The Galli Report: 11.20.20

It might get worse--or not. Dreher: Rant or Prophecy? Hopeful pessimism. Audio blasts from 1908 and earlier!

It Might Only Get Worse—or Not
Rehearsing my fascination with mega-explanations of our current state, I offer “The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse: A historian believes he has discovered iron laws that predict the rise and fall of societies. He has bad news.”  I featured Peter Turchin’s main argument/thesis in September, co-authored by the historian.  This piece is a profile of the man, including comments from his critics (to keep his argument in perspective). Just to remind you of his thesis:

The year 2020 has been kind to [Peter] Turchin, for many of the same reasons it has been hell for the rest of us. Cities on fire, elected leaders endorsing violence, homicides surging—­­to a normal American, these are apocalyptic signs. To Turchin, they indicate that his models, which incorporate thousands of years of data about human history, are working. (“Not all of human history,” he corrected me once. “Just the last 10,000 years.”) He has been warning for a decade that a few key social and political trends portend an “age of discord,” civil unrest and carnage worse than most Americans have experienced. In 2010, he predicted that the unrest would get serious around 2020, and that it wouldn’t let up until those social and political trends reversed.

As the article notes, he's criticized by the historical profession for arguing for “laws of history,” but the Bible teaches one overarching law of history: humankind is fallen and will only make things worse—or at best, keep things consistently bad—until the Lord shows up. (Postmillennialists are, of course, more optimistic, but other than in science and technology, it’s hard to see significant moral or spiritual progress among us bipeds. But perhaps I’m biased, looking at my own life…). So, as one with a high view of biblical authority, I have a weakness for grand pessimistic theories.

Rant or Prophecy?
Speaking of historical pessimism, there’s Rod Dreher’s new book Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents. Despite my weakness for pessimism, I’ve noted before that I tire of Dreher’s gloom and doom predictions of growing “soft totalitarianism” in America.  But to be fair, sometimes the doomers and gloomers are right—e.g. Winston Churchill’s warnings and about Hitler in the early 1930s, when everyone else believed Hitler could be dealt with as a rational leader.  So I remain open to the insights of such pessimists—thus my love affair with Russian novelists.  At any rate, here’s a mostly positive review of the book, which may help you decide whether or not to read it.

Hopeful Pessimism
In the strange paradox that is Christian faith, it’s pessimism about human nature that, in fact, opens the door to redemption. No site better hammers this point home than Mockingbird, most recently with “Heaven is a 12-Step Meeting.”

On Monday, I was sitting in a twelve-step recovery meeting via Zoom…. At the beginning of the meeting, people were recognized for various lengths of sobriety with a metal chip. One woman, who looked like your average, sweet older church woman, joyfully announced that she was celebrating twenty-seven years (!!) sober. As the gathered congregation of drunks clapped in our muted Zoom screens, one person unmuted and asked the question that is often asked when someone celebrates a milestone sobriety anniversary: “How did you do it?”

This question gives the honoree a chance to thank folks and give out a few nuggets of recovery wisdom, but in this meeting on Monday the joyful woman who got sober when I was in elementary school did something unusual.

She smiled and said simply, “I didn’t do it.” With that, she pointed straight up to the sky and muted herself again. 

Audible Blasts from the Past
OMGosh—an historian’s treasure trove of recordings of (mostly) music and some (short) speeches from the turn of the 20th century!  The story in the LA Times is here, and one sample—William Howard Taft in 1908 calling for justice for “the negro”— is here. This call came in the midst of the Jim Crow era.  So, it will be fodder from both impatient progressives (“What progress?”) and gradualists (“Justice has a long arc.”).  I just found it fascinating.

Grace and peace,

Mark Galli
markgalli.com