Dear Friends,
I have been shamefully absent from your inbox over the past number of weeks. I am writing to apologize for it. I have some explanations, but as I am fond of reminding my children, “explanations are not excuses.” I did not tell you that I was taking something of a hiatus and that is largely because I did not know I was taking a hiatus.
April was for some reason a difficult month for me. My day job (and night, actually) really sapped a lot of energy from me and I found myself very unmotivated to attend to serious writing. And perhaps some of the malaise was the fast approach of my half-century birthday, which, when you put it that way, highlights why it might bring a malaise. How can I be fifty? What have I actually accomplished in FIFTY years!? Those sorts of questions are unhealthy in strong doses, but even a little bit can deliver a shot of melancholy.
Anyway, yes. I did turn 50 this month. My kids banded together to get me that beauty in the picture above. Finally, finally I am a proud owner of a Yeti pipe, beautifully rocking the Ravenclaw colors (my Hogwarts House). I have never been able to afford Micah’s pipes, so it was a really thoughtful, extravagant, and special gift. I gave it an inaugural smoke last night and—well, yeah. That’s a lot better than my old one! Which I don’t like to say because my daughter handcrafted my other one (under the tutelage of the Yeti himself!). But sometimes the master is just simply the master for a reason.
My malaise has another cause. I have simply lost interest in most current events. I have friends whose job it is to keep up with all the news: The war is on! No, sorry, the war is off! No, it’s on! The Strait is OPEN! They’d better open that Strait or they’re REALLY going to pay! They are shooting at us and it “threatens” the “ceasefire”! Political parties are redistricting! It’s a threat to democracy! Hegseth fires another pansy General! Honestly, I cannot imagine being Erick Erickson. I know he has a staff that gathers together all the stuff he gets to talk about all day long on the radio, but just talking about this stuff all day long on the radio must be soul-sucking.
Almost everything is farce. You might think this is just me being old and cynical. But you’d be wrong.
The Oxford English Dictionary explains what is a farce: “A dramatic work (usually short) which has for its sole object to excite laughter.” We are safe to modify that a bit: to excite outrage, anger, or any number of other passions. I don’t think it can be denied that much of our culture and all of our politics has become performance art. Short, dramatic works for TikTok and Cable TV. (Speaking of TikTok, what better illustration of “farce” than the fact that Congress literally passed a bill—yes, they really did! They passed an honest-to-goodness bill!—banning the app in this country; it was signed by the President of the United States, and it was then promptly ignored by everybody. Memory-holed.) Anyway, this incessant performance art is not designed to illuminate the truth but bypass the brain entirely so as to excite some passion or other. The OED goes on to clarify even more:
Something as ridiculous as a theatrical farce; a proceeding that is ludicrously futile or insincere; a hollow pretence, a mockery.
That describes an awful lot of modern public life, doesn’t it? I am not saying there are not actual events that are deadly serious and worthy of attention. I am saying that those events are covered and framed in our media landscape and in our actual institutional actions in utterly farcical terms, and there seems little point in engaging with it.
I am partly inspired in all this by slowly listening through episodes of Ben Sasse’s “last stand.” He and Chris Stirewalt are spending Ben’s few (?) remaining weeks/months doing a podcast on which they interview interesting people and talk about real things—in an occasionally too-lighthearted way (in my opinion). Ben Sasse doesn’t just say that everything in culture, politics, and media is farce; he demonstrates it by powerful counterexample. If one of his lasting contributions to our society is to remind us of the things of real importance, it is a life well-lived and worthy of a “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I know he is full of humility and habitually deflects all personal praise these days, but I do not care and will just say that he is a man of whom our nation is not worthy. And he will be sorely, sorely missed.
Here’s what all this means for The Square Inch Newsletter, practically speaking: the lion’s share of my attention is henceforth going to be placed on the Friday newsletter, where I intend to produce serious writing about serious things. The mid-week Quarter Inch will not entirely disappear, but it will wane to some extent. I will publish one if I have something to say about something that I think might be helpful to somebody. But it is not likely to be weekly. In any event, I will be sharing with you various non-farcical things people create and produce that are worthy of your attention.
The Pipe & Dram visits must be renewed, as well. I have no shortage of things I could write about in that space, so as I ramp up my motivation you can expect that production to increase.
As for the Friday newsletter, I still intend to write at least two or three more essays on a Christian approach to Artificial Intelligence. If you’ve missed the first two, you can find them here and here. I think they are important, and I do hope you’ll read them!
Thank you for sticking with me! If I am not mistaken, we have in fact entered the seventh year of this publication. Time certainly does fly.
When I first saw the pipe with the blue stem, I thought "what fun, Brian got a bubble pipe as a gag gift". But then you invoked Ravenclaw. How in the tarnation did you get an appointment with the sorting hat?