The Galli Report: 09.03.21

Inexpert experts. Vaccine shaming. When life becomes deadly. Living in ‘a world in flames.’ Avoiding false paths. ‘Every Sport a Bowling Ball.’

Inexpert Experts
What initially struck me about the Afghanistan debacle was the bad advice given to President Biden. To wit: The Taliban is far from taking over the country, and we can be assured of a peaceful and orderly withdrawal of Americans and their Afghan collaborators. This reminded me of our entry into the Iraq war, which was officially based on advice given to President Bush assuring us that Saddam Hussein possessed and was poised to use chemical weapons. This is not to excuse either president, for each—especially Biden, as is both the left and the right agree—made a mess of things. But it does give one pause about why the experts, upon whom much of our country’s domestic and foreign policies depend, often don’t know what they are talking about.

This article—subtitled “How a humiliating military loss proves that so much of our so-called ‘expertise’ is fake, and the case against specialization and intellectual diversity”— gave me some insight.

Vaccination Shaming
Elizabeth Bruenig at The Atlantic comments on the shaming trend, noted by others including yours truly. Of course, Christians are not immune from this temptation, and may be even more susceptible to it than most. At the end, she relates a personal example of how to move beyond self-righteous condemnation of others.

A record of the plague dead: Stacy Forbess, 55, an Alabama twirling coach; Haley Mulkey Richardson, 32, a pregnant Alabama nurse; Cindy Dawkins, 50, a Florida restaurant worker; Martin and Trina Daniel, 53 and 49, a Georgia couple married for some 20 years; Lawrence and Lydia Rodriguez, 49 and 42, a Texas couple married for 21. All unvaccinated, and all whose deaths were covered by various papers and TV stations, with notes of shame or contempt subtle in some tales and bold in others.

Whom are these stories for? They seem to aspire to be persuasive….

But if persuasion is the target, then the aim seems off—a general problem in our democracy, where persuasion is a key method of self-governance but something we’re less and less amenable to. In that sense, the strange case of vaccine persuasion is just another entry in the annals of our disillusionment with our own liberal democracy. One receives the distinct impression from today’s discursive environment that persuasion in its traditional democratic form—wherein a great deal of value is placed upon shrewd and moving rhetoric that assumes listeners’ basic goodwill—is a useless venture, and that lower forms—insults, scolding, intra-group memeing, the dirty persuasion of disinformation campaigns—are all that’s left. Maybe those things are useless too, one gathers, but at least they’re fun and cathartic.

When Life Becomes Deadly
Arianna Marchetti at Epoché does a deep dive into what drives our culture’s reaction to the pandemic (and to many other things), drawing on a thoughtful essay from many decades ago:

In an essay titled “The Cult of Life,” [Johan] Huizinga points out how, in contemporary society, the increase of comfort and the possibility of satisfaction and security have led to a devaluation of life, expressed in a “cult of life” as an end in itself. People who are frantically engaged in all sorts of enjoyments and satisfaction of earthly pleasures are quick to slouch into a view of life that is reduced to the pure and unrestrained assertion of vital values. Games, sex, food, and all sorts of pleasures become activities that we are diligently committed to– activities that we “owe” to ourselves as they contribute to our happiness. At the same time, work, relationships, and responsibilities take a back seat in our life and become activities that we reluctantly engage in. They become obligations that stand in the way of our own enjoyment which has become life itself.

Living in ‘a world in flames’
By immersing ourselves in “the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” we can eschew the many false paths of our time. Few did that better than Teresa of Avila. Former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams recommends the best books on Teresa in this interview. Teresa’s example and insights remain especially helpful in times when church and society are under assault:

She’s very much aware of the fact that the Wars of Religion are beginning in France, that there is, as she sees it, violence against the church on the part of reformers. She sees her business in religious reform as being, in part, a response to the attacks on the church that are happening elsewhere in Europe. She knows almost nothing about Reformed theology, and not very much about what’s actually happening. She reads the horror stories, and her response is to those. But it’s all part of the sense that it’s “a world in flames”—an expression she used at one point. She might have grown up in the first great glow of Spanish imperial prosperity, in the first half of the century, but that is not looking so favourable by the time she is most active. She’s aware that the systems that she’s taken for granted are more fragile than anybody thought.

‘Now for Something Completely Different’
Why this video made me laugh out loud more than once is beyond me. But “Every Sport a Bowling Ball” did.

Grace and peace,

Mark Galli