Dear Friends,
Jay Nordlinger of National Review writes a wonderful periodic column called “Impromptus.” It’s just a series of personal observations. Sometimes they are connected, but more often they are just random. Jay is a simple writer: pithy and to the point, yet he conveys so much pathos and humanity in very few words.
He came to mind because I have a hankering to do something like that today. Just some observations. Think of it as an all-Miscellany Week.
I largely checked out of social media this week. We had some family friends visit, and it was refreshing to ignore all of it. I don’t think we yet fully reckon with how our media consumption is shaping us. It’s a theme I’ve written about before, but one of the reasons people are anxious and upset is that there are powerful people and organizations dedicated to keeping them anxious and upset. And little of it is to your benefit. It’s okay to just put the phone down.
My wife and I were on a drive the other day and we saw a group of kids walking down the sidewalk on a gorgeous fall afternoon. Every last one of them had their eyes glued to their phone screen: heads down, shoulders hunched. What are we doing to the next generation?
My 7-year-old daughter is becoming an excellent reader. The other day I was outside grilling some food and she asked if she could watch something. I said, “No screens. Get a book to read.” Now, you might gather that this isn’t a universal policy around here since she asked me in the first place (And, of course, by her asking me you can deduce who the easy “mark” is between her parents). But we do try to limit the screen time. Anyway, I was overjoyed when she parked herself in the patio chair with a volume of The Complete Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson. She’s done that before but it only lasts a few minutes (Watterson writes at a pretty sophisticated level) but this time she sat and read for a very long time. She laughs and laughs.
Bill Watterson is a genius, and he has given us nothing less than a masterpiece of western civilization. I mean it. There is no comic strip that approaches its brilliance. When I got this set from my kids as a birthday present years ago, I marveled as if for the first time at the actual artwork. It is utterly beautiful—especially the colored Sunday editions. The simplicity, the economy of space, the thousand little tricks to draw your eye to something or display motion in a static drawing. Add to all that Calvin’s many philosophical musings, and it is just unparalleled in its medium. And the fact that it can make adults and children laugh and laugh means it will endure for generations.
Interesting fact: Watterson quit the comic strip at the absolute apex of his powers—not a case of a guy who ran out of things to say or lost his edge and decided to hang it up. He just quit while he was king of the mountain and decided to become a painter. Another fun fact: though he was pressured and pressured and offered probably something like a billion dollars, he steadfastly refused to license his characters. That’s why you’ve never seen a Hobbes plush toy or an animated cartoon series of Calvin & Hobbes. All those vulgar window decals of Calvin on the backs of pickup trucks? All contraband. The man is a purist who felt commercializing his work would corrupt it in some way. For my part, I think we’re all better for not having seen Calvin & Hobbes: The Saturday Morning Cartoon.
Just because I said earlier that you shouldn’t be anxious and upset all the time doesn’t mean there aren’t things worth being upset about. Here’s a few things I find appalling. Almost unbearable.
There are still Americans and thousands of allies stuck in Afghanistan and many being murdered. Our government, from what I can tell, doesn’t give a rip. It’s their own fault they’re stuck, you see.
Not one person has resigned or otherwise been held to account for that entire fiasco.
Remember the suicide bombing that killed 13 American soldiers at the Kabul airport? Remember President Biden’s tough-guy act when he said that ISIS-K was the culprit and we were going to “hunt them down”? Well, he ordered a cursory drone strike at a vehicle and claimed that he’d killed ISIS-K militants. Oooh! Yesss! Biden the Badass.
He killed an innocent aid worker and his seven children. What an advertisement for all that “over the horizon” capability we keep hearing about for keeping terrorists at bay.
Not one person has resigned or otherwise been held to account for this.
Reminder: when we pray “Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus” we are praying for him to arrive in judgment. There will be plenty to judge.
David Bahnsen wrote a great little book called Crisis of Responsibility: Our Cultural Addiction to Blame and How You Can Cure It. That crisis—the one where nobody takes any responsibility for anything—reaches the highest echelons of government, apparently. I don’t see it getting any better any time soon.
House Democrats voted today to pass a law essentially legalizing abortion for all nine months of pregnancy in all 50 states (which is, for all intents and purposes, the existing regime; they just want to pass a federal law legislatively in case the Supreme Court dumps Roe v. Wade next year). The vote total among Democrats? 218-1. I’m not actually one of those people who reflexively says its inherently sinful to vote for various parties or people—I believe in Christian liberty—but I must say I cannot for a moment fathom ever voting for anyone with a D after their name. Ever. Ever. Ever.
Did you know there is an entire Twitter genre that I would call, I guess, “Now Do Abortion”? It goes like this: Tweet out a liberal progressive saying something about how there’s “nothing in the Constitution about…” one of their prized policies, and then simply attach the words, “Now do abortion.” Xan DeSanctis is the world champion:
May she live long and prosper.
This week’s “newsletter,” if you can call it that, is a bit of a microcosm, isn’t it? Beautiful things and ugly. Praiseworthy things and contemptible. Glory and shame. Light and darkness. Laughter and tears. All in the same world at the same time. The important thing to remember is that the empty tomb followed the cross—Jesus put the world into reverse to get it to its destiny. Death, then life. Last, now first. This glorious wreckage of a world is not absurd, static, irrational randomness. It has a direction. Judgment is coming. Resurrection Day is coming. And even now the light shines in the darkness. God’s kingdom is come, and his will is being done on earth as it is in heaven.
“Grace makes beauty / out of ugly things.” —U2, “Grace.”
Glory in the true, the good, and the beautiful; work to end its opposite in your sphere of influence. Laugh and lament. And do not be afraid. “For behold! I am with you all the days, even to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).
Well said.
Great post, Brian.