A Snapshot of America

More than ever today, we hear handwringing among the press, politicians, and pollsters, about how America is "headed in the wrong direction," and eager finger-pointing over who is to blame.  Naturally, we assume that it is our politicians (especially the ones on the other side of the aisle, of course) who are responsible for the general national malaise.  But how much of it, I can't help but wonder, is due simply to the steady inebriation of our senses with electronic media, and abandonment of reading?  One doesn't have to be a Luddite to be sobered by the following statistics (taken from Nicholas Carr's The Shallows):

1150: minutes per week that the average American young adult spends online (on a computer)

49: minutes per week that the average American young adult spends reading any form of print publication.  

2,272: number of texts per month the average American teen sends (that's 75 per day)

153: hours per month the average American spends in front of the TV (still rising despite increased internet usage)

Unsurprisingly, Americans outstrip Europeans by a long shot, spending 50% more time surfing the Net and three times as much time in front of the TV. 

(These figures are all from 2009, I should add, and are most likely considerably worse now, as they had been getting worse at a rapid pace through 2009.)

And consider that, as of 2006, 42% of those watching over 35 hours of TV programming a week (the national average) also used the Net for over 30 hours a week, for a total of over 65 hours per week, nearly 2/3 of their waking hours.  

Some Much-Needed Clarity on American Empire

In a recent piece for First Things On the Square, Peter Leithart has at last given us a sneak peek at some of the refreshing and illuminating thoughts on "empire" (which is to say, in our current setting, American empire) that have been gestating inside his fertile brain for the past couple years.  His uncanny ability to bring balance and clarity to highly polarized discussions thick with the fog of war is a great asset for this controversial topic.  Many right-wing Christians still need to be brought to a sober reassessment of their nation's evildoings, but without losing all sense of perspective and hurtling headlong into whichever left-wing or anarchist ideology promises the most fervent denunciation of American empire.  

In his mini-essay, "Towards a Sensible Discussion of Empire," Leithart offers ten modest theses, many of which are "truisms . . . so obvious that it is telling that they have become controversial."  Indeed, it is remarkable how many of these truisms will immediately cause many readers (including myself) to bristle, become suspicious, or even to start casting accusations like those of one commenter who compared Leithart's argument to something that might be "made by a German academic in defense of the Nazis during the period of their rise to power."  Such suspicion is perhaps not a bad thing—we should always be suspicious of any claim that appears to serve the interests of those in power—but it should not keep us from being sensible, and recognizing the difference between a truth and the abuse of a truth.  I won't of course repost the whole essay here, but will simply call attention to a couple of the most fruitful contributions it makes.

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The Ambiguities of a Christian President

Although I've been planning to write up a fairly critical review of Darryl Hart's A Secular Faith, that would perhaps not be the most politic thing to do when he is busy trying to critique me (on my review of VanDrunen) over at his blog right now.  So, in a spirit of camaraderie, let me voice an odd point of sympathy with Hart's book.  

In it, he is chiefly concerned to argue (among other things) that we should not be voting for our political candidates on the basis of their Christian faith or values, and in fact should be very leery of them trying to bring those convictions into office with them.  Their Christianity simply does not have anything relevant to contribute to rightly governing our country, and we should vote simply based upon political considerations.  While I dramatically disagree with him on the larger issues, being convinced of the relevance of Christianity to public life, the importance of governing a country in submission to Christ, etc., I find myself oddly in sympathy with him when it comes down to practical questions like, "Who do you want to win in 2012?"

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The Late Great United States: A Lament

Today, August 2, 2011, the US Congress managed to agree not to send the country headlong into bankruptcy.  While we may be glad that the threat of financial Armageddon was averted for the time being, it would be an understatement to call this a Pyrrhic victory, coming as it did at the cost of the last shreds of American credibility abroad and unity at home.  Indeed, perhaps someday this day will be remembered as a symbolic milestone in the decline and fall of the American Empire.  Certainly, whether you mourn or celebrate the end of American hegemony, it is an occasion that calls for a pause for sober reflection.  

It is a perhaps clichéd now to declare that we live in the twilight days of America's world domination; indeed, I suspect that just as the 20th century is now seen as the "American Century," the verdict of history will mark 2001, the turn of the century, as the turning point, the year when the engine of American economic growth sputtered to a halt, when America sought to flex its muscles in response to external attack and gained nothing from the exercise but the hatred of former friends, when a maverick Texan president decided to take the country on a glorious John Wayne expedition against the enemies of civilization that ended up as a ride into its own sunset.

Yet it was only the events of the past couple weeks that succeeded in bringing the fact of our decline home to me--the recognition that we live at the end of an era, on the cusp of uncertain and perhaps unhappy days.

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All Part of the Imagery

For my light reading lately, I've been enjoying a bit of vintage Noam Chomsky--What We Say Goes (a collection 2006 interviews).  In light of my recent post on Sarah Palin, I found this little nugget particularly intriguing:

"...about people here calling Bush names, that's very constructive--for the radical right.  It is as if these people have been programmed by Karl Rove.  Rove wants to have the liberal critics ridicule Bush because he says 'nucular' and 'misunderestimate' and talks with a probably fake Texas accent.  In fact, my suspicion is he's probably been trained to make grammatical errors--he didn't talk like that at Yale--so he'll be ridiculed by liberals, and then he can say, 'See, those elite liberals who run the world and are sitting around drinking French wine and eating quiche don't understand us ordinary guys.'  Regular guys like the guy working on the assembly line and George Bush, who is going back to his ranch to cut brush.  That's all part of the imagery."