Privates and Persiflage

New Words, Trueman's Nuke, &tc.

Dear Friends,

I am continuing to slowly make my way through Peter Gay’s celebrated two-volume 1967 work on the Enlightenment. It is a work of exquisite scholarship and expertise, and I am learning a lot; I am coming to a more and more settled conclusion that postmodernism is simply the natural and logical extension of good old-fashioned modernism. That “post” is basically false advertising. There’s no real breach. The Enlightenment was the “Age of Criticism,” and the postmoderns simply think those older guys weren’t nearly critical enough. Hence, the proliferation of new critical theories with which we are inundated on a daily basis.

Gay is such an incredible writer that I am learning new vocabulary words, as well. I take the time to look them up in the Oxford English Dictionary. If I just Google a word, it doesn’t stick in my brain nearly as well as when I carefully read the entire definition through a magnifying glass (since I have the “concise” version of the OED). The first one that stumped me was “lubricity.” I’d never seen that word before.

“Lubricity” is the attribute of being “slick” or “slippery.” Oh, the possibilities! Donald Trump’s morals demonstrate great lubricity. The Republican Party holds its principles with lubricity. We used to call Bill Clinton “Slick Willie.” How about “Lubricity Bill”? I suppose that doesn’t quite have the same ring. But I love the word and will be incorporating it into my vocabulary so that I can sound intolerably pretentious.

Then I ran across the word “persiflage.” Lubricity at least got my mind somewhere in the ballpark because it sounds like “lubrication.” But persiflage? Not a clue. The OED tells me that it is a French loan-word meaning frivolous or trifling banter. As in, most podcasts are just so much persiflage. Christian Nationalist social media is persiflage. Beautiful and useful word.

---

You may recall last Friday I highlighted a First Things article in which Carl Trueman takes the contemporary Christian Nationalism movement to task for adopting Friedrich Nietzsche’s worldview. Predictably, the folks over at American Reformer took exception, and Ben Crenshaw—poor fellow—wrote a response. A response that Trueman then nuked from orbit.