Dear Reader,
This week started with an interesting twist (at least for those of you on Facebook as much as I am) when the social media platform (along with sister platforms Instagram and What’s App) went down for a better part of the day. I took a few notes as things progressed and came up with a feature article that is perhaps more confessional than persuasive. Please read gently.
In the meantime, I heard from a few readers this week in response to last week’s newsletter. The first contributor (who is in final interviews to become my official copy editor) writes:
“I'm sure you meant [Rod Dreher’s latest book] Live Not by LIES....not Lives. I'm aware I'm likely the one thousandth person to point this out. Maybe the 999th. Either way, pretty sure I'm late to the editing party.
It also gives me an opportunity to thank you for your always-thoughtful posts. And I'm also comforted to know I'm not the only one with the ‘okay’ opinion on Mr. [Os] Guinness’ talks. The cultured British accent somehow draws us in. I'm often flummoxed by it.”
This reader had a few thoughts to share about last week’s Hot Take on Congress’ next steps to expand the military draft to include women. He wrote:
“In today’s email, you pose the question wondering if this military draft proposal will diminish the masculinity of our servicemen. Well, my opinion is that if you diminish masculinity in society anymore, it may just become a military composed of only feminine men (i.e. women!). Problem solved!!! Sure, there may be some discrepancy in the genitalia seen during showers, but society has already given credence to being attached to the sex you identify with, not born with.
This thought that women are effective on the front line (some roles women are very qualified for) is absolutely laughable. There will always be examples of women keeping up with push ups or other physical benchmarks, but strength is not the only basis for assessing this.
Society constantly neglects the needs and hard wiring of the men involved. It’s our nature to protect women - not a great trait to possess when the soldier next you is in need of help and masculine instinct kicks in and the mission objective is ignored. Also, clouding the minds of young men taught to fight with the distraction of women they may find attractive is just bad news.
Sorry for the diatribe. Just some thoughts from a guy who actually believes men and women are different and that it’s okay as such.”
I love hearing the perspectives of my readers and do my best to publish as many (and as much) of your letters as I can each week. Keep ‘em coming, and as always, thanks for reading.
Craig
P.S.: As a reminder, you’re welcome and encouraged to email me directly with feedback, ideas, links, etc. at cmdunham [at] gmail [dot] com. Just know that, unless you specifically tell me not to, I may quote you here (though it will always be anonymously).
Hot Takes
A few items (there are always plenty) that I took note of this week:
“New Zealand Drops COVID-19 Elimination Strategy Under Pressure from Delta” - It was an admirable attempt, I suppose, but is anyone really surprised that zero tolerance of the coronavirus didn’t work?
“New Zealand on Monday abandoned its long-standing strategy of eliminating coronavirus amid a persistent Delta outbreak, and will instead look to live with the virus and control its spread as its vaccination rate rises.”
Some of the retreat from perfection may have to do with New Zealand’s response a few weeks ago to some of the tightest Covid restrictions implemented by any country. Of course, the new strategy is being met with cheers and jeers:
“Aucklanders turned to social media after the announcement, with many cheering the decision while others expressed concern.
‘I think if we'd been at 1-2 unlinked cases a day and/or no infections in community and no spread outside Auckland (and higher vaccination) I'd be cheering right now,’ one Aucklander said on Twitter.”
Perfection is a goal for baseball pitchers, not virus containment; it’s just not realistic or sustainable, and the prescribed cure is often worse than the disease. It will be interesting to see where the numbers go and whether more New Zealanders get vaccinated in hopes of combatting the spread.
The normally bustling High Street in Auckland’s CBD is largely deserted during a lockdown to curb the spread of a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Auckland, New Zealand, August 26, 2021. REUTERS/Fiona Goodall
“A.G. Merrick Garland Tells FBI To Investigate Parents Who Yell at School Officials About Critical Race Theory” - Here’s this week’s example of the results and ridiculousness stemming from American civility being at an all-time low:
“Taking note of a supposed ‘spike’ in harassment and intimidating behavior directed at public school officials, Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed the FBI to be on the lookout for angry parents demanding accountability at school board meetings.”
What does “being on the lookout” mean? Meetings, for now. Garland’s memo:
“To this end, I am directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders in each federal judicial district within 30 days of the issuance of this memorandum. These meetings will facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff, and will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.”
Not that the above isn’t a threat itself. Ahem.
Here’s the problem (and the linked article does a good job explaining it): speech is not violence. I’ll be the first to push back against parents who show up to board meetings just to make a scene (I’ve got stories if you want ‘em), because we need adults being adults in engaging the issues pertaining to schools.
However, we also need to recognize that, despite the National School Boards Association’s claims that parents sending “threatening letters and cyberbullying” school officials is the same as “domestic terrorism,” there has been little (if any) actual “violence” committed. As the article rightly observes,
“Has some great number of teachers, principals, and district leaders come under violent attack? Of course not. What both the Justice Department and the concerned school boards are really talking about it is the increased number of recent community meetings that have featured angry feedback from parents. These parents are sick of COVID-19 mitigation efforts that have relegated actual students to afterthought status within the education department: the farce of virtual learning, mandatory closure when asymptomatic cases are detected, ceaseless masking. Young people who have the least to fear from the pandemic—the severe disease and death rate for the under-18 crowd is extremely low—have been forced to make tremendous educational and social sacrifices to bend the curve of COVID-19. Families are fed up with a public education system that puts the needs of students last, and they are speaking up about it.”
This is a potentially dangerous precedent that the Attorney General could set in trampling first amendment rights (free speech, peaceful assembly, etc.). However, there’s blame on both sides, and parents - especially Christian parents, for whom there is no place for rude belligerence - should grow up.
Everybody take a chill pill, listen with both ears, and talk to each other.
Attorney General Merrick Garland.
“Teachers Union Boss Accidentally Endorses School Choice While Rushing To Support Masking in Schools” - Speaking of teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers’ president Randi Weingarten may just be the best advocate for whom the school choice movement could hope. Earlier this week, Weingarten tweeted this:
The irony, of course, is Weingarten used the “c” word, which is not something she and her union peeps are big on parents doing, even going so far in the past as to label school-choice programs the “only slightly more polite cousins of segregation.” However, in praising the mom in the picture, it’s as if Weingarten recognizes that parents are and should be responsible to make the best decisions for their children. Who knew?!
The article concludes,
“It's possible that the fight over mask mandates in schools has caused Weingarten to see the light and understand that parents know what is best for their kids. But that's unlikely. Instead, it seems like the politicization of mask mandates has caused Weingarten to temporarily forget that she believes one-size-fits-all schooling is the only way to go.
It's just another example of how the pandemic has exposed the hypocrisy of our national leaders and those who have undue influence over them. By Weingarten's logic, exercising school choice to send your kids to a private school where they will be masked all day is praiseworthy, but wanting to have greater school choice so your kids can get a better education (or any education while public schools are closed) is racist.”
According to the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, the percentage of homeschoolers had been steady at 3.3% since 2012. In March of 2020, 5.4% of households with a school-aged child homeschooled, more than doubling last fall to 11.1%. Then, in spring of 2021, that number nearly doubled to 19.5%. What will 2021-2022’s percentage be? I’ll guess higher. Keep it up, Randi!
American Teachers Union president Randi Weingarten.
FOMO: What We Should Really Fear Missing Out On
On Monday (also known as “The Day That Facebook Died” - try singing it to Don McLean’s “American Pie” for kicks), the relief many felt when the social media platform came back up after being down for six hours paled in comparison to the hope others of us experienced when it went down. Seeing this on Twitter (where many of us went to follow what was happening on Facebook) had raised expectations:
Gone? Could it be that Facebook - this habit/addiction of the past 14 years of my life - was no more? Could it be that a deletion so glorious - yea, even miraculous! - would set free those of us who for decades have spent far more time than we’d confess to trying to solve the problems of the world via blogs and social media? Was this to be our deliverance?
The thought of Facebook’s complete demise was exciting to me because, if true, not only would we be so positively affected, but so, too, would the other 3 billion (no exaggeration) users. We wouldn’t be the only ones dealing with “FOMO” - the “fear of missing out”; everyone would be missing out, which would mean no one would be!
“Please, God, let this be the end,” I prayed. “Let it be over.”
But, sadly, Facebook lived to die another day; unfortunately, so did my FOMO.
One True Tune
It’s not even that my fear of missing out has that much to do with who’s doing what and where (though Facebook and social media are handy for that). Still, think about the absolute fantastical ability we have to keep up with friends in real-time all over the world - something that, in my older age, when it’s harder to make friends at all - has become more precious to me than I once thought. What a time we live in, to be able to connect in an instant with people we love and care about all over the world!
The other equal interest that has kept me on Facebook all these years has been keeping up with and chronicling the culture in the (often foolish) hope of shaping and influencing those in my sphere. I’m fascinated by people of all kinds, and there are all kinds of people on Facebook - some I grew up with and others I’ve never met; several I admire and many I will never understand - yet all make it worth my while to check in on a regular basis. I scroll through my Facebook feed and I think of Psalm 8:3-8:
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.”
We are a busy, bustling people to whom God has given dominion over His creation (Genesis 1:27-28):
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”
As a result, I’m both fascinated and frustrated by all the good and evil we have done, and I just can’t look away - the truth and beauty of God’s “imago dei” is too glorious to behold, while the sin and ugliness of our fallenness is too sad to walk away from without hope of helping. We’re a mixed bag, we humans, and Facebook offers a front-row seat to what Jon Foreman and his band Switchfoot sing about in their song, “The Beautiful Letdown”:
“We are a beautiful letdown
Painfully uncool
The church of the dropouts
The losers, the sinners, the failures and the fools
Oh, what a beautiful letdown
Are we salt in the wound
Let us sing one true tune”
“One true tune” - that’s what I want to hear from others - certainly individually, but preferably as a choir; thus, I’m a fan - of Facebook, of people, and of all the best that we do as we figure out what it means to be created “a little lower than the angels.”
Changed for the Worse
But I despise it all as well. I lament the power, the vitriol, the hate, the sheer meanness of what Facebook has become and led to for several I know - too many I know - who have been changed for the worse. Friends who have followed politicians and pundits into a dead-end corner of argumentative gridlock and become bitter; associates who have secluded themselves in echo chambers, become tone-deaf, and declared themselves experts on racial or gender issues; former students who have walked away from the true, good, and beautiful things they were faithfully and lovingly taught, and are now flaunting their aversion to them as if God were just around for the mocking.
Paul’s words in Galatians 1 come to mind as to the change that I’ve seen happen:
“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.”
Mostly, I dislike what Facebook has surely done to me as well - reprogrammed my brain and attention span in search of the next dopamine hit; served up the next target for me to harshly judge from a distance; trained me to second-guess intentions and (at times) believe the worst in others. What I have seen online has awakened my covetousness - for the success of others and even the blessings of God in their lives - and more than once have I murdered others in my heart on account of words spoken or perspectives shared that challenged or confused or hurt.
And the time! What else could I have done with the accumulated minutes and hours, days and weeks, months and years I have surely sacrificed on the altar of Facebook? I think of this opening lyric from Charlie Peacock’s song, “The Secret of Time”:
“Time is a gift of love and grace
Without time there'd be no time to change
Time to be tried, humbled and broken
Time to hear the word of love spoken”
How much has my time on Facebook kept me from devoting time to these things - these most precious things - and most important, “the word of love spoken?”
Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Hope Deferred, Heart Sick
Perhaps one can understand or even find solidarity with my hopeful emotions on Monday at the thought of a world without “Wastebook.” Despite its benefits (and there are several, as outlined), I wonder what life would be like if everyone in the world - not just me - experienced life without Facebook? How differently would we think from how we think now? How would we relate to the fewer friends we would most surely have? How much more would we hear “the word of love spoken” - from God, from others - apart from our own echo chambers of judgment?
Proverbs 13:12 says,
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”
God, for those of us with sick but hopeful hearts, fulfill our desires - those that go far beyond and deeper than what our Facebook pages mask or portray. Of all that we might fear missing out on, make hearing Your “words of love spoken” top of our list.
(Note: If you’ve not read Nicholas Carr’s 2010 book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, I offer my three-part review (1, 2, 3) for your consideration. An important read.)
Post(erity): “Ten Years of Being Social Online”
Each week, I choose a post from the past that seems apropos of something (of course, you’re always welcome to search the archives yourself whenever you like).
This week’s post - “Ten Years of Being Social Online” - comes from December 14, 2013, and contains a few observations on social media and my use of it. An excerpt:
“While I've taken a few hiatuses from social media (the longest being an intentional six-month respite from blogging), I've never thought seriously about quitting (though like an alcoholic or chain smoker, I promise I can quit anytime). I've read and even written about the dangers of social media, but I still find it engaging and stimulating - not as a replacement for books, but neither as a complete waste of time either.”
Peaches’ Picks
Peaches and I are kind of between books right now, so she suggested we gather a few months’ worth of selections from the family in case you were interested. No rhyme or reason to the books here, but no real stinkers, either, so pick one and enjoy.
Fresh & Random Linkage
“Brain-Cleaning Sleeping Cap Gets US Army Funding” - I want one.
“Russia Launches Movie Actress and Producer to Space for Cosmic Film Shoot” - Anyone tried to justify increased spending for NASA because Russia just put a film actress and producer in space? If not, I’m sure it’s coming.
“William Shatner to Rocket to Edge of Space with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin” - Speaking of space and actors, I’m concerned about a potentially bad “destiny moment” here. “Second star to the right” and all that, but this just seems a tempting of fate for a world already on edge, and I don’t know if Star Trek fans could forgive Jeff Bezos for killing Kirk. As a friend mentioned on Twitter, “It would be like blowing up Gilligan or Opie.” Indeed. Still, Shatner’s prep is epic.
Until next time.
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