On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions. If you read something fascinating please pass it my way.
Things Glen Found Interesting
- Some post-election analysis, with the reminder that I do not endorse everything I share. I share them because they made me think.
- Amazing quote from the Stanford Review: It’s Time For Stanford to Accept President Donald Trump (Again) (Editorial, Stanford Review): “Stanford students often forget to consider that the world around them votes too—and that the world does not have the same concerns. As one peer remarked, ‘I found out some of the dining hall staff voted for Trump and lowkey forgot they got to vote too.’ ”
- 10 Reasons You Didn’t See This Coming (Konstantin Kisin, Substack): “Americans are extremely practical people. They care about what works, not what sounds good. In Europe, we produce great writers and intellectuals. In America they produce (and attract) great engineers, businessmen and investors. Because of this, they care less about Trump’s rhetoric than you do and more about his policies than you do.”
- Kisin is a Russian-born immigrant to Britain. Interesting to see how at least one foreigner perceives the results US election.
- Donald Trump Is the President for Post-Christian America (Aaron Renn, Substack): “It’s hard to complain that he’s crude when we live in a crude society and people like that way — except when it comes to him. In fact, compared to the rest of the country, Trump is a retro model of rectitude when it comes to not drinking or doing drugs, having a relentless work ethic, wearing suits, etc.”
- Democrats Picked the Wrong Women’s Rights Issue (Madeleine Kearns, The Free Press): “Democrats bet big on ‘reproductive rights’ this election cycle, even offering free abortions at their national convention. But the strategy didn’t pay off. Not only was abortion a flop with the electorate, it was Republicans—not Democrats—who pushed the winning women’s‑rights issue: fighting the encroachment of biological men into women’s spaces and sports.”
- How a Latino wave carried Trump to victory (Daniel McCarthy, The Spectator): “The fact is that left-wing cultural attitudes in America, and in the West as a whole, are themselves very ‘European’ and seem often irrelevant or repugnant to people of other cultures and racial backgrounds. White progressive Americans think of their views as being universal, but they are really very specific to their own group. White liberals believe, for example, that masculinity is ‘toxic’ and the world needs more female leaders. They also believe that ‘anti-racism’ requires ‘affirmative action’ or racial quotes to give blacks in particular more representation in positions of power and prestige. White liberalism is the reason Kamala Harris was named as Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020. She wasn’t a popular politician – and as this election proved, she still isn’t. But she was the right sex and colour to satisfy the requirements of white liberals. Latinos are not white liberals.”
- How Different Groups Voted in the 2024 Election (Brian McGill, Anthony DeBarros and Caitlin Ostroff, Wall Street Journal): “Here are the results of a survey of over 120,000 registered voters, compiled by the Associated Press, which offer a look at voting patterns and trends among various groups in the electorate and what issues were the most important to voters heading into Election Day. Numbers will update as responses are added and the survey’s weighting adjusts.”
- A LOT of graphs. One detail fascinating detail: people who voted for Trump were MORE concerned that Kamala Harris would lead America in an authoritarian direction than the people who voted for Harris were concerned about Trump doing the same. It was tight, but the greater fear was of a Harris administration.
- How Could Trump and Abortion Rights Both Win? (Jill Filipovic, New York Times): “How could significant numbers of voters cast their ballots for legal abortion and also for the man who helped make it possible to criminalize abortion in the first place? Mr. Trump boasted about overturning Roe v. Wade and being the most pro-life president in American history, while Kamala Harris pledged to use her presidential power to protect and expand a broad range of reproductive freedoms. Yet, according to the vote tallies released so far, in every state where abortion was up for a vote, more voters cast those ballots for abortion rights than for Ms. Harris.”
- Recommended by a student.
- Prediction Markets for the Win (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution): “The prediction markets predicted the election outcome more accurately and more quickly than polls or other forecasting methods, just as expected from decades of research.”
- Congrats To Polymarket, But I Still Think They Were Mispriced (Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten): “Why [do I think the market was mispriced]? In order for an American to use Polymarket, you have to get a VPN, a Coinbase account, and a Metamask wallet, use the VPN, get crypto on the Coinbase account, transfer it to the Metamask wallet, connect the Metamask wallet to Polymarket, and buy the shares you want. Ability to do this rules out 99% of the US population.… I think prediction markets are among our single best sources of truth, but that (as with every source of truth) we need to think critically about them and notice the rare times when they fail. If you can’t think critically, you’re going to have a hard time, but in that case I would still trust prediction markets over any other source (except Metaculus, which is so similar to a prediction market that it belongs in the same category anyway).”
- Interesting contrarian take on the prediction market’s success in the election.
- Why Women Use Pornography and How the Church Can Help (Helen Thorne-Allenson, The Gospel Coalition): “The biggest driver of pornography use among the women I’ve met with is anxiety. Life feels overwhelming at times; pornography brings some relief… Maybe unsurprisingly, another big driver among the women I’ve walked alongside (particularly younger women) is a desire to know what sex is like.… The driver we probably miss most often in the church is that of managing pain.”
- Be Perfect (Ross Byrd, Mere Orthodoxy): “In the Bible, the word ‘perfect’ doesn’t mean what we tend to mean by it today. For the writers of Scripture, perfection has more to do with finished-ness than flawlessness. A thing is called ‘perfect’ when it is brought to its full maturity, when it becomes everything it is meant to be. Now, if we apply this definition to the Garden of Eden, we are forced to conclude that Eden was not, in fact, perfect. Eden was good, as Genesis tells us over and over. He created this and that, and it was good. He created human beings, and it was very good. But it doesn’t say perfect. In a very important sense, it was not yet perfect, because it was not yet complete. Eden was the beginning. The garden was, among other things, a place of potential.”
- Emphasis in original. I like the core insight in this essay a lot.
- Why We’re Still Atheists (Katja Hoyer, Plough): “I, on the other hand, often wondered even as a child what the point of life was if all you did is grow up, work, die, and be erased. When I lost relatives, friends, and pets, I knew I had lost them forever, while others held out for some form of reunion in another life or at least the idea that souls continued to exist somewhere. On an abstract level, I began to understand why most of humanity finds comfort, surety, and purpose in religion. But by the time I worked this out, it was entirely an intellectual mind game to me. I had grown up in a world that made sense without God and nothing could change that now.”
- A very interesting essay about why East Germany is so atheist, written by an atheist reflecting on it.
- Are Religious People More Fearful? (Ryan Burge, Substack): “I am really surprised at how few of these factors actually ‘pop’ in this analysis. That was true for things like income, age, marital status, view of the Bible, and religious importance. None of those had a measurable impact on the fear index. Also, I didn’t find a single factor that clearly led to higher levels of expressed fear. However, there were four variables in this analysis that predicted a lower score on the fear index. They were: being white, being male, having a higher level of education, and increased church attendance.”
- Emphasis removed for readability.
- St. Junipero Serra: An Unjustly Controversial Figure (Brian Gabriel, The European Conservative): “In present-day discourse, the actions of the missionaries and the Spanish soldiers are often conflated, but the missionaries’ paternalistic attitude toward the tribes actually often led them to protect the tribes from the more rapacious and unsavory behavior of the soldiers. It’s true enough that the tribes were sometimes forced to labor in the fields, and their freedom of movement was restricted once they converted to Catholicism. The missions themselves were often built in part, at least, by the tribesmen, sometimes under duress. But the harsh treatment, while striking the modern observer as cruel and tortuous, was seen by the missionaries as essential to the natives’ spiritual salvation. Today, many of their descendants remain Catholic. The value of the missionaries’ actions can never be recognized by a modern world that doesn’t allow for spiritual effects.”
- I have long believed, even as a very Protestant person, that Junipero Serra has gotten a bum rap in California (and at Stanford).
- Rodney Alcala Didn’t Kill Me. Forty Years Later, I Asked Him Why (Alice Feiring, New York Magazine): “Four-decades-plus later, I learned his real name when it flashed across a television screen beneath his familiar face and orange jumpsuit: ‘Rodney Alcala, The Dating Game Serial Killer, Sentenced to Death.’ It couldn’t be the same man, I’d thought to myself. But after hours of Googling I had to accept the truth: Jon Burger was an alias; he was the winning bachelor on The Dating Game nine years after I met him; and he is believed to have been one of the most prolific of serial killers, officially responsible for at least seven murders with authorities estimating his real body count at about 130.”
- Recommended by a student who says, “Very well written, chilling story. The author is lucky to be alive.”
Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen
- How to Do Action Comedy (Every Frame a Painting, YouTube): nine minutes about what makes Jackie Chan so great, and why his foreign films are better than his American films in important ways.
- Harvey Epstein for New York City Council (Saturday Night Live, YouTube): two and a half minutes I found absolutely hilarious. What’s even funnier is that it’s about a real politician.
- Vote (Texts From Superheroes)
- Diet (Pearls Before Swine) — actually, though
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In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar produced shrewd warriors “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a similar way, we need to become wise people whose faith interacts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may continue the tradition of Issachar.
Disclaimer
Chi Alpha is not a partisan organization. To paraphrase another minister: we are not about the donkey’s agenda and we are not about the elephant’s agenda — we are about the Lamb’s agenda. Having said that, I read widely (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ideological Turing test and in part because I do not believe I can fairly say “I agree” or “I disagree” until I can say “I understand”) and may at times share articles that have a strong partisan bias simply because I find the article stimulating. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with everything an author says in an article I mention, much less things the author has said in other articles (although if I strongly disagree with something in the article I’ll usually mention it). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. Also, remember that I’m not reporting news — I’m giving you a selection of things I found interesting. There’s a lot happening in the world that’s not making an appearance here because I haven’t found stimulating articles written about it. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.