Rod Dreher's Blog, page 492

Unfortunately, Character Is Destiny

A friend e-mails tonight:

Nearly everything seems messy and confusing—and I am a bit disillusioned and frustrated by the news right now.

Because of the venom and the anger, I’ve been tempted to just tune out. Or give up. It makes me want to go work as a barista, maybe, or volunteer full-time somewhere. If I could make enough money to support our family doing those things, I’d probably try.

Do you ever feel this way? And if so, how do you get through it? Thing is, everything’s so vitriolic right now, I don’t feel like I have any words left in response.

I understand this. There is this graf from a piece by Branko Milanovic. He uses “liberalism” here to describe the Western order:

I am writing this in Vienna, in Prater, overlooking a giant Ferris Wheel which inevitably makes one think of Harry Lime. One can see liberalism as having set the Ferris Wheel in motion, with each car moving at first slowly and then faster and faster. The ride brought immense joy at first, but eventually, it seems, somebody turned on the switch to super-fast, locked the control room, and most of us are now in these cars that no one controls and no one can stop, running at break-neck speed, and wondering how and when the crash will come.

This feels right to me. There seems to be a deeper logic playing out here beneath the surface chaos. It’s the kind of thing that perhaps we can intuit, but can’t quite name in this moment, though it will become clearer to future historians, as did the fatal logic leading up to events in the summer of 1914. Which worked out so well for Western civilization.

This morning, my 13-year-old son was asking me about what’s going on with the new president. He hears us talking about it all the time, and expressing concerns about the country that he’s never heard (he was too young to remember his parents talking about the 2008 crash and its fallout). He said to me that he believed that Trump was bound to get himself impeached. I asked him why, and he said that Trump seems reckless, like he wouldn’t obey laws that he didn’t want to obey. You’re right, I said. I don’t think he will. Even if he does, that recklessness is going to cause so many problems for him. We’re seeing it right now, I said, with the immigration mess.

We talked about character. I told him about how Donald Trump came from Queens, and has always had a lot of resentment against people he believed didn’t respect him (McKay Coppins published a good piece about this today). It’s not that Trump is wrong about how those people in society don’t respect him — he’s right about that — but it’s that he gives them so much power over him. And this is going to be his undoing. Character is destiny.

I told my son about Richard Nixon and Watergate, which played out when I was a small boy. As I heard myself explaining Watergate, I recalled what it felt like back then to hear the evening news, and the sense my parents had that our country was suddenly in a very bad place. I remember the summer of 1973, and how strange it was that the morning game shows were pre-empted by live coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings. I didn’t know much more than that — I was only six — but the sense of fundamental disorder was palpable. I had no way of understanding what the president was accused of, but I knew that the president was supposed to be good, and that that was in question now.

At the end of our discussion, I told my son that Richard Nixon was a brilliant, gifted man who was undone by his own insecurity, anger, and paranoia. Trump has none of Nixon’s brilliance, and ten times his insecurity, anger, and paranoia, I said. What I didn’t say is that Trump is now president of a country whose institutions and whose mores will not hold him accountable like they held Nixon accountable.

Character is destiny. And the character of a nation is its destiny too. That’s an unsettling thought right about now, isn’t it? If the Greeks were right, we are all cascading towards nemesis, in the sense Branko Milanovic identifies.

One thing we can do is to try to understand what’s happening, and how to endure it without losing ourselves. In this regard, the newspapers and websites may well be of less practical use than novels, poetry, and the classics. Or other serious works; for example, I’ve started reading René Girard. One may feel powerless to arrest these great and terrible events unfolding like a prophecy, but perhaps one can find a way not to be crushed by the millstone of big history.

A Christian priest and reader who is a Girardian e-mails:

Consider the following, from an interview in First Things a few years ago:

CH: What about this quotation: “Except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened”? 

RG: It means that the end times will be very long and monotonous — so mediocre and uneventful from a religious and spiritual standpoint that the danger of dying spirituality, even for the best of us, will be very great. This is a harsh lesson but one ultimately of hope rather than despair.

Keep reading. Girard explains and even foretells so much of what we are seeing. It’s accelerating. The danger for Christians is cynicism, keeping it tuned to Fox News, reciprocal violence, lovelessness, spiritual mediocrity (cf. the mainlines).

The more important conflict we face now is the one within ourselves, our families, and our communities, to resist the spirit of the age. To build arks within which to ride out the storm. I have more on this coming soon.

Punching Down In Portlandia

The video above is NSFW, for language. It shows a mob of anti-Trump protesters storming into the Portland (OR) airport yesterday, and violently assaulting a pro-Trump protester standing there. The Portland Oregonian describes what happened:

Port of Portland officials say approximately 600 turned out, eclipsing the previous day’s 100 to 150 demonstrators.

The presence of a four-man counter-protest at times turned tense as demonstrators from both camps clashed. One of the counter-demonstrators was assaulted just after 5 p.m., Port of Portland spokesman Steve Johnson said.

Grant Chisholm, 39 of Portland told The Oregonian/Oregonlive that he was at the airport with three other members of the group Bible Believers for a counter-protest when a Trump opponent hit him in the head three times with something metallic. Chisholm dropped and drifted in and out of unconsciousness, he said, while vomiting as other protesters kicked him in the head.

“They almost killed me tonight,” Chisholm said.

Six hundred people vs. four — and they nearly killed the guy.

It’s building. The reader Zapollo said in a comment on a post yesterday:

I hate this. It makes me sick to think of myself turning into one of those conservatives who just mainlines Fox News all day long and never hears anything except through the right-wing media filter. (I actually muted one of my conservative friends, too, because I couldn’t stand his non-stop posting of InfoWars-type crap.) But neither am I a masochist. “A willingness to listen to other points of view” does not imply that I must subject myself to a nonstop stream of insults and outrage.

Thing is, I don’t protest. I don’t march or carry signs or post political rants on Facebook. I pretty much keep my views to myself. When I share them online, I try to stay anonymous.

But I vote. Every time, in every single election, even tiny local races. I haven’t missed an election of any kind in more than a decade.

I’m the quiet, anonymous guy who never has a political sign in his yard, never puts a bumper sticker on his car, never writes a letter to the editor and never melts down his Congressman’s phone lines. But I study the recorded votes of my legislators at all levels every single week and I show up to vote in all elections, without fail. I was originally a reluctant Trump voter, but the left’s reaction over the past week has been pushing me further into the Trump camp.

The Benedict Option couldn’t come at a better time.

Is there a single person unsure of what to think about Trump’s Executive Order, or maybe even opposed to it, who is moved towards the opposition camp by mob violence like this? Seriously, there is nothing more American and patriotic than protesting against the government’s policies. If you believe that Trump has acted unjustly, then you should make a public statement of opposition if you are so moved. More power to you.

But violence? No, no, no. When the violent right-wing mob comes for you — and it eventually will — what are you going to do?

What happens when these violent emotions enter the hallways of schools and universities? Will people identifies as Trump supporters among the student body have to worry about being beaten up? If so, the left surely doesn’t think that the right will stand for that. Do they?

Let me remind you Christian readers what another reader said in this space last week:

However, as the progressive opposition to Trump ramps up and we experience the unfolding four years as one of constant emergency and calamity, there is a real danger for Christians especially: that Christians become drawn by default into the terms of debate established by Progressives, advanced by the media, echoed by Hollywood, supported on campuses, and amplified ceaselessly on social media. Social media is going to be a the Internet Age’s equivalent of the seven deadly sins – especially sloth – and Christians would be well-advised not to be drawn into its tempting distractions. We are going to be a nation ever more defined by constant and ceaseless outrage over everything, and whatever one says – no matter if it’s meant for amusement or a passing observation – will be inexorably drawn into the outrage amplification machine.

One of the great challenges, then, will be fostering spaces where silence, moderation, contemplation, conversation, and real friendships might blossom. I can already see developing the disposition so common during the great ideological battles of the mid-20th century – if you are not with us, you are against us. Not to be drawn into this secularized Manicheanism will be one of the great challenges for Christians, and it seems to me the unexpected way that the types of Christian communities envisioned in the Benedict Option will be especially necessary. We may not face the threat that we thought might be coming under a Clinton Presidency, but in many respects at least that prospect had the benefit of making it clearer to us what was to be expected and the forms of resistance that would be needed. The current conflagration will be subtler in its iniquity – more akin to the temptations offered by a Screwtape – and the ability to build spaces outside the Politics of the Eschaton will be especially needful.

UPDATE: Just seeing that one of the mosque shooters — and perhaps the only shooter — in Quebec has been identified as a right-wing troll who has championed Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump on social media. I will write about this when more information about him becomes available.

Reading Rene Girard At The End Of The World

I have begun reading Things Hidden Since The Foundation Of The World, a book-length interview (conducted by two psychiatrists) with the late philospher René Girard. Here’s what Peter Thiel told an interviewer in 2014:

TIM: What is the book (or books) you’ve most often gifted to other people?

PETER: Books by René Girard, definitely — both because he’s the one writer who has influenced me the most and because many people haven’t heard of him.

Girard gives a sweeping view of the whole human experience on this planet — something captured in the title of his masterwork, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World — but it’s not just an academic philosophy. Once you learn about it, his view of imitation as the root of behavior is something you will see every day, not just in people around you but in yourself.

Here’s a link to a site that explains basic concepts in Girard’s thought. In this post, I’m going to talk about the things that stood out to me from the book’s first chapter, titled, “The Victimage Mechanism as the Basis of Religion.” This is a difficult book, and I’m not at all sure that I’ve gotten it right in what follows. If this blog has any Girardians reading it, I welcome your correction. Below, I offer not a linear discussion of Girard’s points, but rather a series of notes I made as I read through the first chapter.

Girard says, “There is nothing, or next to nothing, in human behaviour that is not learned, and all learning is based on imitation. If human beings suddenly ceased imitating, all forms of culture would vanish.” He calls this process mimesis. We are so individualistic as a culture, he says, that we downplay the “leading role” that mimesis plays in our society and culture. Girard is making an anthropological point here, saying that imitation is fundamental to our humanity.

What is mimesis, then? Girard says that Plato made a basic mistake, and that mistake has been repeated throughout the whole of Western thought. He characterized mimesis as representation — that is, simply copying what other people do. Girard believes there is another dimension to mimesis, what he calls “possessive mimesis,” or “acquisitive mimesis.” We not only want to do what others do, but we want to have what others have. This is the source of conflict within groups; Girard calls it “mimetic rivalry,” and he said in our distant past, we devised ways to deal with it to keep the group from tearing itself apart. This, for Girard (who was a believing Catholic Christian), is the origin of religion.

Primitive societies have a clearer understanding of the role mimesis plays in violence than we moderns do, for “any mimetic reproduction suggests violence or is seen as a possible cause of violence.” Some tribes have taboos against using mirrors or taking photographs, which are absurd, but Girard says that no matter how superstitious they may be, those taboos are based on a sound insight about human nature. Reading this, I thought about the silly intellectual fad among campus SJWs against “cultural appropriation,” e.g., an Ohio college cafeteria offending SJWs by serving “ethnic” food. Culture doesn’t develop without imitation at some level, but imitation also can serve as the source of violence. In this sense, the angry SJWs may be reacting out of primitivism, but that simply means it’s coming from an instinct deep inside human beings.

There are two ways societies regulate mimetic rivalry to keep the violence inherent to community in check. The first is through prohibitions, through Thou Shalt Nots. (Remember that in Philip Rieff’s theory of culture, prohibitions — he calls them “remissions” — are what define a culture by setting out its boundaries.) Says Girard, “Prohibitions are intended to keep distant or to remove anything that threatens the community.”

In light of that line, it’s interesting to consider Girard’s point that people today don’t understand mimetic rivalry, because we are so given over to seeing the world and society in terms of heroic individualism that we can’t perceive the dangers inherent in violating taboos. If we tear down anything that fences us in and serves as a rein on our individual conduct, we also, whether we realize it or not, dismantle the internal mechanism that keeps a check on violence. That is to say, if we come to valorize transgression, we are steadily disarming ourselves before the malign power of our own violence.

Prohibitions repress mimetic rivalry within a society for the sake of keeping the peace. In primitive cultures, the prohibitions are embedded within the symbolic system that is a particular religion. Religion comes from the Latin word religare, which means “to bind.” Religion binds the community together within a shared agreement on prohibitions — an agreement that also affirms that these prohibitions have their roots in the sacred, in the transcendent. After all, “culture” comes from “cult,” which derives from the Latin word for worship.

Again, Girard was a believing Catholic (though he didn’t return to his ancestral faith until adulthood), but he says as a philosopher that the basis for all religion is man’s attempt to deal with the problem of “acquisitive mimesis” — that is, of the fact that we want what others have — and the violence that it inevitably sparks. Religious ritual is a process by which the “conflictual disintegration” of the community is transformed into “social collaboration.”

[UPDATE: A reader corrects me: “I’ll offer just one small directive, if I may: mimetic theory posits not so much that ‘we want to have what others have’ as ‘we want to have what others want to have.’ To put it another way, what we desire is not the possessions of our models but their desires.]

We have to be careful not to try to rationalize this process too much, Girard warns. It is important to keep it shrouded in mystery. To speak of religion and religious institutions in terms of their function is too naive and reductionistic.

The second way societies deal with mimetic rivalry is through ritual. Girard observes that primitive religions usually conclude their rituals with a sacrifice. The sacrifice is enormously important, because it is the process through which the community’s members confront their own division, offload the aspects of themselves that cause the division onto the sacrificial victim, and then reaffirm themselves as united. The victim is sacrificed for the sake of the community. The victim is “the final act of violence, its last word.”

So, in Girard’s theory, societies first try to suppress mimetic rivalry through prohibition, and when those fail, they turn to ritual “to channel it in a direction that would lead to resolution, which means a reconciliation of the community at the expense of what one must suppose to be an arbitrary victim.” The victim is considered to be sacred because in the eyes of the community, it sacramentally bears the sins of the collective and the resolution of the conflicts that led to the moment of crisis.

Girard says that not every society has been able to hold itself together through a sacrificial ritual, and has therefore disintegrated under the forces of mimetic rivalry.

But the observation of religious systems forces us to conclude (1) that the mimetic crisis always occurs, (2) that the banding together or all against a single victim is the normal resolution at the level of culture, and (3) that it is furthermore the normative resolution, because all the rules of culture stem from it.

At this point in my reading, I found myself wondering what constitutes the mimetic crisis of our own society. That is, how would Girard’s theory explain the divisions that afflict us?

For one thing, both sides in the culture war are engaged in a mimetic rivalry to claim victim status. Girard has said elsewhere that there has never been a culture (that we’re aware of) in which being seen as a victim is a source of power. Who are the oppressed, and who are the oppressor? The competition for victim status is a big part of the mimetic rivalry at the heart of the culture war.

For another, it seems to me that the mimetic rivals are contending over the power to set the rules of society. To perhaps oversimplify, the conservative side of the culture war wishes to retain older boundaries, older forms, and older customs. The liberal side wishes to rewrite the rules entirely, for the sake of liberating the expressive individual from those traditional constraints.

As a conservative, I worry very much that the ongoing victory of liberal forces in the culture war are disintegrating society by destroying the authority of tradition and traditional social roles and institutions. For example, not content with having destroyed the institution of marriage, which played a vital historical role in binding men to the mothers of their children, liberalism is now undertaking to destroy the idea of male and female. That much is clear, at least to me.

But that’s too easy. As I have said over and over in this space, we would not have same-sex marriage had we not first had the Sexual Revolution. And the Sexual Revolution did not come from nowhere. It sprang from a culture that had long been fertilized by the idea that eros — that is, passionate desire — is at the heart of what it means to be human. The 1960s may have marked a decisive break in popular culture, but the tectonic plates  had been moving beneath the surface for centuries. The point I wish to make here is that we cannot blame this entirely on the left. The disintegrative forces are also active on the right, especially in the economic sphere. The “creative destruction” of capitalism praised by Schumpeter is accepted without question by people on the right who would never countenance the same principle applied to sexuality. The two are of a piece in modernity.

The left, however, is force-marching our society towards mimetic conflict by tearing down the institutions and customs that have held society together, and by emphasizing identity politics, which sunder the bonds that hold the community together. The left is playing with fire. We are in a very fragile state now.

Moreover, our society is in an advanced state of disintegration for other reasons. The ideology of individualism across the board has served to fragment us. We have lost our cultural memory, and any sense that we are rooted in the past. Technology, especially information technology, plays a role in the cultural disintegration. Our institutions have lost and are continuing to lose legitimacy. Girard says that religion is “an immense effort to keep the peace,” which is why the decomposition of Christianity into Moralistic Therapeutic Deism — a pseudo-religion that neither binds the individual’s desire to something higher, nor binds the community together — puts us all at tremendous peril. Lacking a belief in anything higher than the Self — and let’s be honest, Christianity today is often little more than the sacred Self with a light coating of Jesus sauce — we lack a formal scapegoat mechanism that could restore peace and order to the community. In Girard’s thought, Christianity destroyed the efficacy of the scapegoat mechanism by revealing it for what it really is. Therefore, scapegoating can’t really work anymore, not at the societal level. Christianity replaced it.

But now that the West is losing Christianity, what do we do? Girard, in a different interview, said:

The Apocalypse is not some invention.  If we are without sacrifices, either we’re going to love each other or we’re going to die.  We have no more protection against our own violence.  Therefore, we are confronted with a choice: either we’re going to follow the rules of the Kingdom of God or the situation is going to get infinitely worse

You know my answer to this crisis: the Benedict Option.  What reading Girard makes me consider, though, is how the Ben Op is a refusal of the mimetic rivalry driving the two ignorant armies of the culture war. That is, the Ben Op recognizes that while one side may be closer to the truth than the other, neither one has within it the resources to bind the community — to God, or to each other — so that it can ride out the crisis upon us now, and the one to come.

My reading of Girard tells me that we are on the brink of an era of violence against which we have no protection. Girard says that on the road to violent conflict, the mimetic rivalry reaches a point at which both sides lose sight of the object of their competing desire, and instead desire nothing more than the defeat of the other. Seems to me that we’re almost there.

I will continue writing about the Things Hidden volume. This blog doesn’t even cover the first chapter! But it’s a lot to consider. Again, I remind you that I’m an absolute beginner at Girard, and welcome correction from those who know his work better.

UPDATE: From one of Girard’s translators:

I also wanted to mention that this corrective from a reader–“[UPDATE: A reader corrects me: “I’ll offer just one small directive, if I may: mimetic theory posits not so much that ‘we want to have what others have’ as ‘we want to have what others want to have.’ To put it another way, what we desire is not the possessions of our models but their desires.]–does not seem to me entirely justified.

You are quite right to say that mimetic theory posits that we want what others have, and I think Girard would have approved of your formulation. The final commandments prohibit us from desiring our neighbor’s possessions. That is a prohibition against mimetic desire, since what the neighbor possesses is more desirable than what we have ourselves.

The formulation “desire the other’s desire” sounds more like Hegel or Kojève and is not a formula that Girard himself used very often if at all, to my knowledge.

Girard would say not that we desire the other’s desire but that we imitate the other’s desire, and therefore we desire what he desires. The other may in turn imitate our desires. This dynamic of mutual imitation may lead to an intensifying competition, and this in turn to violence.

Corporate Hippie Virtue Signaling

BestStockFoto/Shutterstock

A reader received this mass e-mail from the ride-hailing service Lyft:

We created Lyft to be a model for the type of community we want our world to be: diverse, inclusive, and safe.

This weekend, Trump closed the country’s borders to refugees, immigrants, and even documented residents from around the world based on their country of origin. Banning people of a particular faith or creed, race or identity, sexuality or ethnicity, from entering the U.S. is antithetical to both Lyft’s and our nation’s core values. We stand firmly against these actions, and will not be silent on issues that threaten the values of our community.

We know this directly impacts many of our community members, their families, and friends. We stand with you, and are donating $1,000,000 over the next four years to the ACLU to defend our constitution. We ask that you continue to be there for each other – and together, continue proving the power of community.

Said the reader:

Apparently, every service we use will feel compelled to engage in this kind of virtue-signaling.

Too true. First, there is the inconvenient fact that federal immigration law apparently gives the US president the right to do what Trump did. Second, the people who created Lyft did it because they thought it would make money, not because they wanted to create a model community for the world. What kind of hippie moron really believes that nonsense? This is all about Lyft taking advantage of its competitor Uber’s bad PR because of its founder’s ties to Donald Trump. I don’t blame them for pressing their advantage, but for pity’s sake, the virtue-signaling is vomitous.

True Things About The Trump Immigration Ban

Here’s what seems true to me as of late Sunday afternoon. This story moves so quickly that I’m not sure that I’ll believe these things by the time I finish writing this post.

1. Even if it makes people mad, there is nothing wrong with a nation’s leaders adjusting its immigration policy, even its refugee policy, to reduce the prospect of harm to that nation, and to serve its own interests.

2. It makes sense to prioritize refugees who are members of vulnerable religious minorities in their war-torn countries. If we can’t accept everybody, then we should favor those whose religion and powerlessness makes them targets for violence, even death.

3. Trump did not say that Christians should receive priority over everybody else. The text of his executive order only said that religious minorities should have priority. Here’s the relevant passage of the EO (which as of Sunday afternoon, had disappeared from the White House website):

Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality. Where necessary and appropriate, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security shall recommend legislation to the President that would assist with such prioritization.

4. Even if Trump did prioritize persecuted Christians over everybody else, is that really such a big deal? For one, the Obama administration under-prioritized Christians (see Dan McLaughlin on that) in its refugee policy. For another, we are the largest Christian nation in the world, in terms of the religion with which most of our people identify. Persecuted Christians should be able to count on the United States as a place of refuge. To be clear, I favor the actual executive order Trump signed, which prioritizes non-specific religious minorities — which could include Muslims, depending on the country and the situation — but it is strange to me that we go to pieces over even the prospect that the president of a nation that is 70 percent Christian would have a refugee policy that prioritizes people who share the majority religion — especially given that Christians from Muslim-majority countries are afraid of anti-Christian violence from other Muslims within refugee camps. 

My sense is that when many on the American left looks abroad and sees persecuted Christians, it sees an undifferentiated horde of brown-skinned Falwells who have probably brought the hatred on themselves.

5. Trump did not institute a “Muslim ban,” only a “ban” (if that is the word) on citizens from seven Muslim nations. Everybody ought to read lawyer and #NeverTrump stalwart David French’s close parsing of the EO, including this:

[T]he order imposes a temporary, 90-day ban on people entering the U.S. from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. These are countries either torn apart by jihadist violence or under the control of hostile, jihadist governments. The ban is in place while the Department of Homeland Security determines the “information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit under the INA (adjudications) in order to determine that the individual seeking the benefit is who the individual claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat.” It could, however, be extended or expanded depending on whether countries are capable of providing the requested information.

The ban, however, contains an important exception: “Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may, on a case-by-case basis, and when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked.” In other words, the secretaries can make exceptions — a provision that would, one hopes, fully allow interpreters and other proven allies to enter the U.S. during the 90-day period.

To the extent this ban applies to new immigrant and non-immigrant entry, this temporary halt (with exceptions) is wise. We know that terrorists are trying to infiltrate the ranks of refugees and other visitors. We know that immigrants from Somalia, for example, have launched jihadist attacks here at home and have sought to leave the U.S. to join ISIS. Indeed, given the terrible recent track record of completed and attempted terror attacks by Muslim immigrants, it’s clear that our current approach is inadequate to control the threat. Unless we want to simply accept Muslim immigrant terror as a fact of American life, a short-term ban on entry from problematic countries combined with a systematic review of our security procedures is both reasonable and prudent.

6. Religion is already a factor in determining refugee status, under US law. Again, read David French.

7. Every one of those countries on Trump’s list makes sense, except for Iran, given that no Iranians have been involved in jihad attacks on the US, and that unlike the other nations, Iran is not wracked by war and jihadism. It makes no sense for Trump to have left Saudi Arabia and Egypt off the list, given that citizens of those nations have attacked us. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are considered allies of ours, which is why they’re not on the list. Same with Pakistan, which is a hothouse of Islamic extremism and terror. But their absence does call into question the real rationale of the EO.

8. It was cruel, unjust and politically insane to include current green card holders in this temporary ban, and I’m glad the White House has walked that back. 

9. The rollout of this new policy was catastrophic. From the NYT:

White House aides said on Saturday that there had been consultations with State Department and homeland security officials about carrying out the order. “Everyone who needed to know was informed,” one aide said.

But that assertion was denied by multiple officials with knowledge of the interactions, including two officials at the State Department. Leaders of Customs and Border Protection and of Citizenship and Immigration Services — the two agencies most directly affected by the order — were on a telephone briefing on the new policy even as Mr. Trump signed it on Friday, two officials said.

Trump reportedly didn’t even consult White House lawyers before issuing the EO, though the White House disputes that.

Again, it’s catastrophic, but of a piece with the shambolic administrative style of Team Trump. He has been president for just over a week now, and already there’s a strong sense that the uppermost levels of the US government are exerting power, but are not in control, if you see the difference.

UPDATE: Read Benjamin Wittes’s legal and political analysis of the thing.  Excerpt:

Moreover, it’s a very dangerous thing to have a White House that can’t with the remotest pretense of competence and governance put together a major policy document on a crucial set of national security issues without inducing an avalanche of litigation and wide diplomatic fallout. If the incompetence mitigates the malevolence in this case, that’ll be a blessing. But given the nature of the federal immigration powers, the mitigation may be small and the blessing short-lived; the implications of having an executive this inept are not small and won’t be short-lived.

10. Trump is not thinking through the politics here. Look:

The joint statement of former presidential candidates John McCain & Lindsey Graham is wrong – they are sadly weak on immigration. The two…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017

And look at this:

Worth noting that Trump is attacking Lindsey Graham, a member of Senate Judiciary Committee, days before he makes a SCOTUS nomination

— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) January 29, 2017

The Trump administration seems to operate on the same audacious, provocative principles that served it so well during the campaign. You can’t govern that way, as he is about to find out. Running against the GOP establishment might have been smart politics during the campaign, and it’s probably smart to keep doing that to a certain extent. But at some point, Trump is going to need them. If he’s managed to Ted-Cruz himself — that is, to alienate the people who ought to be on his side by grandstanding against them — he’s going to find his presidency failing very quickly. You cannot govern by executive order.

11. There’s no way Trump is going to be able to keep up this pace of disruption, nor will the country. His audacity is admirable at times, but his utter absence of prudence is going to cause a catastrophe for his administration, and perhaps the entire country. And if it doesn’t, we are going to be exhausted and at each other’s throats soon. Is this what we want?

UPDATE: Re: No. 7, when I posted this, I was unaware of three domestic terror attacks by people from countries on Trump’s list (two Somalis, one Iranian). That said, I believe it makes sense to have extra vetting for people from most of those countries (Iran, not so much), given the lawlessness and jihadism running rampant within them. Did you realize that those seven countries were first designated by — wait for it — President Barack Obama? From The Atlantic:

Spicer noted that the seven counties put on the list were chosen by the Obama administration. Indeed, it has its roots in the visa-waiver program. The U.S. allows the citizens of more than 30 countries to visit for short stays without a visa under this program. But that visa waiver does not apply if a citizen of an eligible country has visited—with some exceptions—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, or Yemen on or after March 1, 2011—under measures put in place by the Obama administration. Those individuals must apply for a visa at a U.S. consulate. These seven countries are listed under section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12) of the U.S. code, and it is this code that Trump’s executive order cited while banning citizens of those nations.

Readers On Trump’s Immigration Ban

a katz/Shutterstock

I plan to write something about it for the site tomorrow, and maybe for later today. Meanwhile, here are two letters I received overnight that are worth considering:

I believed you mentioned you would be writing about the detention of immigrants with Visas and Permanent Residency in the US at various airports yesterday. I’d like to give you some insight on how Homeland security operates. After 9/11, sweeping legislation was created to help keep us safer, many argued that they were too broad at the time I thought a little inconvenience for some can’t be that bad if it keeps everyone that much safer. However Homeland security has a lot of power and if they detain you it is a fraught situation.

In 2005, my father a naturalized citizen, travelled from Dominican Republic to JFK. Homeland security had gotten the name Jose Rodriguez as a person of interest and detained every Jose Rodriguez on their flight’s arrival. At least 20 of them. My father has lived in the US since 1970, has owned businesses, and owns his home. He said they treated the group like criminals. Keeping them penned in a small room, taking them out one by to interview them, by different agents. Constantly asking the same questions of them, hoping to trip one up. They were not allowed food or phone calls. Several times my father asked for a lawyer, and was denied. I was at the airport circling the arrivals gate for an hour before I just parked the car to enter the airport. I went to the ticket counter to ask if the flight had even arrived, then to ask if my father had even made it on the plane. I was afraid maybe he had had a medical emergency at the airport before departure or on plane. The agent told me she could not confirm if he had made it on the plane. For the next 3 hours I called the airline, I called the airport, I called my relatives in Dominican Republic to travel tot he airport to confirm he had departed. I went to the departure gate where there were several families distraught, I had found the family and friends of the other 20 Jose Rodriguez’s. That’s when I put it together that they were all detained. I called the airport and got in touch with homeland security and told them that I had contacted a lawyer that my father a US citizen was being detained and that he had a right to a lawyer. I was told they could not confirm that my father was in custody but that even if he were their detainees are not guaranteed any such rights. I was livid, I was so angry I was in tears. I was furiously calling an attorney to figure out our rights. 15 minutes after my call to homeland security all of the Detainees were released. I like to think that it was my call to their office threatening to lawyer up but i doubt it.

The following year my sister was detained on her flight from France. My sister was born in the states and is a citizen, not naturalized. She fit the description of a terrorist that might be at that time. She was detained for 3 hours.

Some of the people being held Saturday or outright returned from to their original departure were permanent residents, and valid visa holders. Some had small children and were elderly. Some of them their only home is here in the states.

I remember the sour taste that the above experiences left in my mouth when my family members were detained. It’s how I imagine the people yesterday felt. Upset, and humiliated. I am so grateful for those attorneys that rushed to the airports to help, and the coverage on twitter to bring awareness to what the President’s quick signature wrought on all those people traveling that were blindsided by an executive order with such broad language. I hope it is found unconstitutional and I pray that it doesn’t radicalize some people.

Here’s another one that I’ve slightly edited for privacy:

I thought I’d share a small anecdote about this immigration executive order – and the tumult of the past week more broadly – touches my life. I’m a professor of civil engineering at [university]

I’d like to tell you about one of my best graduate students — possibly the best. In her first year working with me, she wrote two research articles, helped with a third, and was critical to our success on a project for our local Department of Transportation. A year and a half into her graduate career, she is already my go-to research assistant when something needs to be done right, the first time. Last summer she worked as an intern at an auto manufacturer, and they loved her. They’d like to hire her, but she wants to get her doctorate in civil engineering (you know us… we design and operate all that infrastructure you keep hearing about).

When she was in high school, her classes we segregated, and the girls didn’t have access to science labs. She led a group that lobbied successfully to get access to labs and equipment. In 2014, she immigrated to the U.S. as a permanent resident (green card) and her family now lives in Ohio. A year and a half ago she started her master’s degree under my supervision, and is on track for that doctorate. But if she wants to go to a conference in another country to share our research or keep us up to date on what other researchers are doing, she won’t be allowed back in under Friday’s executive order. Or, for that matter, if she wants to take a rare weekend off and visit our nearest neighboring city, which happens to be in Canada. All because she is from Iran — no matter that she is a lawful permanent resident of our country. This young lady has done everything right and played by the rules, and now we’re changing the rules on her. How does this make any sense?

But this is not just about her. I work at a large research university. I have research grants and contracts with right now with a major auto manufacturer, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Transportation, and our state DOT. My ability to deliver on these contracts depends on my recruiting and retaining graduate students, especially PhD students. And my ability to fund those students depends on my securing continued grants and/or contracts. I have already heard from one of my funders in industry that the capriciousness of the administration and the resulting uncertainty for their business may force them to reduce their investments in research over the coming year.

If you have been affected personally by the president’s executive order, or can tell a story like the first reader, tell the rest of us what you’re seeing.

UPDATE: From a conservative Christian friend in Texas:

I want to tell you about a conversation I had on a flight home from Virginia in December. I actually thought about telling you then but was swamped, and besides, now is just as pertinent.

One of the men I sat beside on the plane was a Turkish PhD graduate from one of the New England schools (I forget which) who was presenting his paper on nuclear fusion to various colleges around the US hoping to find employment. We talked about many things, and we discussed the refugee issue. He had an interesting view. I would have expected him to be angry by the rush of people who invaded his home country and disrupted their economy. Instead, he had great compassion. He said, “We do not resent them. We understand war. We understand what they are fleeing. What we don’t understand is the world’s lack of compassion and unwillingness to help.”

He went on to talk about how these people are welcome, but the government thought other countries who had helped other refugees would be open to these, but that is not the case. He recognized countries are afraid of terrorists. He said, “We are afraid of terrorists, too, but terrorists will come whether we help people or not. Not helping them does not stop the problem. It only leaves us accountable when we stand before the final Judgment.”

This man was raised on the front lines of this battle. He was in his mid-20s. War and terrorism have been part of his whole life, and yet, he has compassion. More than that, he has the big picture. Terrorists are going to come…whether we help people or not…they will come. God will not hold us accountable for how many terrorists we accidentally let in, but He will hold us accountable for the poor and needy we turn our backs to. Do I like the idea of helping Syrian refugees? Actually, the idea scares me, BUT, one thing I have learned about God is that mercy, love, and compassion open the door to Him, and He is the only one who can protect us from the enemy, whether that be a physical one or a spiritual one. Is that wisdom? I don’t know. All I know is a young man from Turkey who is smart enough to study and explain nuclear fusion has a handle on compassion that made me stop and think.

Paintballing On The Cajun Prairie

That’s my son Lucas, minutes before his first-ever paintball war. He’s been talking about paintball for at least three years, and finally, today, he got to go. This was his present for his 13th birthday. I drove him, his brother, and two friends over to a paintball field on the far side of Lafayette. I didn’t suit up and play with them because my back and my neck still ache from the car wreck last month, and they’re too shaky to risk re-injuring. I wore a mask to watch the first couple of rounds of paintball war, but eventually left to go sit at a picnic table near the shack and read. View from my table:

I am fully aware of how ridiculous it is to sit at the edge of a cold, wet, windy paintball field and read about mimetic rivalry. I can’t help it, I was born that way.

Below, an image that everybody from south Louisiana knows. It’s a crawfish tower, built by the crawfish from the mud he excavated in digging his burrow. He’s living in the hole below the thing. This short video clip captures a crawfish building his tower at night (they’re nocturnal). Here’s a photo from the paintball field today:

Trump, Disrupter-In-Chief

I’m going to comment later on the Trump refugee and immigration executive order, once I’m better informed about it. Trying harder not to respond without complete information, especially given how unreliable initial reporting has been on things Trump this past week. Just didn’t want y’all to think it had escaped my notice. I’m about to lead a bunch of Paintballers to the field of battle for most of today, so I’ll be away from the keys.

I did want to draw your attention to Peggy Noonan’s excellent column assessing Trump at the end of his eventful first week. Especially these passages:

More important still — the most important moment of the first week — was the meeting with union leaders. Mr. Trump gave them almost an hour and a half. “The president treated us with respect, not only our organization but our members,” said Terry O’Sullivan, general president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, by telephone. Liuna had not endorsed Trump in the campaign, but Mr. O’Sullivan saw the meeting’s timing as an expression of respect: “He’s inaugurated on Friday and we’re invited in Monday to have a substantial conversation.” The entire Trump top staff was there, including the vice president: “His whole team — we were very impressed.” They talked infrastructure, trade and energy. “The whole meeting was about middle class jobs, how do we create more?” Mr. O’Sullivan believes the Keystone pipeline will eventually generate more than 40,000 jobs. Mr. O’Sullivan said he hopes fixing “our crumbling transportation infrastructure” will be “the largest jobs program in the country.”

The new president gave them a tour of the Oval Office. Presidents tend to develop a line of patter about the rug, the color of the drapes. Did Mr. Trump direct things in that way? No. “He gave us free rein, to tell you the truth.”

The lengthy, public and early meeting with the union leaders was, among other things, first-class, primo political pocket-picking. The Trump White House was showing the Democratic Party that one of its traditional constituent groups is up for grabs and happy to do business with a new friend. It was also telling those Republicans too stupid to twig onto it yet that the GOP is going to be something it’s actually been within living memory: the party of working men and women, a friend of those who feel besieged.

And:

And here is the important political point: Democrats don’t have a playbook for this. They have a playbook to use against normal Republicans: You’re cold, greedy, racist, sexist elitists who hate the little guy.

They don’t have a playbook to use against a political figure like Mr. Trump yet, because he jumbles all the categories. Democrats will wobble around, see what works. For now they’ll stick with saying he’s scary, unstable, right-wing.

It’s going to take them a while to develop a playbook against an independent populist, some of whose advisers hate Republicans more than they do.

Read the whole thing. It’s quite good.

Also, read Michael Lind’s essay from last summer about the ideological realignment of the two parties, along those lines.

Off to Paintball…

A View From Mexico

Zerbor/Shutterstock

A reader writes:

Dear Mr. Dreher,

Gratia copiosa et pax! Receive my regards from Chihuahua, Mexico, where my fellow countrymen gallantly fought the Battle of the Sacramento River, defending their homeland from the invading yankees. Everytime I drive the Chihuahua – Ciudad Juárez highway, I see the monument honoring their memory. I see it and have flashbacks to my childhood where, as any Mexican kid, I would ask my Dad about Texas, California, New Mexico and what could have been. He’ll blame it on the freemasons, more worried on destroying the Church than in organizing the defense of the country. I learned from my father that only one decent American has ever lived: Henry David Thoreau. Now, thankfully, I know better. He taught me to love the Irish, who switched sides because they were Catholic. This is my first hint for you into the Mexican soul: the wound of 1848 hasn’t healed; it might seem it has, but it hasn’t.

As one of the few Mexican readers of your blog, I have been appalled by the comments to your post. I would have expected that level of animosity toward Mexicans on the comments section of Fox News or Breitbart. I have been appalled by the hubris, the ignorance and the lack of charity. The hubris: “sinkhole of corruption”. For Mexico, you call it “corruption”. For your own country, you call it “lobbying”. Didn’t Trump promised to “drain the swamp”? Have your readers forgotten the Clinton Foundation? The ignorance: “the Prime Minister of Mexico”. I can’t recall Emperors Agustín and Maximiliano having Prime Ministers… The lack of charity: “victory by humiliation is a lot cheaper than victory by tanks and bombs”. Really? If we don’t pay the wall you are going to invade us? Again, this is not what I would have expected from the readers of TAC. And yes, there is corruption and violence in Mexico, but that doesn’t automatically translate in us paying whatever silly project your President might have. As for the cartels, as bad as they are, they haven’t killed as many children as Planned Parenthood in the US.

Now on to my predictions of what Trump will achieve. The winner of our 2018 Presidential Election will probably be the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, since he is an old school “antigringo”. Not good for Catholics. He has always been careful not to alienate Catholic voters, but he surrounds himself with people that have supported abortion and the LGBT agenda. Irony of ironies: Evangelical voters in America bringing the Mexican Left to power.

Scrapping NAFTA would destroy the livelihood of millions of Mexicans — mine included, since I work in the auto industry. It’s gonna get ugly for both sides: no guacamole on Super Bowl Sunday!. I’ll give you a second hint into the Mexican soul: we have a knack for glorious defeats; we can’t go away quietly. Expect our children to learn Chinese or Russian in elementary school. We’ll stop the war on drugs. If the gringos want pot, let them have pot. It’s kind of silly that Mexicans are shooting at each other on the streets when pot is already legal in California…

One of the first posts I ever read from your blog was about how an article by Anthony Bourdain had spurred your interest in visiting Mexico. I think you should come. Mexico is part of the West. We’re poor Westerners from the Hispanic branch, but Westerners nonetheless. That guy on the bus stop has part of the DNA of sailor in the Armada. That guy’s lastname is Matamoros (Moor-slayer); each of its syllables smells like Old Castile. Our first Saint was a Franciscan crucified in Japan. We don’t require “extreme vetting”. Come visit. As you like to write: it’s important.

Unprecedented March For Life Support

Whatever else one might say about the Trump administration, it has given the pro-life movement more support at the March For Life than any other administration in history. More than Reagan, and more than both Bushes. That’s because for the first time ever, a vice president of the United States appeared at the rally to speak out in support:

Vice President Mike Pence fired up the crowd at Friday’s March for Life in Washington, telling the pro-life throng their movement is succeeding.

“Life is winning in America and today is a celebration in that progress,” Pence said, speaking at the Washington Monument, before the march stepped off just after noon. “We’ve come to a historic moment in the cause of life and we must approach it with with compassion for every American. Life is winning in America because of you.

“Let this movement be known for love,” he added to thunderous applause. “Not anger. For compassion. Not confrontation.”

Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway was there too, and pledged that the president was with the crowd.

This is all very, very encouraging.

Meanwhile, it seems that The Atlantic was so eager to rush Moira Weigel’s pro-abortion article to print that it misstated scientific fact. The piece was originally titled “How The Ultrasound Pushed The Idea That The Fetus Is A Person,” but was changed later to something more neutral. Alexandra DeSanctis is all over the Weigel essay like a mongoose on a snake. So far, here are the four corrections The Atlantic has run on the essay.

* This article originally stated that there is “no heart to speak of” in a six-week-old fetus. By that point in a pregnancy, a heart has already begun to form. We regret the error.

** This article originally stated that the fetus was already suffering from a genetic disorder. We regret the error.

*** This article originally stated that Bernard Nathanson headed the National Right-to-Life Committee and became a born-again Christian. Nathanson was active in but did not head the committee, and he converted to Roman Catholicism after The Silent Scream was produced. We regret the error.

**** This article originally stated that the doctors claimed fetuses had no reflexive responses to medical instruments at 12 weeks. We regret the error.

I suspect this is an example of editors feeling so strongly about the abortion issue that they didn’t check facts or edit too closely an essay that supports their own biases.

Anyway, I’m grateful to have a president and an administration that supports the pro-life cause so explicitly.