Nudging The Titanic

No.236: November 8, 2024

Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This is a paid subscription feature with a preview before the paywall, so please consider subscribing to enjoy this weekly missive along with an occasional “Off The Shelf” feature about books, a frequent Pipe & Dram feature of little monologues/conversations in my study, and Wednesday’s “The Quarter Inch,” a quick(er) commentary on current events.

Dear Friends,

The immediate aftermath of a decisive election victory is always full of exhilaration for the victors. That’s human nature and that is perfectly fine; they earned a celebration. Maybe it is just me, but I’ve noticed that a great many of this week’s celebrants display a touchiness, a sensitivity, a sort of thinness of skin. There is very little magnanimity in victory. Matt Walsh says that it is “good and moral” to “find joy” in someone else’s pain. He couldn’t possibly be more wrong about that. Others get very, very upset—resentful, even—at people who do not celebrate or rejoice with the proper amount of enthusiasm. I don’t want to get too deep into psychologizing people, but I will just point something out.

Megan Basham has made her entire career accusing evangelical “elites” of suggesting that if you do not agree with their politics then you are a bad Christian. She finds this (where it exists, rightly) smug and condescending and an unwarranted binding of people’s consciences. Now I invite you to wander over to her Twitter feed for the past few days. If you do not sufficiently demonstrate elation at Donald Trump’s victory you are a bad Christian. That is by no means an unfair summary and I will let you draw your own conclusions as to who, exactly, makes politics a test of Christian orthodoxy.

Anyone who, like me, sees any downsides to a second Trump presidency, is, according to many on evangelical right-wing social media, bitter and ungrateful to God. Retired Pastor John Piper really enraged people with this Tweet:

Regardless of the arguably questionable wisdom and motivations for posting it, this is a truism; new challenges and tests of mettle emerge after one has been overcome. And if you are a careful reader you will notice that Piper never spoke of equal evils; there is actually no moral equivalence in this Tweet at all. That didn’t stop the mob from picking up their virtual pitchforks; they always know what a person “really meant.” They took it as a dig at their man, Donald Trump. And, fair enough: in this case it is a dig at their man. But isn’t it odd that the very people who have been telling us very loudly for eight years that they are voting “for the lesser of two evils” are now enraged when somebody takes them at their word and calls their candidate an “evil”? Weird. Almost like they didn’t really mean it.

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Since I count myself as one of those people somewhat less enthused about the state of things than I otherwise might be, perhaps I should probably take another run at making clear what my skepticism is all about. And it isn’t very complicated. It has nothing to do with a lack of gratitude to God or some kind of resentment or judgment toward Trump voters (whether from deep insecurity or some other explanation they never believe this, but it remains worth saying anyway).

I believe in tradeoffs, and I do not believe in utopia or political messiahs. If a Martian suddenly arrived on planet earth on Wednesday and listened to the rhetoric on the right, they would conclude that some kind of world-historical or even redemptive-historical event had taken place. The kind of thing that alters human history in decisive, meaningful ways for perpetuity. The country, the “Western world,” had been “saved” and “delivered” from the forces of darkness and a new era of peace and economic security and “greatness” had dawned. If the poor Martian listened to the left, it would conclude the exact opposite.

Count me skeptical of all of the rhetoric. For the right, it was a great political victory, without a doubt. In constitutional republics that hold democratic elections every so often those are necessary and salutary, but, as often as not, very short-lived. There are no ultimately lost causes in America because there are no truly won causes. In his absolutely outstanding post-election essay, David Samuels reminds us:

What outsiders tend to miss is that America was never meant to be stable. It is and has always been an inferno, the epitome of the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter’s idea of creative destruction. [….]

The bigger lesson being that America is just too big — and too wild, and too destructive, and rooted in the idea of individual freedom — for any self-styled ‘elite’ to ride the horse for very long, without being thrown off.

The other 45% of voters still exists and will continue to have a say in matters—that’s also something I believe in because I am not an illiberal. The election was certainly heartening on the cultural front: a sign that the dominance of radical progressive ideologies is not inevitable and has not so gripped the country that we are destined to a dystopian future of getting arrested for silently praying on a sidewalk (as in the UK) or having our pronoun usage policed. What is needed for the long term is genuine cultural renewal more than reactionary convulsion, but I’ll take reactionary convulsion until renewal gets here. For more on that backlash against progressivism, Claire Lehman’s “Revenge of the Silent Male Voter” is must-reading. Three cheers for all that.