Dear Friends,
I am typing this from the Minneapolis airport, where everyone is walking around masked up like it’s March of 2020, (one lady is wearing two masks and a face shield—and you know she’s just gotta be vaccinated, too!) and I feel that I must make an announcement:
I’m done.
I have personally given public health authorities very wide leeway throughout this pandemic, especially early on when we didn’t know a whole lot about Covid-19. I have been critical of the overall approach to the pandemic—turning the entire country into an isolation unit instead of isolating the most vulnerable—but even then I didn’t feel it was a moral make-it-or-break it issue for me. The “mask wars,” where wearing one or not became a political virtue badge, baffled me and still does. Ditto the “vaccine wars.” I wore a mask when my church asked me to, a private business asked me to, or when and where my Governor required me to (none of which presently apply).
I’m done. No more. My perhaps unusually large supply of “benefit of the doubt” is bone dry. Empty. Not a drop left. Here we are, living in an obvious post-pandemic state of affairs, with not one, not two, but three vaccines plentifully on the market, Covid fatalities so negligible that if you are vaccinated you are more likely to be struck by lightning than die from Covid, and our “leaders” want to lead us back to full-blown pandemic mask mandates and maybe even lockdowns.
I’m not one to make overly quick recourse to the ethos of the “Molon Labe” crowd, but, well, as King Leonidas put it to Xerxes in 300: “Kneel, you say? Well, that’s going to be a problem. You see, killing all of your men has given me a cramp in my leg.” My face has developed a cramp and I, a fully vaccinated adult, am not wearing this thing anymore. I am neither at risk nor a risk to anyone else. I mean, the Surgeon General is literally talking about fully vaccinated people and their children wearing masks inside their own homes. With all due respect, he and the rest of our scientific betters are speaking like lunatics. I’m done. I did not get a vaccine so that they would tell me nothing would change and we’d be in a permanent state of hysteria. If a store wants to require it, I’ll shop elsewhere. If the Federal mandate for air travel continues, I’ll drive. The whole point of vaccinations was to get us to a post-pandemic reality, and it did! It was a sensational success! But bureaucrats cannot let a crisis go to waste, and they need this crisis to continue like an addict needs a needle.
This chart from Johns Hopkins tells the story. It cuts through all the media hysteria about rising case numbers and Delta variants and so forth.
If you’re not a chart person, let me translate: Covid mortalities are at the lowest point they have ever been. Time for more masks! School closures! Lockdowns! Yeah, no. More importantly: case growth is irrelevant, and that’s all the media will talk about. But it is hospitalizations and fatalities that matter, and for vaccinated people those are all but non-existent. I say let the un-vaccinated act according to their own (arguably foolish) personal risk-assessment and let’s move on.
On Facebook David Bahnsen pointed out a few more facts—actual, you know, facts—that receive zero mention in our “panic porn-addicted” media:
Why do you think the U.S. media has not said a single word all week - nothing - about Delta cases dropping 40% week over week in the UK,
and that fatality of recent cases has been LESS than 0.2%?
and that U.S. fatality is the lowest it has been since COVID began?
and that 99% of current U.S. COVID hospitalizations are unvaxxed people?
Do you think those facts are relevant?
We’re all entitled to our own opinions. Don’t you wish you had a media willing to give you the facts necessary to form the right ones?
The pandemic is over. All I will hear from now on from Washington, D.C. and the CDC in Atlanta is the sonorous voice of Charlie Brown’s school teacher: “Wah-wah-wha-wha-wha-wha.” Wear a mask in my own house with my own vaccinated family? I’m done listening, thank you.
If you want to read more about it, Jonah Goldberg speaks for me.
And so does somebody from a very different end of the spectrum: Andrew Sullivan.
Plugged In and Disconnected
The Internet is nearly thirty years old, if you date it from the first creation of the “World Wide Web” in 1993. It is high time for a debrief, looking back at what we thought the Internet would accomplish and what it actually accomplished. This would be a task far, far beyond my own abilities and a project well beyond what I could provide in the space of this newsletter. And for all I know, such essays exist and I am unaware of them, and I am sure I am not observing anything unique or particularly profound. Yet…
I am struck by a couple of big things: First, in the early days we were so enamored with the connectivity of this new technology. It was going to bring the whole world together. We went from putting a stamp on an envelope and shipping it across the globe, taking months to arrive, to instantaneous global communication. It is hard to actually fathom the seismic nature of that transition, which we now take entirely for granted. Did it live up to its promise? Was the Internet a force for greater unity?
Second, One of the great promises of the Internet was the breaking up of various monopolies. In 2007 Glenn Reynolds, of “Instapundit” fame—arguably the most influential blogger in Internet history—published a book called An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths. This book, as I recall, came on the heels of “Rathergate,” the episode when Dan Rather of CBS News broadcast a hit-job on George W. Bush using completely fabricated documents. An “Army” of bloggers exposed the fraud, and ultimately ended Dan Rather’s career as a journalist.
How does all that look in retrospect? Far from being somehow more connected and more unified, we seem to be more disconnected than ever. Oh, we are connected, but that connective tissue ordinarily extends to a small tribe rather than some imagined “cosmopolis.” We’re just not made to be friends with everybody. The Internet, it seems to me, actually broke us up into a thousand shards. You’re familiar with other metaphors, like “bubbles” and “echo-chambers.” I don’t think anybody can credibly claim that the Internet has accomplished anything like national or global unity. It democratized smaller micro-communities—it enabled the “birds of a feather” to actually find each other so that they can “flock together.” But the various flocks increasingly do not even recognize each other.
And those small tribes have often served to malform us. I think of that tight-knit Facebook group called the “Geneva Commons:” a flock of pastors and elders yukking it up in a “private” group, engaging in what we might call theological “locker room” talk. Whatever you think about the exposing of what went on behind those digital doors, the fact is that grown men were encouraging and affirming each other in some pretty ugly rhetoric. I mean, pastors should know that Paul told us that “bad company corrupts good morals.” And you know what? I don’t care if everybody in the room has an M.Div; it just might be bad company.
As for the breakup of monopolies, be careful what you wish for. It goes without saying that the Internet enabled alternative information sources—we no longer had to take Dan Rather’s word for it that this super-secret document he got in a manila envelope from some shady dude in a parking lot was totally, like, 100% legit. But it also has to be admitted at this point that there were no internal checks and balances, no guardrails at all; the rejection of such “elitism”—that is, established elite institutions—has made everybody an elite. Anybody with an Internet connection and good graphic design could set up shop and attract an audience with click-bait. And now? Nobody knows who to trust. “Fake News” is not just a problem in legacy mainstream media; it is a problem across the entire spectrum of journalism, news, and thought-leadership. In other words, the promise of gaining real access to the “real” news by way of the diversification of sources has led to the opposite problem of the monopoly: chaos.
I am aware of a well-trafficked “conservative”—well, Trumpy—website that has long trafficked in what I know to be absurdity; that is, their writers make claims that I know to be false. Moreover, I know that they know they traffic in falsehoods; they claim to have “sources” when publishing stories I know to be false. It is a cynical, worthless, propagandist rag. But you would be astounded, as I am, at the number of respected and well-meaning people that still link to their stories and Op-Eds. The “Fake News” versus “Real Scoop” does not cut neatly along party lines, folks.
I am talking about the downsides, of course. I don’t minimize for a moment the great upsides of all this—I like instant messaging as much as the next guy. But we should realize that it has been a mixed bag. Much like the fact that the architecture of the American system of government or the structures of a free market are dependent on the virtue and character of the people in those systems, so also the blessings and benefits of technological advance: it depends on what people do with the technology. And that is a matter of character and virtue. So while the Internet has been a blessing in so many ways, it has also exposed a lot of our underlying cultural dysfunctions.
We have gained a lot, but we have also lost a lot when it comes to connectivity. In a conversation just last night with my girls, somebody said something about handwriting. My 7-year-old daughter went and got a card she once got in the mail from her piano teacher who had moved away. She treasures that card. She reads it over and over. She knows that handwriting—all of us know that handwriting. It’s hers. It is a tactile signature. There is something deeply profound and human about something as simple as handwriting. People save old love letters in a shoebox. Can you imagine pulling up a thread of old text messages or Instagram DMs from a loved one? Not the same. At all. A lover can’t spray perfume on a text message to her man fighting a distant war. We’ve digitized all the humanity out of our communications. That’s why they invented Emojis, to compensate for that loss and inject a little character and emotion.
I like text messages. But I have been more moved on a few occasions when readers of this very newsletter have sent me a handwritten card. Where am I going with all this? I can’t solve the big societal and technological issues of disconnectedness, but I can resolve in my own life to pursue deeper, richer, more human, less digital connections with others. That might mean buying some stationery and stamps and actually putting people’s addresses in my iPhone Contact Card rather than just their phone number. Imagine that! I think whatever blessings the digital age has brought when it comes to connectivity and unity—whatever breadth we’ve achieved—has come at the expense of depth.
As for the Fake News problem, I also have no solution. But I am certain that a society cannot exist in chaos, without established and trusted institutions. So I resolve to support the institutions I think best exemplify those ideals. I have dear friends involved in a variety of institutions that deserve my trust and support. I’ll just say it unapologetically: in media and politics, National Review is a stalwart. The Dispatch is reliable and enjoyable—almost everything Jonah Goldberg writes lives up to his last name, a “mountain of gold.” World Magazine’s daily podcast is superb. In the realm of finance and economics, David Bahnsen’s Dividend Cafe newsletter, his Capital Record podcast, and numerous cable news appearances are rock solid. The Acton Institute is also a worthy institution on Christianity and economics. Alliance Defending Freedom is a treasure in the legal system—where would we be without them?—so support them. Andrew Sandlin at the Center For Cultural Leadership is learned, whip-smart, and—more importantly—speaking of deep humanity—an uncommonly gracious friend.
And I’ll continue to do my little part with the opportunities God gives me, in my own little square inch. Thanks for reading.
Miscellany
We are in desperate need of rain out here in Big Sky Country. Pray for rain, please? And don’t miss this classic devotional by John Piper on how amazing the very idea of “rain” is.
I don’t know if this is behind a paywall, but a Dispatch reporter spent two-and-a-half hours on the phone with the MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell. He had a lot to say. All I will say is that if you are listening to and believing this guy, you are one gullible person and you need to get out of your echo-chamber.
A few days ago, July 29th, marked a hundred years since the death of Herman Bavinck, my towering theological mentor. James Eglinton wrote a lovely essay on why Bavinck still matters. I highly recommend you read it.
I hadn’t intended for this one to be so long, and by this point I have no idea what all that rambling was about. I think it had something to do with human connection, and what better way to take it home than with the Milk Carton Kids and Sarah Bareilles (with a subtle Chris Thile cameo). Here’s “Somebody Who Loves Me.”
I wonder if God's giving us digital technology is a way of growing us up a bit? We've torn the wrapper off the present, we've imbibed the sugar rush. But now, we have to harness our BB gun and go out and be productive and take down Black Bart. Stewardship.. hard work.
Good thoughts.