyles. “Dreher says run for the hills!” is an interesting kind of argumentative fallacy. It is a sneaky way of trying to dismiss Dreher’s basic premise. If (1) a conclusion follows from Dreher’s statements, and (2) is so undesirable that my brain won’t accept it, then (3) it must be wrong and absurd, thus (4) Dreher is nuts and everything he says can be ignored. So (5) Whew, what a relief! Now we can ignore the problem and just go back to whatever we were doing. QED.

…

It’s true that Dreher insists over and over that he isn’t saying run for the hills. But unfortunately, he can’t show that the solution set for the problem includes anything less drastic or radical He would be more honest to say, “I might be saying run for the hills. I’m not sure yet; nobody is. It’s not something I’ve worked out or could work out. I really hope I’m not saying that, but it’s possible I am. To be even more gloomy and frank about it, it may turn out in the final analysis that even running for the hills wouldn’t be enough. Hills are much protection anymore.”

I suspect that everyone, Dreher and his critics, grasps all that, but that the rhetorical games dance around it. Both Dreher and his critics may suspect it to be true, but have to pretend it’s false, for different reasons.

The critics pretend RFTH is false because that implies they don’t have to get off their asses to do anything: the most comfortable and pleasant possibility.

Dreher has to pretend RFTH is false because he doesn’t want it to scare away readers before even having a chance to make his case.

But again, how do we know that Christians won’t need to RFTH? How do we know that Dreher’s historical examples of Christian survival despite oppression and adversity are relevant to the modern age?

Modern religion faces a different kind of enemy: the metaphysical revolution of empiricism and eliminative materialism. One is contending not with superstitious pagans or even someone like Celsus but with a set of ideas altogether (and durably) antithetical to all serious theological sensibilities. And it is a set which has solidly owned the perch atop all the hierarchies of our intellectual life for centuries, with every sign of being irreversible so long as advanced civilization persists.

The other major criticism from these types is the claim that separating from mainstream society can’t preserve Christianity because it is inherently anti-Christian. All Christians, these critics say, are commanded to evangelize and proselytize on behalf of the faith. They are to be the salt of the earth and a light unto nations. That, at a minimum, requires them to remain integrated with the heathens in order to be ambassadors for Christianity and winsome examples projecting the noble virtuousness of the Christian character. By such example and good works, and by routine display of courage and the strength of their commitments, they will generate such a positive impression that it will open the hearts and minds of the heathens, and make them receptive to the gospels.

This argument has even more rhetorical strength and emotional resonance than the previous one. Religious commandments are not easy to counter by rational explanation of exceptional circumstance in which injudicious obedience would be self-destructive. When the pragmatic mode of cognition turned off, the counterargument – that there is no sustainable strategy if converting one man come at the cost of losing two – simply doesn’t resonate. “Will the last convert please turn out the cemetery lights.”

…

I understand why he can’t be more blunt, but I sometimes wish he would break down just once and hit them with a 2×4 of frankness, like this:

It’s completely unethical of you to abuse the duty to evangelism as an excuse to do nothing except put your head in the sand, deny the crisis, and avoid reality. It’s not like you’re some full-time missionary, converting and baptizing people left and right, and I’m asking you to stop all that and give up your important, holy works. You just don’t want to make the sacrifices that would follow from disengagement and separation from mainstream society. And you’re so desperate to avoid them that you’ll disgustingly pretend it would be anti-Christian to do so, which is perverse. And also, frankly, blasphemous, since the result of your counsel would mean a continuation of the status quo which is, obviously, the suicide of Christianity. “Passive evangelism” goes both ways, and you don’t look winsome to the abyss without it looking winsome back to you, or, more importantly, to your kids. It’s so winsome, in fact, that you can’t bear the thought of leaving it, even if means the death of your Faith for your family. That allure is why you’re making all these excuses in the first place. You can’t bullshit your way out of this one, so get you head out of your ass. Jesus commands you to tend to the survival of Christianity, and isolation or insulation of one kind or another is only the bare minimum of what it’s going to take. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. Once we could play offense. Now we must play defense. Or perish. So buck up, it’s time to get with the program.

…

It is of course usually good to have an allergy to fighting dirty. But that’s not the case when you are innocent and your life depends on it. Prison gangs are every bit worthy of everyone’s condemnation and disgust. But in the special context of prison, one joins or one perishes.

…

But what he seems to share with those Northeast fellow travelers is a common desire for disaffiliation and social distancing. Nearly all prominent right wing writers want desperately to be taken seriously and to be seen as special cases worthy of civility, respect, and thoughtful consideration in the eyes of liberals and progressive elites. They want to be friends, not enemies. They want to be seen as distinct: more principled, sophisticated, and nuanced than those straight-ticket-voter-for-life hoi polloi fundamentalists. They don’t want to be presumptively dismissed, reflexively disposed of, and ostracized from polite society. They abhor being found guilty by association.

…

And, to be blunt, there is just something pathologically suicidal about modern American Christianity un-tempered by a commitment to a superseding principle of the survival of the things one claims to care about.

There is something that craves the self-righteous satisfaction of taking a conspicuously public stand for collective martyrdom for the sake of ‘principle’ – one that is hard to distinguish from generic, progressivism-compatible ‘niceness’ – no matter how futile, impotent, unreasonable, or counterproductive. These performances overflow with displays of sanctimonious indignation, but at the end of the show it’s clear that they don’t take the danger of failure seriously. That’s someone else’s problem.

Absent the special circumstance of a solid track-record transforming this kind of commitment into net increase and propagation, any beleaguered group whose members care about something more than survival, won’t survive. We cannot all be the priests in the French Carmelite Convent, or the holdouts on top of Masada, or there will be no one left to honor the martyrs and be inspired by their example.

Either you’re willing to accept the end of something, or you’re not. Well then, what if you’re not?

…

All of this seems consistent with common sense and normal moral intuitions, so why is the commentary so lopsided, and why do American Christian public intellectual commentators so often stick with advocating naively idealistic policies even when they are clearly counterproductive? There’s just no incentive for them to do otherwise. That’s what virtue signaling is all about. When one doesn’t actually bear any responsibility for consequences, one is judged only on what one says, not on the bad results which follow. That why the focus on things like ‘reputation’ instead of consequences.

At any rate, the “preserve our reputation” line relies on a myth. With perhaps the exception of a few high-status Christian commentators, Progressives have already believed that about all religious conservatives for a long time: either they were brainwashed idiots or Elmer Gantrys at best. Nothing but evil liars paying lip service to religious sentiments they didn’t share, and scriptures they had never read, merely as means of suckering the brainwashed idiots as a road to power. The minute a principled man of character steps into the limelight and emerges as a potential threat, the progressives give that individual zero credit and their media apparatus spares no time at all in smearing the man as evil incarnate, whether that individual lived a scandalous life that gives them plenty of ammunition to do so, or whether he’s been a spotlessly clean boy scout from birth. E.g., Mitt Romney. (Though they are happy to emphasize all those positive traits and rehabilitate all the beautiful losers the minute after they no longer pose any political threat, and prove useful for other purposes.)

…

At this point one might well ask what “coming to terms” means after transcending mere denial. But judging from many of the reactions to Dreher’s message to date, it seems that dealing with denial alone is such a major front in the war that one needs to focus on that, and ease them into it as gently as possible. Thus it’s best to be vague about next steps. And there is some value to letting people think it through for themselves.

But then again, maybe they already have on some level, and this frame has the direction of causation reversed. Perhaps it is a protective reaction that is downstream from already having faced – on some psychological level – some uncomfortable implications about the hard requirements of the near future.

…

People are going to have make the hard choice about how much they are willing to sacrifice. On the one hand, there is fidelity to faith but cultural withdrawal and separation. On the other, a normal, successful life, integrated into mainstream society and culture, and able to interact and socialize in general with one’s reputation and status intact, able to get into the good schools and good jobs.

“I’m not saying run for the hills!” – “Yeah, I know you’re not saying it. But … it kind of sounds like … we’re going to have to run for the hills. At least, that’s the level of sacrifice we’re talking about. And, if I’m being honest with myself, I’m not the run for the hills type. So, though I don’t like to admit it, I’ll probably just cave.”

No one wants to admit that. And one doesn’t have to: the only thing one has to do is pretend and deny the problem exists at all.

…

After all, the “being salt and light …” rebuttal is like trying to plead with the lions in the arena, or ‘inspire’ the spectators who only came to see you become a fun, fancy feast. If it ever worked, it doesn’t any longer. The fact is, everybody knows this strategy has been tried for our entire lives, and it has failed, utterly.

…

But while Benedict dose indeed have a special and important role in the history of Christianity, it’s worth asking before even getting started whether the example is a good analogy for our time or not. Have we actually been here before, or are modern technological times simply too different, too ‘disenchanted’, and too unique?

If we aren’t sure, then how do we know if we can actually learn anything of practical and spiritual use from Benedict’s example? After all, if the book is called The Benedict Option, and spends a lot of time on Benedict and his monastery, then and now, then if we even suspect that the answer to that question is negative, why even bother?

Rome’s fall left behind a staggering degree of material poverty, the result of both the disintegration of Rome’s complex trade network and the loss of intellectual and technical sophistication.

That was Benedict’s context, but consider just how different that description is from today’s conditions in which, if anything, it is our wealth and material prosperity and government welfare expenditures that make us much less dependent on neighbors or community.

…

MacIntyre, Dreher, Deneen, and many other non-progressive Public Intellectuals of a certain age are still stuck in the ‘Relativist’ frame (cf: “Relativism and the Study of Man” – 1961) which goes back well over a century but which started to fade away during the early “New Left” era. They are beating a distracting dead horse, when there is a live one running around, winning the race.

Ask whether it makes sense that virtue is being undermined to critically low levels at the same time that “virtue signaling” is exploding in frequency of usage. It is being used as a legitimate complaint about an increasingly intense social phenomenon of sanctimonious conspicuously displays of critical and judgy-condemnations. One can’t signal arbitrary, individualized virtues. It’s only possible when there a dominant ideology emphasized by nearly all high status people has social currency.

Furthermore, does it make sense to say that it’s still all about choice and self-interest – the emancipation and liberation of individuals from authority – when ‘liberals’ are completely eager for state authority to impose various behavioral and speech rules on everybody, according to their moral vision?

All the relativism and principled (as opposed to boutique) multiculturalism talk occurred during what we can now appreciate to have been merely an intermediate phase of our political evolution. It characterized an early stage of the diffusion of a minority elite ideology into the cultural mainstream, until that ideology established sufficient levels of adoption and dominance to encourage its proponents to switch gears.

One argues for ‘relativism’ when one is trying to tear down an established moral order to make space for something new. And one drops that effort the moment one achieves the upper hand, then works to consolidate one’s gains and eliminate all rivals.

This evolution is entirely analogous to the evolution of progressive positions from free speech absolutists to ruthless speech police during the same time-frame.

The truth is, we’re not ‘after’ virtue at all. We’re just after the old set of virtues, which have been replaced by a new, progressive set.

…

Actually, I think Dreher already knows that leftism / progressivism is not ‘after virtue’ but consists of ‘different virtue’ than the set handed down in the West’s Great Tradition, with its substantial Christian inheritance and influence.

Just like the critics of older Socialist movements and keen observers of the ‘sociology of Marxism’, Dreher has an instinctive recognition of the religious mindset, even when directed towards secular ends. He finds it intuitive to use religious terminology to explain the social psychology of contemporary progressivism. Terms like zealot, fanatic, Puritan, blasphemy, heresy, excommunication, etc., all seem to flow naturally and cut the nature of common and instinctive norm-policing behaviors at the joints.

…

So why all the emphasis on relativism and unlimited liberation then?

I think it’s two things:

1. People just can’t get past the “‘Religion’ Requires A Supernatural Deity” frame. They will say things like, “Without God, and without a fixed moral revelation, how can there be any basis for asserting moral claims? And the immediate logical implication of the absence of such a tether is obviously moral nihilism.”

This is made more difficult by the fact that secular progressives also operate within the same epistemic framework, and would reject any identification of their ideology with a ‘religion’. They certainly wouldn’t go even further and recognize that is effectively our “state religion”.

But that’s not how the social psychology of ideological cognition works. For better or worse, God is not a necessary ingredient.

The human moral mental architecture is able to accommodate, latch onto, and implement other, secular systems. And so long as enough high-status people signal their belief in that system, then the vast majority of adherents will be untroubled by any logical contradictions or other intellectual problems deriving from alternative, trans-objective metaphysical constructs taking the place of God.

2. The erroneous obsession with a purported “unlimited liberation of the individual” derives from the traditionalist social conservatives focus on sexuality and the family. If one maintains this cynosure, then the past 60 years look like

… a cutting asunder of straps and ties, wherever you might find them; pretty indiscriminate of choice in the matter: a general repeal of old regulations, fetters, and restrictions …

New rights to contraception, abortion, no-fault divorce, the moral welter of modern family law, a right to sodomy and to gay-marriage, normalization and commercialization of promiscuity, cohabitation, voluntary single-motherhood, all the new pronoun-Nazi and socially-contagious sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) stuff, ‘toxic’ masculinity, etc. The list goes on and on.

…

One can see how someone of a traditionalist bent would view all that as almost morally nihilistic and libertine ultra-individualism. It seems to be heading inevitably towards unrestricted license to do almost anything with anyone or anything, like Bartol’s Alamut: “Nothing is true; everything is permitted,” or Crowley’s Thelema, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”

But all that is in error. Progressive sexual morality gives with one hand but takes away with the other, and can be obnoxiously and inhumanely strict in new ways depending on who is trying to what to whom.

…

When progressives propose some social reforms, traditionalists get worried. Some reforms are bigger deals that others. Some cross long-established lines that underpin important social compromises and hold back a flood of other measures. When the reform looks to be a crack in that dam, traditionalists figure out that new moral and legal principles would be established, the implications of which would include changing a lot of things they strongly care about. So they bring up the examples of those implied, undesirable consequences as an argument against implementing the reform.

Progressives don’t assuage such concerns by credibly committing to forswear the enactment of these potentially aggravating policies. If they were willing to do so, there are plenty of clever ways they could try to accomplish it. For example, they could do so by explicitly prohibiting them in the law, or perhaps by placing huge public bets against the prospect. Instead, progressives prefer to deploy an alternative, rhetorical strategy by saying that traditionalists are either lying to cover up their bigotry and/or being literally crazy, hysterical, and paranoid about what ‘everybody knows’ will never come to pass.

And then, when all that was predicted in fact comes to pass, and usually in just the blink of an eye, the progressives not only refuse to admit they were deceitful or even just innocently wrong, but say that of course it should be this way, because it’s a clear and obvious logical implication of a (now sacred and established) moral principle!

Since this keeps happening the same way, over and over again, in practical terms, Dreher’s Law translates as, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, or a thousand times in a row, shame on me. So don’t trust them again. They’ll ask for an inch, but when you give it to them, they’ll take a mile, call it justice, and still ask for more and more again. Either insist on rock solid assurances, or fight them to the end.”

…

(For some historical perspective: remember that a Mayflower full of Puritans left Plymouth over 20 years before Newton was even born, and would set up a strict theocracy on a new continent.)

…

Whether Dreher’s telling actual makes sense as a sufficiently, causally explanatory historical narrative could be the basic of endless debate. But we should ask to what extent is all of this explanation even necessary to Dreher’s thesis? Dreher writes:

For our purposes, the Enlightenment matters because it was a decisive break with the Christian legacy of the West. God, if He was mentioned at all, was not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but the nondescript divinity of the Deists.

Well, that says most of it rather concisely. It was an irreversible metaphysical upheaval. When Science, reason, and empirical thinking – the Enlightenment state of mind – became high status and intellectually fashionable among European elites, then received traditional theology came to be doubted as unfounded superstitions suitable only for children and simple, low-status commoners.

…

One must note here that it is impossible, or at least incredibly unstable, for a government run by human beings to have no effective substitute for an “ultimate conception of the good”. Civilizations cannot be governed well without a set of ideas which provides both the popular legitimization of coercive power and a moral and practical guide for how to make all kinds of decisions which necessarily involve countless value judgments.

Whether recognized as such or not, all states have an effective state religion, with or without a supernatural Deity, and America is no different. If the state does not collapse, and when the old religions fade in importance and influence, then the state religion persists, evolves, and adapts to fill any vacuum left behind.

…

There are a few quotes about Eros and the liberation of an individual’s carnal desire becoming a cult that … doesn’t quite jive with the #MeToo era and cries of #ToxicMasculinity. Again, Dreher starts to go off track when the subject is progressive sexual morality:

The Romantic ideal of the self-created man finds its fulfillment in the newest vanguards of the Sexual Revolution, transgendered people. They refuse to be bound by biology and have behind them an elite movement teaching new generations that gender is whatever the choosing individual wants it to be.

That doesn’t sound right. For instance, most LGBT advocacy rejects Foucault’s framework in his The History of Sexuality and insists on “Baby I was born that way.” That is, these identities have nothing to do with “choice” and are “real and authentic,” innate and immutable characteristics that therefore deserve the same special legal protection as other discrete and insular minorities.

…

Everyone has a right to develop their own forms of life, grounded on their own sense of what is really important or of value. People are called upon to be true to themselves and to seek their own self-fulfillment. What this consists of, each much, in the last instance, determine for him- or herself. No one else can or should try to dictate its content.

No way does that describe out current culture. There is zero tolerance of ‘bigots’. No one is allowed to be racist or sexist, to discriminate or segregate or hate. Taylor’s description was the rhetoric and spin used by the Old Liberals when it was socially expedient to do so. That era was over long ago.

The church, a community that authoritatively teaches and disciplines its members, cannot withstand a revolution in which each member becomes, in effect, his own pope.

But each person is not his own pope. We have whole institutions dedicated to forming culture and shaping public opinion, that can broadcast to everyone on earth simultaneously at zero marginal cost. And humans are social animals who have a spontaneous desire towards mimicry of high status elites, which includes conspicuous adherence to the same beliefs in their attempts to signal affiliation.

It’s like the magnetic field at the North Pole, and all the compass needles all around the world respond to the field in the air and point toward it. That’s our new pope. That’s everybody’s pope, if not already, then soon enough. Even the actual Pope now follows that pope.

…

I realize Dreher is using it metaphorically, but one must appreciate how bizarre, exaggerated, and even absurd, the use of “Dark Age” must seem to a typical progressive looking around at what he or she perceives as the richest, most technologically sophisticated, and most ‘just’ society that has ever existed.

Furthermore, they are unlikely to agree that they have failed to replace God with ‘reason’. For one, they have replaced God. And they imagine their secular system of morality and conception of social justice to be objectively reasonable and vastly superior to anything which came before, the best that could be said about which is that they were grasping towards the current understanding. Serious thinking Christians do themselves no favors by using language that betrays a failure to pass the Intellectual Turing Test on this point.

Dreher doesn’t want to give progressives any more ammunition to pick the fight they want to have with him, and that’s prudent. But if one is going to survive a war one really has to know how his adversaries think.

…

Dreher has written the book from what he calls the small-o orthodox Christian perspective. After all, even though it’s a little light on actual strategy, the subtitle is, “A Strategy For Christians in a Post-Christian World.” Emphasis on the Christian, and did I mention Christian?

That’s fine, and it confers several advantages.

He sticks to his areas of expertise, stays focused without overly broadening the scope of his effort, and retains the ability to talk to a selective audience in a language they already understand, and use symbols and stories with which they are already familiar.

He also avoids picking a fight and provoking the progressives to rabid, bloodlust-level rage by saying he’s only writing about Christians. That’s instead of for a potentially larger (and thus more dangerous) coalition of the religiously-minded, traditionalists, and social conservatives. Also non-progressives of all stripes who may also be just as interested in carving out a different vision of community and a sustainable alternative to the progressive cultural hegemony.

…

When facing severe cultural and political pressure, there is an obvious temptation to engage in complete political withdrawal and quietism in the hopes that the powers that be will leave one alone. The Napoleonic example shows that this is a foolhardy hope and an exercise in wishful thinking.

So, if the Benedictines offer a glimpse of the Christian future, then how can we know whether that future isn’t susceptible to being snuffed out in an instant by new or revived anti-Christian attitudes and movements? Why are the members of the current ideological vanguard and their allied enforcer agents of the state not the proper inheritors of the French revolutionaries? After all, consider their clearly allergic reaction to quite mild claims of The Benedict Option itself.

The problem is that no institution based on values at odds with state law or modern mainstream society can long survive without being selective as to its membership and associations. And that necessarily implies some degree of discrimination which will run afoul of the absolutist egalitarianism and anti-discrimination tenets of contemporary progressive ideology. That’s what’s so pernicious about the principle of anti-discrimination when taken to extremes: there is simply no end to the obnoxious interventions in intimate human affairs that it can justify, no private sphere immune from molestation.

…

The brain is clearly always performing some specialized cognitive function of socially-relevant “intelligence collection”, and then calculating not just the optimal response, but instead constantly reprogramming the self. At least, to the extent it can, given its hardwired genetic constraints and other limitations (e.g., the familiar decrease in flexibility resulting from age).

It is a process that flies under the radar of conscious awareness, and for which the executive function mostly serves to concoct cover stories and rationalizations. People can always try to put up a conscious and deceptive act – to merely pretend they are conforming – but most people simply aren’t very good at lying. On the other hand, they are often intuitively good at detecting lies, at least at the gut-feeling level. So a better approach is to self-brainwash and really come to believe what it is socially expedient and useful to believe.

This is how most acculturation and assimilation really works, and it is also the basis of Rene Girard’s insight into “acquisitive desires” and “mimetic preferences”. We are constantly trying to show off: to seem cool and impressive, but without seeming as if we’re trying to look impressive. But that requires that we know what everyone else will find to be impressive.

…

Most everyone grasps that this is the way things work for kids and especially teens who, in modern times, spend most of their waking hours away from parents. And it is why their peers and popular media have such a strong influence on their whole personality. They are more reluctant to admit that it works in the same way for adults and throughout our lives. Indeed, most advanced and sophisticated attempts at influence people are trying to leverage these mechanisms, and to give one an impression of new common knowledge, of what all the other people are thinking and doing. Especially the cool people.

And while most people don’t realize it, this is what the culture war is really all about.

It’s a kind of “mental environmentalism.” No man is an island, and no countercultural (and fading) set of beliefs or traditions can expect to long survive if its members are thoroughly integrated and regularly exposed to the distinct values and habits of mainstream society.

If one isn’t going to reject, withdraw, and separate from mainstream society to a substantial degree, then one needs the normal, everyday social and mental environment to continuously support and buttress that desired worldview, for oneself and one’s children.

…

So traditionalists need to shape the whole mental environment not just for their kids, but for themselves. There is pent-up, desperate demand from parents for help in this regard, for when and where their influence reaches its limits. And many of our political debates have this ‘postmodern’ insight lurking in the background as context. But if one can’t rely on the whole of society, then one needs the liberty to construct a separate, micro-society that accomplishes as much of the same functions as possible.

In his blogging, Dreher tends to both emphasize parental culpability, while also providing plenty of personal stories undermining that impact of that blameworthiness.

He is quick to blame lazy and weak parents for not doing enough at home, for not choosing Christian schools or homeschooling, for not going to church enough or living Christian-enough lives, and for allowing their kids access to popular culture and social media technologies.

But then he posts letter after letter from people whose parents did pretty much everything possible along those lines, or sometimes from the parents themselves about their lost kids, as projects that ended in complete failure. Usually the very minute the kids left home and joined mainstream society.

The lesson is that it’s impossible to do it alone, but it’s easy if the elites, law, and culture have your back. The public square has private impact, and so everyone has a stake in it. A hands-off strategy just means being at the mercy of whoever owns the megaphones. And if you can’t control the public square, all that’s left is exit of some kind or other, to your own private village where you can make your own square.

…

And so the fact is that everyone has a huge stake in what the social environment feels like, what messages it sends and influences it has. Taking a hands-off and free-market’ approach – a legacy of enlightenment values – is unilateral disarmament in the never-ending war for our souls.

…

But here’s the thing: the culture war is lost.

Or, at the very least, a lost cause. It’s far too late for any more “mainstream shaping and influence operations,” in order that the world “be made safe for�� Christianity. One must accept the ugly truth that if Christians, or traditionalist social conservatives in general, ever get the mainstream culture back, it won’t be for many generations.

It is no longer possible for there to be a cohesive, coherent, and unified American popular culture in which the religious enjoy sufficient status with enough respect and perceived normalcy that they and their children can remain fully integrated into ordinary life while keeping their faith from imploding. The excruciatingly hard choice is either capitulation or strategic withdrawal with increased insularity. There is no alternative.

If religion survives in the West, it will be in deeply fragmented societies. And despite all the talk about multiculturalism, most Western countries have not had to maintain peace and order amidst such serious divisions for a long time. If it is to be done at all, it will require some substantial institutional innovation, both at the level of the state, and the level of independent, value-based communities.

A hopelessly incohesive and low-trust society requires different institutions than the society which gave birth to our inherited ones that are groaning under the pressure of a new, polarized context. These will not necessarily be “new” institutions, perhaps they will look like some updated version of old ones such as the Ottoman system of millets, or Chinese special areas. But the old ways will not persist, so new ways must be discovered.

And this is what the Option is really all about. But in the meantime, it’s going to get tougher.

The closure of certain professions to faithful orthodox Christians will be difficult to accept. In fact, it’s hard for contemporary believers to imagine, in part because as Americans, we are unaccustomed to accepting limits on our ambitions. Yet the day is coming when the kind of thing that has happened to Christian bakers, florists, and wedding photographers will be much more widespread. And many of us are nor prepared to suffer deprivation for our faith.

The “certain” professions are likely to become “all” of them, at least, if one doesn’t hide, lie, pay lip-service, and either compromise one’s integrity or one’s theological principles. The progressives will insist on measures that force the bigots to out themselves, or accept the humiliation of silent heresy. What happens when the company wants everyone to attend the pride event, or to wear rainbow apparel, or to use forms of address inconsistent with traditional scruples?

How much of the labor force could really be immune to such trends and pressures? Christians trying to withdraw economically from all the sectors that might put their values at risk would be doomed to even lower status by means of lower status work, and lower overall life success. They would be poor, which by itself is no insufferable condition. But today, that poverty would imply an inability to afford to separate from the American underclass whose lives are defined by constant familial and sexual chaos, dysfunction, disorder, and sin. Which is not exactly Mayberry on the “wholesome environment in which to raise your kids” scale. A Christian-flavored gypsy subculture cannot be the goal.

People might think about withdrawal and dropping out of normal society to be better Christians, but their Social Calculus Module is sounding off the loudest alarms anticipating what a drop in status such a move would entail. And it will drive them with irresistible compulsion to invent some excuse rationalizing why they can’t do it, or why it need not, or even must not, be done.

…

Dreher compares this to a “fast”, but what is implied here is a permanent lifestyle fast. We can all admire and be inspired the examples of extraordinary martyrs and saints who kept the faith despite incredible trials and hardships. But, realistically, a faith that requires a life of constant suffering is not a “test” most people can pass.

At the very least, people are going to need tight-knit and geographically proximate local communities to protect their interests and their faith. But our nations are still urbanizing, leading to a hollowing out the smaller locales where such communities ones existed. We are quickly moving to an increasingly atomized society and a point where nobody knows how to live in that old fashion anymore, let alone form them in sustainable and enduring ways.

…

Today, one doesn’t care to know his neighbors in part because one can’t want what is irrelevant to one’s interests. The combination of modern prosperity and state subsidies means that people are more independent and don’t need to rely on each other the way they used to.

And modern technological and economic developments continue to make us more independent from each other every day as the trend is to try to unbundle and transactionally substitute for the services we used to barter with each other.

For example, one can view marriage as incorporating a kind of economic “deal” into the overall relationship. Maybe the wife does housework while the husband does yardwork, and after all, the cleanliness of the house and the beauty of the yard are things they enjoy in common. But if the couple is wealthier, maybe they just pay for maid service and landscaping, which frees up time to pursue their individual interests. Their marriage has gained something in an obvious sense. But it has probably also lost something in a more subtle sense.

We want power and freedom and independence but we also want community and belonging and lasting friendships. We are human and we want it all, even if all means a bundle of mutually exclusive contradictions. But for a community of deep and durable relationships, we need to need.

…

Dreher says that with the loss of the culture war, the era of religious right “values voters” having any kind of significant influence and sway over the GOP and state policy is over. That is, if they ever actually did have any influence above the lip-service payment level, which is debatable.

And so, traditionalists will have to abandon those pursuits as impotent, futile, and often counterproductive, and adjust their perspective and tactics to the new reality of permanent defense.

…

Dreher is again trying to convince Christians to give up on normal politics, to give up on fighting a lost cause, and to focus as much as possible on building and maintaining their own “thick communities”, and strengthening their own faith and pious practices. He especially wants them to stop rationalizing exceptions and making excuses for themselves. They need to both withdraw and also to stop fooling themselves that current levels of “engagement” with the fallen mainstream culture are sustainable. Christians are to mind their own proper business and, “tend one’s own garden,” in Voltaire’s terms.

But the trouble with appeals to quietism or an ill-defined ‘localism’ is that while you may decide to not be interested in politics, politics can still be interested in you.

And relying on the good graces of adversaries so that they will not dissolve your monasteries is simply not a workable strategy.

The truly revealing thing about those infamous florist, cake decorator, and other cases is just how incredibly nice, pleasant, charitable, good, and friendly the defendants were in those cases were. How they had lived lives indistinguishable from the ‘Mr. Rogers’ ideal advised by all those commentators going on about reputation and ‘winsomeness’. Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if some of them even voted for Obama. None of that made a lick of difference for them, and there is certainly no reason to think it would in the decreasingly Christian future.

…

Now, it may not be their dream house, or anything more than an “any port in a storm” refuge, but at 81 percent, it kind of sounds like at least some American Christians have a political shelter of necessity after all. Again, most Christian public intellectuals are much more likely to be Democrats or progressives. They have nothing but disdain for Trump which spills over into deeply bitter resentment for the support he enjoys among their fellow confessionists.

But support for Trump derives from the pragmatic political necessity of making the best of a tough situation, and dancing with the one that brought you when nobody else would.

Dreher warns this will ruin their reputation, but that’s trying to close the barn door after the horse has already bolted. Once a group is thought to consist of occasionally nice people, but who are still, fundamentally, “refusnik bigots” and loyalists of a “Homophobe Confederacy”, then in the words of the other candidate, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

…

Dreher gets real again, in a good transition to the next section, “Traditional Politics: What Can Still Be Done”

The best that Orthodox Christians today can hope for from politics is that it can open a space for the church to do the work of charity, culture building, and conversion.

This line is extremely important, but it goes by fast if you’re not careful to stop and appreciate its full implications.

So, at the risk of going off on the kind of provocative and triggering sidetrack that – judging by nearly all of the critics of TBO – will make everyone forget everything else in this discussion, let me put that a little differently.

The best orthodox Christians, traditionalists, or rejectionists of all types can do is try to enable and protect the members, subcultures, and institutions of Benedict Option Communities, so that, in whatever form they may take, they won’t be dissolved by the state like so many monasteries before them.

Following from the logic of Perpetuationism, the existential considerations of cultural continuation and political survival necessarily take precedence over other matters, because those other matters could not otherwise be addressed at all.

And so, for social conservatives of all stripes, this goal ought to be become the primary purpose of traditional, non-local politics. This is nothing more that the result of it being the last goal left when all the other, grander objectives are taken off the table, as no longer feasible.

…

Which leads one to ask, “Well, OK, if religious liberty legislation can’t get passed by ordinary methods even in a situation like that – in as ideal circumstances as one can hope for these days – then to the extent one views these legal protections as essential, what would it take to get them?”

After the failure in his own state, former Kansas legislator Lance Kinzer who spearheaded the original effort just keeps banging his head against the same wall.

Yet Kinzer has not left politics entirely. The first goal of Benedict Option Christians in the world of conventional politics is to secure and expand the space within which we can be ourselves and build our own institutions. To the end, he travels around the country advocating for religious liberty legislation in state legislatures. Over and over he sees Republican legislators who are inclined to support religious liberty taking a terrible pounding from the business lobby. … Pastors and lay Christian leaders need to prepare their congregations for hard times.

Well then, as a purely logical matter, it looks like it’s either “game over”, or, else, something will have to be done about that business lobby.

So, if those Christian leaders are not to simply capitulate on the matter of engaging in traditional politics to expand their religious liberty and rights to community autonomy, and if it is not yet practically impossible, then it seems that they have no alternative but to play political hardball. With the business lobby, with Democrats, and even with the country at large, to whatever extent that proves necessary.

Which in turn raises the question: what would nonviolent, civil, and legal “political hardball” look like?

…

So, getting back to hardball, for one, it would require sufficient organization and coordination such that most sympathizers vote as a reliable bloc – a “votebank” – according to leadership endorsements of Republican primary candidates who can be trusted to pursue a religious liberty agenda.

True, previous efforts at such counter-establishment organization on the right have not had promising results, to put it mildly. And in general this kind of coordination and level of commitment is extremely hard to pull off.

…

One example of a non-mainstream American religious group which has already operated in this manner for decades – and to enviable levels of success – are the ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jewish communities of the Northeast. The power of the Satmar bloc in New York is legendary (or infamous, depending on your perspective). When the heads of those communities tell a candidate that they have the ability to get every adult to the polls and have them all vote the same way, they mean it, and they deliver. They are the ultimate “community organizers,” in that sense. Though in truth the community is already extremely organized by its very nature, and the leaders are merely riding that way to play the democracy game. Benedict Option Communities will surely be so as well.

Despite their minority status and relatively small numbers, by and large, these ultra-orthodox Jews punch well above their weight, and so they tend to get what they want. And, in addition to as much public subsidy as possible (which is what any “organized community as special interest group” seeks), what they want is to maximize their autonomy: to be left alone and to manage their own affairs according to their own rules, with as little interference and oversight as politically and legally possible.

It’s a form of clientalist group solidarity which is a very pared down version of the old “machine” politics. And, for them, it works. It works really, really well.

Many contemporary American Christians – especially white ones – have been acculturated to bristle at that approach to democratic politics, just as they have nothing but contempt for the left’s constant agitation for identity politics and ceaseless denigration of ‘privileged’ class enemies. But seeing as those Christians have no other workable alternative, they’ll get over it, and the fact is, they’re already headed down that road.

Because, like it or not, clientalism based on group solidarity works. There is no stable equilibrium in a two-party democratic system – especially in an era of shifting demographics – in which only own party makes use of this potent weapon while the other maintains a policy of neutrality and unilateral disarmament

…

Now, if something like that could be done – to be sure, an astronomical if – then how would those elected politicians actually go about playing hardball?

Well, if “hardball” is to mean anything it all, then when someone lacks carrots, that only leaves sticks. And, to be blunt about it, that means deterrence by a credible threat against something your opponents care about. A legal and non-violent threat – this isn’t antifa – but a compelling one nevertheless. So, what does the business lobby care about?

Now, in the US at least, due to a combination of historical contingencies, the geographic distribution of the population, and the founders’ intentionally frustrating vision of state political organization – in which ‘ungovernable’ was a feature, not a bug – it turns out there is a way for a steadfastly determined minority to get its way.

And everybody already knows what it is: Shutdown. Or, in the words of Internet inventor and nearly-President Al Gore, “Political Terrorism“.

…

Except, it’s never worked before, which is why the idea always gets such weary eye rolls from the commentariat at even the faintest whisper of floating the idea. “Oh brother, here we go again. This never works, and worse, it’s always counterproductive, resulting in nothing but completely pointless hassle for ordinary, innocent people.”

But ‘never’ isn’t right. That claim rests on thinking that the future will keep on looking like the recent past. But for Christians and traditionalists, it won’t.

There’s a simple explanation for why shutdown warnings have not worked so far, which weighs against believing that will continue to be the case in the future.

Brinksmanship threats don’t work if they’re both bluffs, and known by one’s opponents to be bluffs. They can’t work if your opponent is sure that you aren’t serious and, at best, merely going through the performative motions of signaling by means of frustrating political theater.

A nuclear option is worthless if your opponents knows ahead of time you’ll never actually press the button, as if they were able to read your instructions in your letters of last resort and learn that you ordered your commanders to just lie back and think of England. You can’t win a game a chicken if your counterpart can see you are sure to swerve away. Where’s the fear? If there isn’t any, then it’s all just a show.

And this is the charade which has characterized every single shutdown in modern history. It has always been an exercise in crying wolf, since nobody really means it.

But, it’s just a matter of time until someone comes along who does really means it. And they’ll really mean it, and everyone else will know they really mean it, because they will believe they have absolutely no other choice left but to really mean it.

…

Dreher channels Havel and describes the political consequences of refusing to “live within a lie” and put the sign in the window:

His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth” – and it’s going to cost him plenty. He will lose his job and his position in society. His kids may not be allowed to go to the college they want to, or to any college at all. People will bully him or ostracize him. But by bearing witness to the truth, he has accomplish something potentially powerful.

He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. …

Because they are public, the greengrocer’s deeds are inescapably political. He bears witness to the truth of his convictions by being willing to suffer for them. He becomes a threat to the system – but he has preserved his humanity.

Or … he’s dismissed by all right-thinking and respectable people as some bigoted and hateful crank or delusional troublemaker who deserves everything he’s going to get before everybody forgets about him forever. Hoping for Havel’s outcome, as hard as his journey was, is naively optimistic in our present situation.

Imagine the typical progressive’s reaction to hearing someone got fired for refusing to wear a company rainbow pin during pride month. Are they moved by his “bearing witness”? Do they really think he’s a “threat to the system”? Or is it just, “good riddance to bad rubbish.” The image of George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door. In this way, the story of the naked emperor is inapt. Half the people – and nearly all the educated and elite ones – see him clothed. They react to any claim of nakedness by concluding there is someone seriously wrong with the claimant.

So while Havel is a hero, and his essay inspiring, the story isn’t exactly reliable. One has to remember that details about life in the West had penetrated enough into the consciousness of people under the Soviet system that it had gone a long way towards undermining faith in and commitment to that system, and any optimism and true belief had long given way to widespread cynicism. When the West was widely perceived to have higher status, the writing was on the wall, and any failure of will to meet any sign of resistance with an immediate, brutal crackdown would spell the beginning of the end. And just so, it ended. But the West has no West.

…

Any anyway, what exactly is so bad about retreating into ghettos? And is there really a clear distinction between a ‘ghetto’ and a Benedict Option?

It’s fairly clear from the history of the Jews in Europe that the existence of ghettos, whatever their other drawbacks, was likely instrumental in preserving the continuity and traditions of local Jewish communities. When the Jews were liberated and emancipated and dispersed themselves out of their formal enclaves, it only took a few generations for most of them to assimilate and integrate into the cultural mainstream and watch their distinctive faith and practices gradually become watered down and fade away. Meanwhile, the ultra-orthodox, penned in by their eruv wires into modern, voluntary ‘ghettos’, and with their higher fecundity, are probably what the future of Judaism in the West will look like. Ghettos work.

…

When faith becomes weird, embracing the weirdness will set one free.

It’s not about losing respectability so much as it is about the members of the church putting themselves in a position where they are no longer so sensitive to the typical human impulses to care so deeply about perceptions of normalcy and broad respectability in general society.

The gap between churchgoers and secular infidels can grow so wide that it goes past a “point of no return”. Or, perhaps more precisely, past any point of remaining ambiguity where it would still be feasible to keep a foot in both worlds without marking yourself clearly as a “different other”.

Once that tether to mainstream secular culture is cut, it no longer pulls members into heretical or weaker forms of faith. If it pulls, it pulls out completely, and so those who remain become ‘free’ from the pressures to conform and compromise. In the alternative, they have intentionally been made (or purposefully made themselves) simply too incompatible with the mainstream to ever integrate easily, and too exclusively dependent on their coreligionists for social, spiritual, and even ordinary transactional needs.

Many traditionalist religious groups require conspicuously distinctive habits of dress and patterns of life which by design do not allow one to blend in with mainstream society. Members of future churches will need to be metaphorically and psychologically ‘branded’ with costly signals of commitment in a similar, hard-to-reverse fashion.

…

Part of the problem is that, especially in the US – and as a longstanding feature of American history – many Christians – and especially Protestants – are not effectively a ‘captive audience’ of any particular sect.

This means in part that they have the social right to exit and only suffer comparably minor social penalties and negative consequences from switching denominations. Furthermore, this is generally viewed as a common occurrence and personal matter which ought not to warrant harsh reproach, or raise any great deal of consternation or opprobrium. Indeed, sects optimistic about their own growth opportunities obviously see it as their theological mission to swipe members from other denominations as ‘fair game’, and are thus eager to engage in the ‘conversion contest’ while fishing for souls.

The trouble is that this state of affairs turns “churching” into a mere economic sector and competitive marketplace, with typical competitive pressures leading to a ‘customer service’ mentality of indulgent and obsequious unobtrusiveness. The attitude of “the customer is always right,” (or else he’ll leave) reverses the typical relations of authority and status. It also leads to gimmicks of low-brow appeal which are by their nature fragile and ephemeral when exposed to the fickle and discursive whims of the masses.

Indeed, such pressures weigh hard on those who cater to any minority, refined, or ‘elite’ tastes, which can increasingly only be done in the largest or most cultured cities with a critical mass of these rare patrons. Nevertheless, one might try to counter with the fact that, however diminished, the market still manages to supply these few, special consumers with products in their niche interests. So why should devout Christians worry about competition all-but-eliminating non-mass-appeal churches?

Because unlike all those other goods and services and entertainments, churches cannot be trying to please consumers. Instead, churches and religions must make difficult demands on the individual, teach the individual that it is he who ought to work hard to try to please God. It is very much a “no pain, no gain” message. And just like with strenuous physical exertion, people can train themselves to maintain the right perspective and attitude, and learn to enjoy and even love the process. As with exercise, it’s easier to get into, and near-effortless to maintain, if everyone else you like is also doing it, and it’s equally difficult if you are all alone while you’re friends are out at the bar.

But there is no question that members of households are told to give up their time, money, convenience, pleasure, every spare mental ‘clock cycle’, and many other life opportunities. That’s in order to fulfill their religious duties, and so the congregation functions all day, every day, as a constantly exercised social organism: the primary community of one’s entire life. Churches insist that instead of trying to indulge their impulses, congregants abstain from feeding and yielding to their desires. Churches may claim that a faithful life is ‘liberating’ in a certain, counter-intuitive sense, but such ’emancipation’ is still occurring under a system that emphasizes obligation, submission and one’s duty to obey holy authority.

…

Churches also offer a ‘service’ that has no close analogy in a competitive marketplace. Companies are trying to tempt you with ever more intense ways to feel good. Churches place at least some emphasis on making one feel bad. The concept of sin and the emotions of shame, embarrassment, humiliation, guilt, remorse, contrition, repentance and atonement are all part of the natural and instinctive arsenal ordering human group behavior. The proper channeling of those moral impulses makes the higher forms of civilization characterized by strong religious community possible.

Yes, there is the upside of release and salvation via purification and forgiveness, but in the necessary moments of emotional discomfort those upsides lack salience. One perhaps need not go all the way to Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God every day. But give people plenty of choices, and the market will eventually weed out all the hectoring, which will throw some very important babies out with the bathwater.

…

This is a key line:

A church that looks and talks and sounds just like the world has no reason to exist.

Exactly right, and this is the precise reason why most Mainline Protestant denominations continue to implode.

…

Parents, teachers, and other adult authority figures like to believe they are key influences in their kids’ lives and the main molders of their character and worldview. Alas, a lot of that is wishful thinking. As a salutary corrective to such thinking, Judith Rich Harris’s The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do remains one of the most important books of the last half century and required reading for any intelligent parent.

It’s important your kids have a good peer group. By “good,” I mean one in which its members, or at least most of them, share the same strong moral beliefs. Though parental influence is critical, research shows that nothing forms a young person’s character like their peers. The culture of the group of which your child is a part growing up will be the culture he or she adopts as their own.

Engaged parents can’t outsource the moral and spiritual formation of their kids to their church or parachurch organization. Interviewing a wide variety of Christians for this book, I often heard complaints that church-affiliated youth groups were about keeping kids entertained more than disciplines.

At times like this in the book I begin to suspect that even many devout and pious parents start to secretly think to themselves, “Good grief, who has time, energy, and persistence for all that? My faith is deeply important to me and I believe it to be the cornerstone of my life and existence. But honestly, I’m not a saint. I’m just an ordinary person who has to work late and comes home tired and sometimes it’s a struggle to just get dinner on the table. I can’t supervise everything all the time. Nor would I want to even if I could. I just don’t know if I’m up to handling being that “engaged” all the time. I’m going to need a whole lot of help.”

In other words, “It takes a village.” But one at culture-peace, not embroiled in culture-war, the battles of which parents are likely to lose.

…

First, while teenagers are often portrayed in popular culture as being naturally “rebellious”, they are in fact incredibly conformist and hypersensitive to matters regarding social opinion and approval. This may seem unbelievable to any parent who has experienced the struggle with surly and disobedient adolescents, probing for opportunities to reset the boundaries of dominance and power in the relationship. But that ‘rebellion’ is merely the manifestation of the teenager’s status radars switching targets away from their parents and locking instead to the worldview and attitudes of their peers and that of the general mainstream culture.

Second, “social contagion” is a real, powerful, and extremely important phenomenon. The young mind’s flexibility and tendency to self-reprogram in response to environmental cues about socially important matters has almost limitless potential, for good or ill. In certain circumstances, one bad apple really can spoil the bunch, and in contemporary society what happens during times of peer-interaction are particularly hard for parents to supervise. We are already at the end of the era where it is possible to discuss the truth of this matter as relates to matters of sexual orientation and gender identity without being reflexively accused of bigotry by the people who relish the role of making such accusations. But any educated person can acquaint themselves with the history of diverse cultural approaches to sexual matters to arrive at the conclusion that “baby I was born that way” is hardly the full story.

And third, at some level most parents already understand the importance of peer groups. But when “good peers” are a scarce resource, in the American system, parents start to compete with each other in a zero-sum price war for rights to attend the “best” local schools. Parents collectively pretend that this has something to do with the ‘quality’ of the education at those schools. But they nearly all secretly know what makes a “good school” is a high concentration of “good students”, and there just aren’t enough of those to go around. If parents find themselves unable to pay the prices in that bidding war either by money, grueling commutes, or other lifestyle sacrifices, then they’ll need another way to be selective about their kids’ friends.

…

Dreher seems inconsistent and conflicted about the ideas of ‘extremism’ and ‘fanaticism’. On the one hand, he knows that he and many people of similar levels of Christian piety and devotion are regarded as akin to extremist fanatics by mainstream culture. Dreher in particular is accused of being so when he is perceived to be calling for the self-exile of Christians away from normal society.

But then, instead of concluding that there’s something fundamentally wrong at root with the idea of this kind of judgment, he tacitly concludes that it’s just wrong for him. He looks a little past where he happens to be and seems willing to turn that same artillery on others. He knows friends like him who lost their children to the faith, and thinks it’s because of “the culture”, but when it happens to people more strict or alarmed than he is, it’s the parents fault, having “sheltered” them and “driven the children away.”

Aren’t the monks in the monasteries “fanatically religious”? Won’t the people in their Benedict Option communities be called “fanatics” and “cultists”, and indeed, with justice? Isn’t a ‘cloister’ a sheltering enclosure separate from the outside world? But if that’s what living the faith means, then what’s wrong with any of that?

My provisional conclusion is that because Dreher is a smart guy, he knows what he’s doing here, which is once again have to throw normals and the idea of ‘normalcy’ an occasional bone. That avoids the kind of triggers that make those normal people put up their mental shields and give themselves an easy out as a convenient justification to disengage from the whole uncomfortable topic.

Still, he’s doing the overall message of the book a disservice by using the same disparaging terms. Ask a typical European what he or she thinks about American Christians withdrawing from morally corrupting public schools and choosing to home-school. “Weird” and “Cult” and “Creepy” and “Fanatics” is exactly what you’ll hear. If that’s wrong – which it is – then what’s wrong with it that isn’t also wrong with Dreher’s vague prescriptions?

…

First of all, as above, parents don’t make teens into ‘rebels’. Teens ‘rebel’ because they are conforming to new sources of ‘social authority’ which are displacing familial authority. If anything, it just reinforces the above point that Ellen’s parents failed because they lacked a village.

Second of all, for every story of ‘fanatical strictness’ that goes this way, there’s another that goes the other way, with children brought up to love and cherish their faith, keep it throughout their lives, and pass it on to their own children.

And finally, the real problem here is the lack of a full-life plan. That is, a place in the village for children, for students, for adults with young families, for the retired, and for everybody at every stage. What even the most devout Christians – especially Americans – have been doing instead is just “raise and release”. As with domesticated animals, this is a perfect recipe for quick feralization.

The Anglo-Saxon tradition of having children move away from home and establish their own distinct lives at relatively young ages could only work to preserve family traditions in a cultural environment in which the fact that those traditions were widely shared could be taken for granted. But, for the social influence reasons explained above, that practice has always been counterproductive for counterculturalists, which Christians now are. So “raise and release” will have to change too.

…

But for any Benedict Option to be viable, matters of real estate and concentration will have to have central importance to the overall plan. When done intentionally or inadvertently, such actions will have the effect of a kind of local development plan which resembles the process of gentrification, especially if the land started out cheap. Members of these communities will have to find ways to accomplish these ends without upsetting other neighbors or local civil authorities. And political experience teaches us that people can be quite passionate and determined when fighting over ‘turf’ like this.

…

Related to religious real-estate development plans, in the Eastern Orthodox Community in Eagle River, Alaska:

A number of cathedral families live within walking distance of the cathedral, on land purchased by church members decades ago, when it was affordable.

“When it was affordable.” Could that work elsewhere too?

Paul and Rachel’s parents were among the early settlers of a distressed neighborhood in Augusta, Georgia where the new community’s members could afford housing. They helped each other fix up their places and began life in common. Today the Alleluia Community has around eight hundred members, many of whom remain in Faith Village, which is what they call the original settlement.

A pattern emerges. The same was true for the early Catholic families trying to concentrate themselves in Hyattsville, Maryland. They got in while the getting was good, but part of the reason that particular neighborhood is no longer as affordable today is because by their very presence they made it a more desirable place to live, especially for each other.

…

“If you isolate yourself, you will become weird.” … The idea of community itself should not be allowed to become an idol. A community is a living organism that must change and grow and adapt.”

This is just dead wrong. It’s not coming out of his own mouth, but including this quote at all was Dreher’s biggest error in drafting the book. I’m not saying he should be wearing “Make Christianity Weird Again” baseball caps necessarily, but warning Christians to be wary of forging their own path because they might seem strange from some other perspective is antithetical to the rest of his premise.

First, that’s almost the exact same rhetoric used to advocate for a series of liberalizations that end in the dissolution of the original faith. The ‘idol’ language is meant to be a warning not to take anything to an inappropriate extreme, but that includes throwing around idol language every time someone wants to merely insinuate that they are on the ‘moderate’ side of a debate, but without actually making an argument. “Don’t idolize warnings not to idolize.”

And while it’s not Dreher saying it, ‘weird’ is a particularly daft word. As explained above, devout Christians of all stripes don’t just seem weird to secular types. Like it or not, and whether they want to admit it or not, Christians are indeed weird now.

Warnings about weirdness are faulty at root and play right into the pressure towards secularization. It is completely at odds with Moore’s statement that, “by losing its cultural respectability, the church is freer to be radically faithful.” Worrying about being ‘weird’ means worrying about losing cultural respectability, which, in effect, means the prohibition of radical faithfulness.

…

Some Mormon practices are seen as ‘weird’, and generate a lot of mean-spirited mockery, but laugh all you want, the Mormons are winning and probably in better shape than any other Christian group. Ultra Orthodox Jews seem really bizarre, especially with their unconventional costumes. But outside of Israel, and going by current demographic trends, in a generation or two, nearly all observant Jews will be Orthodox. Speaking of Israel, the story of that country and Zionism fits so well with Dreher’s premise that its absence comes off as a conspicuous omission from his book. After all, Israel is like a Benedict Option writ large – all the way up to national sovereignty.

The point of Israel in the classical Zionist conception is precisely to serve a place of refuge and sanctuary for the people of a particular faith, to be a Jewish state, and one in which, almost anywhere one goes, one can’t help but breathe in Judaism with the air. That is, to be the easiest place on earth to be authentically Jewish. I understand that if Dreher even mentioned Israel it would open up a completely distracting can of worms, and that he was wise to avoid it. Still, what Benedict Option Christians want and need are their own little Zions.

And speaking of foreign places, the past, too, “… is a foreign country; they do things different there.” Weird things. At least, to modern eyes. But if we are going to look backwards for inspiration and examples of how to live in a new, harder age, then we are going to have to recognize that ‘weird’ is a bogus group insult.

…

Part of the hesitation is the instinct that any such project presents a massive coordination / “Aumann common knowledge” problem that, by its inherent social nature, requires a lot of people to sign on all at once. Which they won’t do, unless they feel certain that everyone else will too. One needs to gauge real levels of interest and commitment, but you can’t really obtain reliable information leading to accurate predictions by merely asking people to provide a costless and riskless indication of interest.

Fortunately, commitment vouching and threshold-triggering techniques like the crowdfunding approach used by Kickstarter are emerging to help solve these coordination problems. Those who wish to form new Benedict Option communities would be advised to learn more about them.

…

Two observations worth pointing out. First, Czechia, while an astoundingly impressive economic recovery case and an increasingly prosperous nation, has not recovered culturally, at least insofar as levels of fertility and religiosity are concerned. There are few large and devoutly Catholic families like the Bendas left. But while the Communist tyranny undoubtedly played some role, in these matters Czechia does not seem all that different from other prosperous European countries, and so it seems clear that Benda was fighting a phenomenon of cultural transformation even bigger than the influence of Communist totalitarianism.

And second, while it’s easy to overplay the role and exaggerate the influence of education, everyone still recognizes how important it can be. This obviously includes the state, as demonstrated in this case even while it was relaxing controls on everything else. Any attempt to wrest control over education that the state perceives is opposed and threatening to its interests will clearly be met whatever legal and political measures are thought necessary to neutralize that threat. It will be either in hard forms like outlawing homeschooling (as many other countries do), or softer forms such as curriculum control, ideologically problematic mandates, exclusion from competitions and other opportunities to demonstrate talent and merit, disqualification for grants or scholarships, or refusal to accredit, certify, or grant certain credentials, which are de facto requirements for many careers.

The state is likely content with an outcome such that the choice of non-state-sanctioned educational options means a loss of respectability and recognition so severe that it effectively means sacrificing any chance of a normal, successful life for any talented student. This creates a heart-wrenching situation for his or her parents who are forced to decide between their faith and their duty to improve the welfare of their children.

Benedict Option communities will have to stay out of politics whenever possible, but it seems likely that in the particular matter of education, broad autonomy and near immunity from state intervention and oversight must be fought for as a non-negotiable priority. It’s so important that it’s even be worth the cost of some inevitable unfortunate cases of incompetent and inadequate instruction. For if those are to be regulated, supervised, and made to conform with the state’s will, everything will be.

…

Don’t be too sad for the Catholic Poles in losing the dark night that inspired them to keep a candle lit, because it turns out they are in luck. Fortunately for them, the European Union seems determined to offer a soft and bureaucratic substitute for foreign domination by a totalitarian menace. And, at least at the moment, it seems like Poles are reacting with their characteristic failure to submit.

Meanwhile, in America, the fact that we are our own enemies in the Cold Civil War fails to trigger similar reactive impulses.

…

Progressives are not used to arguing for the value of public education with the same terms that the military uses to describe its goal of creating camaraderie and esprit de corps. That is, of inculcating a homogeneity of outlook that helps foster shared experiences and group consciousness, of common dedication to higher ideals, of national coherence and cohesion and collective patriotism instead of segregated insularity, and so forth. But watch the progressives turn on a dime and wrap themselves in the flag when it’s Christians talking about withdrawing from public schools en masse. That’s a trigger as effective as a matador’s cape is to a raging bull.

…

At any rate, if Benedict Optioners need a higher education plan, then when does the Christian learning stop after that? The answer is clear: it doesn’t.

The obvious implication of all this emphasis on education is the need for an institutional arrangement that insists upon a perpetual, lifetime of learning, and of staying together with one’s ‘classmates’ for as much of one’s life as feasible. This is the kind of attitude toward constant religious learning that is behind the use of the Yiddish terms shul (“school”) and batei midrash (“houses of studying”) for synagogues.

If we start to pull all of Dreher’s suggestions into a synthesis we get something approaching a residential college campus. Once again see that universities are the most reliable guide for how to preserve and adapt traditional religious institutions like monasteries and project them into the modern age while maintaining their function. Like military bases abroad, residents would likely spend most of their time and social interactions with each other, living in ‘base housing’ or barracks, dormitories, faculty quarters, or fraternity group arrangements, and with everything revolving around the primary mission of the community.

And, conveniently, with just a few exceptions so far, universities are granted a legal status that affords them a remarkably broad degree of autonomy, selectivity, and the right to police up the behavior of all members of the campus community. Children and young students would go to school full time, but even working adults can come together and take a night class every semester, according to their availability and intellectual capability, and for the rest of their lives.

Such a community is more like a village or shtetl that can adapt and expand its capacity to deal with all the various needs of its members. They may even find ways to network with each other for the sake of employment opportunities. And, as has been known to happen on campuses on occasion, they may even be able to fall in love with each other, and then form their families in the warm supporting embrace and cultural consistency of their fellow residents.

The setup could be one of clear physical enclosure like a ‘gated community’, or an informal amalgamation combining a lot of small and close properties together. But either way, some sort of ‘religious campus’ is the only sort of thing that has any hope of solving all the big problems at once.

…

Some disturbing quotes from professors at religious colleges.

“You would be surprised by how many of our students come here knowing next to nothing about the Bible,” he said sadly. “A lot of our students come here from some of the most highly regarded Catholic schools in this region,” said one professor. “They don’t know anything about their faith and don’t see the problem. They’ve had it drummed into their heads that Catholicism is anything they want it to be.”

That raises the question of how did such utter failure of religious instruction come about at these supposedly Catholic schools. But the broader point is that widespread ignorance is a real problem even in the best of circumstances. Religious scripture, doctrine, commentary, and history cannot be an optional sideshow or mere elective; it must be part of the daily life of study.

Again, we can learn from Jewish education here. Charles Chaput, the Catholic archbishop of Philadelphia, witnessed the power of Orthodox Jewish education on a 2012 visit to Yeshiva University. After observing students studying Torah as part of the university’s basic coursework, Chaput wrote how impressed he was by “the power of Scripture to create new life.”

Imagine multiple generations of entire families living at and attending a lifetime version of their religion’s approach to Yeshiva University together.

…

Dreher’s appeal is to connect people of the present to their deep heritage and to honor and carry on the memory of the entire long chain of their predecessors. Notice how opposite this spirit is from the recent trend of the Great Erasure, the PC-based implementation of damnatio memoriae which involves blotting out every public trace of each and every historical figure who would not be found perfectly compliant with today’s dyspathetic sensibilities. The effect of all of which is to alienate moderns from their history, focus on condemnation instead of respect, insist on the past’s irrelevance instead of the idea of that history containing insights worthy of modern consideration. To break any sense of continuity or commonality, gratitude or duty.

We have already come a long way in that direction.

…

This section will probably strike the average reader as the most radical and personally burdensome element of Dreher’s counsel.

Because public education in America is neither rightly ordered, not religiously informed, nor able to form an imagination devoted to Western civilization, it is time for all Christians to pull their children out of the public school system.

There’s the matter of ideological conflict as well.

Plus, public schools by nature are on the front lines of the latest and worst trends in popular culture. For example, under pressure from the federal government and LGBT activists, many school systems are now welcoming and normalizing transgenderism – with the support of many parents.

Or, just as often, without the support of many parents. Or even the knowledge of many parents, who either aren’t informed about these matters, or, sometimes, and even in the cases of their own children, are simply lied to by school staff as implementations of official policy, when such lying is deemed to be more fully consistent with being an ‘ally’ to those children, in the name of an Orwellian version of “safety”

There’s not much hope in fixing the public schools in this regard.

…

Many American Christian schools are hardly Christian in anything more than name only, as a mere carryover from more religiously serious origins. Many of them gradually succumbed to the various competitive and market pressures to be little more than another typical private prep school, and a means to non-religious ends.

The principal of one Christian high school told me that he and his faculty are constantly battling parents who find the serious moral and theological content of the curriculum too burdensome for their children. “All they think about is getting their kids into a top university and launching them into a good career,” he said. Another principal, this one at a pricey Christian academy in the Deep South, said, “Our parents think if they’ve paid their seventeen-thousand-dollar tuition bill, they’ve done all that’s expected of them about their child’s religious education.”

…

As mentioned above, we live in an era of specialization, which includes the compartmentalization and disaggregation of the ‘trades’ underlying many social interactions. An individual these days, especially as enabled by new technologies, may have different and non-overlapping sets of ‘friends’ specific to the contexts of work, sports, studies, games, intellectual conversations, and so forth.

That’s completely different than doing everything with the same set of friends, even if it’s by necessity, and when it often means as least one person in the group isn’t particular interested in the event of the moment. That not very ‘efficient’ in a technical sense, though sticking with the same group of friends in a variety of contexts has a value all its own.

The former situation allows for a variety of context-specific ‘identities’, whereas the latter scenario of being a ‘known quantity’ compels a static personality from context to context. Scott Adams has a famous and controversial blog post about the potential to disaggregate marriage itself. That current flows against the kind of deep, multi-contextual human relationships needed to form the foundation of a strong and durable religious community. Such communities will need to focus intently on pulling the fraying strands back in and weaving them together in a sustained effort at reaggregation.

…

The trouble is that homeschooling comes at the opportunity cost of one spouse’s potential income. In a society in which most households are supported by one breadwinner, that wouldn’t present an insupportable burden. But dual-income households have constituted a majority of families for nearly half a century. The economic logic of the two-income trap means that failing to keep up with the rat race can yield a substantial drop in one’s standard of living and ability to afford a home in a quality neighborhood.

But it is possible for some, provided they are willing to live ascetically. Maggie added that she and her fellow homeschooling moms are surrendering careers, success, and given the local cost of living, significant material wealth for the sake of their children.

The deeply faithful will of course give up nearly everything for God, but as a purely practical matter, encouraging the marginal cases to ramp up their pious observance at life-altering cost is an awfully hard sell.

…

The specter of persecution in the name of ‘antidiscrimination’ now persistently looms over the roofs of religious institutions. The trouble is that advocates had long tried to convince the jurisprudential community that the analogy between racial matters and those like sexuality – which touch on the core of religious convictions – is legally isomorphic. That process is now nearly complete, to the point where it will inevitably be deemed to justify any action which was ever judged permissible in the fight against racial discrimination. The precedent of the Bob Jones case extending to non-racial matters is now what animates most of the justified fear.

…

Now is the time for Christians whose livelihoods may be endangered to start thinking and acting creatively in professional fields still open to us without risk of compromise. The goal is to create business and career opportunities for Christians who have been driven out of other industries and professions.

Yeah, sounds good. But talk about having to deal with the problem of antidiscrimination lawsuits. Dreher says one outlet for entrepreneurial energies will be satisfying the demands of other Christians for specifically Christian goods and services. For example, for wholesome entertainment content and modest clothing.

An example of the potential market for these products, could be several Mormon companies including CleanFlicks and VidAngel (the latter claiming to operate under the ‘filtering’ provisions of 2005 Familiy Movie Act). These specialized for a time in Bowdlerizing popular films to remove all morally objectionable and inappropriate material, and then distributing those edited version to the pent-up demand of a large market particularly sensitive to those matters. The demand was there, proving the potential. But in these particular cases the major movie studios were not cooperative with the project, to put it mildly.

…

People used to be able to make a living as farmers, but now they can’t. If industrialism is the new agrarianism, the risk is that the same thing is coming for our die-setters and tradesmen. How long until all die-setting is done by robots? It’s not that far away; it’s going to happen in our own lifetimes. Elk County will adapt, but whether there will be enough manufacturing jobs left to go around remains an open question.

…

But more generally, the traditionalist conception of social organization is one in which the fundamental and culturally prioritized unit is the family, not the individual. As Milton Friedman once said regarding the role of inheritance in the human motivation to work and save, “We are really a family society, not an individualist society.”

If one takes that seriously, not just as a description but a prescription, then one arrives at the perspective of familialism. Raising that concept to a fundamental principle and purpose of the civilized social order naturally implies a whole framework and constellation of norms, policies, and folkways that sustain that order against the entropy and chaos of primitive human impulses.

And of course Christian norms also emphasize a particular, traditional vision of family life such that its doctrines regarding sexuality build upon this common familiastic foundation. In other words, any ideology that focuses on the family cannot help but be “stuck on sex” as the most fundamental matter to regulate and tame, and the most fundamental impulse to be channeled and elevated to sacred importance. In an ideologically-stable family-based society, everything necessarily orbits around a particular ideal enjoying the highest status and level of social (and divine) approval.

This necessarily comes at the expense and exclusion of all deviations from this ideal, which is unfortunate. But that’s part of the tragedy of the human condition, for status is always a zero sum game, and for there to be winners, there will also be losers. Winners should of course treat losers with as much charity, compassion, and generosity of spirit as is compatible with the maintenance of the effectiveness of the mental environment. That is in exchange for the pro-social sacrifice that is being thrust upon them, and in the past this has been managed with some hypocritical leniency and tolerance so long as matters are kept private and discrete. But none of that implies that the system should be abolished, in a naïve and futile attempt to end the tragedy. It’s built into who we are; there’s no getting rid of it.

Nothing but the whole arsenal of social institutions and pressures can hope to contain impulses as powerful, volcanic, and potentially dangerous as those surrounding the evolutionary imperative of sexual reproduction.

Social conservatives have been warning for generations that traditional moral institutions are indispensable to this hard project, and that human sexual nature being what it is means that tearing down these institutions in the name of other values thinking that these reforms will be ‘harmless’ will yield results that are anything but. They will come mostly at the expense of the social normalcy of strong and healthy family life, especially for the lower classes. And that’s exactly the collapse we watched happen over the past several generations.

…

This gets back to the point about ideological messages needing to be able to be expressed with multiple layers of depth, suitable for different personalities, needs, and levels of sophistication and maturity. Sometimes detailed, rational explanations are just the ticket. But sometimes they can be counterproductive, even undermining other hard demands when someone falls into the conceit of thinking that no rule can be legitimate or worthy without a rational explanation, but being unable themselves to articulate such a justification.

Generals must sometimes provide their subordinate officers with detailed explanations so that they can understand the big picture. These lower ranking officers then exercise their independent judgment and use their delegated authorities to improvise and help accomplish the overall mission when the situation’s complexity and uncertainty overwhelms any prior attempt at planning. But the junior enlistedmen need just the opposite. That is, a spirit of faith and trust even in the absence of explanations, and a readiness to simply follow orders, submit, and obey, as suits their role and purpose. And by such reliable obedience, they deliver a better outcome for everyone involved.

…

Dreher’s sympathies with singles is understandable and compassionate. But social nudges are usually as uncomfortable as they are necessary. And there’s nothing wrong with that nudge, quite the contrary. Progressives have a long tradition of arguing against the ‘stigma’ that traditional social institutions place on anti-social behaviors. But that stigma, emotionally difficult as it may be to bear, serves a vital social function.

And in contemporary America, it’s remarkable to what extent life in high status circles -where intense working conditions are common – is dominated and run by singles. Or by people who relegate their family life to such minor important they might as well be single. That’s because people who have to devote any percentage of their potential working time to the needs of family or church are at an obvious competitive disadvantage when it comes to maximizing productivity, availability, and flexibility. They will either not be selected to fill those top roles, or they will not even try in the first place.

These incentives are highly discouraging of family formation. At these levels, the scales of the secular world are already out of balance in favor of singles, and it is entirely appropriate for religions to push them in the other direction, to say that it is the duty of singles to join the social order of family life, or to serve it in prescribed ways, but not to stand apart from it.

…

One should be cautious in using the results of convenient empirical studies to try to bolster a religious point, for fear of sawing off the branch one is sitting on. This grants a higher magisterial authority to Science, which is the metaphysical break that led to the modern condition.

…

Technology as a general term includes pretty much any tool or technique that humans developed since the origin of their distinction from animals. Not just “since the stone age”, but including the stones. Discoveries, innovative inventions, and other technological progress – to include items we now regard as simple like pots and wheels – are essential elements of civilization and any state of human existence that can even approach a condition of prosperity. Even cultural institutions are “social technologies” in a way, and ones necessary to sustain civilized communities.

Technological development occurred all over the world and long before Jesus was born, and there is little evidence that the metaphysical applecart was overturned by the ideology of technology every time someone create a new, better tool. Dreher says we don’t have to go Amish (and even the Amish are using plenty of technology), which implies there might be some way to approach technological use with enlightened awareness, discipline, and moderation. He will make some suggestions in this regard, but it’s hard to know whether anything could really work.

A more likely story would be that our use and development of tools does not displace traditional philosophy with a “technological ideology”, but that instead the wealth, capabilities, and social changes that are the consequences of technological progress produce conditions and incentives that enable new concepts to flourish which were once prohibitive or infeasible. These influence the ideas people use to make sense of and navigate these new and very different worlds. That is, it may not the “ideology of technology” but “ideology after technology.” The really pessimistic view is that if one doesn’t like the bathwater of that modern ideology, one has little choice but to throw out the baby as well, but no one knows for sure.

…

For the sake of both convenience and maintaining amicable relations with their children, parents are sorely tempted to want to trust their kids to make good – or at least innocent – choices with digital technology. But that is profoundly naïve wishful thinking.

Moms and dad who would never leave their kids unattended in a room full of pornographic DVDs think nothing of handing them smartphones. This is morally insane. No adolescent or young teenager should be expected to have the self-control on his own to say no.

Another useful supplement to the “no smartphones” policy is a “no screens in bedrooms” rule. The only way to deal with the risks of digital connectivity while preserving some of the benefits is to make the use of such devices as public as possible.

Additionally, this problem once again illustrates the need for widespread social support and reinforcement for a “wholesome commons”, because one either makes the public world safe for children or has to keep them sheltered from it. This is impossible without widely shared agreement as to fundamental values. For example, there are products available that provide filtering or monitoring capabilities, but what kinds of things will be filtered out in our contentious environment? It’s likely that any company with a product that even offered the option of an “LGBT filter and monitor” would immediately bring the entire force of progressive ire on top of them like a ton of bricks.

…

It’s now a common joke for non-millennials to say that they thank God they made their mistakes before the advent of Facebook and Twitter and so forth. But young people will have no such luck. The danger is that they do not have the cautious instincts and norms needed to preserve their future reputations in an increasingly digital world. The Onion headline, “Report: Every Potential 2040 President Already Unelectable Due to Facebook,” is funny precisely because it expresses the disturbing truth of the matter.

Dreher says ban it all, even though your kids will hate it, and hate you for it. At least until they grow up to appreciate the wisdom and necessity of the action. They’ll hate much less, and think it’s normal, if you are able to surround them with peers who all face the same rules instead of all being free of them. Yet another reason we need Benedict Options.

In another example of his conflicted inconsistency regarding cult-like weirdos and control freaks:

Yes, you will be thought of as a weirdo and a control freak. So what? These are your children

“So what” indeed.

[movieswithkevin27]

Keeper of the Flame

When Keeper of the Flame was released in 1943, it seemed as though everybody was lining up to hate the film. Even director George Cukor stated that the film’s ending was not that good with Katharine Hepburn embodying everything that made the general public hate her in the 1930s. The head of MGM was incensed that they had financed such a picture. Republicans decried it for its leftist politics, leading them to calling on the head of the Production Code to ban such a picture from being made for how it equates being rich with being fascist. Of course, Keeper of the Flame does nothing of the sort, Hepburn is brilliant, and the ending is what makes the film such a brilliant work from Cukor even if he does not know it. Portraying the death of a charismatic political leader, the aftermath, and then the mystery surrounding his death leading to the great reveal - that he was not all he was made up to be in the public eye - Keeper of the Flame shows the dangers the future held for America. In viewing Nazi Germany, many Americans thanked their lucky stars and said, “Good thing that could never happen here.” Portraying a war reporter returning to the United States, Spencer Tracy’s Steven O’Malley is even asked why he is back in the States, as there is no war there. Yet, as the film argues about a secret hand in politics made up of men who want nothing but power and will sow division and discord, amongst the unwitting public in an attempt to pit hatred against hatred, Keeper of the Flame shows there is a war to be fought. It is not a film preaching leftist ideals nor is it one that is anti-American. Instead, it is a film that warns about fascism draped in American flag. It is a warning we ignored as the film was roundly rejected by Republicans (the film never even calls the dead fascist a Republican, but I guess this one hit a little too close to home, eh?) and faced backlash even in the studio (again, a little too close to home for the Hollywood elite, eh?). Tell the truth and the guilty will take issue, apparently.

It is this ending in which the secrets behind Robert Forrest are revealed that Keeper of the Flame becomes so impactful and it is, in large part, because of Katharine Hepburn. As the sound all around her dies down, Forrest’s widow Christine (Hepburn) tells every secret he had to hard-nosed journalist Steven O’Malley. Revealing his plans to put elements of society against one another through “fake news” articles to be run in specifically targeted publications - examples such as an anti-semitic piece, an anti-urbanite piece to run in the Farmers Gazette, anti-black stories, or an anti-poor story - and the way in which this mountain of a man came to believe in his own god-like status bestowed upon him by the public, Hepburn’s monologue is achingly beautiful. It is heavy-handed, yes, but it is necessarily heavy-handed. These are not ideals that can be left to suggestion or thematic development and writer Donald Ogden Stewart wisely recognizes this fact. Instead, it must be said. It must be a rallying cry to “keep the flame” burning. The public is smart, but nothing can be left to chance. They must know there is a secret group of fascists within American borders who sell pro-American ideals as being that of hatred of others, animosity, and racial superiority. They must know there is a plot to install soulless men who want nothing but power and wealth into political office where they will sell themselves and their vote to the highest bidder. There is a plot to leave the public poorly educated, apathetic, build up beliefs in public officials as being god-like, and stoking our childish desire to blame others for our ills. It is a powerfully written call to action that, like all of the best speeches and monologues that hit too close to the mark, fell on deaf ears in 1943. Hepburn’s impassioned delivery of the monologue serves as the emotional climax of the film as she explains her hatred for what her beloved husband had become once he, too, came to believe himself worthy of being worshipped. It may be on-the-nose, but it is its power and delivery that makes it come off so authentically and emotionally. This is, largely, due to Hepburn who deserves great plaudits role in this film.

Until this moment, however, Keeper of the Flame is a mystery drama film. Portraying the death of Forrest, showing the national mourning that occurs, and then the efforts of journalists to interview Christine that are consistently met with a locked gate, Keeper of the Flame creates great mystery and intrigue. The only man capable of breaking through is Steven O’Malley, whose writing was greatly admired by Robert Forrest before his political swing that came to define his life at the end. In a classic role for Tracy - a man in a position to “right a wrong” in society or politics and crusading to create this impact - he is able to smooth talk his way into the estate of Forrest where he is able to win over Christine to gain the rights to pen the biography about Forrest. Once given access, however, he stumbles on some oddity. Christine acts quite weird around her male cousin, who is established as having hated Robert. The gatekeeper’s daughter became quite taken with Robert, only to be sent off to a sanitarium following a nervous breakdown. The gatekeeper’s young son cries daily and has made himself sick because he believes he could have saved Robert as he knew the bridge - which Robert’s car fell through - had collapsed by the phones were out due to a storm so he could not tell him. Robert’s elderly mother claims he was murdered. Christine’s story about her whereabouts that evening do line up either. All of this leads to a suspicion of murder, infidelity, sabotage, and the brutal back-stabbing of a great man. The painful reveal that, while some of these may have some mild truth, that none of what the world knew about Forrest was actually true hits Tracy’s righteous character like a ton of bricks. However, in building this suspense and mystery, Cukor does a fantastic job in giving the film just enough depth and time to reach a great climactic moment without beating around the bush for too long and causing the film to drag on endlessly. This is a succinct work that builds suspense and then gives a great pay-off without overstaying its welcome.

Technically, the film’s atmosphere often gives a very strong horror movie vibe. Starting off with a shot of Robert’s car careening through the gap in the bridge, the film includes heavy lightning in a storm during the middle of the night to set the scene. It feels quite ominous and frightening due to these sound effects, as well as the score from Bronislaw Kaper. Throughout the film, Kaper’s creepy score serves as the perfect undercurrent for the mystery that Cukor and Stewart seek to create throughout the film’s first two acts. However, what makes it all the more impactful is the cinematography from William H. Daniels. Often draping characters in full darkness - such as Steven when he first meets Christine and hides in the shadows of the room - or in absolute brightness - such as Christine’s eyes as she reveals the dark secrets about Robert - Daniels’ cinematography gives the film a great gothic and horror movie feeling. This matches the score, atmosphere, and general aesthetic perfectly, as Daniels’ reliance upon creepy shadows, low-angle shots of houses on big hills, lightning, and cramped spaces, creating a deeply sinister feeling that mirror the mystery and confusion that is unfolding in the script.

Keeper of the Flame has finally found its year. 2017 is the year for Keeper of the Flame and it should be required viewing for everybody given the rise of fascism, pushing of hatred and division, and the apathetic and under-educated populace that eats it all up with two spoons. It is a film that packs a punch with a powerful warning about this fascism wrapped in an American flag and sold as being patriotic, but it is one we ignored. At the time, those in power realized its power - whether it be the head of MGM or the Republicans in congress - so much so that they yelled and screamed about how dangerous the film was, how it was biased, and how it attacked them and their values without Keeper of the Flame even having to name the charismatic Robert Forrest as a Republican. Instead, he is just a wealthy man who everybody loves. It is those in power and the Republicans who assumed Keeper of the Flame was leftist for showing this man turn into a fascist and power hungry individual. Tragically, this may say everything it needs to about the world we have today. While Keeper of the Flame was so ahead of its time it was labeled as lunacy in 1943, it is tragically right at home in 2017 with its message ignored and the reality it presented having come into full view.

[art-in-the-age]

Part 2: Witnessing Conflict

Young people are increasingly getting their news through the lens of social media, which makes it that much more essential to understand the way different platforms refract information. For as long as people have used social media, the content posted has reflected current events more generally, something that is becoming especially acute as time passes. Tumblr users bore witness to several conflicts that unfolded across the world in the year 2014, something Rosemary Pennington chronicled in her article in the International Communication Gazette, “Witnessing the 2014 Gaza War in Tumblr”, through which she explores how several Muslim Tumblr users interacted with and witnessed the violence occurring towards Palestinians during the 2014 Gaza War. She writes in her introduction, “Traditionally, it has been witnessing that can make us feel close to those suffering through the violence we see in media as well as others we imagine are in the audience witnessing the event with us,” (Pennington). Tumblr as a platform provides both a means to witness the violence, as well as a community of fellow witnesses, inspiring feelings of closeness that would heighten emotions. In the case of the Gaza War, the bloggers take note of the fact that the mainstream media centers the experiences of Israelis and largely neglects Palestinian suffering in the construction of their narrative (Pennington). Through the usage of Tumblr, Palestinians can share photos and narratives that reflect their experiences, which can then be disseminated by bloggers elsewhere in the world, such as those who were the subject of Pennington’s research. The platform provides the space to construct an Oppositional Gaze, in the words of bell hooks. hooks writes of the oppositional gaze, “By courageously looking, we defiantly declared: ‘Not only will I stare, I want my look to change reality.’ Even in the worse circumstances of domination, the ability to manipulate one’s gaze in the face of structures of domination that would contain it, opens up the possibility of agency,” (hooks 116). Palestinians are able to control their gaze in a way that stares back at those who are oppressing them, counteracting the narrative that they are the sole aggressors and thus giving them agency. Tumblr elevated the narratives of Palestinians to the point where they could be held in conversation with and in contradiction to those pushed by wealthy media conglomerates. Communities centered around sending aid can also be formed on the platform which is only possible through the shared experience of witnessing. Pennington posits with her research that Tumblr was a crucial piece in raising global awareness of the situation in Gaza, a lasting impact of the platform.

Six years later, the world is no less familiar with incredible amounts of violence and suffering, especially as we live through the COVID-19 pandemic. Relegated to our houses, many Americans turned to TikTok for entertainment but found within it a well of resources for activists as the nation erupted in protests this summer in response to the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans. TikTok, like Tumblr, allowed the average citizen to both bear witness to violence and share their narrative of the situation without it being refracted through the lens of a mainstream media source. TikTok, however, is still plagued by the same issues endemic to the platform; All content distribution is of course driven by the algorithm, which incentivizes outrageous or highly emotional content, raising the stakes to a point that may desensitize viewers after a certain amount of information. The algorithm can also end up prioritizing only a few voices, typically those who already have a platform. This in turn creates its own hierarchy which, although independent from traditional news networks, is still exclusionary. A lot of the information viewed is not controlled, as the primary interface on the app is the For You Page; if the average user is not putting in effort to control the type of information and content they are viewing, it’s not likely that they will put in effort to ensure that it is accurate or unbiased. 

TikTok and Tumblr users alike are fond of their image-based communities and continue to source them on the same platform that they source their news, the unintended consequence of which being the fascist aestheticization of politics as theorized by Benjamin in his 1935 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. He writes, “All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war,” and later continues, “Mankind, which in Homer’s time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic,” (Benjamin 19-20) In the context of 2020 civil unrest, on TikTok, the juxtaposition of violent oppression with daily vlogs from teens in thrifted clothes dancing around big cities has led to both being subsumed into a dominant identity that holds “activism” as a core component. To truly be a member of the alt-TikTok community, one should be a self-identified leftist and activist. Both are noble ideas, and pushing for more accessible leftist literature is not a bad thing, but the issue arises when those looking for membership in the community are not willing or unable to do the work. The process of unlearning carceral understandings of justice and the subtle ways in which racism is intertwined in our everyday lives is a conscious, long, and oftentimes difficult process, that teens are undertaking with the ultimate goal being membership in a community of which the spokespeople are predominantly white and wealthy. The shortcut has become adding “BLM” and “ACAB” to a user’s bio, signaling to other users that they are socially aware. Memes that consisted of a cartoon character, such as Hello Kitty, saying “ACAB” were added to profiles, repositioning the acronym with long traditions in anti-racist and leftist activism as an aestheticized trend. The acronym is not entirely devoid of meaning, because leftist circles extend far beyond the teenage communities on TikTok, but to this new generation, adding ACAB to a bio means less a radical resistance to the carceral state and more a display of performative activism. This practice has led to the acronym being reappropriated into the pejorative term “Emily ACAB”, which typically refers to a wealthy, white teenage girl attempting to be performatively woke without renouncing any of her privileges. Emily ACAB is the rebellious teen daughter of the Karen who uses a movement meant to protect the lives of systematically marginalized groups as a way to separate herself from her family that “just does not understand” but ultimately won’t take too strong of a stance if it means sacrificing something of importance to her. The aestheticization of politics neutralizes the message, something that Benjamin knew all too well, and that TikTok teenagers, many of whom are well-meaning, now find themselves falling victim to. 

Despite being only separated by six years, teens in 2020 find themselves living and comprehending current events in a dramatically different world. No generation comes of age without a tremendous amount of hardship, personal and interpersonal, but Gen-Z is the first to have that hardship published on the internet. Social media has revolutionized organizing in many ways for the better, but as with all developments, it is one that requires active participation and checking of power. TikTok and Tumblr have made positive contributions to activism, but the nature of social media’s democratization of information requires we all pay attention to ensure neither platform does more harm than good.

[mthvn]

Metahaven in conversation with Jen Kratochvil, Prague, September 2017

JK Fotograf Festival is proposing in its 7th iteration named “Eye in the Sky” a condensed timeline of understanding and analysis of a rapid technological development of our times and its social and political implications. In this respect your work stands at the forefront of a possible vision of days to come, considering work of Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige addressing from current perspective almost historical form of digital manipulation through spam emails, which they were archiving and analyzing since the late 1990s, transferring their findings into a complex exhibition set up and a publication, then going one step further to Trevor Paglen’s tendency to uncover deliberately hidden veins of technological superstructure forming our daily digital experiences and their shadows, thus uncovering the other side of the given status quo. Information Skies, your latest film, presented as a sequel to The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda) and a middle point for your upcoming cinematic experience Hometown, formulates a futuristic vision almost in a sci-fi character and enclosing this proposed timeline not that far from our now.

MH Thank you. To be honest, time appears to be mixed up to the point where past, present and future have become quite randomly compressed into a single “now.” In any case the trajectory that we started with our documentary The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda) is about the experience of inhabiting the current technological-political superstructure from within. Both Information Skies and also Hometown are focused on the emotional remainder, perhaps more so than ever, that characterizes that condition of inhabitation.

JK Judging from The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda) and Information Skies, this future trilogy also narrates a certain timeline. How would you describe the mutual genealogy of these three films?

MH Whereas The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda) led directly to Information Skies, with the same lead actress, Georgina Dávid, playing in both films, Hometown and Information Skies are like twins in their fictional rendering of the condition of living with fluid truth and contradictions. Both projects are inspired by what remains as a base below and throughout the tech superstructure. It’s important to note that Hometown shooting was only just completed in Kyiv. All three projects are intended as time-based artworks, meaning that their installation in an art space allows viewers to experience their narratives intuitively and in a less linear way than cinema allows for.

JK In his manifesto “The New Normal" for a current Strelka Institute program your friend Benjamin H. Bratton mentions that results of their practice aim at the year 2050 as a target. Saying that 2050 is for them not a vague vision of a future, where our current problems are deferred, but that designing for 2050 is happening now. What does the future entail for Metahaven?

MH The Strelka School mission statement for The New Normal is driven by its agenda as an architecture and design-led project. It is necessary to bring back a sense of future-oriented “grand design” that is nevertheless working with mistakes, accidents, and glitches, rather than some perfect and smooth implementation of a plan or ideology. Within this program we focus on the role of visual and linguistic texture, image, poetry, and narrative, that may give these iterations of future thinking their character. More concretely, we have been focusing on the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva and Ariel Dorfman, and on Andrei Tarkovsky, as an influence to our work, whose ideas on duration and time can be developed and extrapolated into today’s digital culture. We recognize the way duration impacts our ability to imagine the future.

JK Our society is historically based on narrations predicting possible further developments. In last years we hear more and more often from different sites that we reached a stalemate point when predictions are no longer possible. Adam Curtis is saying that “no one has any vision for a different or a better kind of future”, Bifo Beradi defines our present as an era of impotence, when we collectively lost an ability to critically judge and thus formulate our next steps on a path to the future. Do you see this as a pessimism of older generation of thinkers growing up during the Cold War or a genuine concern applicable to all of us?

MH The impossibility to think ahead and to plan ahead is striking everyone in a very practical sense. There are real, and huge problems, with employment, with livelihood, with pay, with pensions. It is today considered utopian to demand decent living conditions and decent pay. Indeed, the collapse of Leftist future politics and their fracturing into various identitarian, green, and pirate factions on one hand, and a “center-left” on the other, presents a perpetual crisis, but it can be made worse by nostalgia for futurism. It seems most important to, in the face of these huge issues, find something concrete to work on and to believe in, and express what is necessary. The future begins by being not always reactive.

JK That leads us to Information Skies itself and its visual character. You’re depicting a future with very minimal means, it’s a sci-fi without an overwhelming landscape of distant cosmos, interstellar vessels and techno-fetish. In some of your youtube presentations, you are referring to Tarkovsky. Probably that’s already an answer. Can you explain it further, please?

MH We are interested in the tradition of sci-fi by minimal means, applying psychology to the situation, rather than props or special effects. This tradition received a significant boost when Tarkovsky, with Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, reworked the novel Roadside Picnic for the screen, resulting in Stalker. Information Skies with its yellow subtitles uses elements of “art-house” cinema on the level of visual texture, but it is really a hybrid project that also uses animation sequences and garment design. We are interested in the combination of cinematic texture and duration with digital video, where one condition of image can inhabit the other. So our admiration for Tarkovsky has little to do with a return to an appreciation for extraordinarily long films or “serious cinema.”

JK Your adoration for Tarkovsky is naturally entangled in Information Skies, what other references to the tradition of cinema are you referring to?

MH The animated sequences further develop our interest in anime as a sort of “international style” of propaganda. The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda) featured two Russian anime sequences, Katyusha and Nyash Myash, and it was important for us to continue this trajectory in Information Skies.

JK Your practice is gradually evolving over the years from research and design oeuvre to the politically engaged artistic practice of objects and installations. What about a shift to the film medium? Not necessarily a video, but a feature film and a documentary practice?

MH While indeed there is an evolution of the form of practice and the way we treat its main narrative, there are also some consistencies. We still practice graphic design, but it is no longer the final or dominant container of our work. Apart from designing books, websites, album art, and so on, which is ongoing, over the years we have as designers pro-actively engaged with organizations that we admired and identified with politically. In some cases we were able to develop, through their story, a new story, but in some other cases this didn’t work out. Even though all design and art have their content in the treatment more than in the subject matter, it became gradually necessary and also “natural” to develop our own scenarios. Our interest in moving image came concretely from a YouTube addiction, as well as from an interest in how YouTube algorithms and general behavioral online data mining tend to drag one further into tunnel vision.

JK Your current film works were shown in cinemas, film festivals, in installation set ups and also in the environment from which they originate and which they refer to, the internet and youtube channels. What is for you an ideal format for showing films, if there is one?

MH Whilst in principle online viewing should be a viable option for every moving image work, in practice there still is a bit of a shortage of platform alternatives to facilitate this in a way that is responsible to artwork, audience, and artist. Most if not all online art video environments are built on a Vimeo backbone. YouTube and Facebook video fill the rest of the space—that is, the vast majority of online video space—apart from the monetized content platforms like Netflix which themselves have a huge influence on how story and duration are seen by mainstream audiences.

We don’t necessarily believe that, in the offline world, a cinema is the only right space to experience longer films. As said we are interested in re-exploring the physical space of art as a container for longer films, using the possibilities of viewers experiencing works in a circular rather than a linear manner, walking away and returning to, rather than being fixed in front of a timeline.

JK In The Sprawl and Information Skies you emphasize a role of literature and philosophy for an understanding of our times, why particularly Tolstoy? How is this interest going to evolve in your upcoming film Hometown?

MH The essay that influenced The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda) is Tolstoy’s 1897 What is Art?, a provocative and highly necessary assessment of the question that is the title. In his appreciation for folk art, ritual art, peasant songs, etcetera, and his denunciation of Wagner and Shakespeare, Tolstoy sets himself an impossible task, entrapping himself and the readers in contradictions, but his search for the honest and irrepressible core of the art expression, of art, moreover, as a transfer of a relatable emotional core message uniting sender and receivers in a mutual union (which is for him a union with God), is one that enormously influences and inspires us. Why and how this influence has come about is a longer story. It has also left its influence on the Information Skies and Hometown scripts.

JK You are showing Information Skies with English and Arabic subtitles, the original version was accompanied by Korean/ English subtitles and the voice over in Hungarian. The Korean language was introduced for the audience of Gwangju biennial where the film was presented for the first time, how do those other languages refer to the concept of your film?

MH Information Skies is in Hungarian because the main character is Hungarian. We wrote it as a sequel to The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda) and for the same central figure. In Information Skies the voice shifts from voice over to acting as in the second half of the film Georgina turns out to be the narrator. Subtitles are often seen as a nuisance, but as designers by training, we absolutely love them. The subtitles have been purely functional to the languages spoken in the viewing contexts of the Gwangju Bienniale (2016), Mumbai Art Room (2016), and Sharjah Biennale (2017). In addition, they perform a kind of doubling or tripling of the spoken content, as all subtitles do.

JK If I’m not mistaken, you’re showing your work for the first time in the Czech Republic, does this have any specific significance for the message given by your work?

MH Former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia, used to hold a special position in relation to Western Europe because they represented the eastern frontier of its democratic and capitalist regimes and a transitional zone to the USSR and beyond. With the inclusion of the Central and Eastern European countries into the European sphere the line has been redrawn, but the question is for how long and in what way the unified body of the EU holds out against nationalist, regionalist, and other currents which have arisen in the past years. We find it exciting to be showing this work in Prague and hope for a lively reception.

JK Your work shows a strong interest in Eastern Europe, can you please pin point some reasons why is that so?

MH This interest is older than may seem. As you may know some of our work in Metahaven’s early days was focused on questions of territoriality in relation to information networks and especially representation through online means. Then already we were interested in the entities in the post-Soviet space that were these spaces of exception and geopolitical black holes, existing in a legal vacuum, such as Transnistria on the border of Moldova and Ukraine. It is then and at these kinds of apparently marginal places that the “breakdown of the international order” begins with a series of historical land claims based on majority-Russian speaking populations, and so on, offering a blueprint for what happens in Ukraine in 2014. From a point of view of culture, literature, and poetry, we are very interested in the emotional spectres of Russian literature and music, and, as said earlier, in the notion of duration as it gets developed through ideas of long timespans and vast territories.

JK Referring to the global art world and perpetuated gap between East and West, it could feel quite precarious to work under conditions of undervalued Czech art field. How does such an experience feel coming from economically much more stable western context?

MH We are not interested in art as a luxury product, but in giving an audience the best possible experience of an artwork. It doesn’t matter where that happens.

This conversation took place in September 2017 in the framework of Metahaven: Truth Futurism at Futura Gallery, Prague, curated by Jen Kratochvil, part of Fotograf Festival #7 Eye in the Sky.

[samerbs-blog]

Description of Sam Erb’s Behaviors and Conduct

This document has been assembled by multiple organizations and individuals who have been victim to the continued behaviors and harassment of Sam Erbs. This document stands to address and bring to light their continued misogyny, white chauvinism and failure to be accountable to their behaviors. It is our collective opinion that Sam Erbs is not a safe or responsible person to organize with. We issue this document as a warning of their behaviors and after long abandoned and sorely lacking attempts to hold them accountable for their behaviors were not taken up by Sam.

Sam has a long running history of weaponizing their identities against others to downplay their own racist and misogynistic behaviors. The most frequent examples of harmful behavior, which they tend to use their identity as a disabled person to excuse, are their consistent and often violent literal, verbal, and electronic boundary violations they perpetrate towards others. These include, but are not limited to: physical violations of people’s personal space and bodily autonomy (particularly towards femmes, AFAB people, & POC) via non-consensual touch; rushing into someone’s close personal space; taking up large amounts of [physical] space in meetings in a way that involves repeatedly pushing the boundaries of others around them; shouting at people in private and in public during simple interpersonal or political discussions; throwing or banging objects around them in a violent way for point emphasis during political arguments in closed spaces; refusing to disengage from conversations or confrontations, even for the safety of others; actively soliciting confrontation in delicate or unsafe situations in which they are by no means the most vulnerable individual; harassing and verbally threatening strangers on other people’s social media posts; using their alts to harass and find information about people who have unfriended or blocked a primary account of theirs.

Sam leverages their identities to harass and attempt to manipulate others into doing what they want. When Sam fails at weaponizing identity politics ate people they often move into sucking up to them and when this fails they move on to trying to discredit them. This manipulative behavior is most often seen as them harassing people to defriend people they have debated with. This behavior has mostly been in the form of open badjacketing of others as SWERFs for not fully embracing or being critical, or rather, simply not instantly adopting of Sam’s positions on sex work, and as TERFs for criticizing their misogyny (as if being a nonbinary trans person somehow precludes someone from acting misogynistic).

In at least one instance, Sam weaponized their identities against a boyfriend. Sam frequently misgendered him and fetishized his body in a way which was highly non-consensual and transphobic. Sam would dismiss these discussions by centering their own trans identity as sufficient excuse/justification for their misgendering, cissexist invalidation, fetishization and refusal to use correct terms for their boyfriend’s body parts. Sam harassed their boyfriend into isolating himself from former friends based on said friends’ supposed political unacceptability, and manipulated him into spending nearly all his time with Sam. After this boyfriend finally separated himself from Sam, they used their alts to stalk and harass him, including gaslighting his experiences by accusing him of being “petty” for becoming hostile in reaction to Sam’s abuse.

Sam’s misogynist behavior has also manifested in them talked about bringing “hot girls” into their politics in order to date/sleep with them; in other words, they explicitly plan on isolating prospective partners from their pre-existing social circles in order to ensure their access to these people emotionally and sexually. Sam has had prolonged conversations resenting that at least one of their girlfriends wanted to leave them, and detailed how they use their identities to guilt their partners and make them afraid to leave them. Sam frequently externalizes the repercussions of their actions on women by framing women as vindictive, and abusively badjacketing them. They also have applied this behavior to women who disagree with them publicly. Sam has a pattern of calling these women “queens” or “god queens” when discussing them with others.      In regards to racism, Sam has a habit of speaking over black people on issues related specifically to the black community. What this means is that they will assume lines on issues within the black community and then proceed to argue those lines with black people. This is harmful because these are in-community issues. What this means is that while debate on how best to resist oppression can exist and is encouraged within the community it impacts, people from outside of the community who benefit from or perpetuate this oppression do not have the right to hold lines on these issues. This behavior extends to other people of color as well. Sam has a pattern of behavior where they assume a position of intellectual superiority and talk down to and harass people of color. These behaviors are indicative of an ongoing problem of egoistic white chauvinism for which Sam has not been accountable. On another note Sam frequently engages in extreme “ironic” anti-semitism. At one point they started a Facebook page dedicated to showcasing (or rather posting and sharing) violently anti-semitic and racist memes, “for them to be mocked.” This page was closed but it’s opening in light of Sam’s other behaviors is deeply troubling.

Related to this some people have recorded deeply troubling quotes Sam has shared with them such as:  

“I can’t wait for the Nazis to put the jews back into camps so I can complain about white people with POC” and will often say that they want jews (ashkenazim) to return to not being “considered white”.

“John Wilkes Booth was a hero.”

“this kinda hot girl wants to get together and talk politics but she is in such a shit org lol.” ”Ima get her to quit then ima date her”

As it has been briefly detailed, Sam has a longstanding pattern of creating alt Facebook accounts to add people on Facebook who have blocked and unfriended them. When confronted, they will refuse to identify themselves and attempt to maintain anonymity by directing people to contact people who have not agreed to vouch or vet them to vet them. We have compiled some information to assist folks in recognizing their alts below. This behavior constitutes both stalking and harassment and is not acceptable.

Sam has been approached and criticized about many of these behaviors before by many people and members of our many organizations which they have found themselves isolated and removed from. None of the groups who participated in constructing this document have ever known Sam to actually change their behavior, or even engage in documentable self-criticism. They have displayed a consistent pattern of leaving groups in response to criticism, and then attaching themselves to new organizations without disclosing their history of abusive behavior. Sam also will brush off accountability by constantly, performatively talking about how self-critical they try to be, and by asking people to help them be self-critical, but then never actually following through. Especially in one-on-one or other private contexts, they tend to feign unity with criticisms made of them, but simultaneously center themself and their emotions in order to evade immediate consequences, and to make their critics appear aggressive and unsympathetic. This behavior is a textbook racist, misogynist response to criticism. We wish it to be clear that their continued failure and refusal to self criticize and be responsible for their behaviors has lead to this public outing.

There is no identity or reason that one can cite as an excuse for, or as the “cause” of:

Consistently and aggressively violating the boundaries of others in ways that specifically perpetuate common, pervasive forms of oppressive violence.

Entitlement, ego, arrogance, and a disregard for the fundamental agency and value of others.

Aggressive racism and white chauvinist harassment of people of color.

Violent misogyny and transmisogyny.

Stalking and harassment and other pervasive boundary violations of people attempting to distance themselves from them.

Objective wrecking and fabricated slander of organizations.

We hope that our communities both online and and in person take these charges seriously and call on Sam to discontinue their attempts to push their way into organizations until such time that they have thoroughly self-criticized and can demonstrate proof that they have rectified their behaviors. Over the past few years, the decision to keep criticisms and accounts of Sam’s transgressions confidential, or within our respective groups, has allowed them to continue their behavior unchecked within other organizations, and indirectly resulted in them having the opportunity to harm more people. Therefore, regardless of whether or not they are likely to ever introspect or change, we feel it is necessary to make information about their actions in the past publicly accessible in order to help ensure the safety of our communities. 

IDENTIFYING CHARACTERISTICS TO LOOK FOR IN NEW PROFILES:

    Sam makes a lot of alts and will continue to do so in order to inhabit leftist spaces online. There are some commonalities that may be helpful in identifying future alts:

Sam is vocal and fervent about Marxist-Leninist-Maoism: their socks are pretty consistent about this as well. For example, this quote is on at least two of their known alts: “If you aren't MLM and I don't know you I prob won't accept a friend request”

Their sock accounts are also generally very consistent about trans rights and often advocate violence about this, e.g.: “Intro: peasant Stalinist proud Gonzalo cultist They/Them or a bullet to the face.”

Sam very consistently says “ya” instead of yes in conversations.

Frequent use of “ironic anti-semitism” and posting of reactionary memes “ironically” (especially as cover photos or as albums).

Performatively aggressive and hyperbolic displays of allyship (particularly to POC).

Weaponizing disability and gender in arguments online (and in person) in order to derail, antagonize, or evade accountability for their own actions.

Name trends: When making alt accounts Sam will repeatedly use the same few first or last names in various combinations, as well as using Yiddish names or stereo-typically Jewish/often ironically anti-semitic names (Such as Shlomo and Rothschild, referring to anti-semitic conspiracy theories).

Known Alts (Some may have been recently shut down):

Sam Erbs: https://www.facebook.com/samuel.erbs.1

Yasuke Benjamin (Also Yasuke Postblock Benjamin) may have been deleted.

Shlomo Wallach/ Shlomo Rothschild: https://www.facebook.com/shlomo.wallach.90

Yasuke Perzenlekh: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100014176814936

Micheal McAvison: has been reported and deleted. Was used by Sam solely for the purpose of creeping on profiles of people who had blocked Sam on other accounts: presumably Sam has continued this strategy with another profile that is currently unknown.  

Shlomy Wallach https://www.facebook.com/shlomy.wallach?fref=jewel

Koppel Katzenellenbogen https://www.facebook.com/koppel.katzenellenbogen.3

JohnSmith Perzenlekh https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100014176814936&fref=ts

Important Considerations in Evaluating Possible Alt Accounts: A lot of this stuff is pretty vague and general--there are a lot of trans and nonbinary lefties on Facebook, and it would be very easy to accidentally harass someone who is not Sam, who is marginalized, angry about it, and real stoked about MLM-ism. The identifiers above are not, on their own, enough to justify trying to isolate someone/report their profile/get them kicked out of groups. If you come across a profile that strongly fits these indicators, but you don’t have any behavioral context, it is worth asking if others can provide more context for this person/profile’s behavior. At the same time, because Sam is a disabled trans person, it is essential to be careful when engaging in this process process, as mistaken callouts will likely hurt people who are already very vulnerable to social isolation.

If there is a profile that has a consistent pattern of harassing/attacking/badjacketing leftists, that particularly targets women and femmes of color (or in general demonstrates misogyny and white supremacy in their targets), and that fits the other profile characteristics listed above, it is reasonable to believe that profile may also be another Sam alt account. And regardless, that profile belongs to someone whose behavior isn’t okay. Contact Information: If you would like to contribute or share information about being personally or organizationally targeted/harmed by Sam Erbs, or if you believe you have identified another of their alt accounts, you can email the authors of this post at samerbsaccountability@yahoo.com. We are committed to maintaining the privacy/anonymity of our individual sources, in light of Sam’s harassment, so we will not attempt to include any information you send us unless you explicitly indicate that you would like us to do so. We are happy to serve as both a channel for voicing harms done, and simply a resource/repository of information for those who have been harmed in the past.