Hey guys: As always, I try to respond to everyone who comments. Also as always, I have a job, so it might take a bit. But I'm glad you are here and will respond, with the exception of people I'm responding to other places or if anyone was, like, the worst in some way I can't anticipate.
Note that I have been made aware that I mentally subbed in "Montreal" in several places I should have said "Toronto". I am sorry to both Montreal and Toronto people, who seem to be mutually uninterested in being associated with each other.
Great post . Great points. On a slight tangent - yesterday I saw " Mitchells against the machines". Its totally zeitgeist yet manages to be about family and human values. Uplifting, funny and with positive message.
Something sorely missing from a lot of modern culture
So an admission I have is that I haven't ever read the entirety of 17776, since it missed me in much the same way TTTCFLC missed you. I'm working on correcting this.
“they tread water wondering why they have to risk drowning while everyone else they see has yachts built out friendships and satisfying romantic relationships.”
I’m one of the relationship-impoverished.
I’m admittedly clueless about making strong relationships and am ostensibly smart enough to overcome my ‘disability’. It’s humbling to see the relationship-gifted and realize I can’t have what they have.
Man, I feel for you. I am one of the blessed people who, for a lot of reasons I didn't exactly earn, has a lot of good relationships. And I look at a lot of situations where people don't and think about what my life would be like without them and I know that's a lot of hurt.
What my hope is for a lot of people is that there's a Tebow style (I'm not trying to be funny here) type redemption coming for them, that eventually there's a reason why they had to be difficult-life-specific instead of easy-life-general. And in the normal religious way I'll pray for you in that sense.
I know I’m fortunate in so many other ways, I can’t be resentful of people who have a gift for building relationships. I truly appreciate your prayer, and your writing moved me today, and made me laugh. That’s a good day!
French is... OK, so imagine you are a pretty conventional feminist. And there's a feminist writer who was really relevant, really a positive writer for your movement, and they've just sort of persisted across the decades. And they are still basically one of the more prominent writers people think of when they think "mainstream feminist thought leader".
But say over the course of that same amount of time, they've come to hate almost every other feminist. So you read an article from them, and they toss in little stuff like "And, since pretty much every feminist is a blue-hair drug addict who is overaggressive just because they hate men" all the time, and write articles like "the feminist case for paternalism" where they argue that women should really just give up and be lead by the saner/better gender in most things, etc.
That's sort of what reading French is like. Over the course of time he's seemingly decided that democrats are right on most things, and he's stopped knowing any average-world Christians and adopted all the assumptions about Christians (besides himself) that the groups that hate Christians mostly adopt. Ditto conservatives, he sort of has drunk the koolaid on "all conservatives are just that way because they are hateful racists" type thinking.
None of this would be bad, or at least none of this would be unusual, except that he still is wearing that "most prominent conservative Christian" mantle, if that makes sense. And he very certainly doesn't want to give it up, and frames a lot of his articles in a "This is what REAL conservatives and REAL christians should believe - basically that being center left is right in all ways" way. That's the discordance that makes me not like him.
No, I stop short of that mostly because a wolf in sheep's clothing seems to me to imply he's specifically trying to hurt the groups in a knowingly deceptive way, if that makes sense. My mental model of French is more that he got really into what was once called anti-trump hysteria, that it got him real good and deep, and that this colors a lot of how he thinks about things.
So, imagine I was going to vote for Trump in the upcoming election he might end up in. If I did, the reasons would be something like:
1. I want someone with a demonstrated track record of getting conservative SCOTUS justices placed
2. I want someone who has a demonstrated track record of improving the horrific pace of the FDA, which I don't believe Biden is interested in, even if we were to get "Covid 2: the worse one"
3. I want someone who isn't having his press secretary indicate that if he had his druthers he'd force parents to seek the currently-popular trans treatments.
French doesn't believe I exist. He thinks the only reason I'd vote for Trump is that I worship him; the pragmatic options/thinking aren't in his model at all. So when he talks about Christians and Trump, you get something based off that - the only reason they'd vote for Trump is they've abandoned morality, abandoned Christianity and have a new god.
I think that drives a lot of his current policy preferences, too. CRT pops up, he associates it with things that smell Trumpy, is terrified the cool kids might think he's Trumpy, and goes with "please de facto just let it happen" as his policy recommendations. And who spends a lot of time strawmanning any christian trump voter as a non-pragmatic worshipper, and so on.
From doing that, he gets endless rewards from the left. And anybody who thinks Christianity lurched to the right during trump (even though it very arguably has shifted left on, say, abortion, attitudes on homosexuality, attitudes on transgender issues, attitudes on welfare-type-stuff, etc.) because their personal positioning to the overton window hasn't changed is also thrilled, because they can say "listen, I just can't support these other Christians anymore; they've changed drastically" with some popular-writer backup.
Note that last paragraph doesn't mean he's doing it *because* of those things, or knowingly. But incentives matter for the best of us.
> So, imagine I was going to vote for Trump in the upcoming election he might end up in. If I did, the reasons would be something like...
> French doesn't believe I exist. He thinks the only reason I'd vote for Trump is that I worship him; the pragmatic options/thinking aren't in his model at all.
With all due respect, pragmatism is no longer a reason that holds water when discussing a future vote for Trump, given what we now know about his disregard for American democracy and the sycophantic and frankly dangerous race-to-the-bottom behavior of his allies.
So you may be right that French doesn't believe you exist, because it is borderline insanity to hold the "pragmatism" position regarding Trump in 2022. It has always been true since my earliest involvement in conservative politics that a bit of "hold your nose" is needed for the presidential candidate, but this is not that.
What you're describing here is a willingness to compromise on not just the core values of conservatism, but the founding principles of this nation, all to achieve policy goals "because pragmatism".
From what I've seen from French more recently, his position comes from a similar place. As I mentioned in another comment in this thread, French has held true to his conservative *values* while the Conservative party has thrown values out the window all to enforce aging policies that are not compatible with modern society.
Policies and values are not the same thing. French seems to understand this. A frighteningly large portion of the modern Conservative party do not.
I'd have to have specifics to argue this. I don't mean because you are necessarily wrong, but because, for instance, "are not compatible with modern society" sounds in some interpretations a lot like "See, the overton window has moved really far left and all good people follow the overton window". It might not be that, you might mean something different, but I need to know what policies and catastrophies you mean.
I'm not trying to put words in your mouth here. But it's important to me because, frankly, I don't think Biden would have pushed the FDA hard to get vaccines rolling; that has an implication of hundreds of thousands of lives. Things like that matter, on a pragmatic level.
I think the part I'm the most sympathetic to here is overturn-the-election stuff, and very honestly I'm not at all sure I'd vote for Trump if he popped up again. But at the same time there's a name for someone who thinks that 100% of conservative views are wrong and disaster would instantly strike if they had any kind of party control, and it's called "A person who is no farther to the right than a centrist democrat".
If the premise is that republicans are wrong on everything, and need to be defeated at the polls so democrat party goals can be put into play, that's cool, but it's also saying something like "French is conservative only in the sense that he's a democrat". And that's sort of my complaint about him, full stop - it's fine to be a democrat! Many good people are. But if he is, then I'd much rather he said that.
Again, this isn't me saying this is what you are saying - it's why I'm asking for clarity.
> I think the part I'm the most sympathetic to here is overturn-the-election stuff, and very honestly I'm not at all sure I'd vote for Trump if he popped up again.
You seem to be acknowledging that Trump tried to overturn the election.
You then say you're not sure if you'd vote again for the guy who just tried to overturn the election.
Will you share where where your threshold actually lies? What would Trump have to do to change that stance to "no way in hell would I vote for that guy again"?
Because if attempting to overturn the election isn't that line, I'm not sure where the line could possibly be.
> I'd have to have specifics to argue this.
I'll share two specifics.
1) Texas abortion law. Regardless of one's stance on abortion, the implementation of that law, and the disregard for due process, and the enabling of what is essentially vigilantism for profit should terrify liberals and conservatives alike.
2) Voting rights. The restrictions put in place by conservative states are pretty difficult to interpret as anything other than intentional roadblocks for certain demographics and communities. Again, this should terrify both liberals and conservatives alike.
Both may achieve a short term goal, but at a cost that should concern just about everyone, IMO.
> I don't think Biden would have pushed the FDA hard to get vaccines rolling
Ok, but what you or I think would or wouldn't have happened is not very relevant when we have plenty of hard facts about what actually has happened. I could also bring up the dismantling of the pandemic task force - something that Trump actually did - but even that is something that we can only speculate about. We don't know how much impact this really had. I'd prefer to focus on what we do know.
> there's a name for someone who thinks that 100% of conservative views are wrong
Who is saying 100% of conservative views are wrong? I haven't seen French say that.
Just curious, because I didn't pay very much attention to media reports later in Trump's presidency and up through 2022--can you point me to the basis for "his disregard for American democracy and the sycophantic and frankly dangerous race-to-the-bottom behavior of his allies"? I'm not trying to be combative, and I didn't vote for Trump (and do not intend to in the future). Actually uninformed and seeking the info.
It does, and also, right before I read your post, I saw a Twitter exchange involving Elon and Matt Yglesias and others on exactly the issue you talk about in the "From doing that..." paragraph.
Something like that. Mostly I don't hate him, he just bothers me. I really wish he wasn't the banner-carrier for mainstream Christianity/Conservatism, but I don't wish he'd fall off a cliff or whatever.
What you're describing says more about the current state of mainstream Christianity/Conservatism than it does about French.
As someone who grew up in the church, participated in conservative campaigns in the 90s/00s, etc, I don't recognize the current state of the party or church. As has been oft-repeated, "I didn't leave the conservatives, the conservatives left me".
That French continues to explore the nuance of complex issues while conservatives increasingly refuse to do so shouldn't exclude him from continuing to carry a banner that he has been carrying all along.
I'll have more time to talk about this later, but yeah, that's the usual defense of him, and the one he makes himself. It's basically "Listen, I'm the same guy, but Christianity has drastically changed in the last decade, and also every Christian has enshrined Trump as God, I'm just doing the moral thing".
It's harder for me to take him as true on this for multiple reasons. One is that he's taking that stance even on things that both Christians and Conservatives would have always been against, i.e. whatever you are calling CRT, abortion, etc.
So when I see that French's position on abortion is that he's anti abortion, but only in the sense that anybody would want to get one - i.e. he's against anything that would restrict it, he just hopes for a world so rich and pleasant that nobody would want to do it - it's hard to go "Yup, Christians have just until recently been pro-abortion and changed in the last five or so years around him". And so on and so forth.
Note that I would have zero problems with him if he was branding himself as identical to, say, a Bill Clinton voter or a 2008 Obama voter, which he basically is on most fronts. His views are a dime-a-dozen for male center-left people of his age; it's hard to find any daylight between him and Andrew Sullivan, for instance. But he doesn't, which makes it a lot more complex.
French on the TX abortion law: "The law bans abortion after a heartbeat is detected (a position I support)" Seems like he's not against laws that would restrict abortion.
To continue the quote: "but it does so in a way that is engineered both to evade pre-enforcement judicial review (dangerous) and to empower any citizen (except state officials) to file suits against anyone who performs or “aids or abets” the performance of an abortion (even more dangerous)." He notes that there are nuances here (something that modern conservatism seem to not like). There are some potentially dangerous features* of the TX abortion law as he notes here.
This right here. I also participated in conservative campaigns in the 90s early 00s - door to door, etc. And I also don't recognize the current state of conservatism. The definition of "conservative" seems to have changed pretty significantly over the last 5-7 years. It seems to be more defined now as fealty to a particular individual than it is to a set of values or principles. In this sense, I don't think French has moved at all - I've followed him since his days at Alliance Defending Freedom.
Conservatism in it's current incarnation seems more committed to being offensive than it is to actually engaging issues. it's more about who is on "our team" and who isn't - in that sense it's very similar to the Left.
This is black and white thinking. Maybe conservatives have changed, but demonstrably so has French*. And yet French pretends he hasn't. Say what you will of conservatives, but that is fundamentally dishonest.
The problem I see here is that we're having conversations about two very different things:
1) Conservative values
2) Conservative policies
Policies can and should evolve over time, but that does not automatically imply that the underlying values driving those policies have changed.
For example, 246 years ago, the Declaration of Independence made clear the core values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And yet, most signers of that document owned slaves. As the nation evolved, it took time for policies to catch up with those core values.
The core values of the Conservative party are separate from the implementation of policies aligned with those values. Someone like French has been willing to evolve his thinking over time regarding the best way to actual realize those values. That does not have to imply that his values have changed, but rather, his thoughts on policy and how policy can be wielded both for and against those values.
The problem with modern conservatism in my opinion is that it's a group stuck on old policy, unable to separate values from the implementation details. As a group, they are unwilling to consider the possibility that a new policy approach might still move the world closer to their value system.
So yes, French may have changed his views on policy, but I also believe that French ascribes to the same core values he always has, and has simply evolved his thinking on how to realize those values.
Conservatives have remained stuck on the same policies, and instead of seeking new ways to realize their values, started compromising those values in order to implement their policy.
On the surface, this might resemble a shift to "the left" by French and a "stay the course" by conservatives. Dig a bit deeper, and I think this is a fundamentally reductionist interpretation that obscures the truth about both French, and conservatism.
I think we've got people like that—like Camille Paglia. And I do enjoy hearing Paglia rip into contemporary feminists, though it's a bit of a guilty pleasure.
There's a more advanced stage of this, though, where it leads to me (hypothetically) saying things like, "Don't you all see Paglia is the only real feminist, and the others are just misandrists who've perverted true feminism," and I think that would bother the others a lot more. This is more or less the case with French.
Crazy: A world where Nobel-prices were awarded to "Crock of gold" (J. Stephens) and "The princess bride" (the book is so good, the movie was lost on me, sorry) .
1938 a Nobel went to Pearl S. Buck ... the good earth ... big scandal, made them change rules
(I read that novel the other century, still thinking about it whenever I cook tea. Which is often.). Now Nobels go to writers like Elfriede Jelinek. It makes you cringe? See: it's ART! - Thanks for sharing!
As a couple others have suggested, all should check out Bois’s web hypersomething 17776, and look for his YouTube works, like the Secret Base and Chart Party channels.
Gonna be honest, I saw this was about a football novel and thought "this is gonna be 17776, isn't it." And I wasn't far off. Though, honestly, the biggest downside of the Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles is that it doesn't have a rant about a Broncos-Steelers game turning into a property dispute.
Don’t want to be the annoying person that makes requests, but just this once please please read and review 17776 + 20020. Would love to hear your thoughts on them
So I JUST read these. Not sure how I'll work them into a review or when, because they are difficult books in ways that I can't explain without doing a lot of work (but I think you know what I mean, overall). FTR I *didn't* like them as much as TTCFLC but they were still very good and I still liked them a lot.
I can't tell if calling the Super Bowl the Superbowl is a) a typo; 2) an honest mistake since you don't follow the NFL and wouldn't know better; or d) an instance of 4D chess where you know how to write Super Bowl correctly but are trying to give the impression of 2.
There's a bit of argument about how good/bad he was, apparently. Some people seem to think he got unlucky and wasn't used effectively, and other people (more overall) seem to think he generally sucked. It's a little bit harder for me to parse because the religion bit is in there muddling things.
In any case don't trust me to know, again, not a sports guy.
I quite literally just got back from an office lunch which was primarily composed of a discussion about media that makes moves to appeal to the average consumer, generally by sanding off any edges that make it thoughtful or complex. I really like the takeaway from this article, because it presents another axis on the "media political compass". Normally we break it down into good/bad and fun/boring, so you can say "oh, I know that movie is bad, but I think it's a lot of fun" or whatever. Adding happy/sad covers any angle that we don't really talk about in critiquing media, or at least not outside of the entertainment factor. Lots of media is "entertaining" and therefore "makes me happy", but there's something to be said for an uplifting message that makes you feel good on its own, without any other serotonin generating jokes or action.
I think "fun" movies aren't necessarily just "makes me happy" movies, but movies that are lazy but over-the-top. Go to example would be transformers. Perhaps there's plot holes or bad acting, but something about the cinematography makes up for it.
Conversely, I think art could be joyful and yet smart. Princess Bride would probably fit here. But I don't have a deep enough movie familiarity to give enough examples to delineate the terrain.
Transformers, for me, is at the top of the all-time list for "Greatest experience relative to expectations." I think that's the reason you (and I) remember it being so good. It just turned out to be way better than expected.
I started to read 17776, but the football kept ruining it. Jon Bois is a wonderful writer, and if he wrote about literally anything other than sports, I'd be a huge fan. But it's like a Michelin star chef who insists on making all of his dishes feature olives. I just do not like them. I wish I could, I'd like to experience this expertly crafted creation, but nope. Olives will always taste like someone tried to put out a fire at a sulfur mine by covering it in salt. So will football.
I think this is fair. As much as I don't watch sports I don't actively hate them - they are just sort of "there" for me. It might have been a lot harder to watch this is I hated them in the way one hates green olives.
Hey guys: As always, I try to respond to everyone who comments. Also as always, I have a job, so it might take a bit. But I'm glad you are here and will respond, with the exception of people I'm responding to other places or if anyone was, like, the worst in some way I can't anticipate.
Note that I have been made aware that I mentally subbed in "Montreal" in several places I should have said "Toronto". I am sorry to both Montreal and Toronto people, who seem to be mutually uninterested in being associated with each other.
Great post . Great points. On a slight tangent - yesterday I saw " Mitchells against the machines". Its totally zeitgeist yet manages to be about family and human values. Uplifting, funny and with positive message.
Something sorely missing from a lot of modern culture
Never responded to this, but I'll check out the movie - I'm so old-man now that I'm rarely aware when stuff is even coming out.
I thought this was going to be about 17776 and am now delighted to find out there are even more weird Jon Bois football novellas out there.
So an admission I have is that I haven't ever read the entirety of 17776, since it missed me in much the same way TTTCFLC missed you. I'm working on correcting this.
Wow! Your insight really struck me here. Genius!
“they tread water wondering why they have to risk drowning while everyone else they see has yachts built out friendships and satisfying romantic relationships.”
I’m one of the relationship-impoverished.
I’m admittedly clueless about making strong relationships and am ostensibly smart enough to overcome my ‘disability’. It’s humbling to see the relationship-gifted and realize I can’t have what they have.
Man, I feel for you. I am one of the blessed people who, for a lot of reasons I didn't exactly earn, has a lot of good relationships. And I look at a lot of situations where people don't and think about what my life would be like without them and I know that's a lot of hurt.
What my hope is for a lot of people is that there's a Tebow style (I'm not trying to be funny here) type redemption coming for them, that eventually there's a reason why they had to be difficult-life-specific instead of easy-life-general. And in the normal religious way I'll pray for you in that sense.
I know I’m fortunate in so many other ways, I can’t be resentful of people who have a gift for building relationships. I truly appreciate your prayer, and your writing moved me today, and made me laugh. That’s a good day!
What do you have against David French? Serious question.
French is... OK, so imagine you are a pretty conventional feminist. And there's a feminist writer who was really relevant, really a positive writer for your movement, and they've just sort of persisted across the decades. And they are still basically one of the more prominent writers people think of when they think "mainstream feminist thought leader".
But say over the course of that same amount of time, they've come to hate almost every other feminist. So you read an article from them, and they toss in little stuff like "And, since pretty much every feminist is a blue-hair drug addict who is overaggressive just because they hate men" all the time, and write articles like "the feminist case for paternalism" where they argue that women should really just give up and be lead by the saner/better gender in most things, etc.
That's sort of what reading French is like. Over the course of time he's seemingly decided that democrats are right on most things, and he's stopped knowing any average-world Christians and adopted all the assumptions about Christians (besides himself) that the groups that hate Christians mostly adopt. Ditto conservatives, he sort of has drunk the koolaid on "all conservatives are just that way because they are hateful racists" type thinking.
None of this would be bad, or at least none of this would be unusual, except that he still is wearing that "most prominent conservative Christian" mantle, if that makes sense. And he very certainly doesn't want to give it up, and frames a lot of his articles in a "This is what REAL conservatives and REAL christians should believe - basically that being center left is right in all ways" way. That's the discordance that makes me not like him.
Are you calling French a wolf in sheep's clothing?
No, I stop short of that mostly because a wolf in sheep's clothing seems to me to imply he's specifically trying to hurt the groups in a knowingly deceptive way, if that makes sense. My mental model of French is more that he got really into what was once called anti-trump hysteria, that it got him real good and deep, and that this colors a lot of how he thinks about things.
So, imagine I was going to vote for Trump in the upcoming election he might end up in. If I did, the reasons would be something like:
1. I want someone with a demonstrated track record of getting conservative SCOTUS justices placed
2. I want someone who has a demonstrated track record of improving the horrific pace of the FDA, which I don't believe Biden is interested in, even if we were to get "Covid 2: the worse one"
3. I want someone who isn't having his press secretary indicate that if he had his druthers he'd force parents to seek the currently-popular trans treatments.
French doesn't believe I exist. He thinks the only reason I'd vote for Trump is that I worship him; the pragmatic options/thinking aren't in his model at all. So when he talks about Christians and Trump, you get something based off that - the only reason they'd vote for Trump is they've abandoned morality, abandoned Christianity and have a new god.
I think that drives a lot of his current policy preferences, too. CRT pops up, he associates it with things that smell Trumpy, is terrified the cool kids might think he's Trumpy, and goes with "please de facto just let it happen" as his policy recommendations. And who spends a lot of time strawmanning any christian trump voter as a non-pragmatic worshipper, and so on.
From doing that, he gets endless rewards from the left. And anybody who thinks Christianity lurched to the right during trump (even though it very arguably has shifted left on, say, abortion, attitudes on homosexuality, attitudes on transgender issues, attitudes on welfare-type-stuff, etc.) because their personal positioning to the overton window hasn't changed is also thrilled, because they can say "listen, I just can't support these other Christians anymore; they've changed drastically" with some popular-writer backup.
Note that last paragraph doesn't mean he's doing it *because* of those things, or knowingly. But incentives matter for the best of us.
Does any of that make sense?
> So, imagine I was going to vote for Trump in the upcoming election he might end up in. If I did, the reasons would be something like...
> French doesn't believe I exist. He thinks the only reason I'd vote for Trump is that I worship him; the pragmatic options/thinking aren't in his model at all.
With all due respect, pragmatism is no longer a reason that holds water when discussing a future vote for Trump, given what we now know about his disregard for American democracy and the sycophantic and frankly dangerous race-to-the-bottom behavior of his allies.
So you may be right that French doesn't believe you exist, because it is borderline insanity to hold the "pragmatism" position regarding Trump in 2022. It has always been true since my earliest involvement in conservative politics that a bit of "hold your nose" is needed for the presidential candidate, but this is not that.
What you're describing here is a willingness to compromise on not just the core values of conservatism, but the founding principles of this nation, all to achieve policy goals "because pragmatism".
From what I've seen from French more recently, his position comes from a similar place. As I mentioned in another comment in this thread, French has held true to his conservative *values* while the Conservative party has thrown values out the window all to enforce aging policies that are not compatible with modern society.
Policies and values are not the same thing. French seems to understand this. A frighteningly large portion of the modern Conservative party do not.
I'd have to have specifics to argue this. I don't mean because you are necessarily wrong, but because, for instance, "are not compatible with modern society" sounds in some interpretations a lot like "See, the overton window has moved really far left and all good people follow the overton window". It might not be that, you might mean something different, but I need to know what policies and catastrophies you mean.
I'm not trying to put words in your mouth here. But it's important to me because, frankly, I don't think Biden would have pushed the FDA hard to get vaccines rolling; that has an implication of hundreds of thousands of lives. Things like that matter, on a pragmatic level.
I think the part I'm the most sympathetic to here is overturn-the-election stuff, and very honestly I'm not at all sure I'd vote for Trump if he popped up again. But at the same time there's a name for someone who thinks that 100% of conservative views are wrong and disaster would instantly strike if they had any kind of party control, and it's called "A person who is no farther to the right than a centrist democrat".
If the premise is that republicans are wrong on everything, and need to be defeated at the polls so democrat party goals can be put into play, that's cool, but it's also saying something like "French is conservative only in the sense that he's a democrat". And that's sort of my complaint about him, full stop - it's fine to be a democrat! Many good people are. But if he is, then I'd much rather he said that.
Again, this isn't me saying this is what you are saying - it's why I'm asking for clarity.
> I think the part I'm the most sympathetic to here is overturn-the-election stuff, and very honestly I'm not at all sure I'd vote for Trump if he popped up again.
You seem to be acknowledging that Trump tried to overturn the election.
You then say you're not sure if you'd vote again for the guy who just tried to overturn the election.
Will you share where where your threshold actually lies? What would Trump have to do to change that stance to "no way in hell would I vote for that guy again"?
Because if attempting to overturn the election isn't that line, I'm not sure where the line could possibly be.
> I'd have to have specifics to argue this.
I'll share two specifics.
1) Texas abortion law. Regardless of one's stance on abortion, the implementation of that law, and the disregard for due process, and the enabling of what is essentially vigilantism for profit should terrify liberals and conservatives alike.
2) Voting rights. The restrictions put in place by conservative states are pretty difficult to interpret as anything other than intentional roadblocks for certain demographics and communities. Again, this should terrify both liberals and conservatives alike.
Both may achieve a short term goal, but at a cost that should concern just about everyone, IMO.
> I don't think Biden would have pushed the FDA hard to get vaccines rolling
Ok, but what you or I think would or wouldn't have happened is not very relevant when we have plenty of hard facts about what actually has happened. I could also bring up the dismantling of the pandemic task force - something that Trump actually did - but even that is something that we can only speculate about. We don't know how much impact this really had. I'd prefer to focus on what we do know.
> there's a name for someone who thinks that 100% of conservative views are wrong
Who is saying 100% of conservative views are wrong? I haven't seen French say that.
Just curious, because I didn't pay very much attention to media reports later in Trump's presidency and up through 2022--can you point me to the basis for "his disregard for American democracy and the sycophantic and frankly dangerous race-to-the-bottom behavior of his allies"? I'm not trying to be combative, and I didn't vote for Trump (and do not intend to in the future). Actually uninformed and seeking the info.
It does, and also, right before I read your post, I saw a Twitter exchange involving Elon and Matt Yglesias and others on exactly the issue you talk about in the "From doing that..." paragraph.
Give me that link, brotherman.
Elon's tweet: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519735033950470144
Matt Y's comment: https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1519736215532101639
I'm not sure there's anything transcendent in there. Just interesting that the two discussions coincided.
Ah, I can see that. And I love him for the same reason you'd probably enjoy a feminist who told you how and why all the other feminists were wrong.
Something like that. Mostly I don't hate him, he just bothers me. I really wish he wasn't the banner-carrier for mainstream Christianity/Conservatism, but I don't wish he'd fall off a cliff or whatever.
What you're describing says more about the current state of mainstream Christianity/Conservatism than it does about French.
As someone who grew up in the church, participated in conservative campaigns in the 90s/00s, etc, I don't recognize the current state of the party or church. As has been oft-repeated, "I didn't leave the conservatives, the conservatives left me".
That French continues to explore the nuance of complex issues while conservatives increasingly refuse to do so shouldn't exclude him from continuing to carry a banner that he has been carrying all along.
I'll have more time to talk about this later, but yeah, that's the usual defense of him, and the one he makes himself. It's basically "Listen, I'm the same guy, but Christianity has drastically changed in the last decade, and also every Christian has enshrined Trump as God, I'm just doing the moral thing".
It's harder for me to take him as true on this for multiple reasons. One is that he's taking that stance even on things that both Christians and Conservatives would have always been against, i.e. whatever you are calling CRT, abortion, etc.
So when I see that French's position on abortion is that he's anti abortion, but only in the sense that anybody would want to get one - i.e. he's against anything that would restrict it, he just hopes for a world so rich and pleasant that nobody would want to do it - it's hard to go "Yup, Christians have just until recently been pro-abortion and changed in the last five or so years around him". And so on and so forth.
Note that I would have zero problems with him if he was branding himself as identical to, say, a Bill Clinton voter or a 2008 Obama voter, which he basically is on most fronts. His views are a dime-a-dozen for male center-left people of his age; it's hard to find any daylight between him and Andrew Sullivan, for instance. But he doesn't, which makes it a lot more complex.
French on the TX abortion law: "The law bans abortion after a heartbeat is detected (a position I support)" Seems like he's not against laws that would restrict abortion.
To continue the quote: "but it does so in a way that is engineered both to evade pre-enforcement judicial review (dangerous) and to empower any citizen (except state officials) to file suits against anyone who performs or “aids or abets” the performance of an abortion (even more dangerous)." He notes that there are nuances here (something that modern conservatism seem to not like). There are some potentially dangerous features* of the TX abortion law as he notes here.
quote from: https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/the-pro-life-movement-must-transcend?s=r
*Note that CA wants to replicate some of these features to restrict gun rights.
This right here. I also participated in conservative campaigns in the 90s early 00s - door to door, etc. And I also don't recognize the current state of conservatism. The definition of "conservative" seems to have changed pretty significantly over the last 5-7 years. It seems to be more defined now as fealty to a particular individual than it is to a set of values or principles. In this sense, I don't think French has moved at all - I've followed him since his days at Alliance Defending Freedom.
Conservatism in it's current incarnation seems more committed to being offensive than it is to actually engaging issues. it's more about who is on "our team" and who isn't - in that sense it's very similar to the Left.
This is black and white thinking. Maybe conservatives have changed, but demonstrably so has French*. And yet French pretends he hasn't. Say what you will of conservatives, but that is fundamentally dishonest.
*see e.g. https://twitter.com/Byzness/status/1513628325394083841
The problem I see here is that we're having conversations about two very different things:
1) Conservative values
2) Conservative policies
Policies can and should evolve over time, but that does not automatically imply that the underlying values driving those policies have changed.
For example, 246 years ago, the Declaration of Independence made clear the core values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And yet, most signers of that document owned slaves. As the nation evolved, it took time for policies to catch up with those core values.
The core values of the Conservative party are separate from the implementation of policies aligned with those values. Someone like French has been willing to evolve his thinking over time regarding the best way to actual realize those values. That does not have to imply that his values have changed, but rather, his thoughts on policy and how policy can be wielded both for and against those values.
The problem with modern conservatism in my opinion is that it's a group stuck on old policy, unable to separate values from the implementation details. As a group, they are unwilling to consider the possibility that a new policy approach might still move the world closer to their value system.
So yes, French may have changed his views on policy, but I also believe that French ascribes to the same core values he always has, and has simply evolved his thinking on how to realize those values.
Conservatives have remained stuck on the same policies, and instead of seeking new ways to realize their values, started compromising those values in order to implement their policy.
On the surface, this might resemble a shift to "the left" by French and a "stay the course" by conservatives. Dig a bit deeper, and I think this is a fundamentally reductionist interpretation that obscures the truth about both French, and conservatism.
I think we've got people like that—like Camille Paglia. And I do enjoy hearing Paglia rip into contemporary feminists, though it's a bit of a guilty pleasure.
There's a more advanced stage of this, though, where it leads to me (hypothetically) saying things like, "Don't you all see Paglia is the only real feminist, and the others are just misandrists who've perverted true feminism," and I think that would bother the others a lot more. This is more or less the case with French.
Crazy: A world where Nobel-prices were awarded to "Crock of gold" (J. Stephens) and "The princess bride" (the book is so good, the movie was lost on me, sorry) .
1938 a Nobel went to Pearl S. Buck ... the good earth ... big scandal, made them change rules
(I read that novel the other century, still thinking about it whenever I cook tea. Which is often.). Now Nobels go to writers like Elfriede Jelinek. It makes you cringe? See: it's ART! - Thanks for sharing!
>I read that novel the other century
Brilliant prose, I will have to work that into conversation sometime.
As a couple others have suggested, all should check out Bois’s web hypersomething 17776, and look for his YouTube works, like the Secret Base and Chart Party channels.
He's just overall good. Even his twitter is pretty amusing.
Gonna be honest, I saw this was about a football novel and thought "this is gonna be 17776, isn't it." And I wasn't far off. Though, honestly, the biggest downside of the Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles is that it doesn't have a rant about a Broncos-Steelers game turning into a property dispute.
It does have a court case about water feature interference in plays, though!
Oh wow I loved 17776 and 20020 but didn't know this existed, will have to check it out.
Don’t want to be the annoying person that makes requests, but just this once please please read and review 17776 + 20020. Would love to hear your thoughts on them
In exchange I’ll read this book
So I JUST read these. Not sure how I'll work them into a review or when, because they are difficult books in ways that I can't explain without doing a lot of work (but I think you know what I mean, overall). FTR I *didn't* like them as much as TTCFLC but they were still very good and I still liked them a lot.
I savored this one like a 10-course dinner.
I think you'd really like the book if you didn't read it - it seems like the kind of thing you'd find funny.
Here is some more Jon Bois content, in video form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAL5X3TRA2A.
I can't tell if calling the Super Bowl the Superbowl is a) a typo; 2) an honest mistake since you don't follow the NFL and wouldn't know better; or d) an instance of 4D chess where you know how to write Super Bowl correctly but are trying to give the impression of 2.
Or....something else.
Huh, shows how much I know about Football, I thought Tebow had done pretty well.
Book seems weird, but intriguing.
There's a bit of argument about how good/bad he was, apparently. Some people seem to think he got unlucky and wasn't used effectively, and other people (more overall) seem to think he generally sucked. It's a little bit harder for me to parse because the religion bit is in there muddling things.
In any case don't trust me to know, again, not a sports guy.
I quite literally just got back from an office lunch which was primarily composed of a discussion about media that makes moves to appeal to the average consumer, generally by sanding off any edges that make it thoughtful or complex. I really like the takeaway from this article, because it presents another axis on the "media political compass". Normally we break it down into good/bad and fun/boring, so you can say "oh, I know that movie is bad, but I think it's a lot of fun" or whatever. Adding happy/sad covers any angle that we don't really talk about in critiquing media, or at least not outside of the entertainment factor. Lots of media is "entertaining" and therefore "makes me happy", but there's something to be said for an uplifting message that makes you feel good on its own, without any other serotonin generating jokes or action.
I think "fun" movies aren't necessarily just "makes me happy" movies, but movies that are lazy but over-the-top. Go to example would be transformers. Perhaps there's plot holes or bad acting, but something about the cinematography makes up for it.
Conversely, I think art could be joyful and yet smart. Princess Bride would probably fit here. But I don't have a deep enough movie familiarity to give enough examples to delineate the terrain.
Transformers, for me, is at the top of the all-time list for "Greatest experience relative to expectations." I think that's the reason you (and I) remember it being so good. It just turned out to be way better than expected.
I started to read 17776, but the football kept ruining it. Jon Bois is a wonderful writer, and if he wrote about literally anything other than sports, I'd be a huge fan. But it's like a Michelin star chef who insists on making all of his dishes feature olives. I just do not like them. I wish I could, I'd like to experience this expertly crafted creation, but nope. Olives will always taste like someone tried to put out a fire at a sulfur mine by covering it in salt. So will football.
I think this is fair. As much as I don't watch sports I don't actively hate them - they are just sort of "there" for me. It might have been a lot harder to watch this is I hated them in the way one hates green olives.