Dear Friends,
If you’re new around here, you should know that sometimes I write about my personal evolution as a handyman and “YouTube” mechanic. It’s not to brag—well, not mostly—but rather to marvel with gratitude for the resources we’re blessed with.
Do you ever stop to think about how much the world has changed? What did we once do when we didn’t have GPS and GoogleMaps on our phones telling us which way to turn to get to an unknown destination? Way back in 2001 my wife and I were driving to Philadelphia for seminary, with all our worldly belongings packed into the car. Even then, I guess we had printed out directions from Google. But before that? I remember my Dad driving and Mom sitting in the passenger seat with an actual, physical map. And it sounded like this:
The technology at our fingertips is amazing, and I make the most of YouTube for fixing my own vehicles and doing other projects.
This week my old Mountaineer broke down on my eldest daughter and she pulled into a parking lot and called me. The battery light had come on, accompanied by a sudden loss of power steering. I went to Google and typed: “2000 Mercury Mountaineer battery light on no power steering.” The first result was a YouTube video. I clicked. Within the first ten seconds the guy says, “If your battery light comes on and you lose your power steering, you’ve got a problem with your serpentine belt.”
Thirty seconds. That was easy. I called up my girl and had her pop the hood. She’d never opened the hood before so that took awhile (Haha), but her first words were, “Is this belt supposed to be all frayed?” Yeah, I think we found the culprit.
I grabbed my tools, stopped by the auto parts store to get a new belt, and proceeded on to the parking lot. It turns out that the tensioner pulley wheel had completely disintegrated, which resulted in a shredding of the belt. Another glance at Google ON MY PHONE (Man, we take for granted how amazing that is) to confirm that the parts store had a new one in stock. Sure enough. Got a new pulley wheel, and with just my own tools and her help in a random parking lot we got the old beast back on the road just fine. No towing, no garage, no labor costs.
Then yesterday the wax seal on my bathroom toilet decided to fail. Watched a quick video on installing a new one-piece toilet, and I made short work of it. My family loves the new toilet and we all agree we (meaning I) should have done that years ago.
I am glad that most people can afford to hire out the labor for these kinds of things (I’m kind of a big fan of economic prosperity), but for folks like me in my socio-economic bracket, a set of tools and YouTube is indispensable. I don’t know who needs to hear it, but here it is: you can do it yourself. A few years ago I barely knew how to handle any tool at all. I had no idea how cars worked. My soft, scholarly hands do take quite a beating, but there is great personal satisfaction in the end.
This Goes So Much Higher Than We Thought
I received a good deal of feedback on last week’s newsletter, “Skin Makes The Man,” and I appreciate all of it. I sense a great hunger for plain-speaking on matters relating to Critical Race Theory. Note: not hysterical speaking, which is what our polarized society incentivizes on both sides of the aisle. I mean plain speaking. So I will continue to insist that CRT is a repackaged form of Marxism, that its very essence and purpose is to divide and inflame, and it bears all the wrong kinds of fruit when held against the standards set down by the Apostle Paul in Galatians chapter 5. And I will also insist that racism exists and that sometimes racists are able to establish unjust systems of exclusion (e.g., Jim Crow segregation; Harvard College Admissions).
Most conversations or debates about CRT do not seem to be carried out in good faith. This week we got a pristine example. Ibram X. Kendi, the apostle of “antiracism,” penned an essay for The Atlantic in which he argues that the election of Barack Obama was a setback for the antiracist cause! Wesley J. Smith gives a blow-by-blow here, but suffice it to say that to Kendi’s way of thinking the election of Obama was bad because it helped foster the illusion that America was maturing in race relations. It furthers the myth of a “post-racial” America.
Here’s how you can tell a charlatan: they play a game of “Heads, I win; Tails, you lose.” It is a non-falsifiable worldview. Every single fact can be neatly co-opted and interpreted in such a way as to further the bedrock narrative. So, here we have a complaint about the ineradicable racism of America; America elects a black man as President twice, and it is simply more evidence of America’s ineradicable racism—our attempt to fool ourselves into thinking we’ve progressed beyond our racist past. There is no winning with these charlatans. And people need to simply refuse to be bullied by them.
We’ve now reached the point where the “antiracist” application of CRT is simply another conspiracy theory. In conspiracy theories, every fact—especially the inconvenient one—is overwhelmed by the theory, is coopted into the theory, and is made to explain or vindicate the theory. This explains, by the way, why global warming advocates self-consciously changed the terminology to global “climate change.” If warming is your theory, then cold weather is kind of a problem. But “climate change” is truly a brilliant piece of sophistry: every single weather event proves your theory by definition. Ah, so it is with “antiracism.” Everything, even the election of Barack Obama, proves your point.
You’ve heard the one about the conspiracy theory nut who dies and goes to heaven? God tells him that he can ask and have answered any question he wishes.
The guy asks: “Who really killed JFK?”
God: “Lee Harvey Oswald.”
Guy (muttering under his breath): “Man, this goes so much higher than we thought!”
Much like that guy’s certainty about his JFK theories, the CRT/Antiracist conclusion that America was founded as, and continues to be, a society-wide system of oppression of minorities by white people serves as the immutable and ineradicable presupposition. It’s exactly like trying to reason with a Moon Landing Hoaxer: when you present contrary evidence like, in this instance, America had no problem twice-electing a black man, you get the “Well, that just proves my point! America is faking it!”
What’s the difference between a Flat-Earther and Ibram X. Kendi? One is fashionable.
If we needed any more evidence of bad faith, this week we also learned that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is a card-carrying member of an all-white private beach club. I’m generally not a fan of picking the low-hanging fruit with complaints about media bias, but this one…. whew. Can you imagine the outrage if his party identification was different? I’m old enough to remember when Senator Trent Lott was hounded out of his job as Senate Minority Leader because at a birthday party he said flattering things about his (once segregationist) colleague, Strom Thurmond. And now here is a politician who participates wholeheartedly in alleging that his political opponents are racists trying to take us back to Jim Crow segregation, who simultaneously belongs to a beach club that excludes minorities. I’d say we’re living in a Tom Wolfe novel, except that not even Tom Wolfe could’ve come up with something quite that absurd.
Anyway, here’s Senator Whitehouse’s explanation upon confrontation:
“It’s a long tradition.” “We just need to work our way through the issues.” This fellow is pretty easy on himself, isn’t he? You know what was an even longer tradition than Rhode Island’s all-white beach clubs? Slavery.
What are we to conclude from the fact that this colossal hypocrite gets kid-glove treatment from the national media and is not subject to the typical “cancelation” policy that usually gets applied after these kinds of revelations? One possible explanation is that the “antiracist” movement isn’t really motivated by actual racism; maybe it is motivated by power, and because Sheldon Whitehouse is politically helpful to their various causes he is given a pass.
At very least, it is enough to not take all that outrage over systemic racism at face value.
Miscellany
Remember that time Senator Sheldon Whitehouse badgered a judicial nominee over a…club membership? David Harsanyi does.
The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America is upcoming, and there are going to be controversies. One of them is about the Bible’s teaching on sexuality, and David Garner wrote a very helpful response and critique of one pastor who wishes to accept the concept of “gay identity.” It’s very well-done, and I encourage you to read it.
Winston Marshall is a musician best-known as the banjo player for the worldwide sensation Mumford & Sons. Last year he made the mistake of congratulating Andy Ngo for his bestselling book about Antifa, Unmasked. The Twitter mob—the hordes of Mordor—set out to destroy him and his bandmates, accusing him of being a fascist, and worse. As you might expect, he apologized for his “wrong-think.” In a fascinating turn of events, he is now retracting his apology and leaving the band. Why? Because he is haunted by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s famous essay “Live Not By Lies.” Marshall has concluded that to give in to the peer pressure, to keep quiet about what he thinks, is to participate in lies. His whole explanation is beautifully written and well-worth your time. This is what I mean by standing up to the intellectual terrorists and bullies. Godspeed, Mr. Marshall! I shall purchase any of your future musical offerings.
I’ll let Winston Marshall and the boys send us off—a flashback to those wonderful early days when they brought so much joy to so many people. Here’s “Sigh No More,” a compilation of lyrics taken directly from William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. It’s just thrilling.