Rage Against the Species

David Frum is angry. The target of his anger is one Larry Taunton, who has written a book, entitled "The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World's Most Notorious Atheist." And the book is the reason for Mr. Frum's anger. To make a long story (and an interesting read) short, Mr. Frum takes exception to what he understands as Mr. Taunton's characterization of the late Mr. Hitchens as a) someone who was flirting with the idea of a conversion to Christianity, despite his very public atheism, and b) a thoroughly reprehensible person - even while he portrays himself as the author and polemicist's friend.

In order to be sure that he wasn't misrepresenting Mr. Taunton, Mr. Frum interviews him directly. And this where things become interesting. Mr. Frum points out that Mr. Taunton only makes a single unambiguously favorable statement about Mr. Hitches where he does not also complement himself, and when Mr. Taunton becomes defensive about this, Mr. Frum asks what complements he pays Mr. Hitchens in his book:

In other words, even when challenged: “You seem unable to say something non-disparaging about the man you call your friend”—even in the course of his own attempt to demonstrate that after all he could say something non-disparaging—Taunton only produced more denigration.

This strikes me as a side effect of what happens when a friendship is potentially born out of a desire to redeem a bad person - and Christians and Atheists have a habit of regarding the other as bad people. One of Mr. Taunton's other books is "The Grace Effect: How the Power of One Life Can Reverse the Corruption of Unbelief," and one of Mr. Hitchen's most famous is "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything."

And so, to a certain degree, I begrudge Mr. Frum his anger. After all, he describes Mr. Taunton as "an evangelical publicist and promoter," and a page for his book describes him as a Christian apologist. Why would one expect that his view of Mr. Hitchens, a man who had devoted his life to the idea that religion, including Christianity, was a virtual cancer to be even moderately positive? From sayings such as "There are no atheists in foxholes," to the assertion(http://www.christiantoday.com/article/atheism.is.personal.rebellion.against.god.says.philosopher/25529.htm) that atheism stems from "a persistent immoral response of some sort, such as resentment, hatred, vanity, unforgiveness, or abject pride." It's easy to see how a devout Christian can see atheists as bad people.

In this, Mr. Frum makes something of the same mistake that he accuses Mr. Tauton of - not expecting him to believe what he professes to believe. A man who sees unbelief in Christianity as "corruption" and a world without Christianity as "cold, pitiless, and graceless," is unlikely to consistently have a very high opinion of someone who is bent on bringing about that world.

This is a topic that I've written about before. Not as a convenient way of knocking Christianity, or any other religion, but as a reminder to understand that sometimes, it's not about us. Mr. Frum's column is subtitled: "Larry Taunton's new book says more about its author than about the man he claims as a friend." But this would be true even if it were effectively a glowing hagiography of the man. Mr. Frum's column can be described the same way - as more about Mr. Frum than it is about Mr. Taunton. I think that all writing is like that. Despite the fact that I rarely write about myself from an autobiographical standpoint, Nobody in Particular is always, at it's core, about me, whether it my sliding into writing about Things Aaron Hates, or my consistent push to avoid simply using this as a forum to complain about things.

And in that sense, it does us no good to be angry at people for, well, being people.

Blood Money

There are parts of Africa in which people believe that the body parts of albinos have the ability to make one wealthy, either by being useful in magical ceremonies, or by being literally infused with gold. This leads to a trade in albinos body parts, which is picked up on every few years by Western news outlets. This time, it's The Economist's turn to trot out some horror stories and the reaction is predictable. In the comment section of one social media link to the story a man from another part of Africa called the killers "Retarded savages."

And a thought occurred to me. I've known people who could tell you how much it would cost you to have someone murdered by a killer-for-hire. Why does the fact that our murder markets lack any supernatural motivation make them any better?

Understanding

There are times when Cluelessness is indistinguishable from Disrespectfulness. In other words, "If you respected me, you'd take it upon yourself to understand me better. And as I am entitled to your respect, I am also entitled to being understood." I understand the sentiment. I remember feeling that way. I remember all of the times that I felt slighted, not because someone has set out to slight me, but because they didn't make a point of engaging with me in a way that felt that I was entitled to. They OWED me, and they didn't deliver. And so I felt that I had a right to be upset.

I don't know if I'm moving towards a more enlightened way of dealing with people, have mellowed in my old age or am simply succumbing to cynicism and resignation. But I've stopped expecting people to regard the way I want to be seen as more important than their life experiences up to the point at which I encounter them. One of the interesting things about Bellingham, Washington for me is that it is the only place in which I have actually heard living, breathing people refer to their fellow citizens as "colored." My first thought (even though my sister has warned me about this) was, "Wow. I didn't know that I'd hit the off-ramp to 1950." Of course, once I got over the sheer you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me-ness of it all, I was somewhat bothered. Calling people "colored" was, for me, a throwback to a time before when I was born, and the stories that I'd heard about that time in American history weren't pleasant. And so I started to become concerned that more than just the language was backwards. But I was on their turf, not the other way around. This was simply the way they'd grown up doing things, and all of the things that were going through my head at that moment were completely invisible to them. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that people there had heard that the 21st century had arrived, and that "Colored" was no longer an appropriate way of referring to people. But so what? Was I, just some random dude who happened to be up there to meet with some other people that I knew, really important enough for the locals to police their language on my behalf? Given all of the other things that they had going on in their lives? Of course not. And I do think that there is a certain amount of maturation that comes in realizing that.

And once you stop berating people for being Clueless, the rest of it becomes easier. For better and for worse, it's easier to be less bothered by Disrespect. On balance, I think the better holds the majority. But I can understand why that's not true for everyone, and so they hang on to the idea that to respect them is to know them.

Vengeance

InfoTrumped

I think it has also hijacked the attention of the press to the extent that for many months, they weren't giving Donald Trump the kind of due diligence, the kind of tough scrutiny in his business life that you would give to a politician for his earlier political life. And I think Trump did that by feeding the press so much. It was irresistible to the press. The ratings show it. The clicks show it. This will be a time of high profits for cable news. But it meant that, for many months, he was able to escape a different kind of scrutiny that I think would have served the voter better.
David Folkenflik "Trump Takes On Media For Questioning His Fundraising Efforts For Veterans"

"The ratings show it. The clicks show it." What this says to me is, regardless what people might say, is that they're more interested in the showmanship angle of Donald Trump than they are in "due diligence" or "tough scrutiny" of him. And "the media," being a business, caters to that, and Mr. Trump knows it. I understand that people feel that a hard-hitting and  dogged news media are the watchdogs of a vibrant democracy, but it's also worth pointing out that we don't live in a nation where very many people are willing to give media outlets money without any strings attached. And that even goes for public broadcasters like National Public Radio, which has an audience, and has to do some level of catering to that audience.

It's often said that "the media" has been suborned by the wealthy and powerful in this nation, who have lulled the populace into self-destructive complacency with a constant diet of colorful circuses; but if that's the case, then we still have to accept some responsibility in our own fates. After all, no-one is making us watch or read certain media, and the World Wide Web means that any number of people can be different sources of information.

In this regard, I think that the media is serving the voter. The voter knows what they want, whether or not what they want is what others think they should want or need.