Dear Friends,
I think it is fair to say that my favorite writer in the world today is Kevin Williamson of The Dispatch. I was sad when he left his perch at National Review because his weekly newsletter, “The Tuesday,” was the best thing to hit my inbox every single week. Thankfully, his weekly newsletter at The Dispatch (Wanderland) does not disappoint. He is free to write about whatever he wants and all of it—from the political punditry to the English grammar notes to the economic lessons to profound musings about religion—is excellent. Williamson alone is worth a subscription to the Dispatch, but you also get Jonah Goldberg thrown in, too. (Before I get too far, congratulations to Kevin and his wife for the recent birth of triplets! Exciting, and also yikes. Get some shut-eye when you can.)
I guess somewhere deep down inside I aspire to be like Kevin Williamson. Particularly, I desire to write as well as he, which is like aspiring to climb Mount Everest whilst in my current physical condition. Also, I aspire to be as well-rounded as he, writing about a wide variety of interests. But if there is one thing about Kevin Williamson I do not aspire to, it is this: he is a curmudgeon.
Alas, I am fast becoming like Kevin Williamson in the one way I don’t intend.
He left X (formerly known as “Twitter”) many years ago in disgust. He found the whole Very Online ecosystem a stunted, idiotic waste of time. And he was right. More and more I sit high up in my “cheap seats” and watch “the discourse” online—particularly Christian “X”—and what I mostly see is the equivalent of a horde of meth-addicted rage monkeys hyperventilating and reacting to the slightest external stimuli. [Note: if I stole the phrase “meth-addicted rage monkeys” from someone, I apologize. I probably did, but I can’t remember.]
It takes nothing to poke them and sit back and watch the brawl. Very Online people will fight about anything and everything. No, worse than that, they will get angry about anything and everything—I mean really, literally, angry. Our country has a lot of problems, but I’m not sure we talk enough about our anger management issues.
I’ve often thought this is simply the product of the politicization of everything, but I wonder if I have it backward. What if the rage is the cause of making everything political rather than the other way around? I mean, someone once said that is isn’t what goes into a man that defiles him; rather, “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (Matt. 15:19).
If seeing football player Travis Kelce on a television ad for Pfizer enrages you, you have an anger problem. If seeing his girlfriend on a football broadcast enrages you, you have an anger problem. If you get enraged watching a television commercial about Jesus Christ, you have an anger problem.
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