The Vernaculist: June 8, 2020
As a reminder: one of the founding principles of The Vernaculist is to “reject reactivity” (it’s #4). This newsletter isn’t about breaking news but about digesting ideas. If you’re looking for hot takes, you won’t find them here. But that doesn’t mean that current events aren’t worth thinking, talking, and writing about in thoughtful ways. Read on for some recommendations in that regard!
What a week.
2020 continues apace. Remember the Australian wildfires? It’s hard to believe that those happened this year. So much has occurred since January, and the global pandemic has only accentuated the time-warp feeling. Let’s start things off with what's on everyone’s minds.
George Floyd was murdered 13 days ago, and the protests about his death (and the larger issues of police brutality and systemic racism) are not slowing down. The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb has a short piece illuminating some more of the context of the murder that is well worth your time. (Cobb’s interpretation of the “Cooper incident” in Central Park’s Ramble misses the mark, I think. But his analysis of everything else is spot on.)
The current moment already feels so much bigger than Ferguson, which birthed the Black Lives Matter movement. We’ve had nonstop protests for almost two weeks, and racism is the dominant subject of conversation on social media and among my friends.
I’m appalled by the George Floyd murder (and Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and the list goes on) and hope and pray that his death will not be in vain. This needs to be the catalyst for hard conversations, policy, and behavioral change. But the roadmap from here to there is not clear, and I’m concerned that a lack of linkage between grievance and solution—or divergence on solutions—will hinder progress.
But those thoughts are for a future date. I’m taking this opportunity to share something on the topic of racial reconciliation.
For Our White Friends Desiring to be Allies by Courtney Ariel (Sojourners)
A friend of mine (thanks, @mirielmargaret!) sent Sally and I this article (originally from 2017) last weekend, and it has aged well. I’ll get out of the way and let you read it, but first I’ll add that I hope it makes you a little uncomfortable. That’s part of the point. The author embraces the idea of reparations (a subject on which I admittedly have no firm opinion because I haven’t read enough of the debate) and argues that having privilege means owing a societal debt. These are things worth thinking about!
Listen more; talk less. You don’t have to have something to say all of the time. You don’t have to post something on social media that points to how liberal/how aware/how cool/how good you are. You are lovely, human, and amazing. You have also had the microphone for most of the time, for a very long time, and it will be good to give the microphone to someone else who is living a different experience than your own.
This is a late add, but I’d like to also call your attention to David French’s Sunday column for The Dispatch: American Racism: We’ve Got So Very Far To Go. David has been a voice of conscience in conservative circles for years (see his 2012 piece on the Trayvon Martin killing), and he’s spot on here:
I freely confess that to some extent where I stood on American racial issues was dictated by where I sat my entire life. I always deplored racism—those values were instilled in me from birth—but I was also someone who recoiled at words like “systemic racism.” I looked at the strides we’d made since slavery and Jim Crow and said, “Look how far we’ve come.” I was less apt to say, “and look how much farther we have to go.”
Then, where I sit changed, dramatically. I just didn’t know it at the time. I went from being the father of two white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed kids to the father of three kids—one of them a beautiful little girl from Ethiopia. When Naomi arrived, our experiences changed. Strange incidents started to happen.
And I also want to call your attention to what I think is the most reasonable, realistic, and comprehensive proposal so far for achieving real law enforcement reform. It comes from a fellow former Republican (who, like me, left the GOP over its embrace of Trump and Trumpism), Congressman (unlike me), and one-time presidential candidate (also unlike me):
The Inevitable Long, Hot Summer by Matthew Walther (The Week)
Credit to the masthead of The Week for being willing to host interesting writers who can’t be counted as ideologues. I’ve been a regular reader of Michael Brendan Dougherty for years (he’s since moved on to National Review), have admired Damon Linker’s intellectual honesty, and usually find Walther’s takes helpful. This one is no exception—though it sort of fizzles out at the end due to what I think are space constraints. It easily could have been five times the length, but he teases some interesting ideas that I hope he will explore more in future columns.
This will make you do a double take (and I hope you read the whole piece):
Subjecting hundreds of millions of people to ultimately unenforceable restrictions upon their conduct is by definition lawlessness; everyone, including police, regard the letter of the law as meaningless, but at any moment its full weight can be brought to bear upon anyone. This is why as I write this across this country black joggers and gym goers are being treated not as conduits of disease but as criminals; the virus has become a pretext for the evil that was always in our hearts.
You might say this is the intellectual exploration of the “we are the virus” meme.
Unleash the Dragon: NASA and SpaceX Count Down to the Next Stage of Space Travel by Ben Lindbergh (The Ringer)
Lindbergh, a fantastic baseball mind and the author of one of my favorite books, dives into another of my favorite subjects: space. I was really excited to watch the launch twelve days ago but liftoff was canned fifteen minutes before countdown due to poor weather. It was rescheduled for the following Saturday (May 30th), when I watched this happen with my girls, ages 5 and 3:
Can a reinvigorated space program play a role in healing our divides by casting our glances beyond the surly bonds of earth, teaching us about the cosmos and our place in it? I don’t think the idea is too far-fetched—a much younger me once wrote a piece called “the merits of a national object.”
Lindbergh’s reflection on the launch has a hell of a lede:
Three things in life have reliably made me cry: a death in the family, a broken bone, and a crewed rocket launch. In the first two cases, the tears are a product of pain, either emotional or physical. In the third, they’re the happy, overpowering result of a mélange of more positive emotions: inspiration, pride, exultation, awe, wonder. When this piece is published, I’ll be at T-minus six hours to blubbering, because barring equipment or weather problems, Wednesday afternoon will mark what may be the most momentous launch in the past 40 years of U.S. human spaceflight—and, perhaps, the inauguration of a new normal for travel to the stars.
Come on, Ben. Now I’m crying!
What Sammy Watkins Believes by Tyler Dunne (Bleacher Report)
Everyone was so quick to judge, so quick to dismiss him as a bust, and when they looked at him, all they saw was a Clemson supertalent who got paid. They didn't know where he was really from. He's seen friends shot "dead in the head" inches in front of him. So often, he knew who pulled the trigger but says he never snitched. Nobody dared snitch. And even then—even if you evade the streets and make it to the NFL—home had a way of haunting him. He tried to avoid it as much as possible, but sometimes he didn't have a choice but to return.
I’m a sucker for great sports profiles and biographies, and this one doesn’t disappoint. Sammy Watkins was a star Clemson wideout, drafted 4th overall by the Buffalo Bills in 2014. His story is all too common among professional athletes: their athletic prowess opens doors to fame, secures a college scholarship (which doesn’t so much secure a free education for the athlete as it secures free labor for the college’s athletics department), and lends exactly zero preparation for the challenges of life as a professional athlete or the material and physiological needs of family back home. I read this piece prior to the murder of George Floyd, and it has taken on an even greater weight in the intervening period because of how it highlights the poisonous fruit of economic turbulence and systemic inequalities on America’s black families.
I’ve always liked Sammy Watkins (his brother Jaylen was on my Philadelphia Eagles for a while) but never knew that he was such an unorthodox and deep thinker. I don’t agree with a lot of his conclusions, but his instinct to appreciate the supernatural is rare.
The Prophecies of Q by Adrienne LaFrance (The Atlantic)
I have to admit that I’m a sucker for conspiracy theories. I don’t generally believe them (I can’t think of a single one that I do endorse, come to think of it) but I find them fascinating because they pose interesting counterfactual narratives and illustrate something about the psychology (psychosis?) of their progenitors.
I recently stumbled on a Facebook page for QAnon devotees, and yikes—vaccine microchips, Bill Gates heading the New World Order, Obama still somehow managing the shadow government. If you can conceive it, you’ll find a willing audience.
It’s of course a problem when accusations of “misinformation” become dog whistles to suppress reasoned, good-faith dissent (like the NYT walking back the Tom Cotton opinion editorial with vague inanities about the “fact checking process” without actually issuing a correction). But the QAnon type of misinformation is something else entirely, and the internet has enabled it in ways that we couldn’t imagine even two decades ago. Conspiracy theories are no longer the sole domain of reclusive hermits in the woods of western Pennsylvania; now they’re peddled and consumed by soccer moms and hedge fund analysts. And when the proof is all around us, who can blame them? (that’s sarcasm. See below…)
Many QAnon adherents see significance in Trump tweets containing words that begin with the letter Q. Recent world events have rewarded them amply. “I am a great friend and admirer of the Queen & the United Kingdom,” Trump began one tweet on March 29. The day before, he had tweeted this: “I am giving consideration to a QUARANTINE.” The Q crowd seized on both tweets, arguing that if you ignore most of the letters in the messages, you’ll find a confession from Trump: “I am … Q.”
I Thought Stage IV Cancer was Bad Enough; Then Came a Pandemic During the Presidency of Donald Trump by Caitlin Flanagan (The Atlantic)
This piece, by one of The Atlantic’s most talented writers, bears some of the hallmarks of writing that I don’t like: a clickbait-y headline, an overdramatic lede, etc. But I’m including it in this list because of Caitlin’s remarkable cancer journey and because we need to recognize that the pandemic is affecting us all differently. For some (looking in the mirror), it’s an opportunity to be frustrated at our policymakers and media class; others have lost family members or close friends; still others like Caitlin are struggling with fear and uncertainty in the midst of other complex life issues. Caitlin’s story resonates with me too because I have a close family member who is undergoing intensive chemo right now. During COVID-19, that means solitary hospital stays for a week or more, with no visitors allowed. This piece is a good reminder of the human cost of COVID-19, especially for people like me (and hopefully you) who have been only minorly inconvenienced.
What I’m…
Listening to: Fr. Anthony Giambrone, OP joined me on Creedal Catholic to talk about divine agency and COVID-19. Sally and I also hosted a roundtable discussion on Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life with Chandler and Lara Ryd. Campaign Zero’s DeRay McKesson was interviewed on the Bill Simmons Podcast to talk about curbing police violence through his #8CantWait campaign. I learned so much. I also encourage you to check out NPR’s Throughline episode on American policing.
Reading: I recently finished Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys, which is a dive into the world of high frequency trading and by extension the simultaneous fragility and opacity of the stock market. It was equal parts interesting and terrifying. (Nota bene: Michael Lewis was on the Bill Simmons podcast for an interesting discussion about COVID and some other topics last week. A lot of the conversation centered on ideas in his most recent book, The Fifth Risk.)
Watching: Steve Carrell and Greg Daniels brainchild, Space Force, was the most hotly anticipated streaming launch of the last couple of weeks. I got through all of half an episode before turning it off. Vulture even called it “a massive misfire.” It’s bad. 39% on Rotten Tomatoes bad. So instead I recommend Ava DuVernay’s 13th (streaming on Netflix). Sally and I watched it over the weekend and were appalled to learn its hard truths about structural racism and mass incarceration. I also learned that Jelani Cobb has an incredible voice.
Sharing without comment:
In other news: I learned through experience that Aspen trees, which use distributed root systems and grow in clonal groves, are incredibly difficult to remove once a small grove of saplings has started to take over your yard. I spent a not insignificant time this weekend doing just that, and now I have the sunburn to prove it.
Have a great week!
Would love to hear your feedback: zac@vernacularpodcast.com.