Monday, February 24, 2025

Three Years of War

 


When she was German Chancellor, back in Trump's first term, Angela Merkel discerned how "there would be no co-operative work for an interconnected world with Trump," who, she writes in her recently published memoir, still saw things as a real-estate developer. "For him, all countries were in competition, and the success of one meant the failure of another." 

It was three years ago today that Russian dictator Putin invaded Ukraine. Whatever is now being claimed, it is Putin who is the dictator, and it was Putin who started the war. The short-term result was an encouraging strengthening of the western alliance, as the U.S. and most of Europe made common cause with Ukraine, identifying that country's struggle for survival with the international order which the U.S. and Europe had forged in the aftermath of the Second World War. The long-term result of Putin's aggression remains to be seen, however, as the U.S. seems now to be switching sides, as it were, reimagining the war's origin story even as the Trump Administration is reimagining America's role in the world.

Historically, the post-war international order has been seen as an alternative to American isolationism. Maybe nobody ever actually imagined that an American retreat from "co-operative work for an interconnected world" would be not isolationism as once understood but an approach to international relations that more than anything else resembles a kind of shameful bullying gangsterism.

Such is the world's sad prospect as the third anniversary of war dawns over Europe.

Once again, shall we evoke Sir Edward Grey's famously ominous words from 1914? 

"The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time."


Sunday, February 16, 2025

After the Pope's Letter



In the aftermath of last week's letter from Pope Francis to the U.S. Bishops on the increasingly contested subject of immigration policy, could an increasingly divided American Church be finding herself stuck in another dangerous Mater, Si, Magistra, No moment? For those below a certain age, that refers to the negative reception among some American Catholic conservatives to Pope Saint John XXIII's 1961 social encyclical, Mater et Magistra ("Mother and Teacher"). A take-off on the anti-Castro slogan, Cuba, Si, Castro, No, the phrase, Mater, Si, Magistra, No, first appeared in print in William F. Buckley's National Review. In time, the slogan would appeal to others across the ideological spectrum as a way of expressing rejection of other particular Church teachings (e.g., on artificial contraception in the late 1960s).

Many ordinary people perhaps don't pay too much attention to routine papal pronouncements (anymore than many do to news in general). But those who do pay attention could not fail to have noticed this particular papal letter, given its timing and its obvious salience for this particularly problematic political moment in the U.S.

The Pope's pronouncement took the form of a Letter of the Holy Father Francis to the Bishops of the United States. He began by acknowledging that these are "delicate moments" which the Bishops are "living as Pastors of the People of God who walk together in the United States of America." Then follow three introductory paragraphs referencing the Old Testament migrations of the people of Israel, the New Testament migrations of the Holy Family, and Pope Pius XII's Apostolic Constitution on the Care of Migrants, Exsul Famillia (1952), which Francis calls "the 'Magna Carta' of the Church's thinking on immigration."

Finally, in paragraph 4, Francis famously says, "The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly  identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality." This indeed gets to the heart of the current problem, according to which migrants, whose presence here is often initially legal (asylum seekers, Temporary Protected Status holders, etc.), are being demagogically described as "illegal" and also assimilated to the cases of those migrants who have committed actual crimes. It is inherent in the concept of illegality, that it is wrong and States are right in responding to it. The problem - or at least a major part of the present problem - is the demagogic use of that concept and the political unwillingness to create a viable system of legality as a functional alternative.

The Letter is clearly directed not just at the Trump Administration's immigration and deportation strategy but also at Vice President J.D. Vance's recent ordo amoris theological forays. "Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation."

In the end, the Pope not only affirms the U.S. Bishops in their ministry to migrants and refugees, but also addresses "all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will," exhorting them "not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters."

It is generally recognized that Trump won a majority of the Catholic vote in 2024. Presumably, Vance understands the implications of this, better perhaps than some of his American Catholic opponents do. For the latter, the Pope's challenge to Trump and Vance indeed represents bold leadership from the Church in the political order. That said, in a world in which increasingly many people's primary identification is political rather than religious, the contrary prospect of broadly based popular rejection (obviously not for the first time in modern U.S. history) of magisterial teaching, remains a very real threat - with all the ecclesial and social damage which that does.

Friday, February 14, 2025

Alone


Today is Valentine's Day, traditionally a great day for florists, but also for marriage proposals! Obviously, I don't personally observe Valentine's Day, which lost its minimal religious connection when the post-conciliar calendar reform inexplicably and absurdly dropped the obscure Saint Valentine for other very meritorious but probably ot very widely known or appreciated saints.That said, this widely observed feast of romantic love is as good an occasion as any to reflect upon the decline of romance and even friendship in our society, with all its complicated consequences. 

That Americans are more alone - and lonely - today appears incontrovertible. The national marriage rate is nearing an all-time low, while the share of women under 65 who aren’t living with a partner has grown steadily since the 1980s. More broadly, young people say they spend significantly less time with the friends they do have, attend fewer parties, and spend much more time alone. The decline of coupling has had a noteworthy economic component, having declined more than among those without college degrees compared with college graduates.

A major complicating factor appears to be the stagnation of less educated young men's incomes in recent decades. For single, non-college-educated men, average inflation-adjusted earnings at age 45 have fallen by nearly 25% in the past half century, whereas average real earnings for the country as a whole have more than doubled. Since men's odds of being in a successful relationship are generally correlated with their income, it is alleged that a lot of contemporary men do not seem marriageable to contemporary young women, whose college completion rates (and presumably incomes) have risen in contrast.

Add to all that the general epidemic of increasing loneliness that afflicts more and more people in our supposedly super-connected social media society, stripped sadly of so many traditional opportunities for human connection!

Valentine's Day cannot repair our growing epidemic of loneliness and disconnectedness. If anything, Valentine's Day's glorification (or at least commercialization) of romance may merely highlight the pain of those left behind in loneliness' contemporary Slough of Despond.



Wednesday, February 12, 2025

The Party of Lincoln

 

Today is the birthday of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), our 16th president, who successfully steered the country through the Civil War which his election had provoked. It is still a legal holiday of sorts in New York State, although nothing like the widespread observance it was when I was a lad, when we always had the day off from school. In those days, Lincoln's Birthday meant singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic and, for Republicans, the annual Lincoln Day Dinner. Republicans do still hold Lincoln Day Dinners, but the party that holds them is vastly different from what it was decades ago, let alone what it was when it was "the party of Lincoln."

Quickly replacing the Whigs as the opposition party to the post-Jacksonian Democratic party, the Republicans accomplished what no other U.S. third-party has ever done. After the Civil War it became the dominant national party, as the U.S. experienced an era of explosive economic growth and increasing industrial prosperity, now known as the "Gilded Age." The Republicans presided over the transcontinental railroad, the end of the "frontier," the expansion of "manifest destiny" and American Empire beyond the confines of the North American continent, but also an era of unprecedented immigration and the development of a class-conscious, apparently permanent proletariat. The first Republican era ended only when the Great Depression collapsed the social and economic structure bequeathed by decades of Republican rule.

The Republican failure led to the New Deal, a systematic effort by the newly empowered Democratic coalition to use the federal government to advance the interests of non-elite Americans, producing a period of unprecedented economic prosperity, widespread abundance, and greater equality than anything experienced since at least the Jacksonian era.

Under Eisenhower and Nixon, the Republicans appeared to have adapted somewhat successfully to the new social and economic order, but this was superseded by the Reaganite takeover of the Republican party that eventually went beyond even Reaganism. This was the historical process so well described by Geoffrey Kabaservice in his monumental Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party (Oxford U. Pr., 2012).

That is, of course, what parties tend to do in a two-party duopoly, in which coalitions must be formed before the election rahter than after as in parliamentary systems. Thus, bot the Republicans and the Democrats have transformed themselves beyond recognition over the course of their history.

The newly transformed Republican party described by Kabaservice already bore little, if any, resemblance to Lincoln's party of Abolitionists and strong Unionists. All that was left to happen, which admittedly no one was really expecting or predicting, was the Trump takeover of the party, which occurred - if not quite seamlessly then seemingly inexorably - between 2015 and 2024. And now we have a Republican party even more thoroughly president-centered than it was under Lincoln or TR or even Reagan.

"The party of Lincoln" is today as unlike Lincoln's Republican party as today's Democratic paty is unlike Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans.

As for Lincoln, One of the few enduring remnants of the once widespread cult of Lincoln is his image on the penny. President Trump picked this week to announce his plan to discontinue the penny. So much for "the party of Lincoln."



Monday, February 10, 2025

Super Bowl Sunday



Unlike the overwhelming majority of my fellow citizens, I do not worship at the altar of our national religion of football; but even I am not free to feign indifference to our civil religion's supreme annual ritual, the Super Bowl. So, when the Kansas City Chiefs met the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX yesterday, like most Americans my community celebrated with a Super Bowl party. Inevitably I attended. That said, my priorities, in order of interest, were, first, the pizza, second, the half-time show, third, Taylor cheering her boyfriend. The game itself, however, held absolutely no interest for me. In that, I do not think I was alone (although admittedly a minority) among the game's 100 million + viewers.

Whatever one thinks of football, however, it is incontrovertibly our preeminent national sport, bordering on obsession. And the Super Bowl is our civic religion's preeminent annual ritual. Watching the Super Bowl (or at least participating in a Super Bowl related event) is perhaps one of the few things most Americans still do together. The Super Bowl is our great unifying tradition - being performed at a time when nothing seems to be unifying anymore, when our national life has increasingly been emptied of its hallowed traditions.

This was Super Bowl LIX, the Roman numerals presumably reflecting the immense self-importance attached to the event. I am - I say with a sigh - old enough to remember the first Super Bowl on January 15, 1967, before the Super Bowl Party had become a semi-obligatory ritual of our civil religion. At that time, of course, we still had a common entertainment culture. Most people watched the same things on TV (or at least chose from a very small menu of alternatives) and so could talk to one another about their favorite shows at school or work the next day. Sadly, all that has largely been lost - with rare exceptions such as the Super Bowl. Much as I couldn't care less about the game itself, I certainly recognize the need for more such commonly experienced civic rituals.  

That said, the pizza, wings, and guacamole were all great. The 5-Grammy winner Kendrick Lamar put on a spectacularly energetic half-time show. President Trump showed up with his daughter and grandson. Lots of other celebrities did too, including Sir Paul McCartney. The game itself was lopsided from the first, with the Eagles comfortably winning 40-22. 

And thus passed Super Bowl LIX.