Saying the quiet part out loud.

In the midst of encouragement to eat bugs and not meat, a recent video surfaced highlighting an older World Economic Forum article which asked the reader to imagine a 2030 where the protagonist owns nothing and is happy about it.

While author and Danish parliamentarian Ida Auken added a disclaimer saying she was opening a conversation and not setting forth a dream of the future, that is difficult to square with the ending paragraph:

All in all, it is a good life. Much better than the path we were on, where it became so clear that we could not continue with the same model of growth. We had all these terrible things happening: lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest and unemployment. We lost way too many people before we realised that we could do things differently.

There is a group of people missing from the urban "better path" here: children. 

Which is baffling, given that Auken herself is apparently a mother of three. 

But reading through the scenario, space for children is entirely absent. Indeed, you can't raise kids when "the living room is used for business meetings when I am not there" and you have to wait for cooking utensils to be delivered.

No country for toddlers, this place. And it is striking that this appears to be a mirror image of Ayn Rand's child-free cutthroat capitalist utopia. 

In each, humanity has to be cut to fit--with predictable results.

The Memorial for the 54th Massachusetts Regiment was defaced during the protests.

That regiment was the all-black unit immortalized in the film Glory.

Men who had been born free fighting for the liberation of their enslaved brethren in the Confederacy.

So, makes perfect sense that the protests would vandalize that one.

Current mood: this.

Turns out it's a regular target of the Epsilons (yes, I'm really hacked off) who will eventually run the show.

"A thousand men signed up just after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, just think about that," said Liz Vizza, executive director of Friends of the Public Garden. "These are men who, if they were captured in the south, would be enslaved or murdered. But this cause was so important to them, they signed up to go fight for their freedom."

The memorial has been vandalized before – with paint in 2012, and the sword was broken off in 2015 and 2017.

The Memorial is one of the great achievements of America's greatest sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. 

Wise people know its significance as a timeless tribute to the black American in arms--and to liberty itself.

But we seem to have hit "peak wisdom" some time back, and it continues to dwindle away by the hour.

Shakespeare for Epsilons.

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” 
                                                                        --Ray Bradbury.

 An interesting article about our continued descent from our cultural heritage: essentially, a theatre troupe in Oregon is rendering Shakespeare into 21st Century American English. No word yet on whether the new scripts will use emojis.

My beloved wife's reaction when I told her this:

That's her verbatim response, by the way.

Hard to argue, really.

For nearly half a millennia English speakers have enjoyed, or at least consumed, Shakespeare’s work in its original language. Often the plays are shortened, sometimes variants from different folios are chosen, but Shakespeare’s words have never been changed wholesale to accommodate the intellectual laziness of a generation of artists and audiences. Why now, when more people graduate college than at any time in our history, do we need Hamlet for Dummies?

Is Shakespeare’s language difficult at times? Yes. Does it require effort to understand? Sure. But has anything happened to the English language or its speakers that make the works inaccessible? Absolutely not. Telling students and audiences they aren’t smart enough to get Shakespeare, that some appointed “experts” need to simplify it for them, turns appreciation of his work from an accomplishment into a literary participation trophy.

There is no reason for any of this. Shakespeare remains relevant to us on stages, in movies, and in our classrooms. Beyond that direct contact, works like “West Side Story,” “Sons of Anarchy,” and “Strange Brew” all use his stories in unique modern ways. But how equipped will we be to appreciate these adaptations if we don’t have a solid grounding in his actual plays?

I have to admit, I really got a kick out of the Strange Brew reference. Yes, it's true: the Bob and Doug Mackenzie classic really does have Shakespearean underpinnings.

But back to the major point: yes, this is bad news. Currently, it's just one troupe, but if it catches on, sheesh. 

Yes, Shakespeare can be rough-going at first. Especially when you approach him from the printed page. That's the key, though: seeing it performed? You see the players and the light goes on. 

As is the case with all parents, I like to think that all of my children are above average.  

I know they're not, but...

I do know that my older three (ages 14, 12 and 11) have seen Baz Luhrmann's take on Romeo and Juliet. The thing is...they got it. And they think Romeo's a twit, not so by the way.

Nevertheless, they followed along and understood it. And enjoyed it. Does that mean they are some trio of amazing prodigies? No, though I will defend their brainpower to all and sundry. 

The thing is, we didn't treat Shakespeare like some odd artifact from a bygone era suitable only for eccentric tweedy eggheads and other Anglophiles. Rather, it is something worthwhile for them, too--with a little effort. 

Apparently, such assumptions are bizarre, so now we have this exercise in mutilation to meet the dumbed-down expectations of our times. If "expectations" they are.

The tragedy isn't just that we're losing so much. Rather, it's that those to whom we are supposed to pass the torch will have no idea of what was lost.  

On the bright side, that might keep them from shooting us. 

That, and the latest distracting app for their smartphones.   

I can't imagine doing this kind of work.

Not without shooting some of the scum who engage in this slavery, that is.

But thanks to the FBI and Michigan State Police for taking down a few sex traffickers this week.

According to MSP Detective Sgt. Edward Price [no relation that I know of--Ed.], the teens were found in Detroit, Madison Heights, Ferndale, Clinton Township and across Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. Price is assigned to the Southeast Michigan Crimes Against Children Task Force, an FBI Task Force that investigates the exploitation of children by means of sex trafficking.

Price said investigators found a variety of sex toys, drug-related items such as "crack pipes," guns, laptop computers, clothes, underwear and high-heeled shoes and boots.

The 19 girls rescued in the sting ranged in age from 13 to 17. A dozen suspected pimps were arrested.

Price said the amount of sex-trafficking cases has steadily increased in Michigan.​

"It's increasing," he said. "We have dope guys that have stopped selling drugs and have started selling human beings."

Price said investigators have seen known drug dealers switch to sex trafficking partially because they believe it's a less violent, but rich and thriving industry.

"We've also seen a lot of gangs getting involved," he said. "It's not new, but it's picking up. ... These cases are difficult to work, they have to be victim-centered."

A stop-motion look at too much of Detroit.

The Detroit News chronicles the death of Garland Street over the past decade.

The heart breaks:

Click to enlarge.

An out-of-state friend of mine saw Google Earth pictures of Detroit and couldn't believe how much of it had been reclaimed by nature.

"Is Detroit really that bad?" he asked.

Not all of it, of course. Unfortunately, too many parts of it truly are, most of it located in a wide belt astride the city's midsection. There are numerous Garland Streets across Motown's 142 square miles--and no prospect that they will be repopulated any time soon.

If you're in the area, take the Chalmers Street exit (No. 222) off of I-94. Then take Hayes Street directly north. There are blocks upon blocks like Garland, former residential neighborhoods now reverting to forest. With the exception of Outer Drive, there aren't any stable zones until you get to around five blocks south of Eight Mile Road. 

What Detroit needs more than anything is people. And that's what she is losing by the literal truckload.

 

Just because I don't post Catholic commentary these days...

...doesn't mean I can't refer to other people's.

1. Steve Skojec ruminates on the apocalyptic. And offers some solid advice on prayerful responses. The latter seems especially fruitful, and worth pondering. God knows my own prayer life is best described as "undead" these days. Read both.

With respect to the former, I don't have much to offer. It strikes me as moderate, thoughtful and speculative, with Steve freely admitting the latter.

My only thought is it seems to be in the cultural air, so to speak--"it" being apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic thinking. From people spending hefty sums on the latest survivalist "cottage" to shows about "preppers" to hotcake-sales of young adult fiction (Hunger Games, Divergent, The 100), a discordant chord is chiming through our society right now. We sense that something is really wrong, even as we try to distract ourselves from facing it. Mostly successfully, if not entirely so.

I'm the least capable prognosticator you've ever run across, so I'm not going to begin to speculate, at least not in the religious realm (my exegetical skills being even less trustworthy at this point). To the extent I will venture out on a limb, I am reasonably certain we're past the point of no return, fiscally-speaking. We're an interest rate spike from being unable to service our debt. Not a new dark age, but more of a slow-mo tumbledown, with the related corrosive impacts on the social fabric. Zero-sum gaming begins once the money runs out. That, and the scapegoating. Our progeny will have ample reason to resent us, and wonder why we wasted so much time on bullshit and reality-avoidance.

2. Elliot serves up some weapons-grade snark at Catholic quietism, but there's a deadly serious argument wrapped up in it. Namely, in our post-conciliar age, with its mashup of collegiality and soft ultramontanism, Catholicism is no more than what the Pope and/or your bishop say it is.

Given the irresistible and undeniable power of the episcopacy to do whatever they want with the traditions, disciplines, and “style” of the Church at any time in history, why should I bother clinging to those features from any age in the Church’s life, as if such pesky particulars mattered? The Faith is the thing, the Creed is the thing, the Mass is the thing–not how it’s lived, expressed, or celebrated. What am I, more Catholic than the pope?

Admittedly, this quietist position does not help me resolve the tension created by seeking above all to “empower the laity” in the past half-century or more, but, again, I am a mere worm, and the Church certainly doesn’t need my input. The key to Catholic happiness, apparently, is more than “pay, pray, and obey.” The key to happiness in the Church in our day is not simply to submit, not simply to commit all things to the Lord, but, rather, actively to flout one’s sense of tradition and prudence in order to defend and valorize and “internalize” every aspect of the status quo. Resignation is not enough; celebration is the sign of a Serious Catholic. After all, didn’t Luther criticize the hierarchy and various abuses, and we know how that turned out? The key to happiness in the Church now is to breathe deeply and unflinchingly from the exhaust pipe of the New Evangelization as the hierarchy drives the Catholic Cadillac where God knows it must go. Woe to the man who would lay a finger on God’s anointed one. Just ask St. Athanasius. 

Which is, I think, a--if not the--root of my discontent.

By the way, I recognize the following sorta violates my no-commentary rule, but permit me to answer a question/charge posed to/thrown at me before. Namely, if I fall away, it won't be to sojourn to the weird, illogical faerie realm of sedevacantism, nor to the anomalous-status Society, whose position doesn't really compute, even where I sympathize with layfolk who have gone that route. That, and the repulsive Jew-hatred that permeates some sectors of trad-dom also finds fertile enough soil in both places.

Nor does Orthodoxy persuade--despite my incurable love of things Byzantine. I'll just be...gone, I guess. So much for my earlier bravado.

Such are the twists and turns of life. Your prayers continue to be welcome.

The cheery sang-froid has dissipated.

I find myself more unnerved by the Pope's resignation than I was yesterday. Losing certainty in increasingly uncertain times is bad, full-stop. I pray that the next Pope has a full awareness of what he's up against. He can't be a doomsayer, but a chirpy optimist is the last thing we need.

  Turning and turning in the widening gyre
  The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
  Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
  The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
  The best lack all conviction, while the worst
  Are full of passionate intensity.

Proposition: "The collective national IQ peaked in 1967, and has eroded since."

Discuss!

No, I'm grasping towards something like that.

It's a byproduct of cataloguing the books. What strikes me about the America of the 1950s and 1960s is the earnest, serious belief that a general familiarity with matters historical, cultural and intellectual was not only essential, but possible. Durant's Story of Civilization, the Encyclopedia Britannica with its study guides, the Great Ages of Man series, and even rolling on momentum into the early '70s with the Life History of the United States. All general, but well-researched and serious efforts to give the reader a conversational familiarity with a wide range of topics--all because they were worth knowing if one was a well-rounded person. You also saw the flowering of museums, city orchestras, theatrical groups and the like during the same time frame.

Then it ended. The demand dried up, and voila--it was gone. The books went out of print and the arts organizations started to live a hand-to-mouth existence which they haven't, in the main, escaped yet.

Sure, there have been some efforts to push back the tide--Hirsch's Dictionary of Cultural Literacy comes to mind, (hopefully) successful re-funding of museums (the DIA here in Detroit). But nothing like what you saw five decades ago. Nothing like the general presumption that such knowledge is important in and of itself, and is part of a full, well-ordered life. It feels like the fall from, if not a golden age, at least one of silver.

Food for melancholic thought.

"Equally condemn..."

Or, "an object lesson in how not to reassure."

“There is a need for deterrent legal measures against those individuals or groups that want to damage relations between people, spread hate and incite violence,”  Osama Siblani, Publisher of The Arab American News said in a statement. “It is a need that Americans should seriously consider.”

Sibliani is one of the organizers of a rally in Dearborn, Mich., that will denounce both the video and the deadly terrorist attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Libya. “While we condemn violence against innocent Americans abroad, we equally condemn the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims,” he said in the statement.

I don't know...how about seriously considering growing a thicker skin instead?

Or seriously considering violence to be worse than insult? Apparently that's too much to ask.

Nah. Better to run the Bill of Rights through the shredder, then nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.