Reading Log: March 22, 2022

Although links get more views with individual posts, I think it's helpful just to keep things together. A couple of items got my attention over the weekend.

David French

Here's conservative commentator David French linking covid denial/vaccine refusal, January 6, and support for Russia all as a big middle finger to "the narrative" we encounter from experts and mainstream media. In "What the Russian Invasion Teaches Us about the Right," we find this brilliant line, "Contrarians aren’t critical thinkers. They’re gullible reactionaries, vulnerable to conspiracy theories."

French still lives in a very right wing world, or what used to be the right wing, but this piece is insightful. Why he wouldn't include climate change denial, I have no idea. 

Russian Fascism and American Fascism

I grew up in the militarized, patriotic South, where we could valorize Stonewall Jackson and George Patton with no sense of contradiction. That was and is problematic, but we had a sense that democracy was worth defending. That's why I've been so troubled by Trumpist devotion to Russia and Hungary, not to mention US betrayal of our Kurdish, Afghan, Syrian, and Iraqi allies. But I digress.

What we're seeing is a form of globalized fascism, in which authoritarians look out for one another. That's why India and China are helping Putin despite his criminal actions in Ukraine. It's why Trump embraced every authoritarian under the sun.

In an 8-minute video Mehdi Hassan unpacks the philosophical underpinnings of Putin's philosophy. From what I'm reading, especially from historian Timothy Snyder, this analysis is spot on. Putin literally distributes books by a Russian one-time Nazi, Ivan Ilyan, once exile but now with a Putin-approved statue.

Christian Nationalism

Bad news: Christian nationalists are getting increasingly radicalized and authoritarian.

Sexless

Kids these days. Recently I was in a conversation where some grumpy old men were grousing about immorality among the youth. I don't buy that line at all, especially since the generation my age and up has basically pillaged the planet and seems determined to keep it that way. 

But we should all be concerned how little sex younger Americans are having. Today's more permissive sexual culture is not making people happier. In fact, it's leading to less sexual intimacy, even less solo sex, than used to be the case. In the New York Times Michele Goldberg offers a sympathetic but critical read of Rethtinking Sex: A Provocation by Christine Emba that's worth a conversation. I'm not saying more sex is always a good thing, but loneliness sure isn't.

It's funny how often our conversations about sex and morality react against "traditional Christian values." But nobody's reading contemporary theological ethicists, who have lots of good things to say. I'll just note one contribution Christian ethics could make to our conversations about sex: sex is social and political as much as it is personal. Feminists used to say this a lot.