You Are Your Own First (Cultural) Responder

No.91: January 21, 2022

Dear Friends,

I apologize for the delay getting this out this week. There is a virus of some kind that has been sweeping its way through our house, and one of the main symptoms has been fatigue. As I was writing yesterday my brain was foggy and I really didn’t think any of my content was good. I decided to give it another effort today, and we’ll see how it goes.

Earlier this week I launched a sister publication, The Quarter Inch, and I received a lot of positive feedback. Thank you! As I mentioned in the inaugural issue, I don’t have a set timetable for sending those out. But for now let’s get back to our regularly scheduled programming: The Square Inch.

Here’s a handful of things to ponder:

• New York Times columnist David Brooks writes that “America Is Falling Apart at the Seams.” And he has no explanation for it.

• Pollster Frank Luntz sat down with a group of average Americans. Jim Geraghty describes it this way: “[T]he focus group paints a dark picture of dispirited, depressed, anxious Americans — a sign that our leaders must realize the human need to return to pre-Covid normalcy, and fight reflexive cynicism, and the pervasive demonization of our fellow citizens who disagree over politics.”

• From my hometown of Billings, Montana: “3 shootings in 5 days highlight alarming growth in Billings weapon assaults.” One of those shootings was the as-yet unsolved homicide of a 15-year-old boy who attended my daughter’s high school. In all, assault with a deadly weapon has tripled here since 2019.

Last week I was doing my customary “Don’t listen to the panic producers” bit, so I’d like to balance that out. Just because the world isn’t ending doesn’t mean everything is fine. Things clearly are not fine. There is, indeed, a hard-to-miss fraying of our social fabric. Homicide rates are skyrocketing; so are incidents of road rage, public brawls over mask policies, and so forth. An alarming number of Americans curate their news and entertainment habits almost as if they are purposely trying to refine the purity of their hatred for the “other” side. And we should not forget to mention the staggering increase in suicides and opioid overdoses, which speaks to a dark, underlying societal hopelessness.

I wrote:

It is also important to realize—and this is my real interest—that politics is but one aspect of our civilizational decline, not the whole of it. In fact, it is probably the least of it because at bottom it is a symptom, not a cause, of decline. I’ve said this before, and it bears repeating: most of us don’t have much influence on politics. But we all have some cultural influence. We have families and neighborhoods and communities and churches and businesses and workplaces and clubs and associations, and we have a role to play in influencing those things toward the good, the true, and the beautiful. Long, cool, steady, consistent, and mature conviction in those spheres will make a more lasting impact than a spasm of passionate panic.

There is a funny self-contradiction I’ve long noticed about the more radical wings of the political left (think: Occupy Wall Street, Antifa, etc.). They never tire of mocking the idea that corporations are “persons” under the law. No, they insist, corporations are faceless, pitiless, greed machines. Corporations cannot love you, they cannot give you meaning, and they cannot be a net benefit to humanity. Radicals even have a phrase that captures what they think when somebody aligns themselves with any sort of corporate interest: “Selling out.”

But have you ever noticed that the very same people, when confronted with any and every social problem, insist that the solution is… the government? It strikes me as utterly bizarre. If ever there was a collective group that cannot love you and cannot give you meaning, it is a government bureaucracy. Have you ever spent time in an Office of Public Assistance? I have. It did not inspire warm, fuzzy feelings. I’m sure the clerks were all nice people, but I’ll be brutally honest: their job was compiling paperwork, not dishing out compassion.

Why do I bring this up? Look again at the litany of social problems noted above. Maybe, just maybe, at the margins the government can move the needle through some implementation of public policy. Certainly when it comes to things like opioids and crime, there is a large role to play. And there has been the occasional politician in the past who can inspire and uplift society as a whole (e.g., Ronald Reagan’s famously sunny disposition). But, at the end of the day, the government cannot love you, cannot give you meaning, cannot befriend you, and cannot fill gaping holes of loneliness and despair.

And, hear me out: this is ultimately good news. It means that you and I are not helpless bystanders when it comes to our civic breakdown. We are not fated to stand by wondering when “the government” is going to do something about all this. There’s no outsourcing our responsibilities here—which, in my estimate, is always what the progressive left is trying to do; if you just make everything the government’s responsibility, you can shirk your own. Our social problems are cultural problems, and they are not going to be solved by passing laws. They are going to be improved at the ground level by actual communities. Our civic problems must be addressed by civil society—the free associations and institutions that form the backbone of a community, the foremost of which are churches and religious organizations.

I confess to being irritated by the headline of Mr. Geraghty’s essay on that Frank Luntz focus group: “That Focus Group Transcript Should Worry Democrats.” Look, I get it: his job is punditry. He’s supposed to view these things through a political lens. And, frankly, I doubt he wrote the headline, so I can’t be too hard on him. So let me pick on the headline writer: reading that transcript should worry all of us. The point is not what it means for the electoral fortunes on one particular political party. And pretending it is exacerbates the problem: our societal breakdown is not primarily political. To the extent we think it is, we also then think the solution is primarily political. We then put our trust… in more government.

The government cannot love you and cannot cure what ails our communities. In that article on the recent slew of shootings in Billings, a police administrator said something more profound than he knew:

‘While we would like to have an officer there at that moment to prevent those things from happening, that's not the reality,’ said Brando Wooley, the Billings Police Department's administrative lieutenant. ‘We've only got anywhere from 9-12 officers on at any given time. We can't be everywhere in the city.’

On the practical surface level, this is why I recommend that citizens take responsibility for their own personal protection. It’s one of my mottos: “You are your own first responder.” I think taking no precautions for your own personal protection and home defense because, well, “that’s what the police are for” is rather foolish, for the reasons Lieutenant Wooley admits.

But we can apply this principle on a macro scale: standing by waiting for “the government” to solve the spiritual and psychological deterioration of one’s own community is equally foolish.

We are our own cultural “first responder.”

So, I wonder: when is the last time I talked to my neighbor? When is the last time I invited someone to church? When is the last time I met somebody for the first time? For that matter, when is the last time I left my house!? Punditry is easy. Waiting for the government to “do something” is easy. Taking personal responsibility is hard. Let’s work on that, shall we?

After my nap, of course. ;)