This Week's Boring, Earnest Political Post

I said I would do these every week, so here's this week's

The other day Alan Jacobs posted a funny and thoughtful message for his Buy Me a Coffee supporters, of which I am one. It was in response to a general-interest blogger who has shifted to all-Resistance-all-the-time posting, and the part that I strongly agreed with, though I may seem to be violating its spirit, was this:

Kottke says, "I still very much believe that we need art and beauty and laughter and distraction and all of that" — indeed, but why do we need it? I believe that we need "art and beauty and laughter," and history, but not merely to give us a break from political struggle, but also for political reasons: because only fully human persons, persons formed by wide and generous encounters with the whole of humanity, are able to think and act wisely in the political realm.

Now this is just true, which is why I’ll still be writing about other things on this Substack, in addition to these weekly accountability posts.¹ I am doing these posts because I want to live out my political commitments, and among those commitments is “We are all made in God’s image and are therefore creative.” And also because, let’s be honest, I can’t help myself. I could be dying in a work camp and I’d still be thinking about some remark that Greil Marcus once made about some quip that Gaye Advert once said and how it reminds him of a little-known bread riot that took place during the Hundred Years War. These posts will be a lot more frequent than the other posts because one thing I learned from the Dillard-Robinson series is that a big rereading project is ideally paced at around once a month rather than once a week.

I’m not trying to start a fight here with a writer I clearly think highly of — anyway, most of Alan’s point is simply to state what he’s going to do and why, not so much to prescribe. But I agreed less with these bits, and since I had to think about why, I might as well show my work:

Blogging is a poor tool for political resistance; clicktivism is not activism. Kottke thinks that the problem is that people don’t know what’s going on — which is why he’s blogging about it — but you can tell that that’s not true from the fact that almost everybody he quotes is writing for very widely-read outlets, from the New Yorker to The Verge to Wired. Everything’s readily available; there’s no real value proposition in Kottke's aggregating it. And Kottke himself has no distinctive political knowledge or expertise.

Definitely it’s true that clicktivism is not activism. But you can try to make the first thing serve the second one — for example by holding yourself publicly accountable to actually do a couple things in the real world, however minor. As for the second point: in my experience, the posts of mine that seem to be the most helpful to people in my actual life, people I encounter on a regular basis or live with, are the ones where I write about some political thing that is eating away at me, but that I was telling myself not to write about because surely everyone has already heard about that thing and can anticipate what I’ll say about it (me being a somewhat predictable person) to the nth degree. Now, there are cases where a writer should ignore his audience and their needs (you’re deep into writing a novel and you know the only truthful way for the book to end is unhappily), but I don't think this is one. As for the last point — that I lack distinctive political expertise — I just take it that politics is one of those things where (to adapt a point of Chesterton’s) you need everybody doing their risible best. It’s supposed to be more like the Scratch Orchestra than the Vienna Philharmonic.

I am still thinking about how to make these posts less annoying for the people who mainly want to hear about books. I haven’t done much with open threads on Substack, but I could make this a weekly thread instead. I guess if anyone has any opinions on this, feel free to Sound Off In the Comments.

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Yesterday a survey was doing the rounds online. It’s from a task force in the Episcopal Church. It’s about how and whether you think AI should be used in the life of the church. I am still a tithing member of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Ann Arbor and so I filled this thing out like I was Johnny Rotten going on the Tom Snyder show. If you are Episco or ELCA, you are also eligible to fill it out, and there are places where you can write in your own responses. You can also leave your contact info if you’re willing to do a follow-up interview. If they contact me for a follow-up, I will be cram-studying my notes on Raymond Tallis’s books.

In your view, in which areas should the use of AI in church contexts be considered ethically inappropriate or off-limits? (Select all that apply)

There is no ethical use case for a plagiarism machine that is founded on the vast disrespect of millions of writers’ intellectual property rights

What additional support or resources would help you or your church engage with AI more effectively? (Please choose your top 3)

A more robust philosophical and theological understanding of the truly miraculous nature of human capabilities, such that we will not disrespect them by even using the term “artificial intelligence”

How do you consider the environmental and sustainability aspects of AI use in church settings? (Select all that apply)

Given the amount of water these machines waste and the demand they place on our power grid, to fulfill purposes for which human labor is better suited, it is offensive to even mention sustainability in this context

I do not know whether my filling in this survey will matter to any decision-makers, but If Enough People Do It …

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It is obvious that these posts could be read as “liberal virtue signaling.” Given the way this term has been used in the last several years — at one point it seemed like an OK description of certain kinds of lib speechifying but at this point it’s just applied to anyone who doesn’t comport themselves like the Hell’s Angels — I don’t know why I allow this non-critique to occupy any space in my mind at this point. I guess you never stop hearing your dad’s voice in your head, even on issues where you’ve decided your dad is wrong. But anyway, since I am doing these posts in part to hold myself publicly accountable, let’s be clear: these are non-virtue signals. If I could completely trust my own willpower, I wouldn’t need accountability.

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The most helpful article I read this week, regarding politics, was this one.

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Last week I committed to doing these things:

—I’m going to commit to doing 5calls again, every workday, and to continuing to pray the daily office;

—I’m going to donate a hundred bucks (which would otherwise have been blown on records) to Harm Reduction Toolkits, a charity for trans people, who this government seems to hate with a special venom (I tried to do this just now but the CAPTCHA system seems fucked up);

—I’m going to write letters to all three of my congresspeople summarizing the abovementioned arguments for using all their power not only to slow Congressional business but to actually withdraw from debt ceiling negotiations if USAid isn’t restored and Musk/DOGE neutralized;

—probably something else, but I don’t know what it is yet and will keep an eye open for it.

I did 5calls two or three days, and then wrote a few letters instead because I didn’t want to literally call my congresspeople every day. (Debbie Dingell’s person has started recognizing my voice.) I gave that hundred bucks. I wrote impassioned letters to Slotkin and Dingell. (When it comes to Peters, I am sometimes blocked by the sense that the man is so thoroughly checked out that there’s no point. That’s probably not true, though.) I also looked up Slotkin and Peters’s biggest donors on OpenSecrets but didn’t see anything obvious to do with that information. I stuck with the Daily Office. After the big storm Thursday morning, I helped dig out the neighborhood. I also just did my job. Hopefully that matters. When you can get a bunch of tired kids to talk experimental poetry with you on a Thursday, it feels like that matters. In the fullness of time, who knows.

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This week:

—I renew my commitment to not doomscrolling, and, in fact, to not scrolling. I’ll try to check for news once a day and no more, and to look at BlueSky once a day and no more. The news requires focused and strategic thought; you shouldn't let it just become this environment that eats your whole life. There are people I want to say “Hi” to online, but there’s no reason to spend more than ten minutes on that.

—I’ll give some thought to the question of what I could realistically do for work if/when universities are decimated. (University of Illinois-Chicago is cutting all of its non-tenure-track humanities faculty at the end of the year.) Off the top of my head, I’m great at shoveling snow (seriously! I do the whole neighborhood if there’s time) and I could probably learn some fancy programming language very quickly. We have friends who continued to have university jobs all through the Bolsonaro years in Brazil; U of M has a crazy rich endowment; maybe, all in all, I’m overreacting. I don’t know.

—5calls three days a week.

—Continue to pray the daily office.

—Go to this meeting this afternoon. Meetings are often stupid, but the last thing like this that I went to ended up being worthwhile.

—I will get my ass out of bed early enough tomorrow morning to actually be present in church for most of what happens.

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If the spirit moves you, post some things you’d like to do (and be held accountable for) in the comments.

Thus ends this week’s Boring, Earnest Resistance Post.

1. I have finished rereading Amusing Ourselves to Death and have moved on to Early Postman. I remember being utterly enamored of Teaching as a Subversive Activity. It is now utterly pissing me off. What changed? Oh my God, am I old?