So. Much. To. Read.
So. Much. To. Think. About.
This is one of those times when it really helps to cue up a Bob Dylan playlist and turn up the volume.
I have two Dylan playlists that fit the bill, right now — Dylan Hymns I and Dylan Hymns II. They aren’t full of real hymns or even Gospel arrangements (that’s in the Dylan Gospel playlist), but they are full of songs with obvious faith content from the openly born-again albums and then the many interesting discus that followed, almost always with a few tracks that include clear Christian images and themes.
Hang in there with me. I am getting to this weekend’s “think pieces,” I promise.
The Dylan Hymns II playlist opens with another version of the same song that ended Dylan Hymns I — “When the Night Comes Falling From the Sky” (click here for a fiery live take with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers). That would be a great song for right now. But the song that really fits is, “Everything Is Broken” (lyrics here). Here’s some crucial images from the end of the song:
Broken cutters, broken saws
Broken buckles, broken laws
Broken bodies, broken bones
Broken voices on broken phones
Take a deep breath, feel like you’re chokin'
Everything is broken
Every time you leave and go off someplace
Things fall to pieces in my face
Broken hands on broken ploughs
Broken treaties, broken vows
Broken pipes, broken tools
People bending broken rules
Hound dog howling, bullfrog croaking
Everything is broken
This brings us to our first “think piece,” by Axios CEO Jim VandeHei. The thesis statement says, “America, in its modern foundational components, is breaking into blue America, red America, and Trump America — all with distinct politics, social networks and media channels.”
The emphasis here is, of course, politics and there is no openly stated religion theme. You know: politics is real and religion is not so real.
However, this short piece points toward a painful reality in conservative America, which is the divide between the actual power structures of traditional forms of religion and many of the believers in pews and a few (often independent) pulits. So read this chunk of VandeHei material and think about religion (including this week’s “Crossroads” post and podcast). From Axios:
The existential question for Republicans, and perhaps for America, is whether Trump America — animated by the likes of Newsmax + Rush Limbaugh + Tucker Carlson + Parler (or whatever replaces it) — eclipses the traditional Red America in power in the coming years.
The danger: Parts of Trump America, canceled by Twitter and so many others, is severing its ties to the realities of the other Americas, and basically going underground. There will be less awareness and perhaps scrutiny of what's being said and done.
Axios' Sara Fischer reports that AppTopia shows a surge in downloads for conservative-friendly social networks — Parler, MeWe, and Rumble — in the past two days, following Trump bans by mainstream social media and tech.
Finally, there is a stunning, sobering piece at Tablet, written by editor Alana Newhouse. While this is a Jewish website, the religious themes are understated in the essay, “Everything Is Broken: And How to Fix It.”
Trust me, there is no way to create a short, paraphrased summary of this highly personal piece. While some readers may attempt to force a political label on this, that is really behind the point. The emphasis is on economics, technology and the cracks in America’s cultural and moral foundation.
Here are three crucial chunks of Newhouse’s work, looking at the roots of this current sickening moment in American life:
Being on a ship nearly 4 million square miles in area along with 330 million other people and realizing the entire hull is pockmarked with holes is terrifying.
But being afraid to face this reality won’t make it less true. And this is the reality.
For seven decades, the country’s intellectual and cultural life was produced and protected by a set of institutions—universities, newspapers, magazines, record companies, professional associations, cultural venues, publishing houses, Hollywood studios, think tanks, etc. Collectively, these institutions reflected a diversity of experiences and then stamped them all as “American”—conjuring coherence out of the chaos of a big and unwieldy country. This wasn’t a set of factories pumping out identical widgets, but rather a broad and messy jazz band of disparate elements that together produced something legible, clear, and at times even beautiful when each did their part.
But, beginning in the 1970s, the economic ground underneath this landscape began to come apart.
How to describe this new culture?
Newhouse settled on this word — “flatness.”
Flatness is the reason the three jobs with the most projected growth in your country all earn less than $27,000 a year, and it is also the reason that all the secondary institutions that once gave structure and meaning to hundreds of millions of American lives — jobs and unions but also local newspapers, churches, Rotary Clubs, main streets — have been decimated. And flatness is the mechanism by which, over the past decade and with increasing velocity over the last three years, a single ideologically driven cohort captured the entire interlocking infrastructure of American cultural and intellectual life. It is how the Long March went from a punchline to reality, as one institution after another fell and then entire sectors, like journalism, succumbed to control by narrow bands of sneering elitists who arrogated to themselves the license to judge and control the lives of their perceived inferiors.
Flatness broke everything.
What to do? I think it’s safe to say that Newhouse is urging people to stop worshipping at political altars.
This disconnect between culturally mandated politics and the actual demonstrated preferences of most Americans has created an enormous reserve of unmet needs — and a generational opportunity. Build new things! Create great art! Understand and accept that sensory information is the brain’s food, and that Silicon Valley is systematically starving us of it. Avoid going entirely tree-blind. Make a friend and don’t talk politics with them. Do things that generate love and attention from three people you actually know instead of hundreds you don’t. Abandon the blighted Ivy League, please, I beg of you. Start a publishing house that puts out books that anger, surprise and delight people and which make them want to read. Be brave enough to make film and TV that appeals to actual audiences and not 14 people on Twitter. Establish a newspaper, one people can see themselves in and hold in their hands. Go back to a house of worship—every week.
Dig in. And turn it up.
FIRST IMAGE: Poster for sale at RedBubble.com.