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We Can No Longer Afford to Be ‘Respectable’
“What happened to that guy?” A lot of us have asked this question in the past few years about columnists, pundits, and thinkers we’ve always agreed with, only to see them taking a wildly different tack. Next, we’ll ask, “Did I change or did they?” I know I’ve changed quite a bit, but to see influential conservatives pushing “the conservative case for voting Democrat/Promoting CRT and Queer Theory/censoring Republicans/etc.” remains tough to stomach.
Many blast these (former?) conservatives on social media, but that’s never been my style. I expect people to disagree with me on most issues; a round of insults won’t change their minds anyway. Our discourse is too toxic as it is, so I’d rather promote the good and beautiful (i.e., my own brilliant ideas) than curse the infidel.
Yet, I can’t help but wonder what happened to so many influential commentators. “Trump broke them” is an easy out, yet doesn’t explain the ideological 180s they’ve taken. I’ve begun to settle on another cause, especially among newly woke-ish Christian writers. A recent interview tied a bow on my thoughts.
Author Paul Kingsnorth has made a fascinating journey over the past few years. He rose to prominence as a dedicated environmentalist, calling for an end to the capitalism that was destroying the planet. Raised an atheist, he later sought answers in Buddhism and Wicca.
Then, almost against his will, he entered the Orthodox church. By then, he was living a humble life in rural Ireland with his family and began reconsidering all his beliefs. This week, toward the end of an interview with iconographer Jonathan Pageau, he said the following (1:17:00 timestamp):
We can’t afford to be respectable.
Christ was not respectable. None of his disciples were respectable. You can’t be conformed to the world because this is where the world is going. You have to be prepared to be all the things that Christ told you were going to be, rejected and humiliated and attacked and all the rest of it. Not for the sake of it, just because you’re being a contrarian…
That’s really hard but you have to say, “if I’m going to walk in the direction i need to walk in, i’m going to be metaphorically wearing rags.” Or maybe actually wearing rags.
There’s a lot of renunciation that has to come. That will be different for different people but that’s the hardest bit for those of us who come from comfortable countries.
There’s a renunciation involved, whether it’s reputational or physical or material. And that’s what the interesting people always do. The marginal people who can bring the wisdom back into the center. There’s a need to renounce and to walk away before you can see what the next stage of the path is.
This, of course, applies to Christians, but also to anyone seeking capital-T Truth.
Going against the grain is essential when the grain is heading the wrong way. Disputing the official narrative soon follows. Standing athwart The Current Thing and rolling your eyes comes next.
The resulting mockery will be swift. Why didn’t you post the black square on Instagram? Why aren’t you wearing a mask in your profile pic? Why don’t you have a Ukrainian flag next to your screen name? All the respectable people do that! When you shrug off the feedback, you’ll be labeled a racist, anti-vax Putin fan.
Some get offended by this treatment. The rest of us are bored by it.
Perhaps if you’ve made a lot of money, sold a lot of books, need to curry favor with media moguls, and have grown accustomed to a certain level of material wealth and social influence, these attacks spook you. After all, you have to pay for the house, the cabin, and your kids’ private school.
Or you’re less materialistic yet thrive on the speaking invites, conferences, and Beltway social connections. You think the primary goal of life is to be “nice” and “respectable.” Abandoning that belief horrifies you.
The rest of us no longer care about being respected, especially by people who despise us. We expect the insults, the bad-faith arguments, and attempts at cancellation. When attacked on social media, the only passion I can gin up is clicking the “mute” button.
In the near future, most of us expect the attacks to get worse. I’ve assumed for years I’d be kicked off social media and am surprised it hasn’t happened yet. Who knows, in five years (or five months), we could lose access to our finances. The stuff I write is worse than honking a horn in Ottawa and look what happened to the truckers.
We live in a censorious, conformist age and I remain terrible at following orders. So, I expect the worst and speak my piece anyway. Because when you see the world going to hell, someone has to speak their mind.
What’s needed today are truth-tellers. We can no longer afford to be respectable.
Published in General
Here’s another look at it… if they smack you down, don’t back down. Get up and keep going as if you have many cheeks to smack.
I heard a testimony from a woman who was marched through the jungle naked and beaten by her captors and she wouldn’t let them beat her down until she gave up. She kept on going and never gave up.
Might be the other way around, though. The problems with Congress might be a symptom rather than a cause.
Since we’re not sure, I’d suggest not putting all our money on only one or the other. Go after all of them.
I love the title of this post, Jon Gabriel.
Well it’s pretty definite that the people in congress didn’t just wander in and sit down, they were (usually) elected. Which often means they got a lot of votes from people who are even dumber than the people they voted for.
So it’s not easy to be optimistic, in either direction. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I had neighbors in Phoenix and still have relatives now, whose basic attitude even now seems to be “Wow the Democrats have really made a mess! We have to elect more Democrats to fix it!”
Now let’s all give a big Hurrah! for the disrespectables of January 6.
Another ZING!
It always comes back to Trump. Left or Right, its always Trump. Galileo was wrong. The earth isn’t the center of the universe nor is the the Sun. It is Donald J. Trump.
I was thinking I could respond respectfully, but I can no longer afford to be respectable.
Congrats on another Instapundit link Jon. And a damn fine post.
This encapsulates my sense of things exactly.
Yeah. What have any of us ever gained by reading intelligent commentary? It’s a scam. Adam and Eve founded the entire human race and were likely illiterate.
Often folks describe it as the inevitable leftward ratchet effect. But there can also be a rightward one. When I pick up the tool from my work bench I have to flip the lever to reverse the ratchet. I think that can be done in politics. It certainly has in my area.
I think Trump did get the country headed in the right direction – energy independence, economy chugging along, useless regulations dropped, border more under control (even without a complete fence), and three Supreme Court picks making it to the bench.
It hasn’t in my area. Conservatives should have won our school board election after the trans-nonsense in our schools made national news. But alas, Democrats control everything in this city. And too many normies think everything is just fine.
Which is why it’s weird when people who claim to be conservative refuse to give him credit for anything.
Reminds me of how after Trump was elected, everything suddenly started looking up for America, and the Trump haters here on Ricochet insisted that this was in spite of Trump’s win, not because of. And they were okay with Trump being impeached and handing the country to Biden because Trump supposedly didn’t matter.
And some of them still insist that Biden was the better choice.
The other problem is that most school board elections are non-partisan, which means no clearly identified party choice to less informed voters . . .
They would insist the Titanic wasn’t sinking.
“Just a bad list,” they’d say. “It’s only temporary.”
Oh, it was made very clear here who was on the side of parents and who was on the side of groomers. Nevertheless, the groomers won.
Understandable confusion, given how many — even here on Ricochet — are spouting the line that Republicans and Democrats are equally terrible. Why not vote for the Democrat, given that?
You and I will never see eye to eye on this. Therefore, it’s best if I just let you have the last word.
I don’t find it all that difficult to make distinctions between unequally bad parties, and I believe others are capable of it too. One party is piss poor at representing my positions and adhering to the vision of the Founders, and the other is bat guano crazy when it isn’t outright evil. Makes voting binary unless I choose to abstain.
I used to know a guy who said, “It’s not that the Republicans are always right. It is that the Democrats are always wrong.”
If they were only wrong, we’d be living in a better country. I used the word “evil” intentionally.
More and more I view modern left as being based on resentment against the inherently unsatisfactory nature of reality.
NSFW
Yes, resentment and self-pity. I don’t know if you read my post on the life of Jesus, but I refer to Dante’s portrayal of Satan encased from the waist down in the ice of his tears of self-pity. We often say pride is the root of all sin, but self-pity is somehow related (I’ll have to ponder that). Dennis Prager has often noted how people engaged in self-pity excuse themselves from all kinds of cruelty and wickedness, up to and including murder. It’s so true. The devil is in self-pity — literally in Dante’s Inferno.
I have already pondered it.
Sorry for being a bit wordy but human psychology is kinda difficult to summarize.
An oxymoron, Jon?