I’m a bit weary this morning – we got 14 inches of snow on Thursday, and my 1500 square foot driveway always gets drifted in – so have a few links to interesting and relevant items from other observers.
First up is a Roger Kimball essay I managed to overlook when it was fresh. Kimball explores a lot of the same material I wrote about in this piece. Please read it all; it’s eminently worth the time.
Next, we have newsman Will Rahn’s nostra culpa about press smugness. Rahn is a respected “insider,” but “journalists” are one of the most resistant of all trades to criticism – and Rahn’s criticism is piercing:
The mood in the Washington press corps is bleak, and deservedly so.It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that, with a few exceptions, we were all tacitly or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to a certain anguish in the face of Donald Trump’s victory. More than that and more importantly, we also missed the story, after having spent months mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on.
This is all symptomatic of modern journalism’s great moral and intellectual failing: its unbearable smugness. Had Hillary Clinton won, there’d be a winking “we did it” feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic.
Once again, please read it all. Though I question whether Rahn’s statement will have any practical consequences, I’m cheered that at least one press figure has seen the error of his ways.
Third, we have an angry, biting emission from SF writer Michael Z. Williamson about cops’ priority for “going home safe.” The gut punch:
If you want to tangle with bad guys and blow them away, fair enough. But understand: That means they get to shoot first to prove their intent, just as happens with the military these days. Our ROE these days are usually "only if fired upon and no civilians are at risk."If your plan is "shoot first, shoot later, shoot some more, then if anyone is still alive try to ask questions," and bleat, "But I was afeard fer mah lahf!" you're absolutely no better than the thugs you claim to oppose. All you are is another combatant in a turf war I don't care about.
Since I know your primary concern is "being safe," then I'll do you the favor of not calling. Cash your welfare check, and try not to shoot me at a "courtesy" sobriety checkpoint for twitching my eye "in a way that suggested range estimation."
If you're one of the vanishingly few cops who isn't like that, then what the hell are you doing about it? If there's going to be a lawsuit costing the city millions, isn't it better that it be a labor suit from the union over the clown you fired, than a wrongful death suit over the poor bastard the clown shot? Both are expensive, but one has a dead victim you enabled. So how much do you actually care about that life?
Compound Williamson’s sentiments with the recent police-shootings scandals from Wichita, Kansas and ask yourself: “Were I to suspect some sort of intrusion onto my property, would I be better advised to call the police or to deal with it myself?”
Finally for this morning, a piece I read nearly a month ago and have been “sitting on:” Matt Walsh’s proclamation about the respect wives owe their husbands. It’s a stunner:
There is more than one way to cheat on your spouse — or, I should say, cheat your spouse. And it seems that many husbands are being cheated by their wives in a way that is no less damaging and no more justified than being cheated on. This form of "cheating" is all the more common because our culture tells women that men aren’t owed anything in the first place. You can’t cheat them out of something you were never supposed to give them, after all.But a husband is owed something, and his wife is obliged to provide it. He is not only owed it; he needs it.
That is: respect.
Another please-read-it-all. One of the signal ironies of our time is that this should need to be pointed out to women who claim to deserve more respect than they receive:
Learning more about the traditional methods witches used to make covens work hadn’t done much to set my mind at ease. Back home it would be just about impossible to find five people who could maintain that kind of relationship for long. Inevitably attention wouldn’t be shared equally, someone would get their feelings hurt, and things would go rapidly downhill from there. Especially considering how poisonous modern relationship advice is. Teaching men to subserviently kowtow to a woman’s every whim, while the women are taught to harshly scrutinize their partners for any possible fault, is not a recipe for happy relationships. [E. William Brown, Black Coven]
Respect isn’t a currency one doles out to one’s spouse as payment for this or that. Indeed, that modern marriages so often lack any trace of respect is all that’s required to explain why they’re so fragile. Yet even the most sincere and earnest spouses, sincerely determined to “make it work,” can feel great reluctance to introduce so painful a subject:
When my wife and I teach the remarriage class for the Diocese, we talk about the elephant in the living room. That's where a couple avoids discussing a major issue and it gets bigger and bigger until it's like having an elephant in your living room that you pretend you don't see. You never bring it up because you're afraid of the argument that will result.
Indeed.
That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. I’ll be back tomorrow, God willin’ an’ the creek don’t rise. And as “the creek” in these parts is the Long Island Sound, let’s pray that the Almighty will keep it right where it is.
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