Don't Destroy Cultural Artifacts. Contextualize. - Round II

Or: Dr. Seuss and the Hygiene Hypothesis.

I know I'm late to the party when it comes to commenting upon the Dr. Seuss brouhaha. Forgive me, but it took me this long to track down some of the forbidden books so that I might revisit the so-called "offensive content" - and its context - for myself. Unlike The Very Smart Set, I'm not inclined to follow, sheep-like, whenever the clerisy declare that some popular American writer or artist is "problematic." No: our blue check twits are currently encouraging a moral panic that outpaces the Red Scare in its cultural destructiveness -- and its detachment from anything resembling reality. I'm not going believe that the books that taught my brother and me how to read are racist simply on these commentators' say-so.

So I read four of those books again (I couldn't find the other two): McElligot's Pool, If I Ran the Zoo, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, and Scrambled Eggs Super. My conclusion? Some of the content would never pass muster today because it's dated at best and - yes, in a few cases - racist at worst. If I Ran the Zoo is the biggest offender on this score (for relative values of "big"). But in none of these books - not even Zoo - were the questionable bits so omnipresent that they completely overshadowed the benign elements of the text in which they were embedded. In fact, in three out of the four books, I could only find one page that featured words or art that would offend the politically correct. Why pull a book out of print for one controversial page out of 20-30? Why not simply add an introductory disclaimer (if you absolutely must)?

And yes, before some Very Smart Person says it, I know this was the choice of the Seuss estate, I know they have the right not to publish certain works if they choose, blah blah blah. It's still overkill driven by a craven and eminently critique-worthy fear of sociopathic bullies -- and I think it's only going to do more damage in the long run to the people our censors say they're trying to protect. According to the hygiene hypothesis, asthma, allergies, and autoimmune conditions may be more common in the developed world because, given our public sanitation and almost obsessive personal cleanliness, we no longer train our developing, antifragile immune systems to fire on the right targets. Similarly, purging our cultural space of anything deemed offensive seems to be making people more upset and uncomfortable, not less. Granted, some SJW's claim to be traumatized by, say, simple mentions of the n-word because they know the victim card confers the power to intimidate -- but I also think the younger folks who've been swept up in this are dead serious. Because they have not been taught how to confront less egregious instantiations of cultural insensitivity in a measured, confident way, they sincerely process every such "microaggression" as a Thanos-level threat. This is not good for them; it locks them into a state of permanent anxiety that prevents real empowerment and productive activity. Better, I think, to allow kids to encounter the questionable in the relatively safe context of old picture books than to bubble them up and deny them the chance to build their resilience.

"That's easy for you to say, RG." Is it, though? Do you think I've never had the experience of being the only X in the room? Because I have bad news for you: as a conservative-leaning Catholic Christian, I get "hit" all the time in fannish spaces - and in many of the books and comics I read - with casual, unthinking misconceptions about my political and religious beliefs. Do I complain about it? Yes. Do I wish writers and my fellow fans would actually do some research instead of embracing cheap stereotypes? Of course. Does the "hitting" inspire me to lift up people and works that actually get my worldview right? You bet. But I while I hope that fandom one day learns to respect the conservative minority in its midst and will continue to write posts that challenge fandom's endemic bigotry, I will never ask that any book that contains a problematic representation of conservatives and/or Christians be pulped for the sake of my feelings because, over time, I've learned to attribute such nonsense to ignorance -- and I've learned not to take them as intentional, malicious attacks on me as an individual. (At least, not without very good evidence.)

What's more, I have a couple intellectual questions about the assumptions beneath these censorship efforts that I think deserve real answers. First, have we actually demonstrated that pop culture has a significant impact on our behavior or beliefs? Or is this something we merely assume because it appeals to our common sense? Do our books/movies/television shows/etc. actually shape us as a people, or do they merely reflect a cultural reality that already exists? I don't think this is an idle line of inquiry. After all, I've been told repeatedly that there's no reliable evidence that violent video games lead to increased aggression in children. And those historical figures who've launched campaigns warning the world about the corrupting influence of novels/games/comic books/etc. are - in fandom at least - universal targets of ridicule. So what's the logic here? How can pop culture make us racist -- yet not make us violent, antisocial, or sexually promiscuous?

Secondly, how exactly does a drawing of a Chinese man wearing a conical hat and eating with chopsticks cause harm? What is the mechanism? And is this result truly inevitable? Traditionally, many Chinese did wear conical hats -- and even today, many Chinese do eat with chopsticks. What's the harm in observing something that, in certain times and places, is true? Mere acknowledgement of cultural differences in dress and eating style need not lead to disparagement of those differences (fortunately for any school that's held a multicultural fair). It certainly didn't in the context of And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. The boy in said book added the Chinese man because he thought such a person was more interesting than one of his American neighbors. "Orientalism!" cry the activists. "It's objectifying the so-called 'exotic'!" Or, if you would permit me to blow your minds, maybe this depicts a spark of child-like curiosity that could be fanned into a fire of genuine cultural appreciation and - just maybe - friendship and peace. Yes, the visual shorthand in that Mulberry Street illustration would not be used by an artist in current year -- but a child growing up today is not going to look upon such a picture and conclude that the Chinese are rightful targets of prejudice unless he is told by idiot adults that this is what the picture means by default. Or, to put it another way: we as teachers, parents and mentors can, through careful guidance, absolutely change how the young folks in our charge interpret a book like Mulberry Street and thereby squelch any bigotry before it takes root. The Wokerati seem to regard pictures and words as magic charms that instantly re-wire our brains at the moment we encounter them, but that's not what happens at all. Top-down processing exists -- and it can be molded.  

Ultimately, am I saying suck it up and deal? When it comes to openly prejudicial actions perpetrated with malice aforethought, no. When it comes to lingering inequalities that should be tackled with smart public policy, no. But when it comes to art? Yes, especially if you have to pull out an electron microscope (or take a class in critical theory) to see what's offensive -- or if you have to yank the troubling thing out of its exculpatory context in order to argue that it's beyond the pale. By all means, do what I do and - within reason - argue for more accuracy and more sensitivity in our current books.  But it's crossing a bright line to say, for instance, that a historical work like McElligot's Pool deserves to be unpublished because on one page, the point-of-view character imagines a school of "Eskimo fish." No, we don't use the word "Eskimo" anymore. Yes, we now perceive it as derogatory. But lots of innocent people didn't see it that way at mid-century. All a teacher or a parent need do is point out that we don't use that word anymore because we wish to respect the Inuit people -- and then move on to enjoying the beautifully illustrated story about a boy with a sense of wonder who doesn't judge a pond by its outward appearance.

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And ICYMI, here's the second stream in my dystopian fiction series. Here, we discuss The Giver and its relationship to the worship of perfect order, the rise of safetyism, the tension between rationalism and romanticism, and many other topics!

The Right Geek's Birthday Stream!

This was a free-form stream with a couple of my YouTube bros. And yes, I'm pretty sure the tags below don't quite cover everything we discussed.

Video: Why the Past Matters

Induced Learning Disabilities

Critical Theory teaches its adherents how not to understand texts, art, or speech like neurotypical human beings. Under the influence of its doctrines, people lose their God-given ability to discern key non-linguistic features of communication and consequently become learning disabled.

As I've observed in other posts, words and symbols take on meaning from the context in which they're deployed. As I wrote around this time last year:

"Words are not completely comprehensible on their own; they also take on additional - or sometimes even new - significance from the gestalt in which they sit -- much like tofu soaks up the flavors of the other ingredients in an Asian dish.

"Take a sentence like 'I love my mother.' This sentence is composed of four utterly prosaic words -- yet do we really know what it means? Don't we need to hear the inflection with which it was said? Don't we need to see the speaker's body language? Don't we need to know why/where/when/etc. it was said? If this sentence appears in a poem lauding the beauty of Mother Earth, 'mother' likely does not mean our female parent. If this sentence is uttered with a particular stress after a long sigh, most of us effortlessly intuit that it's meant to be ironic."

All of this richness gets lost, however, once the social justice bully gets to work. Suppose, for example, you decide to write a protagonist who starts off with a few unconsciously bigoted notions but eventually learns to cast such mistaken ideas aside. Sounds like great fodder for a redemption arc, no? Nope, sorry: if you attempt to publish this seemingly innocuous, morally upright story, some motivated busybody on Goodreads is going to tear you apart. Why? Because critical social justice impedes one's ability to comprehend how character development works.

Or let's consider works written in other eras. Many historical texts that tackle the subject of race - including those written by black civil rights champions! - use the dreaded n-word. Those of us who aren't ideologically-possessed realize that norms have changed over time and therefore filter such usages out to get to the central point. But the social justice bully doesn't want us to do this. The social justice bully encourages us to get distracted - and upset - by the surface features of a piece of writing without digging deep to parse what's actually being said. That's how they're able to portray pro-black works (like Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird) as somehow anti-black and beyond the pale.

Social justice bullies also deliberately blur the lines between characters and authors, heroes and villains, heroes and anti-heroes, etc. If the bad guy says something racist, then our would-be censors behave as if the author endorses that statement -- even though such a conclusion is patently ridiculous. Assholes say asshole-ish things. That's how writers establish that they're assholes. How else are we creators to delineate villainy?

Social justice bullies, in short, have trained themselves to deliberately misconstrue what writers and artists mean to convey. And that's why they can never be trusted to control the levers our popular culture. Their attempts to warp the things we make need to be beaten back with severity and speed.

Don't Destroy Cultural Artifacts. Contextualize.

When I was in college back at the tail-end of the 90's, I took a class on the earliest days of cinema, which covered everything from the very first silent films to, roughly, The Wizard of Oz. Among the movies on the syllabus? The Birth of a Nation. Yes, that's right: I was required to watch D.W. Griffith's paean to the Ku Klux Klan. My professor didn't impose this requirement because he was eager to indoctrinate us all on the glories of white supremacy. Like 99% of the academics in his field (probably), he was a proper lefty. No: we were required to watch this movie because, regardless of its repugnant message, my professor believed it to be a seminal work from a purely artistic standpoint. Now, I'm sure other students of film will take issue with this aesthetic judgment, and that's perfectly fine. Debate to your heart's content. But personally, I'm glad Dr. What's-His-Name didn't expunge The Birth of a Nation from the record simply to soothe our modern-day, more enlightened sensibilities.

Now let me veer off in another direction: A few years ago, I visited Stone Mountain in Georgia -- not because I, a transplanted Yank, have any real love for the traitorous Confederates pictured there, but because I was concerned about its possible loss. (I literally texted to a friend that I wanted to see it before "some apparatchik decides to sandblast that thing.") Whatever you may say about its subject matter, said carving took the work of multiple artists and several decades to complete and shouldn't simply be ground into powder to satisfy our current moral impulses. (And I'd just like to note, for the record, that every single person in my Sky Car could separate the artistic achievement of the carvers from the problematic history just as easily as I -- even though I was the only one who was white. Weird. It's almost like normal people of any color can look at questionable artifacts from bygone eras without getting the vapors.)

It's creepy, this yen our radicals have for erasing our history -- this Year Zero mentality that imagines we can eradicate racism forever simply by clearing away everything that's been tainted by it. And it's also wrong-headed. All that icky stuff that dots our cultural landscape? If you advocate for the disposal of such things, you are, quite frankly, missing many important nuances. Gone with the Wind might overly romanticize the Civil War-era South -- but, as many on Twitter have observed, it also netted the first Oscar ever awarded to an African American. Erase Gone with the Wind and you erase the achievement of Hattie McDaniel.

There's a better path than wanton, feral iconoclasm. You can put Confederate statues in museums -- or, if that's not possible (perhaps because, like the Stone Mountain carving, they're much too large to transport), put plaques beside them that fully explain their existence. You can erect accompanying installations that honor civil rights activists and abolitionists. You can put content warnings in front of uncomfortably racist movies. (I'm honestly okay with this compromise if it means we avoid outright censorship.) Do whatever you want -- so long as it's creative and not simply destructive.

After World War II, Poland could've razed Auschwitz to the ground and nobody would've objected. But instead, it's been left as a memorial to human cruelty. Similarly, if permitted to remain, our offensive statues and reprehensible movies could provide opportunities to critically reflect upon our mistakes. We should consider this option before we start applauding today's leftist vandals.

Keep Cops Visible in Our Media

Strong majorities agree that our police departments should be reformed -- that there should be more accountability when officers behave badly. But I think most reasonable people also agree that not every cop is a villain -- that holding all cops responsible for the actions of George Floyd's killer is a gross miscarriage of justice. Why? Because that's simply not what we do in a liberal democratic society; we don't declare an entire collective guilty for the actions of a few.

It's this foundational American philosophy that drives my positively revolted reaction to the new moral panic: the craze to expunge all positive portrayals of the police in our entertainment, our toys, etc. Cops has already been canceled, and a clamor has arisen to purge our airways of the Law & Order franchise (and similar crime dramas) as well. Further, I've seen calls for Lego to stop selling its police-related building sets -- and whining claims that Zootopia and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse are now totes "problematic" because they both feature characters who work in law enforcement and yet aren't complete bastards.

Honestly, I'm just waiting for the day the Discovery Channel decides to cave and completely shutters its Investigation Discovery offshoot.

Sorry, you theory-addled utopians, but the police are here to stay. That means they do have a place in our popular media whether you like it or not. And because good and bad cops both exist, both should be depicted. In fact, since the era of Hill Street Blues (at least), both have. I'm not really an expert on crime dramas - my tastes run more to hospital shows and science fiction - but even so, I'm pretty damn sure that said dramas have been grappling with the issue of police brutality and corruption for decades. So the idea that the mere existence of a cop show is going to somehow lie to the viewer about the reality of policing in America is pure nonsense. That hasn't been true for a long, long time.

Consider too what would happen if we made overreactions like this routine. What if a white doctor, for example, killed a black patient through his malice and/or gross incompetence and the story was covered in the national news? Would that mean we'd have to wipe out every hospital show currently in existence? Would that mean the Discovery Channel would have to black out Tales from the E.R.? And lest you think this is a bad analogy: no, the ideology that's presently driving this anti-cop madness claims that our health care system is also irredeemably racist, so a high profile murder of a black patient would certainly be seen as emblematic of a larger issue that requires a radical response.

I think those of us who are normal - those of us whose brains haven't been pickled by grievance studies BS - need to rise up and push back against these new cultural revolutionaries and their attempts to "purify" our recreation. These wild-eyed idiots need to be told in no uncertain terms that if they don't like seeing cop shows, then they shouldn't watch cop shows -- and that they don't get to decide for the rest of us what we can enjoy in our spare time.

Eff censorship.

Essential Listening: The Purity Spiral

The Purity Spiral is a BBC Radio program that covers what readers of this blog will surely recognize: social justice activists' using well-meaning attempts to diversify hobby groups to colonize and destroy said groups. This particular journalist covers controversies in the knitting and young adult literature communities, but we've seen the very same thing occur in gaming, in science fiction literature, and in comics -- all fandoms that are generally liberal in outlook and are thus ripe for the taking.

Towards the end of this program, the question is asked: how do we identify the warning signs of a potential purity spiral? To answer that question, I'd first like to point to my post on Toxic "Diversity;" many important signs are discussed there, including emotional reasoning (as revealed by the rejection of criticism and/or contradictory evidence), bullying and censorship, and the like. To that, I would add that if activists within your particular hobby group can't articulate a clear, achievable end goal, you're definitely looking at the makings of a spiral and should take whatever steps are necessary to stop that shit in its tracks.

Two More of My Videos!

In both of the videos below, I discuss the subject of heroes/role models.



"Girls Need Female Role Models" and Other Bromides, Elena Shalneva

A Few Links of Interest

Apologies for the perfunctory posts this past week. My paternal grandmother died (peacefully and at home, fortunately) on November 9, and things have been busy since then. If you, reader, are a believer, I'd appreciate it if you would pray for the repose of the soul of Barbara Rita. Bless!

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Empathy Is Tearing Us Apart, Robert Wright, WIRED

“Polarization is not a consequence of a lack of empathy among the public, but a product of the biased ways in which we experience empathy.”

This provides an important qualification to the claim that empathy is good. Since this sort of social science has always fascinated me, I think I'll be exploring the literature further in future posts.

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Journalists Against Free Speech, John Tierney, CITY JOURNAL

"Free speech is no longer sacred among young journalists who have absorbed the campus lessons about “hate speech”—defined more and more broadly—and they’re breaking long-standing taboos as they bring “cancel culture” into professional newsrooms. They’re not yet in charge, but many of their editors are reacting like beleaguered college presidents, terrified of seeming insufficiently “woke.” Most professional journalists, young and old, still pay lip service to the First Amendment, and they certainly believe that it protects their work, but they’re increasingly eager for others to be “de-platformed” or “no-platformed,” as today’s censors like to put it—effectively silenced."

We need a complete and total shutdown of our entire education system until we can figure out what the hell is going on.

The PERFECT Video for Our Present Moment

Remy is a national treasure.

Perfect's the Enemy

I really, really don't want to live in the nightmare hellscape the wokescolds seem determined to create. How can anyone possibly want to live in that world? It's profoundly anti-human.

I come from a beautiful tradition - Catholic Christianity - that sets standards that rival those of the most fervent SJW. We're taught - through the Catechism surrounding the 9th and 10th Commandments - that we must govern our thoughts as well as our words and deeds because thoughts are the genesis of sinful behavior. "You have heard that it was said to them of old: Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say to you, that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matthew 5:27-28) But here's the thing: my tradition makes allowances for human fallibility. We're taught that when we stray, we have recourse in the Sacrament of Reconciliation -- that our loving God will always welcome us back with open arms when we atone. And our list of saints is replete with terrible sinners. St. Paul, author of the majority of the New Testament, watched with approval when St. Stephen was executed -- but Jesus claimed him too and loved him with all His might.

In the Church of the Woke, on the other hand, there is no forgiveness. If you screw up - at least according to this church's dictates - that's it. Your life is forfeit no matter how inconsequential the sin may be, how long ago that sin was committed, or what good you may have done in the meantime. You can - oh, I don't know - raise a million dollars for charity and yet still be damned for all time for something stupid you said years ago. Hell, not even your childhood can escape this scrutiny -- because apparently, the Church of the Woke has decided to throw decades of developmental psychology out the damn window for the sake of its fevered utopian dreams.

I know I harp on this so damned much, but I can't let this evil stand. Human beings should be allowed to make mistakes without being unpersoned for all eternity -- especially the children. (Seriously: hands off the children or Teacher Steph is coming for you.) Outrage should have time and age limits. There's no good reason to go trawling through eight years of someone's Twitter history looking for dirt. There's no good reason to ruin people for misspeaking or making bad jokes. Try to understand that no one is perfect, stop the all-or-nothing reasoning, and let people be freakin' people.

If our current Culture of Vengeance goes on, we will have no more comedy, no more literature, no more art, no more social trust, no more friendship -- no more living. So for Christ's sake, bring back perspective and proportionality before our entire culture is trashed.

Artists Are (Often) Dicks

Hello, everyone! I'm back -- sort of.

Today's post will be relatively brief because I'm down with the infamous Con Crud, but I do want to expand on something I posted on Twitter regarding the Renaming Craze.

Similarly: Creatives often have skeletons in their closets. Recognizing them for their professional contributions - by, say, naming awards after them - does not in fact represent approval of their politics or their personal sins.

— Stephanie Souders (@TheRightGeek) August 29, 2019

Let's just pull up an artist at random: Pablo Picasso. Picasso, quite frankly, treated the women in his life like dogshit. He was constitutionally unable to be faithful and as a consequence indirectly drove two of his lovers to suicide. Should we now storm every museum on Earth that exhibits his work and demand that those paintings be taken down and destroyed?

And what of the actors and writers in Hollywood who were devoted Communists long after that was even remotely forgivable? What of those creatives who were all for fighting against the emergent menace of Nazi Germany until the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (after which they immediately switched gears like good little Stalinist puppets)? Do we need to sack our movie archives? Have ourselves a little bonfire of the reels?

This whole notion that artists must be stainless for their cultural contributions to be honored is destructive nonsense. Pursued to its logical conclusion, it will result in the razing of our entire patrimony. Why? Because, as I said at the start, artists are (often) dicks. Historically, there seems to be a strong correlation between six-sigma genius and mental disturbance/eccentricity/cross-grained political enthusiasms/horrifying private sins. That's why, until five minutes ago, we've always tried to separate the creative from his work.

Let's get back to that old regime, please. It's far more sane.

America Is Not an Address

You are "American" in a legal sense if you were born here. You are also "American" in a legal sense if you've moved here from elsewhere and have become a citizen. But having a permanent residence within our borders is not what makes you truly American in a spiritual, philosophical sense. That requires acculturation -- the installation of a certain mental software.

Every nation has its own software. Occasionally, countries with common ancestors will share lines - even large chunks - of code, but even movement between cousins requires a long period of adjustment.

I live in a community of immigrants. 90% of my clients are immigrants. My bosses are both immigrants. Many of my friends and acquaintances are immigrants. Even those who've moved here from Western Europe - our cultural origin point - say they had to download a few new programs to assimilate.

Okay, enough with the tortured metaphor. My point here is that an American identity has to be cultivated. It can't just be assumed based on your physical location. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we'll actually get immigration right.

So what, precisely, is an American identity? Well, there's room for some debate on that subject, but in my opinion, there are a few things that are absolutely non-negotiable:

First of all, you must be broadly liberal. You must have faith that we can solve our problems through discourse and cooperation, not through force. This means accepting our institutional embrace of free speech, free markets, due process, the rule of law, and the like.

Second, you must be willing to work on setting old tribal animosities aside in order to, shall we say, get shit done. I'm not suggesting, of course, that America's own history in this regard is without blemish. Far from it. But we've traveled a generally upward trajectory ever since we declared the universality of human nature at our moment of becoming. You have to be willing to accompany us on this journey.

And speaking of the universality of human nature, you must also agree that all people have natural rights to their life, liberty and property. Read the Declaration of Independence. Read the Bill of Rights. Read them, love them, and live them.

There are people among us right now who reject some or all of these requirements -- including the members of the so-called "Squad" who've recently been the target of the president's ire. These young ladies (I think they're all younger than I, so "young ladies" it is) are "American" due to a technicality. Yes, it's stupid to tell them to go back to their own countries -- but given their ideological commitments, it's absolutely not out of bounds to question their Americanism. I insist on my right - on everyone's right - to do so loudly and repeatedly.

You can't be American if you hate everything we are.

Please, God, Stop Arguing About Petty Shit

(The Black Ariel Edition)

I don't care about Black Ariel.

I'm not saying this to virtue signal. I actually do. not. care. who plays a fictional Disney princess in a live-action remake.

I don't care about this the same way I didn't care when Scarlett Johansson was cast for Ghost in the Shell.

The guy who played Matt Murdock in the Daredevil series on Netflix didn't have red hair. It didn't matter. He was awesome. That show was awesome.

In the Marvel 616, Tony Stark is tall and has blue eyes. Robert Downey Jr.? He's an adorable munchkin with brown eyes. Doesn't matter. For the next fifty years, people will actually riot if they try to reboot Iron Man. This is incontrovertible. RDJ is definitive.

I was a big-time theater kid. The production of Fiddler on the Roof we did when I was fourteen had a white guy playing Tevye and an African American girl playing Chava. Why? Because those were the kids who impressed the directors at our auditions. In most situations, this is how casting should go.

Who had an excellent audition? Who screen-tests well? Who meshes well with other potential cast members? Who has chemistry? Unless we're casting for a work depicting real people, these should be the only questions at the forefront of a casting director's mind. Have casting directors always lived up to that standard? Hell no. But that doesn't vitiate the principle.

I'm 100% confident your average American agrees with me. But, of course, so-called "journalists" had to track down the few crank Twitter accounts complaining about Black Ariel to gin up a phony controversy because, apparently, they have nothing better to do. Either that or they have no confidence in Halle Bailey and therefore feel they have to prepare the battle space ahead of time. If I were Halle Bailey, I'd be insulted.

In any case, here we are now arguing about something that doesn't. actually. matter. The social justice left is being obnoxious, so people on my side feel the need to respond. Honestly? At this point, maybe we need to stop taking the bait and try ignoring these assholes into oblivion instead.

Let's focus on the social justice left's attempts to destroy the philosophical foundations of liberal democracy -- and let Twitter bullshit stay on Twitter.

Remember You Are Human -- Before It's Too Late

When it comes to fiction, I have a type.

(Actually, I have two types, but the second is not relevant to the thrust of this post.)

The type in question is the striving sinner -- the character whose concupiscence leads him to make poor decisions but whose core of goodness allows him to scrounge some form of redemption out of the ashes. Give me a character like this and I connect - and connect hard - to your story. A character like this is, in my view, so painfully universal that I can't help but love him whenever he appears.

Hell, I even love him when he appears in our history. Every year around the 4th of July, I always do the same thing: I watch the director's cut of 1776 followed by HBO's seven-part John Adams. I've read enough history to know that both take Hollywood liberties with the actual life and accomplishments of their central figure, shuffling events around and adding face-to-face conversations that probably didn't take place for dramatic effect. Taken together, however, both are generally faithful in capturing John Adams' true character (at least as I understand it from the several biographies I've read). He was prickly and prone to Moods with a capital M. He was fiercely independent and stubborn. He did have a dim view of human nature born of reflection on his own flaws. And yes, his choices as a statesman were not free of error. But he also had an unquestionably brilliant mind -- and, significantly, a heart big enough to embrace people with whom he strenuously disagreed. It was Adams, please note, who initiated the long correspondence that ultimately rekindled his friendship with Thomas Jefferson after years of estrangement. (His first letter in that correspondence is dated January 1, which makes me suspect it was some sort of New Year's resolution. Heh.)

On the whole? John Adams was so wonderfully and beautifully human that I adore him with my entire soul. And through Adams, I've come to appreciate his entire generation. I haven't taken as deep a dive into the personalities of the other Founders, but I'm sure I would make similar discoveries if I were to embark on such a project -- and would feel just as emotionally invested for having done so.

Alas, there are people in our society today - a diabolical faction, I think - who argue that I should not feel such profound loyalty to these men -- that I shouldn't cry whenever I remember what they managed to accomplish despite their frailties and blind spots. To these people, John Adams and all the rest are "problematic" - God, I hate that word - because they failed to wholly rid the early American republic of history's ills. Never mind that they put forth in writing the liberal principles that would inspire their descendants to grapple seriously with those ills. Never mind that, after much wrangling, they took whatever steps they could to restrain and restrict the impact of America's original sins in their own time (as insufficient as those steps may seem to our modern sensibilities). No: to modern-day leftists, the Founders are unpersons worthy of complete erasure because they neglected to, shall we say, immanentize the eschaton.

To these people, I say: How arrogant are you? Are you really so convinced of your own righteousness - of your own infallibility - that you actually think future social justice warriors will not find you wanting in some way? Are you really so devoid of Christian charity and empathy that you can't imagine yourself making similar mistakes? Because I have news for you: you are not that special. As your bullying and street violence reveals, you are just as terrible as the rest of us -- and are, in fact, more dangerous because you can't see it. Because you refuse to examine your own consciences. Because you fail to heed Solzhenitsyn's wise observation that "the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."

Mark me, radicals: I have no illusions regarding the wrongs of our forebears. In this day and age, who does? But when you tell me I can't embrace some imperfect hero - either fictional or real - because they are "problematic" (ugh), it makes me want to double the hell down on loving them. Because I feel I must. Because I fear I will lose my own humanity if I stop. You would do well to pause and reflect on what exactly you're abandoning in pursuing your ceaseless and ever-more exacting purges instead of choosing the path of mercy and understanding.

God bless our Founders. And God bless the United States of America.

Blast from the Past: Reclaiming "Literary"

Originally published in 2014.

In my circles, the word "literary" is often thrown around as a pejorative -- and given the developments of the last century, it's really no wonder. Literary fiction, you see, has become tightly associated with a certain background and cast of mind that many of my associates do not share. It is now rooted in the humanities departments of academe, where Marxist dialectic reigns triumphant and cultural pessimism rules the day. When it is not overly obsessed with style and method - when, in other words, it has genuine substance- it is quotidian and parochial in its attitudes and sentiments. It is usually penned by graduates of literature, "studies", or fine arts programs and is judged by the same; consequently, it exists not to speak to the general public but to stroke the egos of the elite.

But this was not always so.

Consider William Shakespeare. On those occasions when a Western literary canon is acknowledged to exist (which is not always, mind), Shakespeare floats to the top of the list. Many still deem his plays masterworks for the ways in which they capture both the flaws and the virtues of our human nature. Was all of this writing bound up in literary magazines to be consumed by the Few? No! These plays were presented at the Globe in front of audiences that included everyone from the Queen to the illiterate commoner. And while Shakespeare definitely had some identifiable political and religious opinions, these thoughts did not completely dominate what he wrote. This, in fact, is what has allowed his plays to endure in the centuries since.

I would like to take back the term "literary" from the arrogant poseurs who've stolen and sullied it. "Literary" to me should involve grappling with the universals. It should reveal who we are in all of our glorious messiness. And no -- this does not mean focusing on everything that's awful and base in the world, as that is no more a true representation of humanity than is pat optimism. A genuinely "literary" fiction would show the courage as well as the cowardice, the virtue as well as the sin, and the love as well as the mindless hate. It wouldn't absorb itself with the fads and fashions of our narrowly-educated clerisy but would instead seek to reach the minds of all men.

And literary science fiction? Again, many on my side of the Social Justice Wars chafe at the very idea that science fiction should seek such a label, but if we take care to properly define our terms, no dichotomy need exist between the sense of wonder that was once the defining feature of our genre and the exploration of the human psyche that makes a story "literary." We could live in a both/and universe in which a science fiction that "comments upon society and civilization at a safe remove" is also a science fiction that is enjoyable to read. We could live in a both/and universe in which a science fiction that is entertaining is also a science fiction that "makes us better people." Hasn't this been done before? Don't you feel that the stories you've read have actually shaped your worldview and led, in a subtle fashion, to your own improvement? I know I do!

So we shouldn't completely set aside the didactic function of Story simply because certain social justice warriors are abusing it. We should, instead, outperform them at their own game.

Apologies, by the way, for re-running some of my greatest hits instead of posting brand new content. I'm going to be pretty busy until the 4th of July.

The Right Does See Structure: Responding to G. Watts

Areo Magazine, a liberal humanist publication helmed by Helen Pluckrose (of the Sokal Squared hoax), Iona Italia, and Gauri Hopkins, is one of several online sources of extended cultural commentary that have earned slots on my weekly blog crawl. Because it is explicitly pro-free-speech, Areo is one of the few places on the internet where broadly left-leaning writers are actually taking the right seriously and engaging with its ideas. These folks don't resort to the boring leftist tactic of calling us all -ists and -phobes, which I greatly appreciate. Every once in a while, though, I feel their interpretations of our positions are not quite correct; hence the reason for this particular post.

In "The Personal and the Political: Reconciling Right and Left Perspectives," Galen Watts addresses the tragic life trajectory of an unnamed first generation college student who feels financially stressed and culturally out of place and eventually turns to substance abuse to cope. After explaining the left-wing perspective on this particular story, Watts characterizes the right's position this way:

The young man made a number of poor choices that led to his eventual downfall. He ought not have turned to alcohol and drugs to cope with his problems, as they offered a far from sustainable solution. Conservatives would argue that he should have exhibited more self-control, and found healthier ways to adapt to his circumstances. Another problem from the conservative perspective might be the young man’s unwillingness to humbly accept his employment situation after graduating, or at least to recognize that going off the rails is likely to achieve nothing. Nevertheless, conservatives would probably have much more to say about this young man’s choices upon his descent into self-destruction. They would probably point out that he was foolish to show up to work drunk, demonstrated a lack of gratitude and responsibility in blaming his parents for his troubles, and had no excuse for hitting his girlfriend. My guess is that many conservatives would be glad to see this young man placed in a facility where he will be taught to take responsibility for his past actions and control his emotions (of course, some may wish to see him receive harsher treatment). Thus, rather than pay attention to social structures, conservatives would likely view this young man as in dire need of moral reform. They would probably contend that he requires a healthy dose of humility, gratitude and responsibility, and deserves condemnation for his unruly behaviour. Some might also argue that such values would be best fostered by a voluntary association (perhaps religious in nature), which could act as both a source of moral accountability and of the belonging and community which the young man sorely lacks. The details of the conservative take are bound to differ from person to person, but such a view would likely focus on how this young man failed to make good choices and take responsibility for his actions. In sum, a conservative take would identify personal problems and attendant personal solutions.

It is indeed true that we conservatives put a lot of emphasis on personal responsibility -- but systemic/political issues are not utterly absent from our analysis.

For example: Why is college so expensive? Why is its cost increasing faster than the rate of inflation? First, we on the right say that the government's underwriting of student loans has allowed universities to spend recklessly on their physical plants and administrations. We question the need for glitzy amenities, and we wonder just how many deans/provosts/etc. with six-figure salaries are actually required to ensure students are properly educated. Second, our analysis also addresses the demand side of the equation: our popular culture has sold a college education as the ticket to a comfortable middle-class life, but it turns out that not all college educations are created equal. What did this young gentleman major in? Was he told the truth about his future job prospects in his chosen major, or did his counselor blow a cloud of smoke up his butt about "communication and critical thinking skills"?

For example: Why do students from disadvantaged backgrounds feel out of place on elite university campuses? We on the right say that universities' misguided efforts to foster "diversity, inclusion and equity" have instead resulted in balkanization and academic mismatch. We believe admitting students to programs for which they are manifestly not prepared is a terrible means to address achievement disparities -- that instead, the focus should lie on improving education at the K-12 level so that incoming university students of all backgrounds will be able to meet the same standards before enrollment. We also believe that deemphasizing subjective admissions requirements in favor of objective measures of academic performance will allow poor students a fighting chance to compete against more affluent peers who've amassed sparkling resumes. And lastly, we believe schools should scrap their diversity programs - which enhance consciousness of our differences - in favor of programs that highlight our common humanity and focus on developing a unified institutional identity.

For example: Why are we facing a substance abuse crisis? We on the right say that the emptying of the intermediary space between the government and the individual has resulted in alienation and a loss of meaning. Watts mentions voluntary associations as an afterthought, but such associations are in fact central to the conservative view of the world. To explain: We see the individual as a central matryoshka doll. He is enclosed first by his immediate family, which is supposed to serve as a place of physical and emotional security and as the primary site for moral formation. Then comes his extended family, his church, his local community, his state or province, and - at the very end - his nation. Unfortunately, in the right's view, popular culture and public policy have removed the family, the church, and the community from the set, leaving our poor little central matryoshka doll rattling around in a big empty space and getting damaged along the way. And sometimes, this damage leads to self-destructive decision making.

Notice what the last three paragraphs did not do? They did not say that Watts' young man should stop complaining, take responsibility, and pull himself up by his bootstraps. We on the right do believe in holding people accountable for their poor choices -- but that doesn't mean we believe people can succeed without support, and that doesn't mean we don't bring structural analyses to bear on complex social problems. Our structural analyses simply differ from those produced by the left.

Another Week That Was

A Civics Lesson

Quick question: In the late 1780's, when the US Constitution was written and ratified after lengthy argument, which state was the most populous? Children?

Yes, that's right, Sarah: my home state of Virginia. Virginia was enormously influential during this period; except for my boy John Adams, all of the first five presidents were Virginian. But for certain strictures (ahem), Virginia could've used its bigness and reputation to curb stomp little states like Rhode Island and Delaware and drive the entire country according to its interests. Given that Virginia was a slave state, how do you think that would've turned out?

Thank the holy God that the Framers had the wisdom to realize that a nation ruled by Virginia and its allies was less than ideal. Thank the holy God that they therefore created institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College to kneecap the tyrannical majority and force politicians to appeal to national - rather than regional - concerns.

Right now, roughly a fifth of the US population is rural. If we switch to a national popular vote - or dispense with the Senate - this minority will be effectively silenced. If you are among those agitating for the complete destruction of our republic, I beg you to reconsider. You would never treat any other minority of comparable (or even smaller) size in this manner.

Our federal system, with all of its weird complications and roadblocks, was born of careful deliberation and years of assiduous examination of human history. Forgive me, then, if I trust it more than the fanciful ideas of ill-educated Current Year politicians and activists who are pissed they lost an election.

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Regarding the Importance of Careful Deliberation...


The message of this video needs to be tattooed on certain people's eyeballs.
No, it's not admirable that New Zealand is rushing to confiscate guns, ban books, and squelch speech after Christchurch. It is, in fact, yet another terrifying demonstration of the importance of our Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

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In Other News: Dissatisfied Fans Are Not "Entitled Manbabies"

Last night, I saw another manifestation of this attitude in a Facebook group I follow, and to be quite blunt, I'm fucking sick of it. If you're a game developer, a comic book writer or artist, a genre film maker, or any other creator in pop geekdom, you are not some grand ah-teest who can spit on his audience and do whatever the hell he wants. Dial the arrogance way, way back, bucko. You are, effectively, a guy in a rubber mask screaming at a green screen like it's chasing him. And if you're working with an established IP - as many of you are - you're playing with something that, ultimately, is not yours to "fundamentally transform".

Do the fans want you to do the same thing over and over again? No: just to take one example, the principal critique I've seen of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is that it's a weaker copy of A New Hope that strips out all the struggle of the original story. In other words, what we hate about the film in question is that it lacked creativity and heart -- not that it failed to perfectly replicate something we've already seen. So go ahead: as long as you respect the history of the IP you're borrowing, you can - and should - tell an entirely new story. We love evolution; what we don't like is rupture. 1990's Star Trek? Good. Rian Johnson's Star Wars? Bad.

Do the fans want you to completely avoid political themes? No, this is another strawman. What we hate is inorganic, in-your-face politics that stacks the deck in favor of one worldview. What we hate is boring, predictable politics; we hate the thousands of "Orange Man Bad"/"America is -ist and -phobic" stories that all unfold in identical fashion and therefore are never insightful and never surprise. What we love are things like DS9's "In the Hands of the Prophets," which tackles the theme of science versus religion in a manner that respects (and reveals the flaws of) both sides.

Do the fans hate diversity? No: we hate toxic diversity.

I don't think fans have the right to completely control what creators do. I respect artistic freedom. But the vast majority of fans aren't asking for that power. What we're asking for is craft and professionalism. Within those boundaries, multitudes can exist.

Spare Me Your Lectures on Civility, Blue Checks

People on the right can be hostile and violent. So can people on the left. But here's the difference as I experience it: When a crazy Trump supporter with a rap sheet sends "bomb-like" packages to high profile Democrats, the mainstream conservative media personalities I follow have no trouble condemning him. When Trump says something stupid and insensitive after Charlottesville, those self-same mainstream conservatives call him out on it -- while also utterly disavowing the fringe racists whose actions led to a woman's death. But I have yet to see any mainsteam leftwing members of the press acknowledge the violence of their own side. Don Lemon and others of his class have never searched their souls on air and questioned whether their friends might share the blame. No, it's all Trump's fault; it's never theirs.

Trump is a symptom, not the disease. If you would talk to Trump supporters for two seconds, you would hear the myriad ways in which right-leaning folks have been harassed, blacklisted, defamed, and otherwise kicked around by leftists -- particularly in fields that have always leaned left, such as academia and the arts. And the frustrating thing? Until Trump, nobody went to bat for these people. Before Trump, the GOP was notoriously inept at defending the right from the charge that it was -ist and infected by -ism. The result? A massive ground-swell of resentment among people tired of being called things they manifestly were not. Take it from someone who, as a right-leaning writer, was watching this unfold in real time.

There were warning signs if you cared to see them. A few Republican primaries ago, Newt Gingrich surged in popularity the moment he attacked the press. I remember that distinctly. I also remember the excitement among conservatives in the early days of blogging. Finally - finally - we had a powerful tool to counter mainstream media bullshit. Indeed, for as long as I've been a conscious, politically-engaged conservative, I have seen hatred of the press on my side -- and in my opinion, that hatred is generally earned. No newsworthy event in which I've been a participant has been covered with even a modicum of accuracy; it's all been poorly researched, dishonest spin.

The upshot? Trump is not some unique boogie man who's broken our discourse by stoking hate. He's playing to what already exists. And yeah, okay, he shouldn't do that. As a president, he should be trying to unite us instead of encouraging the Great Untruth of Us-Versus-Them (thanks, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff). But to act like Trump is the sole inventor of "incivility" - to act like everything is just peachy except for Trump - is pish-posh. Admit that you have done something wrong, Mr. Lemon, and then we'll talk.

Podcast #9 w/#1 Marmaduke Fan & Disney Princess Nonsense

The return of my podcast went well -- audio issues aside. If you were unable to watch the stream live (I know I was up against some big channels whose audiences are my targets), click play below:



Now, for the rest of this post, I'm going to expand on my brief remarks regarding one of this weekend's controversies du jour: the supposed sexism of Snow White, Cinderella, and The Little Mermaid.

I've always been a little skeptical of the romantic tropes featured in many Disney princess films. I don't think you can know someone is your "true love" the instant you meet them; infatuation can happen in a split second, perhaps, but love requires conversation and a great deal of time in your potential partner's company. And truthfully, if I had girls who were old enough to be interested in boys, I probably would remind them that Disney movies are (often sanitized) re-tellings of classic fairy tales whose deep historical purpose was not to serve as a mere guidebook to dating in the real world. However --

As I mentioned in last night's broadcast, I watched Snow White yesterday for the first time since my childhood, and yes: the fact that the prince is essentially a non-entity in that film does bother me at the superficial level. But does that mean I think Snow White is sexist -- or that it teaches terrible lessons about consent? No.

Granted, Snow White is a very stereotypically "feminine" character. She's frightened of the woods. Her vulnerability and beauty quickly attract a crowd of adorable forest creatures. She enjoys housework and basically mothering the dwarfs. But - mark me, feminists - I don't think there's anything wrong with this. There are plenty of nonfictional women who fit this mold. All of my own mother's talents - sewing, interior decorating, flower arranging, cooking - fall firmly into the "feminine" category, and I will fight anyone who attempts to argue that Mom, therefore, is not strong or worthy of admiration.

I think it's terribly confining and narrow to say that all women must be housewives. I think it's also terribly confining and narrow to say that all women must be butch, independent bad-asses. There is room in the world - and in fiction - for both types.

As I remarked somewhat clumsily last night, the feminist reading of Snow White also fails to see the ways in which the film gently lampoons men. Pre-Snow White, the dwarfs don't know how to keep a tidy house and are, apparently, totally clueless when it comes to table manners. One long sequence in the movie argues pretty explicitly that it takes a woman to remind men to wash and present themselves respectably for dinner. And I know - I know - that every single woman reading this right now is smiling and nodding because we have all seen this exact phenomenon in our own lives. I love you, gentlemen, but it wasn't for no reason that we girls joked about "the four smells of Morgan Hall," the all-male dorm at my first college.

When you get right down to it, Snow White is presented as the civilizing force. That's extraordinarily complimentary to women.

And the prince? The flat character who wakes Snow White from her coma with a kiss?  Twitter has done an okay job mocking the #MeToo hysteria over this moment, which has been replicated by happily married couples on many a morn since time immemorial, but I have yet to see anyone on my TL address the Christian cultural genesis of the original story and what its beats are actually supposed to signify. As I said, Snow White's eating of the poisoned apple is an undeniable allusion to Eden -- which means the prince, who resurrects Snow White after her apparent death, is meant to represent Christ, Who has rescued humanity from the death of original sin and will bring about the general resurrection at the end of time. Bottom line, we're talking about a literal deus ex machina here; thus, on a deep level, it doesn't matter that the prince has no apparent reason to love Snow White. Christ has no reason to love us either; His love is perfect and unconditional.

The feminist readings of Cinderella and The Little Mermaid, meanwhile, are just as shallow. That Cinderella suffers as much as she does and yet never becomes bitter - that she is able to remain kind and good and capable of forging real friendships - is a testament to her strength as a character, not her weakness. And I'll say it again: She isn't rescued by a man. She's rescued by little mice who are the beneficiaries of her compassion -- which means, in the end, she does rescue herself by being the sort of person who inspires heroism in others.

And Ariel's crush on Eric is only part of the reason she gives up her voice; she's also driven by a profound curiosity about the human world and a desperate desire to escape her father's strictures and strike out on her own. I was ten years old when The Little Mermaid was released, and because I was precocious and already a little rebellious, I deeply related to the yearning Ariel expresses in "Part of Your World," which goes far beyond the desire for romance.

This rush to condemn any creative work that doesn't hew to the strict, politically-correct script of 2018 is ahistorical, lacking in imagination, and frankly anti-human; we definitely shouldn't be encouraging children to read and interpret texts in accordance with said rush. Instead, we should be helping kids understand each story's context and should encourage them to have empathy for its author(s), who lived in radically different times and places and thus saw the world in radically different ways.