The Weekly, July 24, 2024
Hi all,
In a since deleted tweet, Zaid Jilani said,
I think one of my more controversial opinions is that history should teach more about the bad guys' rationale. The way it's taught now, where the bad guys are just evil, makes it hard to understand the present, where the bad side often has their own complex justifications.
I suspect that what stands behind much of the contemporary resurgence of far-right ideologies is related to this point.
I thought of that again this past week as I considered two cases I’m aware of involving speakers at a recent Christian Nationalist conference.
One of the speakers at this event has a sibling who now identifies as transgender. Another speaker had an elder in his church leave after the elder’s wife became affirming on LGBT+ issues and began to distance herself from church and family. In both cases, these events coincided fairly closely, so far as I can tell, with the individual’s turn toward the far right.
Now, neither of these speakers have shared any of this publicly. But both pieces made for useful data points as I tried to suss out how a person goes from “relatively normal blue state church planter who loves Tim Keller” to “Nazi-adjacent right wing reactionary” in just a few years.
It should also go without saying that these events do not justify the person’s turn to the far right. But I think if we lack the ability to even conceptualize in our own minds how someone could adopt beliefs we find abhorrent than we render ourselves utterly unable to meaningfully critique those beliefs or help others who might be drawn to them to choose better paths. We will be left only with the ability to scold and to sneer, which is to say we will be left devoid of the ability to lovingly engage with people who believe abhorrent things.
Books
In the weeks since the last newsletter I’ve finished the Bowles book as well as Joy Clarkson’s new book, which is a delight. I’ve got others in the hopper though—I’m reading Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by Le Carre, Beevor’s history of the Spanish Civil War and picked up a Christopher Dawson volume on Christianity and the New Age.
Articles
Gary Saul Morson on Dostoevsky’s anti-Semitism
Freddie on poptimism
And Freddie on the UVA rape hoax story
Casey Cep on Harriet Tubman
Glen Scrivener interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali about her conversion:
Jonathon Van Maren on how the GOP became a pro-choice party
Elsewhere
I recently discovered the Mixel app, which feels like it could be a gamechanger for me with home mixology. Tons of great resources and makes it super easy to know what you can make at home with what you have on hand.
Also, if you have kids at home or just need something sweet and non-alcoholic, make this, which a friend in a Discord I’m on shared recently:
Black Rose
2 oz black tea
1 oz grenadine
1 oz lemon juice
1 oz club soda
Add the tea, grenadine, and lemon juice to a shaker filled with ice and shake till chilled. Strain into a glass, then add club soda. I made it on Sunday for our kids and they loved it—definitely a sweet treat, but also far less caffeine than a can of soda and less sugar as well.
Thanks for reading!
Under the Mercy,
~Jake