Being clear-eyed and full-hearted doesn’t mean being passive, weak, or silent.
It means resisting every effort to supplant our autonomy of mind with symbols of identity, no matter the source.
Extreme language during election season isn’t anything new.
But this time it really is different. Our response must be different, too.
The question is not whether Trump will accept the election result if he loses. He won’t.
The question is whether a Missionary with actual power will join him.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m thoroughly despondent about the calcification, mendacity, and venal corruption that I think four years of Clinton™ will impose. Trump, on the other hand … I think he breaks us. Maybe he already has. He breaks us because he transforms every game we play as a country — from our domestic social games to our international security games — from a Coordination Game to a Competition Game.
The outcomes of NFL games are inordinately influenced by officials relative to other sports. This is not new. The Narrative environment faced by the NFL in 2021, however, IS new.
I’m not sure they’re ready for it.
When a famous person shakes his or her finger at you, they’re not telling you a fact.
They’re telling you how to think about a fact.
Called It - Election Edition
Men of God in the City of Man is a nine part series about a narrative virus that infected the charismatic and Pentecostal churches in the United States. It isn't a story about Christian Nationalism. It isn't a story about January 6th. It isn't a story about why people voted for Trump. It is a story about a story. It is a story about the language that created a self-sustaining movement defined by its unwavering belief in a fundamentally corrupt electoral system.
Recent Notes
Useful Idiots
Yes, Virginia, western news media are often useful idiots.
But let’s be real: so is Tucker Carlson.
It’s All True
Eight thoughts that I can’t reconcile about about Justin Mohn, the 32-year-old in Levittown, Pennsylvania who murdered his father, cut off his head, and made a YouTube video showing off his trophy and saying he did it because his father, who worked for the US Army Corps of Engineers, was part of the “Biden regime” and was a “traitor to his country”.
It’s All True (Eight Thoughts on Justin Mohn)
Eight thoughts that I can’t reconcile about about Justin Mohn, the 32-year-old in Levittown, Pennsylvania who murdered his father, cut off his head, and made a YouTube video showing off his trophy and saying he did it because his father, who worked for the US Army Corps of Engineers, was part of the “Biden regime” and was a “traitor to his country”.
Men of God in the City of Man, Part 9: Pathogenesis
A single virus can cause disease of the body in several ways at once.
A single narrative can cause disease in society in several ways, too.
This is the story of a new disease from an old acquaintance.
The Intellectual Rot of the Industrially Necessary University
The intellectual rot of the modern University perverts and diminishes the works of its faculty and administrators, no matter how smart they are, no matter how well-intentioned they are. It is a rot that requires plagiarism and promotes antisemitism.
We require a new Reformation, and here are its theses.
Non-Linguistic Inflation Framing in the Wall Street Journal
We do a lot of work here to understand how the media frames issues linguistically, but we haven’t done much to see how that carries over in graphical narrative representations. Would the same patterns we see in the WSJ’s words be represented in the WSJ’s pictures?
Oh yes.
“Yay, College!”
Every once in a very great while, the direct beneficiaries of a yay-something narrative construction overplay their hand so egregiously, embarrass themselves so publicly, reveal their mediocrity so clearly, that the common knowledge propping up the yay-something narrative collapses.
This is the breaking of “Yay, College!”.
I Got You Fam
Last week, Jay Powell told you that the Fed intends to cut interest rates next year, not because they must, but because they can.
But inflation is a bird that always comes home to roost. And when it does, we will look back at Powell’s Christmas 2023 “I got you fam” pivot as a BFD in the Great Unmooring.
The Changing Narrative of Women on Wall Street
Sure, you can do it. But you shouldn’t.
This used to be our common knowledge about risk-taking men on Wall Street. Today it’s our common knowledge about women.
And we are all paying a heavy price for that.
Pain, Political Vibes, and Being a Bat
The core problem for Team Blue isn’t the candidate, it’s the team. Specifically, it’s the very online population of Team Blue journalists, academics and political operatives and their pseudo-religious, dogmatic urge to explain why aggregate economic statistics are more meaningful than lived experience.
Argentina Leaps
The election of Javier Milei as Argentina’s president is a classic Great Unmooring event. Don’t get me wrong – I am totally rooting for the guy and I am not saying this is a Bad Thing TM. In fact, I think Milei is absolutely right to take a flamethrower to the Argentine central bank and entrenched public sector. But it is a profound unmooring all the same, not just for Argentina but for the world.
Fiat News in the Fog of War
The obligation of the news media when major events are unfolding should be to act with more discretion and care, not less.
They failed at this most critical task this week. Utterly.
Men of God in the City of Man, Part 2: Carriers
Every virus needs carriers to spread. Even a narrative virus.
We can learn a lot from what they have in common.
Men of God in the City of Man, Part 1: Virus
This is a story about a virus and the gain-of-function research that produced it.
It’s not what you think.
Freedom of Speech, Rich Men of Reach
TRIGGER WARNING:
This note will make many readers anxious and angry, because you have been told by the political entrepreneurs of your tribe that neither Oliver Anthony nor Greta Thunberg is ‘political’ at all, and that anyone who says otherwise is a bad person.
The political entrepreneurs of your tribe are lying to you.
Narrative Derangement Syndrome
Awareness of narrative is a necessary tool for the politically engaged citizen.
Up to a point.
If obliviousness to narrative is the easiest way to shut off our brains, narrative derangement syndrome is a close second. The citizen must be vigilant against both.
Language is a Virus: Mike Pence edition
This is not a note about Mike Pence.
This is a note about language.
This is a note about how viral words of *therapy* have infected blue tribe brains and viral words of *war and conflict* have infected red tribe brains, words that change the way we see the world and speak to the world. Words that change the way we THINK.
Men of God in the City of Man, Part 8: Zoonosis
Physical viruses sometimes jump from one species to another.
Narrative viruses sometimes jump from one culture to another.
All it takes is the right virus and a susceptible host.
Men of God in the City of Man, Pt. 7: Mutation
Narrative viruses are not immune to events in reality world – especially when we have made those narratives part of our identity.
And when a narrative becomes part of our identity, it changes what we need to be true.
Men of God in the City of Man, Pt. 6: Pandemic
Surprising outcomes in reality world that seem to confirm a narrative often produce explosive growth in its scale.
But also in its scope.