As noted yesterday, today is a travel day for the pond.
Up at five and hit the Hume tar hard, and no time to look in the rear view mirror or contemplate the lizard Oz hive mind. (Here comes the fun of EV charging at the Tarcutta terminus).
The pond did however issue a challenge to its coterie of correspondents, and provided a new way forward for those keen to enter an official Loon Pond Competition for Correspondents.
Here's how it works. Click on a reptile to whom you are devoted. Copy the URL, then Head to the archive.
Paste the url into the search function. Now copy and paste the verbiage into some kind of word or rtf file. Examine at your leisure. Select nuggets, or gobbets as long as the blogger comments form allows. Paste these gems into the pond's comments section. Or just do a straight copy and paste. Whatever. Just keep those cards and letters coming Dean Martin style in the pond's comments section. Correspondents must entertain each other in this pond lay day.
Contributors will have officially entered the Loon Pond Competition for Correspondents in search of the craziest contribution.
There is no prize, save for satisfaction at a job well done and a race well won, but participants will be awarded a post-graduate degree in herpetology studies, and may refer to themselves as Doctors of pond punditry.
Of course this assumes the reptiles have still left this archive avenue open, but it was working yesterday, Tamarah is always another day, but we must live in hope.
As for the promised place holder, the pond could have tackled the task a number of ways.
The pond could have provided a link to the keen Keane in Crikey berating the reptiles (*archive), as noted by an early entrant in the competition ...
Late last week, the US again told Australia it should increase defence spending to 3.5% of GDP — a different figure to the 3% urged in March, but one should never expect consistency from Donald Trump. How did America deliver its message? A letter between ministers? Communications between the Pentagon and Department of Defence officials? A speech by the acting US ambassador?
No, via News Corp. Trump’s Pentagon briefed staff at The Australian and directly linked the demand for increased spending to AUKUS: “It is vitally important that they are able to raise defence spending to 3.5% of GDP … we can say with confidence that if Australia does not raise defence spending, it is going to struggle to field the forces required to defend Australia but also to make good on its commitments to others.”
It’s not especially surprising that News Corp should be the chosen mechanism of delivery. It is a US company; it exists to serve the interests of its American owners. Like other large US companies, it also has a complex but ultimately dependent relationship with Trump. And it is not a media company, which might mean its Australian outlets undertake journalism and thus have some working concept of the public interest in the Australian context.
No, via News Corp. Trump’s Pentagon briefed staff at The Australian and directly linked the demand for increased spending to AUKUS: “It is vitally important that they are able to raise defence spending to 3.5% of GDP … we can say with confidence that if Australia does not raise defence spending, it is going to struggle to field the forces required to defend Australia but also to make good on its commitments to others.”
It’s not especially surprising that News Corp should be the chosen mechanism of delivery. It is a US company; it exists to serve the interests of its American owners. Like other large US companies, it also has a complex but ultimately dependent relationship with Trump. And it is not a media company, which might mean its Australian outlets undertake journalism and thus have some working concept of the public interest in the Australian context.
The pond could have looked towards the end of the week, a dismal prospect, with the help of Cathy Young in The Bulwark ...Alaska Summit: Trump and Putin Planning to Carve Up Ukraine, It’s hard to see anything good coming from the meeting of the president and his hero.
If this summit is a bad moment for Ukraine and for everyone else with a stake in opposing Putin’s aggression, it is also likely to be a moment of national disgrace for the United States. There are several possible explanations for Trump’s behavior, one more humiliating than the next: (1) He’s a chump who has been taken in, yet again, by Putin’s crude manipulation; (2) he has simply caved in to Putin’s pressure in yet another TACO episode; (3) he’s an egomaniac so intent on getting a Nobel Peace Prize (preferably along with some location named after him) that he’s perfectly fine with negotiating a peace or even ceasefire agreement even if it amounts to a meaningless piece of paper; and (4) he’s never really gotten over his bromance with Putin.
Barring any surprise developments in the next few days, the only question that remains is whether Trump’s Alaska summit with Putin will rival the Trump-Vance-Zelensky Oval Office fiasco as a national day of shame.
Barring any surprise developments in the next few days, the only question that remains is whether Trump’s Alaska summit with Putin will rival the Trump-Vance-Zelensky Oval Office fiasco as a national day of shame.
Been there before ... different hats, same methodology ...
But The Bulwark offers freebies as an enticement to subscribe, and yesterday is more than a day old in today's world..
The pond thought its place holder should offer something different, a complete change of scenery, something almost timeless, while making some minor use of the "archive way" ...
Come on down blathering, blithering loon David Brooks ...
The header: Why More People in the World Are Feeling Hopeful (Except Us)
The one good thing about this sordid detour, the snap: a bleak photo of road lined with buildings, Credit...Alec Soth/Magnum Photos
Now this piece is already well aged, which might help with certain meat cuts, but not with Brooks.
It can be found direct here, but it's also on the archive here.
Having helped plunge the United States into its current crisis, Brooks' solution is to smirk a lot, wriggle around in his chair, and attempt an ingratiating style which is even more offensive than when he was just a plain old war hawk. (The pond sometimes hate watches his PBS outings with Jonathan Capehart).
Remember that Brooks and his half-baked apologies?
‘We overstepped in that case’ — David Brooks offers another empty apology for supporting Iraq war
On Charlie Rose in November, David Brooks tried to explain away the Iraq war he had supported, saying it hadn’t worked out:
Iraq was Iraq, and it didn’t work out. But at least it was a belief in essential progress – that history is not just an endless war of all against all, but a common march toward a more common future.
Iraq was Iraq, and it didn’t work out. But at least it was a belief in essential progress – that history is not just an endless war of all against all, but a common march toward a more common future.
More generally, how about Andrew J. Bacevich in The Nation suggesting It’s Time for David Brooks to Reckon With David Brooks, The New York Times columnist once worshipped at the altar of American “greatness,” too.
Bacevich is perhaps over kind, but he does allow a few barbs ...
...In 1997, in the midst of the Clinton presidency, Brooks had written that “America’s mission was to advance civilization itself.” In 2017, as Donald Trump gained entry into the Oval Office, he embellished and expanded that mission, describing a nation “assigned by providence to spread democracy and prosperity; to welcome the stranger; to be brother and sister to the whole human race.”
Back in 1997, “a moment of world supremacy unlike any other,” Brooks had worried that his countrymen might not seize the opportunity that was presenting itself. On the cusp of the 21st century, he worried that Americans had “discarded their pursuit of national greatness in just about every particular.” The times called for a leader like Theodore Roosevelt, who wielded that classic “big stick” and undertook monster projects like the Panama Canal. Yet Americans were stuck instead with Bill Clinton, a small-bore triangulator. “We no longer look at history as a succession of golden ages,” Brooks lamented. “And, save in the speeches of politicians who usually have no clue what they are talking about,” America was no longer fulfilling its “special role as the vanguard of civilization.”
By early 2017, with Donald Trump in the White House and Steve Bannon whispering in his ear, matters had become worse still. Americans had seemingly abandoned their calling outright. “The Trump and Bannon anschluss has exposed the hollowness of our patriotism,” wrote Brooks, inserting the now-obligatory reference to Nazi Germany. The November 2016 presidential election had “exposed how attenuated our vision of national greatness has become and how easy it was for Trump and Bannon to replace a youthful vision of American greatness with a reactionary, alien one.” That vision now threatens to leave America as “just another nation, hunkered down in a fearful world.”
What exactly happened between 1997 and 2017, you might ask? What occurred during that “moment of world supremacy” to reduce the United States from a nation summoned to redeem humankind to one hunkered down in fear?
Trust Brooks to have at hand a brow-furrowing explanation. The fault, he explains, lies with an “educational system that doesn’t teach civilizational history or real American history but instead a shapeless multiculturalism,” as well as with “an intellectual culture that can’t imagine providence.” Brooks blames “people on the left who are uncomfortable with patriotism and people on the right who are uncomfortable with the federal government that is necessary to lead our project.”
An America that no longer believes in itself—that’s the problem. In effect, Brooks revises Norma Desmond’s famous complaint about the movies, now repurposed to diagnose an ailing nation: It’s the politics that got small.
Nowhere does he consider the possibility that his formula for “national greatness” just might be so much hooey. Between 1997 and 2017, after all, egged on by people like David Brooks, Americans took a stab at “greatness,” with the execrable Donald Trump now numbering among the eventual results.
Back in 1997, “a moment of world supremacy unlike any other,” Brooks had worried that his countrymen might not seize the opportunity that was presenting itself. On the cusp of the 21st century, he worried that Americans had “discarded their pursuit of national greatness in just about every particular.” The times called for a leader like Theodore Roosevelt, who wielded that classic “big stick” and undertook monster projects like the Panama Canal. Yet Americans were stuck instead with Bill Clinton, a small-bore triangulator. “We no longer look at history as a succession of golden ages,” Brooks lamented. “And, save in the speeches of politicians who usually have no clue what they are talking about,” America was no longer fulfilling its “special role as the vanguard of civilization.”
By early 2017, with Donald Trump in the White House and Steve Bannon whispering in his ear, matters had become worse still. Americans had seemingly abandoned their calling outright. “The Trump and Bannon anschluss has exposed the hollowness of our patriotism,” wrote Brooks, inserting the now-obligatory reference to Nazi Germany. The November 2016 presidential election had “exposed how attenuated our vision of national greatness has become and how easy it was for Trump and Bannon to replace a youthful vision of American greatness with a reactionary, alien one.” That vision now threatens to leave America as “just another nation, hunkered down in a fearful world.”
What exactly happened between 1997 and 2017, you might ask? What occurred during that “moment of world supremacy” to reduce the United States from a nation summoned to redeem humankind to one hunkered down in fear?
Trust Brooks to have at hand a brow-furrowing explanation. The fault, he explains, lies with an “educational system that doesn’t teach civilizational history or real American history but instead a shapeless multiculturalism,” as well as with “an intellectual culture that can’t imagine providence.” Brooks blames “people on the left who are uncomfortable with patriotism and people on the right who are uncomfortable with the federal government that is necessary to lead our project.”
An America that no longer believes in itself—that’s the problem. In effect, Brooks revises Norma Desmond’s famous complaint about the movies, now repurposed to diagnose an ailing nation: It’s the politics that got small.
Nowhere does he consider the possibility that his formula for “national greatness” just might be so much hooey. Between 1997 and 2017, after all, egged on by people like David Brooks, Americans took a stab at “greatness,” with the execrable Donald Trump now numbering among the eventual results.
Now see how you can cope with a serve of current Brooks hooey ...
I hope you don’t mind if I pierce the general gloom with a piece of wonderful news. More people around the world report that they are living better lives than before. Plus they are becoming more hopeful about the future. In a new survey, the Gallup organization interviewed people across 142 countries and asked them a series of questions to determine whether they felt they were thriving in their lives or struggling or, worst of all, suffering.
The number of people who say they are thriving has been rising steadily for a decade. The number of people who say they are suffering is down to 7 percent globally, tying with the lowest level since 2007. This trend is truly worldwide, with strong gains in well-being in countries as far-flung as Kosovo, Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Paraguay.
Unfortunately, there is a little bad news. Some people reported sharp declines in well-being. That would be us. The share of the population that is thriving is falling in America, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand. In 2007, 67 percent of Americans and Canadians said they were thriving. Now it’s down to 49 percent.
To put it another way, the nations with some of the highest standards of living are seeing the greatest declines in well-being. We still enjoy higher absolute levels of well-being than nations in the developing world do, but the trend lines are terrible.
This should not be a surprise. I would say the most important social trend over the past decade has been the disconnect between our nation’s economic health and its social health. Over these years the American G.D.P. has surged, wages have risen, unemployment has been low, income inequality has gone down. At the same time, the suicide rate has surged, social isolation has surged, social trust is near rock bottom. According to a Gallup survey from January, the share of Americans who say they are “very satisfied” with their lives has hit a new low. According to the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer report, only 30 percent of Americans feel optimistic for the next generation.
What’s going on here?
The number of people who say they are thriving has been rising steadily for a decade. The number of people who say they are suffering is down to 7 percent globally, tying with the lowest level since 2007. This trend is truly worldwide, with strong gains in well-being in countries as far-flung as Kosovo, Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Paraguay.
Unfortunately, there is a little bad news. Some people reported sharp declines in well-being. That would be us. The share of the population that is thriving is falling in America, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand. In 2007, 67 percent of Americans and Canadians said they were thriving. Now it’s down to 49 percent.
To put it another way, the nations with some of the highest standards of living are seeing the greatest declines in well-being. We still enjoy higher absolute levels of well-being than nations in the developing world do, but the trend lines are terrible.
This should not be a surprise. I would say the most important social trend over the past decade has been the disconnect between our nation’s economic health and its social health. Over these years the American G.D.P. has surged, wages have risen, unemployment has been low, income inequality has gone down. At the same time, the suicide rate has surged, social isolation has surged, social trust is near rock bottom. According to a Gallup survey from January, the share of Americans who say they are “very satisfied” with their lives has hit a new low. According to the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer report, only 30 percent of Americans feel optimistic for the next generation.
What’s going on here?
Oh please sir, the pond can answer that.
Hooey, a giant-sized serve of hooey ...
People thrive when they live in societies with rising standards of living and dense networks of relationships, and where they feel their lives have a clear sense of purpose and meaning. That holy trinity undergirds any healthy society. It’s economic, social and spiritual.
I spoke with Dan Witters of Gallup, who broke down some of the contributors to social and spiritual health. People who are thriving are more likely to feel a strong attachment to their community. They feel proud of where they live. People are more likely to experience greater well-being when they join congregations and regularly attend religious services. Feeling your life has purpose and meaning, he adds, is a strong driver of where you think you are going to be five years from now.
The most comprehensive study of well-being is probably the Global Flourishing Study, led by Tyler J. VanderWeele of Harvard and Byron Johnson of Baylor. Their group has interviewed 200,000 people across 22 countries beginning in 2022. They found that a few countries do well across material, social and spiritual measures, notably Israel and Poland. A lot of countries score well materially, but the people who live in them are less likely to have a sense of clear purpose and meaning, like Japan and the Scandinavian nations. Other countries don’t do as well economically, but do very well socially and spiritually, like Indonesia, Mexico and the Philippines.
I’d say that the nations that are doing well in that Gallup thriving survey are those that are experiencing rising living standards while preserving their traditional social arrangements and value systems. The nations like America that are seeing declining well-being are fine economically, but their social and spiritual environments are deteriorating.
Why have rich nations lagged behind in this way? VanderWeele theorizes that maybe it’s a question of priorities. “I tend to think you end up getting what you value most,” he told me. “When a society is oriented toward economic gain, you will be moderately successful, but not if it’s done at the expense of meaning and community.”'
I’d add that we in the West have aggressively embraced values that when taken to excess are poisonous to our well-being. Over the past several decades, according to the World Values Survey, North America, Western Europe and the English-speaking nations have split off culturally from the rest of the world. Since the 1960s we have adopted values that are more secular, more individualistic and more oriented around self-expression than the values that prevail in the Eastern Orthodox European countries such as Serbia, the Confucian countries like South Korea and the mostly Catholic Latin countries like Mexico.
The countries that made this values shift are seeing their well-being decline, according to that Gallup thriving survey. The countries that resisted this shift are seeing their well-being improve. The master trend in recent Western culture has been to emancipate the individual from the group, and now we are paying the social and spiritual price.
I spoke with Dan Witters of Gallup, who broke down some of the contributors to social and spiritual health. People who are thriving are more likely to feel a strong attachment to their community. They feel proud of where they live. People are more likely to experience greater well-being when they join congregations and regularly attend religious services. Feeling your life has purpose and meaning, he adds, is a strong driver of where you think you are going to be five years from now.
The most comprehensive study of well-being is probably the Global Flourishing Study, led by Tyler J. VanderWeele of Harvard and Byron Johnson of Baylor. Their group has interviewed 200,000 people across 22 countries beginning in 2022. They found that a few countries do well across material, social and spiritual measures, notably Israel and Poland. A lot of countries score well materially, but the people who live in them are less likely to have a sense of clear purpose and meaning, like Japan and the Scandinavian nations. Other countries don’t do as well economically, but do very well socially and spiritually, like Indonesia, Mexico and the Philippines.
I’d say that the nations that are doing well in that Gallup thriving survey are those that are experiencing rising living standards while preserving their traditional social arrangements and value systems. The nations like America that are seeing declining well-being are fine economically, but their social and spiritual environments are deteriorating.
Why have rich nations lagged behind in this way? VanderWeele theorizes that maybe it’s a question of priorities. “I tend to think you end up getting what you value most,” he told me. “When a society is oriented toward economic gain, you will be moderately successful, but not if it’s done at the expense of meaning and community.”'
I’d add that we in the West have aggressively embraced values that when taken to excess are poisonous to our well-being. Over the past several decades, according to the World Values Survey, North America, Western Europe and the English-speaking nations have split off culturally from the rest of the world. Since the 1960s we have adopted values that are more secular, more individualistic and more oriented around self-expression than the values that prevail in the Eastern Orthodox European countries such as Serbia, the Confucian countries like South Korea and the mostly Catholic Latin countries like Mexico.
The countries that made this values shift are seeing their well-being decline, according to that Gallup thriving survey. The countries that resisted this shift are seeing their well-being improve. The master trend in recent Western culture has been to emancipate the individual from the group, and now we are paying the social and spiritual price.
Oh please, a little counter-balance Mr Bacevich, and with a generous serve of irony, hypocrisy and epic forgetfulness.
Sock it to him ...
Say what you will about the shortcomings of the American educational system and the country’s intellectual culture, they had far less to do with creating Trump than did popular revulsion prompted by specific policies that Brooks, among others, enthusiastically promoted. Not that he is inclined to tally up the consequences. Only as a sort of postscript to his litany of contemporary American ailments does he refer even in passing to what he calls the “humiliations of Iraq.”
A great phrase, that. Yet much like, say, the “tragedy of Vietnam” or the “crisis of Watergate,” it conceals more than it reveals. Here, in short, is a succinct historical reference that cries out for further explanation. It bursts at the seams with implications demanding to be unpacked, weighed, and scrutinized. Brooks shrugs off Iraq as a minor embarrassment, the equivalent of having shown up at a dinner party wearing the wrong clothes.
Under the circumstances, it’s easy to forget that, back in 2003, he and other members of the church of America the Redeemer devoutly supported the invasion of Iraq. They welcomed war. They urged it. They did so not because Saddam Hussein was uniquely evil—although he was evil enough—but because they saw in such a war the means for the United States to accomplish its salvific mission. Toppling Saddam and transforming Iraq would provide the mechanism for affirming and renewing America’s “national greatness.”
Anyone daring to disagree with that proposition they denounced as craven or cowardly. Writing at the time, Brooks disparaged those opposing the war as mere “marchers.” They were effete, pretentious, ineffective, and absurd. “These people are always in the streets with their banners and puppets. They march against the IMF and World Bank one day, and against whatever war happens to be going on the next.… They just march against.”
Perhaps space constraints did not permit Brooks in his recent column to spell out the “humiliations” that resulted and that even today continue to accumulate. Here in any event is a brief inventory of what that euphemism conceals: thousands of Americans needlessly killed; tens of thousands grievously wounded in body or spirit; trillions of dollars wasted; millions of Iraqis dead, injured, or displaced; this nation’s moral standing compromised by its resort to torture, kidnapping, assassination, and other perversions; a region thrown into chaos and threatened by radical terrorist entities like the Islamic State that US military actions helped foster. And now, if only as an oblique second-order bonus, we have Donald Trump’s elevation to the presidency to boot.
In refusing to reckon with the results of the war he once so ardently endorsed, Brooks is hardly alone. Members of the church of America the Redeemer, Democrats and Republicans alike, are demonstrably incapable of rendering an honest accounting of what their missionary efforts have yielded.
A great phrase, that. Yet much like, say, the “tragedy of Vietnam” or the “crisis of Watergate,” it conceals more than it reveals. Here, in short, is a succinct historical reference that cries out for further explanation. It bursts at the seams with implications demanding to be unpacked, weighed, and scrutinized. Brooks shrugs off Iraq as a minor embarrassment, the equivalent of having shown up at a dinner party wearing the wrong clothes.
Under the circumstances, it’s easy to forget that, back in 2003, he and other members of the church of America the Redeemer devoutly supported the invasion of Iraq. They welcomed war. They urged it. They did so not because Saddam Hussein was uniquely evil—although he was evil enough—but because they saw in such a war the means for the United States to accomplish its salvific mission. Toppling Saddam and transforming Iraq would provide the mechanism for affirming and renewing America’s “national greatness.”
Anyone daring to disagree with that proposition they denounced as craven or cowardly. Writing at the time, Brooks disparaged those opposing the war as mere “marchers.” They were effete, pretentious, ineffective, and absurd. “These people are always in the streets with their banners and puppets. They march against the IMF and World Bank one day, and against whatever war happens to be going on the next.… They just march against.”
Perhaps space constraints did not permit Brooks in his recent column to spell out the “humiliations” that resulted and that even today continue to accumulate. Here in any event is a brief inventory of what that euphemism conceals: thousands of Americans needlessly killed; tens of thousands grievously wounded in body or spirit; trillions of dollars wasted; millions of Iraqis dead, injured, or displaced; this nation’s moral standing compromised by its resort to torture, kidnapping, assassination, and other perversions; a region thrown into chaos and threatened by radical terrorist entities like the Islamic State that US military actions helped foster. And now, if only as an oblique second-order bonus, we have Donald Trump’s elevation to the presidency to boot.
In refusing to reckon with the results of the war he once so ardently endorsed, Brooks is hardly alone. Members of the church of America the Redeemer, Democrats and Republicans alike, are demonstrably incapable of rendering an honest accounting of what their missionary efforts have yielded.
Well yes, you just get hooey, and without even a little eggnog to help the gigantic swill of hooey go down ...
Two groups are particularly hard hit. First, young people. Those of us who are older can at least remember the pre-Bowling Alone era. But young people now have to grow up in a more distrustful and atomized world. It used to be that people’s happiness levels followed a U-shaped curve. People felt happier when young, then it dipped in middle age (it’s called having teenage children), and then happiness levels rose again around retirement. Now the curve looks more like a slope. People are more miserable when young, doing OK in middle age and happiest in their senior years. Young Americans are the worst off of all age groups in that Global Flourishing Study, as are young people in Australia, Brazil, Germany, Sweden, Britain and other Western countries.
Progressives, and especially young progressives, are the other group that is suffering. Since researchers started measuring these things in 1972, conservatives have almost always been happier than progressives because conservatives are more likely to do the things that correlate with happiness, like get married, go to church, give to charity, feel patriotic, have more sex and feel their life has meaning.
But around 2011 something changed. Lower happiness levels transmogrified into higher levels of depression and mental illness, a related but different thing. That year, young progressives began reporting a significant rise in depression rates. A few years later, conservatives began reporting a similar rise, but not to the same degree. A 2024 survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression found that 35 percent of “very conservative” college students said they suffer from poor mental health at least half the time, which is terrible, but 57 percent of “very liberal” students did, which is horrendous.
There’s a lot going on to explain these depression rates, but one of them has got to be that progressives are more likely to embrace the autonomy and social freedom ethos described in that World Values Survey, and this hyper-individualistic ethos is not good for your social and spiritual health.
Let’s be clear about what’s happened here: greed. Americans have become so obsessed with economic success that we’ve neglected the social and moral conditions that undergird human flourishing. Schools spend more time teaching professional knowledge than they do social and spiritual knowledge. The prevailing values worship individual choice and undermine the core commitments that precede choice — our love for family, neighborhood, nation and the truth. There’s a lot of cultural work to do.
Progressives, and especially young progressives, are the other group that is suffering. Since researchers started measuring these things in 1972, conservatives have almost always been happier than progressives because conservatives are more likely to do the things that correlate with happiness, like get married, go to church, give to charity, feel patriotic, have more sex and feel their life has meaning.
But around 2011 something changed. Lower happiness levels transmogrified into higher levels of depression and mental illness, a related but different thing. That year, young progressives began reporting a significant rise in depression rates. A few years later, conservatives began reporting a similar rise, but not to the same degree. A 2024 survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression found that 35 percent of “very conservative” college students said they suffer from poor mental health at least half the time, which is terrible, but 57 percent of “very liberal” students did, which is horrendous.
There’s a lot going on to explain these depression rates, but one of them has got to be that progressives are more likely to embrace the autonomy and social freedom ethos described in that World Values Survey, and this hyper-individualistic ethos is not good for your social and spiritual health.
Let’s be clear about what’s happened here: greed. Americans have become so obsessed with economic success that we’ve neglected the social and moral conditions that undergird human flourishing. Schools spend more time teaching professional knowledge than they do social and spiritual knowledge. The prevailing values worship individual choice and undermine the core commitments that precede choice — our love for family, neighborhood, nation and the truth. There’s a lot of cultural work to do.
The pond gets it; generating hooey is a comfortable and comforting gig, but the closing note almost made the pond retch, a kind of poor person's mindless summary for benefit of AI ...
And now to a Times double down with Douthat ...
If there's a more contemptible scribbler for the Times than Brooks, it surely has to be Douthat, this outing available here, but also via the archive here ...
Before starting on the dribble titled Will MAHA Change America?, please allow the pond a pre-emptive strike by citing Jonathan Cohn's outing in The Bulwark under the header The Most Damaging RFK Jr. Decision Yet, He’s Making America Great Again—for lethal pathogens.
Cohn started with a bit of "what if" sci fi style speculation:
"The year is 2035 and the world is dealing with another pandemic, only this time it’s even worse. A bird flu strain has made the leap that scientists have long feared, evolving into a virus that spreads as quickly as COVID-19 but kills at a much higher rate. Businesses and schools have shut down. Economies have crashed. The infected are overwhelming hospitals.
In a virtual press conference, officials announce that there is hope, because the same kind of vaccine that got us through COVID will work this time as well. The catch is that it will take a few more months to develop and produce. And the death toll, already in the millions for the United States alone, is rising fast.
A reporter on the zoom call asks: Why will it take so long? Well, the officials explain, we had a chance about a decade ago to prepare for this by creating a ready-to-deploy vaccine platform that would have shaved months from the process. But our predecessors who were in charge back then killed the funding. So we don’t have that head start."
In a virtual press conference, officials announce that there is hope, because the same kind of vaccine that got us through COVID will work this time as well. The catch is that it will take a few more months to develop and produce. And the death toll, already in the millions for the United States alone, is rising fast.
A reporter on the zoom call asks: Why will it take so long? Well, the officials explain, we had a chance about a decade ago to prepare for this by creating a ready-to-deploy vaccine platform that would have shaved months from the process. But our predecessors who were in charge back then killed the funding. So we don’t have that head start."
Then Cohn got down and dirty with the luddite:
EVERYTHING ABOUT THE ABOVE SCENARIO is hypothetical—except the final part about the funding. That part happened last week.
On Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the Trump administration was canceling about half a billion dollars of federal contracts with companies and institutions that have been working to develop the next generation of mRNA vaccines.
MRNA stands for messenger RNA, the naturally occurring genetic material that cells use as their guide for making proteins. Vaccines with mRNA have a synthetic version of the material, with “coding” instructing cells to manufacture proteins that are part of viruses or other hostile elements, so that the body’s immune system can learn to recognize and fight them.
Research in this field goes back decades, with the first clinical trials of an mRNA vaccine (for a cancer treatment) in 2008. In early 2020, when COVID hit, the technology was ready for primetime. Scientists developed, tested, and mass produced mRNA vaccines that contained instructions for a protein spike on the coronavirus surface.
The process took about eleven months—a medical miracle given vaccines usually take years to develop1—and it worked, saving literally millions of lives worldwide. Now the hope is to improve on that progress, making it possible to develop and deploy mRNA vaccines even more quickly in response to future outbreaks and to other medical threats, as well.
To realize that potential, the Biden administration decided to invest heavily in mRNA research, much of it through an agency called BARDA, which is the federal government’s R&D division when it comes to pandemic and bioterrorism preparedness. But BARDA is part of HHS, which means it’s now under the control of Kennedy, whose hostility to vaccines generally—and mRNA specifically—is no secret.
In May, he announced that he was canceling a contract with Moderna—which produced one of the original COVID shots—to develop mRNA vaccines for other purposes. Now he’s canceling nearly two dozen more.
Kennedy made the announcement in a two-and-a-half minute video and accompanying press release, in which he stated “we reviewed the science” and “listened to the experts.” Several days later—after repeatedly declining to answer inquiries (including mine) about just what science and experts he had in mind—HHS updated its online press release with a link on the word “data.”2
The link is revealing, though more for what it says about Kennedy than what it says about mRNA technology. It goes to a page with a long list of studies that purportedly show the harms of the vaccines. But, notably, the page itself is not a government website, nor is it from a peer-reviewed journal or some other reputable source. Rather, it’s a storage page on an open website where anybody can post data, coding, or other research tools for sharing.
And what you’ll find on the website is exactly the sort of stuff you’d expect to find on a site with no gatekeepers. The authors listed on the mRNA page include a scientist who has touted the benefits of hydroxychloroquine and another who has claimed the COVID vaccine creates toxins in the body. According to the listing, they and two collaborators originally compiled the citations for Toxic Shock, an independently published 2024 book that claims that mRNA vaccines “are the real menace to our country’s long-term wellbeing.”
That book, by the way, has an introduction by Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican senator known for spreading vaccine misinformation. It also includes a chapter from author Naomi Wolf, who famously claimed (among many other things) that COVID vaccines were causing miscarriage.
To say these views are out of step with the scientific consensus would be an understatement.
Here, for example, is what top researchers have actually found when it comes to the claim on vaccines and miscarriage.
And here’s a Factcheck.org overview of some other misleading or false claims that show up regularly in anti-mRNA rhetoric.
And here’s an article from STAT3 on all the experts who think mRNA vaccines look like the best weapon against future pandemics.
But you wouldn’t know any of this by listening to Kennedy speak. That’s because he has perfected the art of undermining public confidence in vaccines by leaning on a tiny handful of fringe researchers and then sounding “sciencey”—throwing around bits of medical jargon—to give the impression he’s an expert himself.
“This is what upsets me about him the most—and believe me, there are a lot of choices—but what upsets me most about him is that he couches his reasoning in scientific terms,” Paul Offit, physician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told me in a phone interview.4 “It makes it sound like he knows what he’s talking about when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about at all.”
On Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the Trump administration was canceling about half a billion dollars of federal contracts with companies and institutions that have been working to develop the next generation of mRNA vaccines.
MRNA stands for messenger RNA, the naturally occurring genetic material that cells use as their guide for making proteins. Vaccines with mRNA have a synthetic version of the material, with “coding” instructing cells to manufacture proteins that are part of viruses or other hostile elements, so that the body’s immune system can learn to recognize and fight them.
Research in this field goes back decades, with the first clinical trials of an mRNA vaccine (for a cancer treatment) in 2008. In early 2020, when COVID hit, the technology was ready for primetime. Scientists developed, tested, and mass produced mRNA vaccines that contained instructions for a protein spike on the coronavirus surface.
The process took about eleven months—a medical miracle given vaccines usually take years to develop1—and it worked, saving literally millions of lives worldwide. Now the hope is to improve on that progress, making it possible to develop and deploy mRNA vaccines even more quickly in response to future outbreaks and to other medical threats, as well.
To realize that potential, the Biden administration decided to invest heavily in mRNA research, much of it through an agency called BARDA, which is the federal government’s R&D division when it comes to pandemic and bioterrorism preparedness. But BARDA is part of HHS, which means it’s now under the control of Kennedy, whose hostility to vaccines generally—and mRNA specifically—is no secret.
In May, he announced that he was canceling a contract with Moderna—which produced one of the original COVID shots—to develop mRNA vaccines for other purposes. Now he’s canceling nearly two dozen more.
Kennedy made the announcement in a two-and-a-half minute video and accompanying press release, in which he stated “we reviewed the science” and “listened to the experts.” Several days later—after repeatedly declining to answer inquiries (including mine) about just what science and experts he had in mind—HHS updated its online press release with a link on the word “data.”2
The link is revealing, though more for what it says about Kennedy than what it says about mRNA technology. It goes to a page with a long list of studies that purportedly show the harms of the vaccines. But, notably, the page itself is not a government website, nor is it from a peer-reviewed journal or some other reputable source. Rather, it’s a storage page on an open website where anybody can post data, coding, or other research tools for sharing.
And what you’ll find on the website is exactly the sort of stuff you’d expect to find on a site with no gatekeepers. The authors listed on the mRNA page include a scientist who has touted the benefits of hydroxychloroquine and another who has claimed the COVID vaccine creates toxins in the body. According to the listing, they and two collaborators originally compiled the citations for Toxic Shock, an independently published 2024 book that claims that mRNA vaccines “are the real menace to our country’s long-term wellbeing.”
That book, by the way, has an introduction by Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican senator known for spreading vaccine misinformation. It also includes a chapter from author Naomi Wolf, who famously claimed (among many other things) that COVID vaccines were causing miscarriage.
To say these views are out of step with the scientific consensus would be an understatement.
Here, for example, is what top researchers have actually found when it comes to the claim on vaccines and miscarriage.
And here’s a Factcheck.org overview of some other misleading or false claims that show up regularly in anti-mRNA rhetoric.
And here’s an article from STAT3 on all the experts who think mRNA vaccines look like the best weapon against future pandemics.
But you wouldn’t know any of this by listening to Kennedy speak. That’s because he has perfected the art of undermining public confidence in vaccines by leaning on a tiny handful of fringe researchers and then sounding “sciencey”—throwing around bits of medical jargon—to give the impression he’s an expert himself.
“This is what upsets me about him the most—and believe me, there are a lot of choices—but what upsets me most about him is that he couches his reasoning in scientific terms,” Paul Offit, physician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told me in a phone interview.4 “It makes it sound like he knows what he’s talking about when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about at all.”
By way of contrast, Douthat routinely attempts the impossible task of reconciling conflicting impulses, and the result is a complicated marriage ...
This was his attempt to deal with MAGA medicine ...
The movement that helped make Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the secretary of health and human services converged politically with right-wing populism only in the last few years, but in spirit the holistic, outsider critique of modern medicine had a lot in common with MAGA populism long before the “MAHA” neologism came along.
Like populism, the MAHA movement spoke to widely shared frustrations with a medical establishment that didn’t seem to have answers to persistent problems and left people who felt failed by the system feeling unheard and disdained.
But like populism’s critique of insider politics, the outsider critique of the medical establishment has always struggled to offer an alternative vision that’s rigorous rather than credulous. And like MAGA populism, MAHA now finds itself in a complicated marriage with a Republican Party that still retains its pre-Trump orientation toward business interests, drug companies and Big Food.
R.F.K. Jr. entered office promising to address two great challenges in American public health, the spread of obesity and the resilience of chronic illness, and in an ideal world an outsider’s critique would have a lot to offer on both fronts.
The roots of the American weight problem are endlessly debated, with car culture and suburbia offered as non-dietary explanations for why we’re fatter than the Europeans. The anti-corporate critique of how we grow and make and sell our food nonetheless has a certain plausibility, and the MAHA impulse to push Americans away from chemicals and processed foods seems like an experiment worth trying.
Meanwhile, chronic illness, and especially the lengthening list of ailments that lack a clear causal explanation, is a zone where the medical establishment has largely failed, and a new approach with new eyes, new studies and new data would be entirely welcome.
Like populism, the MAHA movement spoke to widely shared frustrations with a medical establishment that didn’t seem to have answers to persistent problems and left people who felt failed by the system feeling unheard and disdained.
But like populism’s critique of insider politics, the outsider critique of the medical establishment has always struggled to offer an alternative vision that’s rigorous rather than credulous. And like MAGA populism, MAHA now finds itself in a complicated marriage with a Republican Party that still retains its pre-Trump orientation toward business interests, drug companies and Big Food.
R.F.K. Jr. entered office promising to address two great challenges in American public health, the spread of obesity and the resilience of chronic illness, and in an ideal world an outsider’s critique would have a lot to offer on both fronts.
The roots of the American weight problem are endlessly debated, with car culture and suburbia offered as non-dietary explanations for why we’re fatter than the Europeans. The anti-corporate critique of how we grow and make and sell our food nonetheless has a certain plausibility, and the MAHA impulse to push Americans away from chemicals and processed foods seems like an experiment worth trying.
Meanwhile, chronic illness, and especially the lengthening list of ailments that lack a clear causal explanation, is a zone where the medical establishment has largely failed, and a new approach with new eyes, new studies and new data would be entirely welcome.
You see? A classic dog whistle, a new approach with new eyes, new studies and new data would be entirely welcome, and yet in this canny oyster dance, there must be an accompanying retreat ...a billy goat butt ...
But the MAHA approach so far is both self-undermining and politically constrained. It self-undermines by matching the medical dogmas it disdains with dogmas of its own, particularly a zeal for the “natural” that underplays pharmaceutical solutions and imagines that public health is just a matter of stripping away late-modern toxins and restoring ruddy pre-1960s vigor.
Certainly modernity has its toxic side and nature has a lot of wisdom. But the natural world also has a lot of ways of killing us and torturing us, which human ingenuity enables us to overcome. And the pre-1960s landscape yielded better health for some people and premature death for many, many others.
So you need to strike a balance, where you tout organic produce and whole grains and exercise regimes to fight obesity … but also embrace the revolutionary potential of the new wave of weight-loss drugs. Or where you look for the roots of chronic illnesses in chemicals and pollutants …. but also remain open to the possibility that a lot of chronically sick people are dealing with infections that might be cured with the right mix of prescription drugs. (I always tell people that in my experience fighting a chronic tick-borne illness, some of the weird alternative therapies I tried were very helpful, but the high doses of antibiotics were essential.)
Certainly modernity has its toxic side and nature has a lot of wisdom. But the natural world also has a lot of ways of killing us and torturing us, which human ingenuity enables us to overcome. And the pre-1960s landscape yielded better health for some people and premature death for many, many others.
So you need to strike a balance, where you tout organic produce and whole grains and exercise regimes to fight obesity … but also embrace the revolutionary potential of the new wave of weight-loss drugs. Or where you look for the roots of chronic illnesses in chemicals and pollutants …. but also remain open to the possibility that a lot of chronically sick people are dealing with infections that might be cured with the right mix of prescription drugs. (I always tell people that in my experience fighting a chronic tick-borne illness, some of the weird alternative therapies I tried were very helpful, but the high doses of antibiotics were essential.)
You'd almost think that Douthat was normal ...
And that balance is completely absent from MAHA when it comes to the question of vaccines. There are plenty of legitimate questions about the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines and the true rate of vaccine injuries and the right schedule for childhood vaccinations. But the holistic critique never manages to just stay with those specific issues, while conceding the general truth that vaccines are mostly good. Instead the impulse is always to make vaccines a grand taproot of modern health problems, whether it’s through implausible claims about the scale of mRNA vaccine side effects or the indefatigible-yet-unsuccessful efforts to establish a vaccine-autism connection. And the refusal to be disabused by data suggests a deep instinct that vaccination in general is just too unnatural to be trusted — a very human impulse, clearly, but not one that can guide public health.
R.F.K. Jr. was an exemplar of this instinct as an activist; as health secretary he’s somewhat trapped by it. His moves on vaccines have been aggressive and unwise, especially the recent decision to cancel all funding for further mRNA vaccine research. Yet they aren’t aggressive enough for his allies and supporters, who already feel aggrieved that he isn’t delivering a fuller vaccine-skeptical crusade.
At the same time, he also looks like a prisoner of coalition politics, because the G.O.P. is still the party of Big Agriculture and industry groups, which seem likely to impose hard limits on any big push to make the American food supply healthier.
An analogy to the Trump administration’s economic policy is useful here. The most ambitious populists sought a radically different approach to right-wing economics, but what they got was Trump’s longstanding tariff fixation stapled onto the traditional G.O.P. array of deficit-financed tax cuts. Confronted with the MAHA challenge, likewise, the old corporate powers will make a few concessions on ingredients and learn to live with anti-vaccine sentiment — but otherwise the status quo may win.
R.F.K. Jr. was an exemplar of this instinct as an activist; as health secretary he’s somewhat trapped by it. His moves on vaccines have been aggressive and unwise, especially the recent decision to cancel all funding for further mRNA vaccine research. Yet they aren’t aggressive enough for his allies and supporters, who already feel aggrieved that he isn’t delivering a fuller vaccine-skeptical crusade.
At the same time, he also looks like a prisoner of coalition politics, because the G.O.P. is still the party of Big Agriculture and industry groups, which seem likely to impose hard limits on any big push to make the American food supply healthier.
An analogy to the Trump administration’s economic policy is useful here. The most ambitious populists sought a radically different approach to right-wing economics, but what they got was Trump’s longstanding tariff fixation stapled onto the traditional G.O.P. array of deficit-financed tax cuts. Confronted with the MAHA challenge, likewise, the old corporate powers will make a few concessions on ingredients and learn to live with anti-vaccine sentiment — but otherwise the status quo may win.
Again the dog whistle, the talk of old corporate powers carrying on, the status quo winning and yet we've noted that's a bad thing, because the medical establishment has largely failed, and a new approach with new eyes, new studies and new data would be entirely welcome.
Now Douthat routinely divides those who can manage the difficult task of reading him.
If you attend Reddit, you might read ...
If you attend George Packer in The Atlantic, you might read How Ross Douthat’s Proselytizing Falls Short, The columnist’s new book, Believe, argues for religion from a rational perspective. It won’t make a believer out of me. (*archive link)
I’m a hard target for Ross Douthat’s evangelism. When I got a copy of his new book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, I felt an impulse to answer, Nope: Why You Should Leave Everyone Alone. I come from a family of atheists and am a lifelong nonbeliever. At difficult times I’ve tried very hard to cross the river into the kingdom of faith—read the Jewish Bible and the New Testament, attended church and temple services, immersed myself in Kierkegaard, and stared at the sky for a flicker of divinity. None of it made any difference. The universe remains random, empty, cold. We’re alone in the dark, nothing means anything until we give it meaning, and death is the end. These are comfortless facts, but I’ve come to accept and even, at times, embrace them, with no desire to disenchant anyone else.
As for Douthat and the cantaloupe clown, try Ross Douthat Once Again Downplays the Trump Threat:
“THERE WILL BE NO TRUMP COUP,” WAS THE HEADLINE of an October 20, 2020 New York Times column (*archive link) in which Ross Douthat downplayed suggestions that the president, if defeated, might use extralegal means to try to cling to power. Needless to say, that turned out to be dead wrong.
Having minimized the dangers posed by Donald Trump three years ago, Douthat is now back with a column (*archive link) repeating the error, minimizing the dangers posed by Trump while maximizing the perils supposedly posed by Nikki Haley. “Why Nikki Haley Could Be the Most Dangerous President” is the arresting title of his January 20, 2024 column. Is Douthat serious? Apparently so. What is his argument?
With the withdrawal from the race of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Sunday, Haley, whose candidacy is facing its final gasp in this week’s New Hampshire primary, is the only Republican alternative to Trump still standing. But, warns Douthat, when it comes to foreign policy and national security, “a Haley presidency could be more dangerous than a second Trump term.”
Having minimized the dangers posed by Donald Trump three years ago, Douthat is now back with a column (*archive link) repeating the error, minimizing the dangers posed by Trump while maximizing the perils supposedly posed by Nikki Haley. “Why Nikki Haley Could Be the Most Dangerous President” is the arresting title of his January 20, 2024 column. Is Douthat serious? Apparently so. What is his argument?
With the withdrawal from the race of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Sunday, Haley, whose candidacy is facing its final gasp in this week’s New Hampshire primary, is the only Republican alternative to Trump still standing. But, warns Douthat, when it comes to foreign policy and national security, “a Haley presidency could be more dangerous than a second Trump term.”
In short, his method is to balance the mythical, the mystical and the philosophical in a way that seems worthy of our hole in the bucket man. Cf, Donald Trump, Man of Destiny (*archive link).
In short, Douthat isn't so much the solution as the cause, isn't so much the analytical cure as the verbal diarrhea disease.
Why did God Favour France?, archive here ...
The pond gets very tired very quickly by this relentless, never ending proselytising ... and the blather about what She is always doing ...
Because God wanted to teach Christians what a just war looks like. There is no Joan of Arc figure in Christendom’s wars of conquest, no miraculous figure who made the difference in the First Crusade or the Spanish Reconquista or the conquest of the Americas. (The story of Our Lady of Guadalupe involves the divine manifesting itself to the conquered, not to the conquistadores.) Instead, a martial and miraculous saint shows up only in a situation where she’s ending a foreign occupation and vindicating a beleaguered nation against an invader. So the fact that she does appear, armed and militant, suggests that maybe God was teaching a lesson in just war theory — giving the faithful a clear example of a saint-soldier to prove the pacifists wrong, while making sure that her example can be legitimately invoked only in wars waged in self-defense.
Because the Reformation was coming and it was necessary that France remain Catholic. In the timeline where Joan doesn’t appear and the Hundred Years’ War ends with England retaining a strong hold on France, maybe the English Reformation still happens, France as well as England flips to Protestantism, and suddenly you have a Protestant Anglo-French bloc with command of the seas and soon the world. In which case you could suggest that Joan was necessary either because of specific divine protection for Catholicism or, more subtly, because it was important that neither Catholicism nor Protestantism win a final victory in the 17th century, given each side’s un-Christian crimes against the other.
Because modernity was coming and it was necessary that France and England exist as rivals and competing poles. This is essentially an extension of the last argument, in which an Anglo-French balance of power, a persistent dualism between London and Paris, is essential not just to balance Protestants and Catholics but also for the healthy development of the entire modern world. How? Well, maybe by preventing not just one but a whole series of undesirable outcomes: the total victory of one side in the Reformation, the total victory of just one version of the Enlightenment, the total victory of 20th century totalitarianism, even the total victory of the American empire or the total victory of the European Union — who can say?
And since the French part of that story isn’t finished yet, the last possibility remains open as well:
Because God loves the French in a special way, and they have a cosmic destiny that still waits to be fulfilled.
And so to his penultimate piece in the Times - at time of writing - not so much because of what it offers as for what it reveals ...
Why did God Favour France?, archive here ...
The title is an insufferable start to an insufferable musing, assuming as it does that there is a God, and that She will conform to Douthat's way ...
Scott Alexander, the noted rationalist blogger, has a feature where guest writers pen book reviews and essays for his site, and this week an anonymous writer reviewed the historical literature on Joan of Arc.
The results resemble past encounters between skeptical authors (Mark Twain is a notable example) and the historical record around the Maid of Orleans: Her story is one of the most extensively documented cases of a miraculous-seeming intervention into secular history, calculated to baffle, fascinate and even charm like almost nothing else in Western history.
Everything in the story sounds like a pious legend confabulated centuries after the fact. A peasant girl with zero political or military experience shows up at a royal court, announces a divine mission and makes a series of prophecies about what God wants for France that she consistently fulfills — a fulfillment that requires not merely some fortunate happenstance, but her taking command of a medieval army and winning an immediate series of victories over an intimidating adversary with Alexandrine or Napoleonic skill.
Then after the mission is accomplished (with some miracles thrown in), some of the prophetic and military capacity seems to be withdrawn and she is captured and dies a martyr’s death — but not before undergoing a religious trial with a bravura performance that likewise looks like the invention of a theologically trained novelist. And through it all she appears to be extraordinarily lovable, displaying piety and kindliness without any of the fanaticism or delusions of personal grandeur that normally shadow people who think they’re supposed to take up arms on God’s behalf.
The review essay considers some of the more persuasive non-supernatural explanations for all these strange events. But the reviewer’s strongest reaction is an understandable one, I think, for any reader who approaches the evidence with an open mind:
I talk about “God stretching down His hand to alter history,” and I’m really not sure I believe it happened, but Joan feels like a giant middle finger to all the people who talk about history being deterministic. Sometimes you get a Great Woman and then history does something really weird.
I also kind of feel called out by God. “So, you say you’re a rationalist? You’re dismissing all the historical evidence for miracles as insufficient? You won’t consider the evidence for Jesus Christ persuasive due to a mere two eyewitness and five contemporary reports? You won’t believe in anything without evidence more than sufficient to convince a court? Okay, have 115 witnesses to miracles that nobody could avoid recording because they altered the course of European history. Now, what were you saying about how you’re not a Christian because you’re a rationalist?”
But if Joan challenges skeptics to explain how a career like hers could be possible without supernatural aid, she also challenges Christians and her other religiously inclined fans to explain why, exactly, God sent her to save France. Indeed, the best skeptic’s argument probably rests there: not in trying to deny the miraculous-seeming record, but in challenging the believer to explain why God wanted or needed these specific events to happen.
Assume, for the sake of argument, that some version of the Catholic theory of miracles is correct. In that case history seems to yield three broad categories of supernatural happenings. First, the “big miracles” of the Old and New Testaments, associated with major events in the history of God’s plan for humanity, from the crossing of the Red Sea to the Resurrection. Second, the signs and wonders associated with the special holiness of specific saints — healings, visions, stigmata, the remarkably well-documented Reformation-era levitations discussed in Carlos Eire’s recent book, “They Flew: A History of the Impossible.” Finally, the miracles and signs and supernatural encounters that happen on a personal level, to ordinary people, as answers to their prayers rather than as manifestations of their sanctity.
The results resemble past encounters between skeptical authors (Mark Twain is a notable example) and the historical record around the Maid of Orleans: Her story is one of the most extensively documented cases of a miraculous-seeming intervention into secular history, calculated to baffle, fascinate and even charm like almost nothing else in Western history.
Everything in the story sounds like a pious legend confabulated centuries after the fact. A peasant girl with zero political or military experience shows up at a royal court, announces a divine mission and makes a series of prophecies about what God wants for France that she consistently fulfills — a fulfillment that requires not merely some fortunate happenstance, but her taking command of a medieval army and winning an immediate series of victories over an intimidating adversary with Alexandrine or Napoleonic skill.
Then after the mission is accomplished (with some miracles thrown in), some of the prophetic and military capacity seems to be withdrawn and she is captured and dies a martyr’s death — but not before undergoing a religious trial with a bravura performance that likewise looks like the invention of a theologically trained novelist. And through it all she appears to be extraordinarily lovable, displaying piety and kindliness without any of the fanaticism or delusions of personal grandeur that normally shadow people who think they’re supposed to take up arms on God’s behalf.
The review essay considers some of the more persuasive non-supernatural explanations for all these strange events. But the reviewer’s strongest reaction is an understandable one, I think, for any reader who approaches the evidence with an open mind:
I talk about “God stretching down His hand to alter history,” and I’m really not sure I believe it happened, but Joan feels like a giant middle finger to all the people who talk about history being deterministic. Sometimes you get a Great Woman and then history does something really weird.
I also kind of feel called out by God. “So, you say you’re a rationalist? You’re dismissing all the historical evidence for miracles as insufficient? You won’t consider the evidence for Jesus Christ persuasive due to a mere two eyewitness and five contemporary reports? You won’t believe in anything without evidence more than sufficient to convince a court? Okay, have 115 witnesses to miracles that nobody could avoid recording because they altered the course of European history. Now, what were you saying about how you’re not a Christian because you’re a rationalist?”
But if Joan challenges skeptics to explain how a career like hers could be possible without supernatural aid, she also challenges Christians and her other religiously inclined fans to explain why, exactly, God sent her to save France. Indeed, the best skeptic’s argument probably rests there: not in trying to deny the miraculous-seeming record, but in challenging the believer to explain why God wanted or needed these specific events to happen.
Assume, for the sake of argument, that some version of the Catholic theory of miracles is correct. In that case history seems to yield three broad categories of supernatural happenings. First, the “big miracles” of the Old and New Testaments, associated with major events in the history of God’s plan for humanity, from the crossing of the Red Sea to the Resurrection. Second, the signs and wonders associated with the special holiness of specific saints — healings, visions, stigmata, the remarkably well-documented Reformation-era levitations discussed in Carlos Eire’s recent book, “They Flew: A History of the Impossible.” Finally, the miracles and signs and supernatural encounters that happen on a personal level, to ordinary people, as answers to their prayers rather than as manifestations of their sanctity.
You see? Assume, for the sake of argument, that some version of the Catholic theory of miracles is correct
No. No way Jose.
No need for that assumption. Might as well assume Catholicism is more than a Ponzi scheme, might as well assume ordinary wine turns into human blood, and a coeliac killer wafer becomes human flesh, might as well assume that Catholicism has theories that go beyond the urgent need for a weekly donation of cash in brown envelopes by the faithful sheep lined up to be shorn ...
Please, remind the pond why it shouldn't allow Douthat assumptions, Mr Packer ...
...President Donald Trump himself, whose first 78 years were nearly unmarked by signs of faith, has sworn a newfound religiosity since his near assassination. God saved him to make America great again, he has said several times, so “let’s bring religion back.” Days before Believe was published, Trump announced the creation of a Justice Department task force to root out anti-Christian bias, as well as a White House Faith Office, led by Paula White-Cain, Trump’s religious adviser, who has said that opposing him means opposing God. (This kind of theocratic edict has turned a generation of young Iranians against religion.) The president’s more ardent followers regard him as a kind of mythic figure, above history and politics, leading by spiritual power that connects him directly to the people. By this light, faith is inseparable from authoritarianism.
Believe is not a political book, but it would be naive to imagine that Douthat’s evangelism has no political implications. He acknowledges that the book could be “a work of Christian apologetics in disguise,” and his invitation to religion in general leads predictably to a case for Christianity in particular, preferably of the conservative-Catholic variety. In his columns he draws no bright line between religion and politics: Contemporary America is decadent, liberalism has famished our souls, and any renewal depends on faith—not New Ageism, not progressive Protestantism, but religion of a traditional, illiberal cast. Douthat has carried on a years-long flirtation with MAGA, endorsing many of its policies while hedging his personal dislike of Trump against his antipathy toward the opposition. (He refused to disclose his choice in the most recent election, which seems like a misdemeanor for a political columnist.) Douthat hasn’t gone as far as the head of the new White House Faith Office, but when he calls Trump a “man of destiny,” it isn’t easy to extricate his metaphysical leanings from his partisan ones.
Douthat wants you to abandon secular liberalism and become a believer at a moment when democracy is under assault from a phalanx of right-wing ideas, some of them religious. That is not a reason to believe or not to believe, for belief needs no reason. But it should make you pause and think before following Douthat on the path to his promised land.
Believe is not a political book, but it would be naive to imagine that Douthat’s evangelism has no political implications. He acknowledges that the book could be “a work of Christian apologetics in disguise,” and his invitation to religion in general leads predictably to a case for Christianity in particular, preferably of the conservative-Catholic variety. In his columns he draws no bright line between religion and politics: Contemporary America is decadent, liberalism has famished our souls, and any renewal depends on faith—not New Ageism, not progressive Protestantism, but religion of a traditional, illiberal cast. Douthat has carried on a years-long flirtation with MAGA, endorsing many of its policies while hedging his personal dislike of Trump against his antipathy toward the opposition. (He refused to disclose his choice in the most recent election, which seems like a misdemeanor for a political columnist.) Douthat hasn’t gone as far as the head of the new White House Faith Office, but when he calls Trump a “man of destiny,” it isn’t easy to extricate his metaphysical leanings from his partisan ones.
Douthat wants you to abandon secular liberalism and become a believer at a moment when democracy is under assault from a phalanx of right-wing ideas, some of them religious. That is not a reason to believe or not to believe, for belief needs no reason. But it should make you pause and think before following Douthat on the path to his promised land.
Back to Douthat trying it on for size, Jeanne d'Arc as a role model for Le roi Donald le brave et l'audacieux ...
The story of Joan of Arc doesn’t fit neatly into any of these categories. The strange events of her life are clearly more than just a personal sign of God’s presence, since all of France is implicated in the drama. They’re also clearly more than just a manifestation of her holiness, since the effect isn’t just to convert people in her orbit to a deeper Christian faith; it’s also to change the outcome of a major war.
But was that military outcome, then, somehow a major event in God’s unfolding plan? One analogue to Joan’s career might be the stories in the Old Testament where God takes an active part in Israel’s military conflicts; another might be Constantine’s vision at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge that supposedly inspired his conversion to Christianity. But in those cases the alleged divine help was being supplied for an obvious spiritual purpose — the survival of God’s chosen people, the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. Whereas in Joan’s case, the divine help turned the tide in a war where both sides were Christian and Roman Catholic, and where the resolution had no major religious consequences. It was a dynastic triumph for the French kings and a national triumph for their people, but it’s not obvious how it was a spiritual one.
So why did God raise up a saint to save the French from defeat? No theory seems all that satisfying, but let’s consider a few candidates.
Because God showed mercy on the French people. A hundred years of war is a lot of war. Undoubtedly a lot of people were praying for relief, and maybe Joan was just the divinely anointed answer to their prayer. Why didn’t God send a similar figure to expedite the Thirty Years’ War or World War I or any other mass-casualty disaster in human history? Well, maybe he did send saints in some of those cases and people didn’t listen to them. (Joan’s miraculous career did require a lot of political cooperation.) Or maybe it’s just the usual divine inscrutability: Just as most sick people who pray for help don’t receive miraculous healing but some people do, most wars don’t end by divine fiat but once in a while (once in 2,000 years?) God puts an obvious finger on the scale.
But was that military outcome, then, somehow a major event in God’s unfolding plan? One analogue to Joan’s career might be the stories in the Old Testament where God takes an active part in Israel’s military conflicts; another might be Constantine’s vision at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge that supposedly inspired his conversion to Christianity. But in those cases the alleged divine help was being supplied for an obvious spiritual purpose — the survival of God’s chosen people, the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. Whereas in Joan’s case, the divine help turned the tide in a war where both sides were Christian and Roman Catholic, and where the resolution had no major religious consequences. It was a dynastic triumph for the French kings and a national triumph for their people, but it’s not obvious how it was a spiritual one.
So why did God raise up a saint to save the French from defeat? No theory seems all that satisfying, but let’s consider a few candidates.
Because God showed mercy on the French people. A hundred years of war is a lot of war. Undoubtedly a lot of people were praying for relief, and maybe Joan was just the divinely anointed answer to their prayer. Why didn’t God send a similar figure to expedite the Thirty Years’ War or World War I or any other mass-casualty disaster in human history? Well, maybe he did send saints in some of those cases and people didn’t listen to them. (Joan’s miraculous career did require a lot of political cooperation.) Or maybe it’s just the usual divine inscrutability: Just as most sick people who pray for help don’t receive miraculous healing but some people do, most wars don’t end by divine fiat but once in a while (once in 2,000 years?) God puts an obvious finger on the scale.
Because God wanted to teach Christians what a just war looks like. There is no Joan of Arc figure in Christendom’s wars of conquest, no miraculous figure who made the difference in the First Crusade or the Spanish Reconquista or the conquest of the Americas. (The story of Our Lady of Guadalupe involves the divine manifesting itself to the conquered, not to the conquistadores.) Instead, a martial and miraculous saint shows up only in a situation where she’s ending a foreign occupation and vindicating a beleaguered nation against an invader. So the fact that she does appear, armed and militant, suggests that maybe God was teaching a lesson in just war theory — giving the faithful a clear example of a saint-soldier to prove the pacifists wrong, while making sure that her example can be legitimately invoked only in wars waged in self-defense.
Because the Reformation was coming and it was necessary that France remain Catholic. In the timeline where Joan doesn’t appear and the Hundred Years’ War ends with England retaining a strong hold on France, maybe the English Reformation still happens, France as well as England flips to Protestantism, and suddenly you have a Protestant Anglo-French bloc with command of the seas and soon the world. In which case you could suggest that Joan was necessary either because of specific divine protection for Catholicism or, more subtly, because it was important that neither Catholicism nor Protestantism win a final victory in the 17th century, given each side’s un-Christian crimes against the other.
Because modernity was coming and it was necessary that France and England exist as rivals and competing poles. This is essentially an extension of the last argument, in which an Anglo-French balance of power, a persistent dualism between London and Paris, is essential not just to balance Protestants and Catholics but also for the healthy development of the entire modern world. How? Well, maybe by preventing not just one but a whole series of undesirable outcomes: the total victory of one side in the Reformation, the total victory of just one version of the Enlightenment, the total victory of 20th century totalitarianism, even the total victory of the American empire or the total victory of the European Union — who can say?
And since the French part of that story isn’t finished yet, the last possibility remains open as well:
Because God loves the French in a special way, and they have a cosmic destiny that still waits to be fulfilled.
C’est certainement possible!
Meanwhile, a beast marches on Washington, a beast Douthat finds vaguely appealing because in the end times and the rapture there's nothing like owning the libs ...
As for that last mangling, intended perhaps as an insult to the French, it was nigh intolerable.
La laïcité est la clef de voûte de la République. C'est le fondement institutionnel des libertés individuelles et de l’égalité des droits dans le prolongement de la déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen. C'est le ferment de la reconnaissance mutuelle des citoyens de toutes origines. Elle constitue le socle indispensable de la paix et de l’unité de la nation.
And so to wrap up proceedings with a TT, dealing with a different manifestation of what passes for the divine in the US at the moment ...
