Rod Dreher's Blog, page 591

Firing Curt Schilling

You’ve heard about this, I guess:

ESPN announced Wednesday night it has fired outspoken baseball analyst and former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling after his reposting of a meme widely interpreted as anti-transgender on his Facebook page on Tuesday.

“Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated,” the network said in a statement.

The meme showed a picture of a male character wearing a wig and women’s clothing, with the caption, “Let him in! to the restroom with your daughter or else you’re a narrow minded, judgmental, unloving, racist bigot who needs to die!!!”

Schilling is said to have added the comments, “A man is a man no matter what they call themselves” and “Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic.”

Here’s the meme image he posted:

 

OK, that’s a provocative image, and Schilling was unwise to post it in this LGBT-McCarthyite environment. But is so bad it merits firing? Besides, I’m pretty sure that a rather huge number of people, especially ESPN viewers, share disgust with how if you aren’t on the Trans Bandwagon, you are basically a neo-Nazi. And honestly, is the commonly held opinion below now the sin that dare not speak its name?:

“A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic.”

The reader who pointed me to the story said:

I mean, that guy (Schilling) seems like a d**k. But was it even that bad? A firing offense?

That’s what I don’t get. I wonder if he had not embraced that meme, if his political opinion would have been enough to get him fired.

I like this:

Someone should start a sports network that focuses on sports. I bet it would be HUGE.

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) April 21, 2016

Another reader writes:

The witch hunts will continue!

What I also found peculiar is the testimony from his son:

“And while I will say he’s not the most well informed in the modern LGBT+ culture, i can assure you he’s made great strides to understand people today. If he were a bigot he wouldn’t have allowed my Trans friends to stay over, he’s respected pronouns and name changes- never once have I heard him say something to me that I thought he should keep quiet about.”

So now trans is a totally common thing among children?  I thought this is supposed to be

Meanwhile, Britain is warning its LGBT citizens about traveling to Mississippi and North Carolina, which suddenly have become Mordor With Magnolias. The reader who tipped me off to that says:

They are going to get the entire world against the South over something everyone agreed on ten years ago.

This is called Progress. Sit still for long enough, and they’ll find a reason to smear you too.

View From Your Olive Tree

Photo by Marco Sermarini

The irrepressible Marco Sermarini took this shot today from the top of one of his family’s olive trees in the Marche. He was in his grove, trimming them. This has to be some of the most beautiful countryside on God’s green earth.

Marco says he met a Canadian woman at the monastery in Norcia the other day, a reader of this blog who knew about him and his wonderful community because of posts like this.

In other happy Norcia-related news, reader Jared K. went to a Birra Nursia tasting in California the other night, and met Father Benedict Nivakoff, who was there presenting the monastery’s beer:

#HateCake Hoax

LOVE WINS FAG. That’s not the cake I ordered, @WholeFoods and I am offended for myself & the entire #LGBT community pic.twitter.com/cuxuv6mL3G

— Jordan D Brown (@PasJordanBrown) April 18, 2016

When I first heard about the Austin HateCake™, with “LOVE WINS FAG” written on it in icing, I knew it had to be a hoax. The idea that a Whole Foods bakery anywhere would produce such a cake is risible. The idea that a Whole Foods in ultraliberal Austin, Texas, would do that sort of thing is beyond absurd. I’m glad that Whole Foods is countersuing the Rev. Jordan Brown, the gay pastor who has reaped a bountiful publicity harvest by claiming he was slurred by the HateCake™. According to the New York Daily News:

Whole Foods also pointed out the baker behind the cake was part of the “LGBTQ community,” adding that Brown’s lawsuit was “completely false and directly contradicts Whole Foods Market’s inclusive culture, which celebrates diversity.”

The barcode for the cake was also on top of the packaging during checkout, but later in Brown’s video, it’s shown to be on the side and bottom corners.

Brown, an openly gay founder of the Church of Open Doors, originally filed the lawsuit against the national food company for discrimination and asked for unspecified damages on Monday.

“Pastor Jordan spent the remainder of the day in tears. He was and is extremely upset,” the lawsuit said. “It is impossible to calculate the emotional distress these events have caused.”

If that were true, and an ugly word written in frosting on a cake causes incalculable emotional distress to this tender young evangelist, then Pastor Jordan probably shouldn’t be let out of the house unsupervised. But it is my opinion that this is not remotely true.

A GetReligion reader is way ahead of the media on this one. Check out Terry Mattingly’s post, which asks questions about whether Jordan Brown is actually an ordained pastor, and whether or not his church is a real thing. An inquisitive reader posted this comment:

I am not a journalist but I did do some checking on the Church of Open Doors. The “congregation” meets in the community room/area of an apartment complex. The official mailing address is a post office box at an establishment named “Drive Thru Postal”. On the “church” website, there is no mention of governance or oversight. According to Facebook link, the “church” utilizes MailChimp, I went to MailChimp and found the archive of emails for the “church” and the majority of them are pleas for money. This is the most recent:



“May starts a NEW chapter – We found a new permanent location to rent!

We can’t do this without your financial support! (The gospel is always free, but can be expensive to get out!)

One of our other goals is to take our services live via webcast to reach anyone seeking the gospel outside of Austin.

To support the outreach of your community, we depend solely on donations of any size!”

Hmmm. Whole Foods is going to own this guy by the time this is over.

Jordan Brown’s error was picking on a most unlikely target, and one with a pile of money to pay lawyers to fight back. If he had picked for his scam a small, independently owned bakery, particularly one run by Christians, he would still be a martyr.

Heartburn Over Jesus Lunch

There’s so much wrong with this story from Middleton, Wisconsin, that it’s hard to know where to begin.  Let’s start with the lede:

An ongoing debate over the propriety of a weekly Christian gathering dubbed “Jesus Lunch” at Middleton High School led to crowds of supporters and protesters facing off at a park shelter adjacent to the school Tuesday afternoon.

Around 500 students, parents and community members gathered at Fireman’s Park, where the lunch is held, to serve and eat lunch as well as express their thoughts on the controversy for about 10 reporters covering the event.

Jesus Lunch was started in 2014 by a small group of parents whose kids attend Middleton High School. The lunches involve parents passing out free food to students and having discussing about Christianity. According to students who attend Jesus Lunch, parents give faith-based motivational speeches and send positive messages their way. On one occasion, parents handed out Bibles and Christianity pamphlets.

Kids at this school have the right to go off campus for lunch. Some choose to go to this park. And on one day each week, moms serve food and have a religious gathering.

It seems to me that there’s a legitimate constitutional issue here. The park, adjacent to the school, is public property, but the school has some kind of lease with the city to use it during the day; under the terms of the lease, school rules apply. It is unclear to me if the public has access to the park during the day. If so, how can the school impose its rules on people who are not students? On the other hand, if someone were to get food poisoning at this event, would the school be legally responsible for it?

Second, it is not at all clear that the school has a right to restrict the use of the park by a religious student group. If the park is open to the use of other groups, then it has to be open to Christian groups. On the other hand, it is not clear if the distribution of religious tracts is constitutionally permissible on school grounds (which the park may or may not be).

So, I agree that there is probably a real issue here. But get a load of this:

Amanda Powers, a freshman at the UW-Madison and Middleton alumnus, showed up to protest the event. She said she is still close to many students at the school and the lunch is exclusive and divisive.

“I’m here to support my friends and peers that feel marginalized. There is a park right down the street that is public property that the parents could have rented out, but instead they chose to go against school laws and policies and stay here,” Powers said. “This is dividing the student body, hurting minority students and creating unsafe spaces for those that aren’t Christian.”

The perfect SJW mindset, right there. Why?

1. “Feeling marginalized” is sufficient cause to shut down someone else’s free speech;

2. “Dividing the student body” is sufficient cause to shut down someone else’s free speech, because conformity is what they desire, even though they use the term “diversity”;

3. “Hurting minority students” — in what way? Nobody is required to attend this thing. Which minorities? Are there no black, Hispanic, or Asian Christians in the school? This is SJW cant;

4. “Creating unsafe spaces” — this is the most Orwellian concept in the SJW ideology. Nobody can possibly believe that this Christian lunchtime pep rally makes the school unsafe for non-Christians. If it does, then let’s see the evidence. I am certain that Amanda Powers simply doesn’t like the people who do this, and considers is “unsafe” if someone, somewhere, has to be aware of people in their community that they don’t like.

Here’s hope:

Middleton student Anna Diamond disagreed with that sentiment.

“I’m Jewish and don’t feel like I’m being oppressed. People think the lunch is oppressive but it’s not; no one is forced to come here at all, students have a choice,” Diamond said. “The parents are not trying to get people to convert and they are very peaceful. We should all be allowed to have our beliefs and right to preach as long as it’s not offending or hurting anyone.”

Good for you, Anna Diamond, though it must be noted that a rabbi is quoted in the story saying that her son has complained that he has been “taunted” by students who go to the thing. If that is true, then punish those students for breaking the rules. If the event is constitutionally protected, why does the bad behavior of some Christian students mean the event shouldn’t happen at all.

Elsewhere in the story, protesters grumble that nobody would be happy with “Muslim Lunch” at the park. Well, maybe a lot of people wouldn’t, but so what? If the Muslims have a right to be there having lunch and talking about their faith, what’s the big deal? If they want to hold an Atheist Lunch, fine by me. It annoys me that the first response so many of us have to speech we don’t like is to try to shut it down, instead of first attempting to increase the diversity of speech.

But then there’s this from the story:

For some students, Jesus Lunch has filled the void of not being able to attend church. Brady Thomas, a senior, said his involvement in athletics interferes with church since many games are held on Sunday.

“The lunches have been really motivating and it gives me hope. It helps me regain my faith since I can’t go to church often,” Thomas said.

Oh, come on. If sports are more important to Brady Thomas than attending Sabbath services, then his faith is not very strong. Brady Thomas can go to church often; he simply chooses to prioritize athletics over God. It’s not the non-Christians and the anti-Christians who are forcing Brady Thomas to prefer sports to Jesus Christ.

Benedict At The APL

This year’s Academy of Philosophy and Letters conference will be on at theme near and dear to my heart: The Benedict Option: The Problems of Culture in Times of Crisis.

The APL has invited me — the only non-academic of the bunch! — to give the keynote address. There will be some great panels, including one on MacIntyre’s After Virtue, one on Russell Kirk and the “Mecosta Option,” one that will take up political theory and the Benedict Option, one that will consider whether or not the Ben Op can be scaled, and finally, one that will take up the question of whether or not now is the time to take the Benedict Option.

If you’re a fan of Front Porch Republic, you’ll be especially interested to learn that James Matthew Wilson, Mark T. Mitchell, and Jeffrey Polet will be on panels at the event. Claes Ryn, Bruce Frohnen, Winston Elliott III, David Walsh, on other will also be speaking. Here’s the full schedule.

Go here for more information about the conference, which will take place in suburban Baltimore on May 27-29. Nota bene, people who aren’t APL members can’t go without a member sponsor. But readers interested in attending the conference and in need of a member sponsor should contact either Justin Garrison, (garrison -at -roanoke -dot- edu), APL Secretary, or its President, Michael Federici, (mfederici -at – mercyhurst – dot – edu).

As far as I know, this is the first academic conference on the Benedict Option. Please come if you can!

 

The Senility Of The Western Mind

Political philosopher John Gray says that we are deceiving ourselves if we think that ISIS is a medieval throwback. Every barbaric act and strategy it employs have also been employed by modern states. In fact, an eschatological cult like ISIS could only have emerged in modernity; fundamentalism, he says, emerges and thrives in societies in which long-settled customs and traditions have been disrupted. And for that matter, movements like Communism and Nazism were simply secular versions of the same millenarian vision. More:

While much remains unknown, there is nothing mysterious in the rise of ISIS. It is baffling only for those who believe—despite everything that occurred in the twentieth century—that modernization and civilization are advancing hand in hand. In fact, now as in the past some of the most modern movements are among the most barbaric. But to admit this would mean surrendering the ruling political faith, a decayed form of liberalism without which Western leaders and opinion formers would be disoriented and lost. To accept that liberal societies may not be “on the right side of history” would leave their lives drained of significance, while a stoical response—which is ready to fight while being doubtful of ultimate victory—seems to be beyond their powers. With mounting bewilderment and desperation, they cling to the faith that the normal course of history has somehow been temporarily derailed.

More:

The prevailing mode of liberal thinking filters out any fact that might disturb its tranquility of mind. One such fact is that toppling despots does not of itself enhance freedom. If you are a woman, gay, a member of a religious minority, or someone who professes no religion, are you freer now in Iraq, Libya, or most of Syria than you were under the dictatorship of Saddam, Qaddafi, or Assad? Plainly, you are much less free. Another uncomfortable fact is that tyrants are often popular. According to today’s liberals, when large numbers of people flock to support tyranny it cannot be because they do not want to be free. They must be alienated from their true nature as human beings. Born liberals, human beings become anything else as a result of social conditioning. Only cultural and political repression stands in the way of liberal values becoming a universal way of life.

This strange metaphysical fancy lies behind the fashionable theory that when people leave advanced countries to join ISIS they do so because they have undergone a process of “radicalization.” But who radicalized the tens of millions of Europeans who flocked to Nazism and fascism in the interwar years? The disaster that ensued was not the result of clever propaganda, though that undoubtedly played a part. Interwar Europe demonstrates how quickly and easily civilized life can be disrupted and destroyed by the impact of war and economic crisis.

Civilization is not the endpoint of modern history, but a succession of interludes in recurring spasms of barbarism. The liberal civilization that has prevailed in some Western countries over the past few centuries emerged slowly and with difficulty against the background of a particular mix of traditions and institutions. Precarious wherever it has existed, it is a way of life that has no strong hold on humankind. For an older generation of liberal thinkers such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Isaiah Berlin, these were commonplaces. Today these truisms are forbidden truths, which can no longer be spoken or in many cases comprehended.

Read the whole thing. 

Future historians will marvel at how Westerners dismantled the fundamentals of civilization — religion, family, community — in the name of a utopian progressive vision: the liberation of the Self.

It is left to the rest of us to figure out how to remain resilient and hopeful amid the ruins they create with each passing day.

Learning Russian

No, I’m not learning Russian, not really. My two younger kids have been playing around with Duolingo (Lucas with Italian, because he wants to go to the Palio di Siena, and Nora with French, because Paris is the greatest city in the world). I started fooling around with it on my phone yesterday while waiting for Matthew to get out of math class, and decided to play around in Russian. I’ve been watching a lot of The Americans lately, and have been trying to pay close attention to the shape and tone of the language. Plus, hey, one day I might get to Petersburg to visit Evgeny Vodolazkin. It would be fun to know at least a few words and phrases.

Duolingo is a lot of fun, but it was challenging fun for me, with Russian. First there’s the Cyrillic alphabet. And then there’s the pronunciation. People tell me I have a very good French accent, and I know it must be true because when French speakers hear me say a few lines, they immediately assume that I’m far more fluent than I am (which is not very). I find that I don’t have much trouble picking up European accents, such that after a couple of days in country, I can read menus aloud to the waiter and make myself understood.

But Russian — wow, is it hard. Repeating these basic words and phrases aloud makes me sound like … well, like a clunky American. But I’m enjoying puzzling out the Cyrillic; if I can learn the Cyrillic alphabet, I will be able to sound out phonetically text I sometimes see at our Russian Orthodox parish.

I won’t ever get serious about learning Russian, because I simply don’t have the time. If I did have time to go all-in to learn a language, it would be French, because I have a good basis from which to start. And I would no doubt learn Italian before Russian, because Dante. Still, I would like to hear from students and speakers of Russian. What’s it like to learn that language? What are the particular difficulties that English speakers have with it? And what are the pleasures you who have learned (or are learning) Russian find in the language?

Me, sometimes I’ll pull my French psalter off the shelf and pray a few Psalms aloud en français, just because the language tastes like creamy butter in my mouth.

Federalizing The Trans Revolution

According to a federal court, it’s a violation of federal law to require high school students to use the restroom that corresponds to their biological sex:

A federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled on Tuesday in favor of a transgender student who was born female and wishes to use the boys’ restroom at his rural Virginia high school. It was the first time a federal appellate court has ruled that Title IX — the federal law that prohibits gender discrimination in schools — protects the rights of students to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity.

The ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in favor of the student, Gavin Grimm, comes amid escalating fights nationwide over transgender people and the bathrooms they should be allowed to use. …

Proponents of L.G.B.T. rights said the ruling could have “major implications” for North Carolina’s law, known as House Bill 2. North Carolina is one of five states covered by the Fourth Circuit.

“Today’s ruling makes plain that North Carolina’s House Bill 2 violates Title IX by discriminating against transgender students and forcing them to use the wrong restroom at school,” the A.C.L.U. and the gay rights group Lambda Legal said in a statement. “This mean-spirited law not only encourages discrimination and endangers transgender students – it puts at risk billions of dollars in federal funds that North Carolina receives for secondary and post-secondary schools.”

Eugene Volokh adds context:

In today’s G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit held that schools must let students use the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity and may not limit students to using the restroom that corresponds to their biological sex.

The court didn’t hold that this is required by the Constitution, but rather deferred to the Education Department’s interpretation of the department’s regulation on the subject. (The regulation, which interprets the federal Title IX provisions, and which generally forbids sex discrimination but allows sex-segregated restrooms, applies to any schools that get federal funds.) The court also held that the high school’s proposed accommodation of G.G., which would have allowed G.G. (as well as other students) to use three single-stall unisex restrooms that it created, was inadequate, because it still barred G.G. from using the ordinary multi-stall boys’ restrooms.

This is insane. This Gavin Grimm is biologically female, but because he/she insists that she is male, the federal government — both the Education Department and now a federal appeals court — have decided that the entire community must accept his/her view of herself, despite biology. And these are minors we’re talking about!

I suppose there might be some hope that because this wasn’t a constitutional ruling, a Republican administration could change the Title IX policy when it took office. Eventually, though, there’s going to be a constitutional challenge on this, and the federal courts are going to impose gender ideology on the rest of us. Do you doubt it?

David French points out that a new statement by the US Commission on Civil Rights represents an astonishing radicalization of civil rights laws, versus religious liberty — all over whether transgenders can use the toilet of their choice. More:

Since our nation’s founding, religious freedom has been deemed so vital to the health of our democracy that lawmakers and judges have often attempted to make sure that state actions are “narrowly tailored” when those actions conflict with religious freedom. Now the Left wants liberty to be narrowly tailored when it conflicts with the new nondiscrimination regime.

In the Commission’s eyes, there is no true accommodation of religion, because religion is merely an “excuse” for discrimination. Thus, there is no value in attempting to build a society where religious believers can live with integrity and — yes — “dignity” alongside sexual revolutionaries. But accommodation and mutual respect have never been the revolutionaries’ aim. Their goal is clear and explicit: to equate sincere religious objections to sexual immorality with the invidious discrimination of Jim Crow, and then to banish believers to the same margins of society currently occupied by white supremacists.

Indeed, Commission chairman Martin Castro says as much, comparing religious-freedom laws to efforts to “block racial integration,” which, of course, have “no place in our society.”

This is what you get if you vote Democratic for national office: the de facto criminalization of orthodox Christianity and common sense, when it interferes with LGBT ideology. Alas, one has learned not to expect much better from the GOP on this front, but at least for now, I think a Republican administration could be counted on to show at least somewhat more respect for the First Amendment, in particular its religious liberty guarantee.

This won’t hold, though. The handwriting is on the wall.

Take a look at this somewhat blasphemous clip from Saturday Night Live, making fun of Christian bakers and religious liberty claims. The reader who sent me this is a religious leader who has been involved with one of these cases. In his e-mail, he gave specific instances of the things that this parody depicts really happening in the case with which he was involved (I won’t mention any details here, because I don’t know if he would want to be identified). He adds:

This sad thing about this parody is that it insinuates that nothing so horrible is actually happening in our country, but it really is. Low-information viewers walk away from this with the smug impression that this religious liberty thing is much ado about nothing. It’s just stupid right wing Christians being stupid. That’s the effect of this kind of propaganda.

You know where this is going. What are you prepared to do about it?

 

Are Comments Sections Worth It?

A reader points out that The New York Times‘s Room For Debate feature this week has five people arguing over whether or not comments sections are worthwhile. 

For the pro side, here’s a bit from Samita Mukhopadhyay, an editorial director at Mic:

Even though these new platforms hold tremendous potential, and have high rates of engagement, it has not stopped online abuse. While the Internet has democratized publishing and provided an opportunity for a plethora of diverse voices to emerge, its openness has not come without consequences. Abuse seems to proliferate, in comments and on social media.

Still, vulgarity does not cheapen the voices of those who take engagement seriously, who are thoughtful and curious about online dialogue. Creating space for readers to grapple with topics that matter to them is still tremendously important — regardless of whether it happens on social media or in a comments section.

For the con side, here’s Jamilah Lemieux, senior editor at Ebony magazine. She says they are too overrun with jerks to be worthwhile. Excerpt:

Those sites with resources devoted to comment moderation may not seem as overrun with vulgarity, but the act of sorting through obscenity can take a heavy toll on moderators, especially when image sharing is enabled.

Comments sections have devolved into places where anonymous strangers can punch up at those they despise, admire, envy — or perhaps all of the above. Once upon a time, I’d lose hours debating with them. Now, I try to pretend they don’t exist: a challenge, because many just migrate to my Twitter feed to hound me there.

I think I have something to add to this. I am often complimented by readers on both the left and the right for the quality of the comments section on this blog. This is first and foremost a tribute to you commenters. But it is also the result of years of very patient, usually unpleasant labor on my part. When I began blogging at Beliefnet in 2006, I was shocked by the viciousness of so many of the comments, but I didn’t have the ability to delete the bad ones. Before too long, Beliefnet let me have administrator’s privileges over my own blog, and I began to weed them out, deleting bad comments and, when possible, blocking access to the blog. It took a long, long time, but I finally got it under control.

My blog went away when I was at Templeton from early 2010 through the summer of 2011, but came back when I joined TAC. I haven’t had nearly the problem with hateful comments here as I had at Beliefnet, and I’m not sure why, because my monthly traffic here is much higher. But I’ve still had, and do have, a challenge. You don’t notice it when I ban someone, but they notice it; all you see is that the comments thread is more pleasant, or continues to be relatively pleasant.

As you know, I try to be as tolerant as I can of views with which I disagree, even those I find somewhat repulsive. Some things are beyond the pale, though. I almost always send to the trash comments that attack me or another reader personally, and if the commenter develops a habit of that, I ban them from the site. I think of this site as a big garden party at my house. I’m happy to welcome all kinds of people to the party, but if you don’t know how to play well with others, I’ll show you the door.

True, there are times when I’ll let something slip through that I ought to have trashed, but that usually happens when I’m approving things in a hurry, often on my iPhone. There have been times when some of you point out to me that I ought not to have approved a certain comment. Sometimes I’ll remove it, sometimes I won’t. Again, at times it’s a fine line between judging a comment provocative but permissible, and judging that it has gone too far. I try to err on the side of more speech. But I do err, and I appreciate your tolerance.

I spend a lot of the work day on the comments section, trying to get it right. I interact when I can, but there are many occasions when I just don’t have the time to do an NFR (= Note From Rod), and I don’t want to hold up your comment until I do. So I just post it without comment. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s what I can manage now, with just me doing it. If this blog were more active in the comments section, I might not be able to do it all by myself. That’s a good problem to have, especially when the comments are so overwhelmingly good, from all of you.

So what do you think? Is this comments section worth it? I don’t read any comments section but the one on my own blog, because they are very much not worth it.

Secret Shame Of The Middle Class

This is a pretty sobering piece by Neal Gabler, a well-known and respected writer of serious books, who confesses that he and his wife are pretty much broke. And they aren’t alone. Excerpts:

The Fed asked respondents how they would pay for a $400 emergency. The answer: 47 percent of respondents said that either they would cover the expense by borrowing or selling something, or they would not be able to come up with the $400 at all. Four hundred dollars! Who knew?

Well, I knew. I knew because I am in that 47 percent.

I know what it is like to have to juggle creditors to make it through a week. I know what it is like to have to swallow my pride and constantly dun people to pay me so that I can pay others. I know what it is like to have liens slapped on me and to have my bank account levied by creditors. I know what it is like to be down to my last $5—literally—while I wait for a paycheck to arrive, and I know what it is like to subsist for days on a diet of eggs. I know what it is like to dread going to the mailbox, because there will always be new bills to pay but seldom a check with which to pay them. I know what it is like to have to tell my daughter that I didn’t know if I would be able to pay for her wedding; it all depended on whether something good happened. And I know what it is like to have to borrow money from my adult daughters because my wife and I ran out of heating oil.

You wouldn’t know any of that to look at me. I like to think I appear reasonably prosperous. Nor would you know it to look at my résumé. I have had a passably good career as a writer—five books, hundreds of articles published, a number of awards and fellowships, and a small (very small) but respectable reputation. You wouldn’t even know it to look at my tax return. I am nowhere near rich, but I have typically made a solid middle- or even, at times, upper-middle-class income, which is about all a writer can expect, even a writer who also teaches and lectures and writes television scripts, as I do. And you certainly wouldn’t know it to talk to me, because the last thing I would ever do—until now—is admit to financial insecurity or, as I think of it, “financial impotence,” because it has many of the characteristics of sexual impotence, not least of which is the desperate need to mask it and pretend everything is going swimmingly. In truth, it may be more embarrassing than sexual impotence. “You are more likely to hear from your buddy that he is on Viagra than that he has credit-card problems,” says Brad Klontz, a financial psychologist who teaches at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, and ministers to individuals with financial issues. “Much more likely.” America is a country, as Donald Trump has reminded us, of winners and losers, alphas and weaklings. To struggle financially is a source of shame, a daily humiliation—even a form of social suicide. Silence is the only protection.

Gabler goes on, in great detail, to describe how he and his wife got to this place. It’s well worth reading, because a lot of it will sound very familiar to many people. To summarize the main points specific to Gabler:

1) He chose to live in New York, which is one of the most expensive places to live in the country;

2) He chose to be a writer, not the most lucrative and stable career;

3) He and his wife chose to put their kids in private school, something they felt was necessary in their Brooklyn neighborhood, but an expense they could have avoided or dramatically lessened had they lived in another part of the country (they eventually moved to the Hamptons to get out of paying that tuition);

4) He and his wife believed their two children had “earned” the right to go to very expensive universities, and they spent everything they had, and the inheritance his parents planned to leave for him, on educating the girls;

5) They got caught in the housing crash and had to sell a Manhattan apartment they owned at fire sale prices;

6) Given the way his income as a writer is structured, taxes were a bitch (as a writer, trust me, this is true).

Gabler’s is not a case of good-paying jobs (e.g., industrial manufacturing) disappearing. His, as he readily acknowledges, is a problem that he caused for himself. And that gets to the more important part of the piece:

Choice, often in the face of ignorance, is certainly part of the story. Take me. I plead guilty. I am a financial illiterate, or worse—an ignoramus. I don’t offer that as an excuse, just as a fact. I made choices without thinking through the financial implications—in part because I didn’t know about those implications, and in part because I assumed I would always overcome any adversity, should it arrive. [Here he lists some of this choices] But, without getting too metaphysical about it, these are the choices that define who we are. We don’t make them with our financial well-being in mind, though maybe we should. We make them with our lives in mind. The alternative is to be another person.

This is interesting. He felt that to choose otherwise would have made him inauthentic, untrue to himself. He felt that he deserved the life he had, and could not choose otherwise without betraying himself. I think this must be an extraordinary thing, in terms of history: people who spend recklessly to give themselves the lives they think they deserve. If you think about it, though, our culture, which valorizes Authenticity, encourages this.

So that was stupid of him, but it’s an error many of us would be subject to. If for some reason the market for my writing dried up, and I had to take a job doing something else to support my family, I would do it. But I would probably resist it for as long as I could, because it’s very hard for me to separate my sense of identity from my writing. Still, bills have to be paid, and I would hope that I didn’t hold out for long. But as we know, human nature is such that we don’t see what we don’t want to see until we have no choice.

This part of Gabler’s piece struck me as deeply true:

So who is at fault? Some economists say that although banks may have been pushing credit, people nonetheless chose to run up debt; to save too little; to leave no cushion for emergencies, much less retirement. “If you want to have financial security,” says Brad Klontz, “it is 100 percent on you.” One thing economists adduce to lessen this responsibility is that credit represents a sea change from the old economic system, when financial decisions were much more constrained, limiting the sort of trouble that people could get themselves into—a sea change for which most people were ill-prepared.

He goes on to talk about how contemporary America is built on consumer credit, and the mentality that goes along with it:

Part of the reason credit began to surge in the ’80s and ’90s is that it was available in a way it had never been available to previous generations. William R. Emmons, an assistant vice president and economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, traces the surge to a 1978 Supreme Court decision, Marquette National Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp. The Court ruled that state usury laws, which put limits on credit-card interest, did not apply to nationally chartered banks doing business in those states. That effectively let big national banks issue credit cards everywhere at whatever interest rates they wanted to charge, and it gave the banks a huge incentive to target vulnerable consumers just the way, Emmons believes, vulnerable homeowners were targeted by subprime-mortgage lenders years later. By the mid-’80s, credit debt in America was already soaring. What followed was the so-called Great Moderation, a generation-long period during which recessions were rare and mild, and the risks of carrying all that debt seemed low.

The difference between the way my father’s generation and my generation regard credit is a conceptual chasm. My father regarded credit cards as at best a necessary evil. Me, I couldn’t live without them. But they are terrible things, because by deferring the cost of things, they lull you into thinking that you are better off than you are. I use my debit card whenever I can, but even that can be misleading. There is something psychological about handing cash to the merchant; it feels more real. Do you find that? If I go to the ATM and get $200 out, I find that I am a lot more thoughtful about spending it than if I just slide the debit card.

Anyway, Gabler’s overall point is that we Americans are doing less well than we think we are, and that we continue to shield ourselves from this reality because we have this ineradicable hope that it’s just about to be morning in America (“Gatsby believed in the green light…”). Please, read the whole thing. 

I have a couple of thoughts. One, when Gabler says that he and his wife are “financial illiterates,” he could just as well have been talking about me and my wife. Fortunately, my wife realized this about a decade ago, and contacted a financial advisor, one who specializes in working with artists and writers. I don’t know where we would be without Chris Currin’s help over these last years. Unquestionably a lot less secure than we are today, because he has helped us invest wisely, to stash a lot away for retirement, and to save bigtime on taxes. I’ve had some very nice income years since we moved back to Louisiana and I started writing books, but if we had not had Chris there to impose discipline on us, I would have foolishly spent a lot of the money that’s now sitting in a 401(K). I don’t think this is because I’m a bad person, necessarily, but rather that I am someone who has a totally unrealistic sense of money. (Me: “Hey, it would be nice to have a nice bottle of wine with dinner tonight. I’ve got $2,000 in the checking account. Why not?” That is an incredibly stupid way to think about money, because you end up nickel-and-diming yourself to death.)

So, my advice to you is this: if you can afford it, get a reputable financial advisor. Really, it’s the smartest thing we have ever done. Julie and I recognized our weakness in this area, and sought help. It has made a tremendous difference.

The other thing I want to point out is how incredibly difficult it is to overcome the force of culture. People do what their neighbors and peers do. When we got ready to buy our first house, back in 2005, a number of our friends were skeptical of the little house we bought in a transitional neighborhood, for $165,000. We could have afforded a bigger house in a nicer neighborhood, but we were really scared about taking on a lot of housing debt, and besides, we loved that little house. It was big enough for us.

We had to sell it in 2010 when we moved to Philadelphia. The housing crash was still a big thing in Dallas. We had to pay the mortgage on that house for six months before it sold, and in that time we watched our nest egg wear away. The anxiety was so intense that it no doubt contributed, along with my sister’s terminal cancer diagnosis, to my developing chronic mono in that period. When the house finally sold, it was for precisely what we paid for it. But we lost over $50,000 in the deal, because we had spent heavily on fixing the house up. Still, we were lucky. Had we done what most people in our income bracket had done, the losses might have wiped us out.

The point is that to live a more financially stable life in America today requires the ability to be strongly countercultural. It requires fighting the tendency within oneself to believe that one deserves to live in a certain manner, because to do otherwise would be inauthentic. You may think there’s safety in numbers, because everyone is doing it, but the thing our mamas used to tell us when we were little kids is still true: if everybody was jumping off the cliff, would you do it too?

The trick is being able to see that everybody is jumping off the cliff, not simply jumping for joy at being able to live in the manner in which we believe we’re entitled.

I was talking the other day to a man who owns a small landscaping business. He said his biggest problem is with labor. “People don’t want to work,” he said. “They watch TV and think that they should be able to live a certain way, but they don’t want to work for it. I’ve got more work than I can handle, but I can’t get people to stick with it. They want it handed to them. It’s crazy. It didn’t used to be like this.”

No, it didn’t. He’s talking about a degraded working class ethic, but we middle class people have our own version of this. We are willing to work; that’s the easy part. We aren’t willing to live within our means. Doing so is very, very hard. I’m as implicated in this as anybody else.