Death of the Son, Episode IX: Flight and Fight

Death of the Son, Episode IX

Flight and Fight

[Episode One; Episode Two; Episode Three; Episode Four; Episode Five; Episode Six; Episode Seven; Episode Eight] 

Theodotus followed two black-robed slaves through a whirling, dissolving mass of white-clad bishops, priests, and deacons, mailclad soldiers, togaed Senators, and robed officials of every type. The sense of chaos in the vast space of the Basilica of Galerius was overwhelming, and entirely different from the rigid order that had unified the assembly only a few moments before.

Something has happened, Theodotus knew; and so did all the other powerful men racing to leave, pushing and shoving and maneuvering around each other like frightened animals. 

But what had happened? The powerful Spanish bishop Hosius, favored advisor of the Emperor for years, had delivered a speech to Constantine's face that had in some way challenged or upset him; he had announced his imminent departure back to Spain; and the Emperor had suddenly left, ending the assembly hours before it had been expected. This was not a crisis of state in any typical sense: but it was nevertheless clearly a crisis.

One of the two slaves behind him touched his arm, steering him slightly around a knot of worried-looking Imperial officials, wearing Phrygian caps and whispering in agitated voices. One of them shot him an angry look, as if to say: What have you Christians done this time?

Theodotus fought simultaneous impulses to laugh and freeze in terror. What have we done?

Future Political Trends: A Study

Future Political Trends: A Study

For roughly the past six months, I have been repeatedly mentioning, in my posts on this blog, my intention to write up something about current and future political trends. I have not done so for a number of reasons, including (in no particular order) disinterest, boredom, anger, disgust, Lent, Easter, the death of Pope Francis, the election of Pope Leo, my desire to write short stories, a school field trip, my birthday, and the onset of spring. Central to my delays, however, has been the fundamental grimness of the topic itself.

Another thing that happened in the interval, however, was Easter; which is, properly considered, the only thing that has ever really happened. It struck me, on Easter night, that Easter is, perhaps, the best standpoint from which to consider present political realities. It is certainly the best standpoint from which to consider the sweep of human history and human life as a whole. 

In any case, I firmly believe that eternal novelties like Easter are a much better means of understanding than the faded abstractions of political and economic ideology that dominate so much of discourse. 

As Chesterton said in the Daily Herald, quite rightly, political ideologies and analyses nearly always lag at least a half-century behind actual political systems. In the 1910s, he pointed out how profoundly unsuited the 18th and 19th century categories of Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy, and the like were for the era of syndicalism and great strikes and great states and secret societies and global warfare. In a similar vein, but even more so, the categories that we use for unraveling the tangled events of our time are practically all hoary 20th century abstractions such as Fascism, Naziism, Communism, Totalitarianism, Authoritarianism, and the like--when they are not the same, even more faded 19th century abstractions such as Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy, Liberalism, and so forth. 

I would suggest that one of the greatest threats to our political life today, a threat that has again and again allowed evils to burgeon and flourish undetected, is simply the enormous gap between reality and our ability to analyze it. This may seem a rather distant and abstract threat, but is in reality among the most practical causes of the practical evils of our time. The year 2025 does not lack for crimes and tyrants--but it does profoundly, I am tempted to say unprecedentedly, lack for both practical recognition of these evils and practical efforts to counter them. And a foremost reason for this lack, I increasingly think, is simply that people cannot understand these evils, cannot recognize them, frequently do not even seem to notice them, because they happen to fall into gaps in their abstract, categorical understanding of such things. 

For some bizarre reason, the real estate, media mogul, and brand icon Donald Trump continues to be analyzed, again and again and at ever greater length and with ever greater portentous seriousness by ever more prestigious intellectuals, entirely by comparison with a mid-20th century Italian movement of ex-socialist, WW1-veteran-populated paramilitary squads turned revanchist dictatorship. Like any historical comparison, there are certainly truths to be drawn from this one--but the gap between reality and analytical abstraction is, nevertheless, so vast that nearly the whole of Trump's actual ideology and program and even legitimate crimes can be, and have been, and continue to be buried within. 

Nevertheless, in carrying out an analysis of present trends, and their likely future results, I would like to be absolutely clear about what I am doing, and why. I am not a historicist, let alone a historical fatalist: I do not believe in memetics, or Hegelian dialectics, or progress. When I speak of trends, I am speaking ultimately of either ideas or habits residing in the actual intellects and wills of actual people: ideas and habits which exercise great power over those people's actions, but never fully determine them. 

People can and do reject ideas they have held, especially when they are ideas that they have never consciously understood, but only passively absorbed from their environments. People can and do change their habits, including habits that have become deeply engrained in their minds and hearts and wills over many years. 

On the most abstract level, I consider history to be first and foremost the study of human actions and the motivations behind them; so that the fundamental historical question is not merely the positivistic query of "What happened?," but the much more intrusive demands "What did they do?" and "Why did they do it?"

What is true for historical actions writ large is even more true for the subset of human actions that make up political systems past and present. Governing, particularly in the modern world, is a highly complex and technical set of actions attempting to shape and respond to constantly shifting conditions. Still, it always depends first and foremost on conscious, considered human action; and conscious, considered human action depends first and foremost on rational ideas and goals. 

Yet people are not always, or perhaps even often, aware of the ideas and goals underlying their own actions, let alone the broader social conditions and trends to which they are responding. It is for this reason, above all, that this kind of analysis is useful. As anyone knows who has ever tried to change a deeply-engrained idea or habit, one of the most important steps is often merely recognizing the actual ideas one unconsciously holds, and the actual habits that one unconsciously possesses. Only then, as a rule, can one then set out to change them.

Hence, while I am engaged in this essay in modestly claiming to understand contemporary trends and their likely future impacts, I am not engaged in actually trying to predict the future. To do so would be to fall under the curse of Chesterton's game of Cheat the Prophet: the game whereby smart people predict the future by extending current trends indefinitely, and the human race thwarts them by the simple expedient of going and doing something else. In this post, I am quite self-consciously teeing up to play a round of this game with the human race, providing them with a helpful listing of the trends they will need to know about in order to defy them. In this, I heartily encourage the human race to cheat me: nay, I demand it. That is, in fact, the entire point of this exercise. If all my predictions are vindicated, I will be deeply, profoundly disappointed in you all.

Of course, the trends I discuss below are not uniformly positive or negative. Some are in my judgment evil, some few are good, some are, in themselves, merely neutral. Nonetheless, my modest claim is merely that if we wish to exercise some control over our collective destinies, it is helpful to know what is happening: only then can we choose to aid what is good, to resist what is evil, and, hopefully and above all, to repent and seek the good. This is my exhortation.

Pope Francis (1936-2025)

Pope Francis (1936-2025)

Of all the tasks a writer may attempt, evaluating a Pope is perhaps the hardest. The Papacy, as I have tried to emphasize elsewhere, is above all a personal and historical institution: it incarnates the messy, human side of the Faith. It is not a thing suited to pristine abstractions, even doctrinal abstractions. 

A Pope is first and foremost a human person; which is to say, an individual substance of a rational nature; which is to say, an entity defined and constituted by numerous relations, personal and familial and social and cultural. A Pope, though, is a person whose relations have been radically extended in a way that is, in a genuine sense, supernatural; who relates to others throughout the world in ways that go beyond the ordinarily human into the realm of the sacramental and the eternal. A Pope's relations encompass the whole world, and enter into practically every realm of human life and interaction, from the familial to the cultural to the political to the diplomatic to the economic to the mass-media and back again. 

Because of this, there is almost an infinity of ways one can analyze an individual Pope and pontificate. There are, at the very least, as many modes of analysis as there are people in the world. Historical analyses are no more valid, in themselves, than the simplest personal anecdote; and this, in turn, does not take away from the most inchoate sense a person may have of the state of the Church, the world, or a life, and the impact of the Pope on that. Popes cannot be understood solely in ideological and political terms: but for all that, they are legitimately political figures who may well have much to do with the triumph or defeat, success or failure, of particular ideologies and political parties and movements. They are international diplomats, with a unique ability to intercede between nations; and they are judges, presiding over the world's largest non-state justice system, and administrators, presiding over the world's largest non-state charitable organization and the world's oldest continuous bureaucracy. And then, of course, they are Fathers, and Shepherds, and intercessors before God, and the rulers of the rulers of this age, and poor sinners who will one day stand with us all before the judgment seat of God. 

Popes can be evaluated legitimately based on any of these things; and in all of them, their records are likely to show normal human inconsistencies, as well as the influence of their own personalities, historical events and conflicts, their advisors and subordinates, and the bureaucratic, political, and religious systems in which they participate. 

There are, to be frank, a lot of terrible takes on Pope Francis, takes that are ignorant or mendacious or malicious or outright stupid. Most of them fail, like most journalistic writing today, simply by imposing a simplistic, highly-colored narrative, based primarily on mass-media symbols, partisan conflicts, bullshit pseudo-intellectualism, and/or private emotion, onto this vast network of relationships and acts. All such takes, without exception, are false. Pope Francis was not the Progressive Pope; he was not the Dictator Pope; he did not preside over the Catholic Church's irreversible decline; he was not a plotter dedicated to power at all costs; he was not a Trumpian revolutionary; he was not a frustrated liberal; he was not the last humane figure in a world gone mad; he was not the death blow of the Imperial Papacy, or Vatican 2, or progressive Catholicism, or the End of History, or anything else. As they have since the very beginning of his pontificate, the soi-disant intellectuals of our frankly pathetic intellectual-cum-journalistic culture continue to lie. 

I don't want to add to these takes; I wish, in fact to denounce them, and will by the end of this essay. 

There are also, of course, any number of encomia, religious and secular, appropriate to the passing of such a significant figure, reflecting on his accomplishments, his character, and the positive personal impact on all of the above on many persons. The present essay also does not belong to this genre. As will become clear, a significant portion of this essay consists of reflections on Francis' weaknesses and limitations as a Pontiff, and the conflicts by which his Papacy was marked. I loved Francis very much, and tried my best to make others love him; but as Chesterton pointed out long ago, it is always dangerous merely to whitewash the weaknesses of any person, since it is often on such weaknesses that a proper understanding of their strengths depends. 

For my own small part, then, I will be proceeding primarily from an abstract, historical perspective, supplementing such analysis with thoughts on Francis as a person and his importance for the Catholic Church of the 21st century. Though I will make a number of comments and preliminary conclusions, the principle intended utility of this essay is to provide various frameworks and contexts through which, I think, Francis can be fruitfully considered: and in which he should be considered, at greater length, by others. I will not attempt a true theological evaluation of Francis, let alone attempt to conclude what his narrative meaning is for all of history for all time.

This is, then, by no means a "definitive take" on Francis; it is not intended to, nor could it, detract from any genuine perspective on the Pope. 

What Went Wrong? Hitchcock's Vertigo, Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides, and Gene Wolfe's Peace

What Went Wrong?

Hitchcock's Vertigo, Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides, and Gene Wolfe's Peace

"What went wrong? That is the question, and not 'To be or not to be.'"

-Gene Wolfe, Peace (1975)

These are times when nearly everyone in America is engaged, it seems to me, in asking one question: what went wrong? 

This is not, I should say, a question confined to either Right or Left on our soi-disant political spectrum.  Trumpists think about nearly nothing about went wrong under Biden, and Obama, and since Harry Truman; and, increasingly, about what has gone wrong and is going wrong under Trump. Progressives, looking at their electoral defeats, looking at Trump's America, ask themselves virtually the same question. Leftists, social conservatives, Distributists, Communists, Integralists--even the tiniest sub-factions of American politics seem to spend more time analyzing how things have gone wrong than how they might possibly go right. 

Yet for all that, virtually no one, it seems to me, actually tries to answer the question in any comprehensive or philosophical or even historically satisfactory way. People produce, say, accounts of ways in which government has gotten less efficient; or how regulations have impeded economic growth; or, at best, how cultural movements or technological developments have caused kids to be less happy or art to be less good. These are all, though, from my perspective, so many discussions of symptoms rather than diseases, of effects rather than causes. 

To understand any human phenomenon, no matter how technical, one must understand human motivation and action. And considered in that light, apparent oppositions frequently conceal unities, and apparent triumphs already hold the seeds of their own downfalls. Most fundamentally of all, one cannot solve a problem until one has recognized what the problem is; nor can one undo a mistake until one understands what the mistake actually was. 

In my next post (probably), I will write about the more political and social side of this question. Today, though, I want to write about three works of art that are, in my mind, at least, connected by precisely their attention to more hidden and human seeds of harm and destruction, the ways in which these seeds grow and unfold, and the destruction they wreak when full-grown. All three films are in at least some sense tragedies; and hence all pose the same basic question of their characters' downfalls: what went wrong? 

Poem: If You Had Said No

If You Had Said No

If you had said no

the burning Archangel

would have offered no rebuke

(he had not been sent

as for the priest

to humble pride

but to exalt humility)

he would have bowed

his crowned head

in silence

and in silence turned

and walked away

his rainbow plumage

receding in the endless distance

forever

in the courts of heaven

a hush would have fallen

on the cosmic powers

the cherubim

turn their thousand eyes

away from the earth

and the stars

take up

a new song

the celestial spheres

sigh like strings

in perpetual, cyclical

mourning

(for one can neither mourn nor desire

the impossible—

but what was possible

can be mourned and longed for

in remembrance

forever)

a quiet

would have fallen

upon the earth

the grass and the trees

clothe themselves

as in winter

with dimness

the burning desire

would go out

of the heart of things

no more of blood

in the dying leaves

no more of fire

in the blooming rose

the moths

would no longer

seek the flame

the leaves would have

no voice in the wind

the trees would have no eyes

and there would be no face

in the dark forest

the sons of men

would cease from

the ancient rites

of winter and springtime

they would make

no war

for immortal glory

the daughters of men

would be fair only

desired only

possessed only

there would be no light

in their eyes

no gleam of gold

fire earth moonlight

in their tresses

they would bear their children

in silence

with no wild hope

in the pain and blood

the birds

would not sing more sweetly

in their presence

nor would the fire burn brighter

there would be no roses

in them

at all

the littleness

of their children

would have no

greatness

in it

bread would be

only bread

wine only wine

and the blood of men

only like the blood of cattle

Death of the Son, Episode VIII: In the Assembly of the Great King

Death of the Son, Episode VIII

In the Assembly of the Great King 

[Episode One; Episode Two; Episode Three; Episode Four; Episode Five; Episode Six; Episode Seven]

Theodotus and Apollon slept, again, in their quarters--but only after Theodotus had made something of a show of locking all the doors, propping furniture carefully against them as the old priest watched nervously. It was all so much theater: if the Emperor's slaves wish to take us, they will do so. Otherwise, I am more than a match for any lone assailant. A locked door will not hold anyone determined. Yet Apollon seemed truly reassured, and after only a few minutes Theodotus had the satisfaction of hearing, through his own door, the old man's snores.

He himself, though, stayed awake a great deal longer, lying in his bed, his head propped up on his hands, considering the events of the previous day, and those about to come. 

There must, he was sure, be some way to make sense of this tale...to wrest some victory from the jaws of apparent defeat. If he could only understand the players involved...deduce the secret both Crispus and Fausta had known, which Apollon had almost heard...the secret that had somehow involved the dead Emperor Licinius...the secret which he must know, when at last he spoke with Constantine...the secret that might save Eustathius' life...

But what could the secret be? So far as he and everyone else know, Licinius' tale was straightforward, if twisted in a way not uncommon for Emperors in time of civil war. A Dacian, friend of Galerius, appointed Augustus of the West to contain the usurpers Constantine and Maxentius...but unlike his fellow Tetrarchs, wise enough to see Constantine's potential, and first tolerate him, then ally with him against Maximinus Daza. Then for nearly ten years, Augustus of the East, ruling from Nicomedia, in partnership with Constantine. 

In his mind's eye, Theodotus saw the statue he had passed every day, along his route from apartment to the chancery, for nearly a decade: the heavy body, the long head, the staring eyes gazing upwards, the small, confident smile. Licinius had been the Emperor he, and everyone in the East, had looked up to, appealed to, praised and thanked for defeating the cruel pagan, the arch-persecutor Daza, and bringing the Persecution to a close. Like most, Theodotus had payed little attention to the second, smaller statue set up beside Licinius', with its sharp nose and broad face and grave expression: Licinius' Western colleague Constantine. It was only when that second statue abruptly disappeared, one morning, from its place at Licinius' side that he, and everyone else, realized that civil war had begun. 

The rest had been only rumors, let slip by tired soldiers in the taverns, or boasted of by confident, well-fed men in the market-places. Again and again, Theodotus had come into the room where his fellow court deacons worked to find them all huddled together, faces grave, discussing the latest news. Incursions, troop movements, raids, persecutions...

As the weeks went by, the talk turned more and more to this latter category. Licinius, it was said, had begun to fear the Christian clergy of his domain, seeing in them advocates and supporters of Constantine: spies, or worse. Bishops, it was said, had been arrested and put on trial before the Emperor for treason, priests expelled from the palace as spies. On every face, Theodotus saw the same fearful, enclosed expression, the same stirring memories, though no one ever actually spoke the words flicking through their mins: it is happening again...

As during the persecution, the people of Antioch began withdrawing. The crowds in the cathedral thinned by nearly a third; people began giving clerics a wide berth in the marketplace; and even the shopkeepers and slaves in the cookshops avoided Theodotus' eyes as they took his coins. Everywhere, there was a tense expectancy, like a storm about to break. 

Theodotus had not known the previous bishop, Philogonius, at all well; apart from brief meetings where he and the other deacons explained the cases and proposed judgments of the court for his approval, the two men had never spoken. Yet he remembered well the sermon Philogonius had given barely two years before, at the height of the war. 

The old bishop, like them all, had lived through the Persecution; barely ten years had passed since Daza's famous indulgences in the arena of Antioch. His thin, grizzled face had been pale even next to his white robe, and his hand had shaken as he had delivered his discourse. 

He had exhorted them, obliquely and carefully, saying nothing that might call down Licinius' wrath or those of officials, to endurance. He called to their minds the sufferings of the martyrs; and his frozen face and unblinking eyes showed clearly that he was remembering even as he spoke. The martyrs, he had reminded them, had considered the loss of their earthly possessions, even the loss of their hands and eyes (everyone's faces involuntarily turning toward the old bishop's empty socket), as nothing in comparison to the gain of heaven. It made no sense, the bishop insisted, to save perishing trifles and in so doing lose imperishable treasure. Still, he insisted, those who had left the Church and returned to their former ways of life out of fear would be welcomed back upon their return. But those who fled from Christ would never receive his rewards.

The display had been effective; the crowds of departing Christians slowed to a trickle, and many returned, shame-faced, to receive the bishop's forgiveness. Among the clergy of Antioch, though, Philogonius' courage had caused a panic. The deacons abandoned their work entirely, and instead spent all their time discussing when the hammer would fall, when and where and how Licinius would take his revenge against their bishop for speaking so openly. 

Abruptly, discussion of the Persecution ceased being taboo among the clergy of Antioch. Stories were swapped, in low tones, of brave men and women, and weak men and women, and their individual fates; of creative punishments administered to bishops by Daza, by local governors, in arenas and palace chambers and prisons. The implications, though never stated openly, were always the same: this is what will happen to Philogonius. Theodotus had taken no part in these discussions, but had wondered, idly, as he continued with his own work, if any of these discussions came to Philogonius' ears, and what the old man thought of it. He suspected the bishop had plenty of memories of his own to occupy him.

At last, it had, apparently, happened. A young priest, Eukalion, burst into the court office, just as the deacons were gathering to leave for the day, to tell them that a messenger had arrived for the bishop from Licinius. Though Eukalion had not heard the message himself, rumors had it that Philogonius had been summoned to Byzantium, where Licinius was currently holed up. Licinius, Eukalion speculated, must be furious; his rages, it was said, had grown worse and worse, and it was said he had had clerics killed in front of him, just like Daza. Even an invitation to court, Eukalion declaimed, his cheeks pale, was as good as a death sentence.

In the end, of course, nothing had happened. Whether or not Philogonius had been summoned to Byzantium, he did not go; nor was Licinius in Byzantium much longer. Within a matter of months, the old bishop was dead; a development not, Theodotus suspected, at all unrelated to the strain of those feverish months. This development seemed to sap the courage of the clergy of Antioch entirely; though month after month discussions were raised over electing a new bishop, nothing was done. There was no point, his fellow deacon Martinus had whispered, shrugging his shoulders, in electing someone who would go straight into the arena.  

As the months passed by without incident, however, the specter of persecution did not dissipate; it seemed rather, to hang in the air over the city, dimming the sunlight. People went about their business with heads bowed, shooting resentful glances at the cathedral, treating it like a bad omen. After the initial flurry of activity, the civil war seemed to have stalled; though there were still rumors of battles, they were less plausible and more fanciful, and the people stopped discussing them. The cookshop Theodotus visited every evening for his dinner was now nearly silent, with people standing quietly in line and even the slave at the counter sullen.

Without a bishop, though, the work of the episcopal court ground to a halt; and Theodotus and his fellow deacons were reassigned to delivering food for the poor. This meant a great deal of traipsing through the streets, day and night, which allowed Theodotus an even better sense of the city's mood. It had soured, and it was clear the souring was against Licinius. People stopped paying respect to his statues as they passed, and a few even spit; graffiti calling for Constantine's victory appeared throughout the city, and after a few months the local Imperial administration gave up on removing it. A statue of Licinius, it was said, had been torn down in the night; and though it was set up and shining again when Theodotus saw it the next morning, soldiers with round shields slung on their backs now watched it, sweating under their armor and shooting suspicious glances at passersby.

Again, the crowds in the cathedral dwindled, though this time it was likely as much due to lack of a preacher than fear of persecution. The smaller chapels throughout the city, when Theodotus passed by them, seemed fuller than ever, people unable to fit inside down on their knees praying for deliverance and, increasingly, for Constantine's victory. Persecutor or not, Licinius had lost the confidence of his people.  Living under Galerius and Daza had been frightening, but living under a possible persecutor was an intolerable strain, from which only the Christian Emperor could deliver them.

Finally, the war broke out again in earnest; not mere rumors, but detailed reports soon began pouring into the city, passed eagerly from well-dressed Imperial messengers in tabernae or soldiers in the town squares or slaves from the Palace; they spoke of battle after battle, all, it seemed, lost by Licinius and won by Constantine. Licinius' army of 150,000, it was said, had been routed by Constantine's much smaller force, bearing the sign of the chi-rho on their shields and with the Emperor's divine totem, the labarum (the design of which, it was said, had been given to him in a dream) borne before them. Licinius too, it was whispered, had dreamed of Christ taking the diadem from his head and placing it on a statue of Constantine. Bodies of martyrs, fresh from the slaughter, had spoken, telling of Licinius' defeat, and predicting his imminent demise. 

Most trumpeted of all, however, was the news of the total defeat of the Eastern Emperor's fleet, the ships taken or burned off the Hellespont after a bold tactical maneuver had encircled them. The commander who had originated this strategy, and bravely led his men in boarding Licinius' ships, was not Constantine, though, but a heretofore unknown figure in the East: the Emperor's brilliant, dashing son, a great strategist, and equally brave, a pious Christian like his father, who had prayed on bended knee before a cross just before the battle: a worthy heir to the throne, a new Christian Emperor, a guarantee against any future persecution. His name, it seemed, was Crispus.

At that, Theodotus' thoughts were brought back, with a jolt, to the present. He sat up in bed, and silently mouthed the words: Constantine murdered Crispus. The Emperor killed his son.

Almost angrily, he lay back down again, and tried to force his mind to consider, once again, what the secret might be. 

Don't Follow the News

[This is an old essay I wrote for a local Catholic publication a number of years ago. I am reposting it now for obvious reasons.]

Don’t Follow the News: A Manifesto

Don’t follow the news. Don’t watch it. Don’t listen to it. Don’t read it. Don’t engage with it. Don’t post about it or argue about it on social media. I have given this advice to friends, enemies, total strangers, Catholics, Protestants, and atheists. This is the most important advice I can give to Americans today.

Allow me to explain, in a somewhat roundabout and proverb-studded way, why I say this.

If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you’ve satisfied his hunger for a whole day, though, you’ve created a problem for all the people who also wanted to sell this man fish, or perhaps Hamburger Helper. Instead, try selling him a picture of a fish. When you come back to him ten minutes later, he will be even more desperate, even more fixated on fish, and his judgment will be even more impaired from the hunger. In short, he will be an even better customer than before. By the time the man finally dies of starvation a few months later, you will have had the opportunity to sell him an enormous number of pictures of fish, increasing the shareholder value of your publicly-traded fish media corporation to the greatest degree possible. Call this the economy.

A fool and his money are soon parted. Unfortunately, the money actually possessed by any given hungry and stupid man is finite. As an alternative to this system, consider one where a third party gives you money every time you manage to momentarily catch the man’s attention. Call this advertising.

There is nothing sadder than the death of a clown. A single clown, wearing the same outfit and performing the same set of tricks, possesses only a limited ability to catch and hold the same person’s attention. Also you have to pay the clown. Instead, consider getting people to send you pictures and videos and texts describing random things that may or may not be happening or have happened anywhere in the world. Using all of these, you should be able to attract the fool’s attention a great deal longer. Call this journalism.

Everyone is special. It turns out that not everything in your pile of random media is equally effective at catching and holding the fool’s attention. Perhaps you should consider constructing a robot to sort that pile into an infinity of smaller piles, each one associated algorithmically with a particular group of people. Use this robot’s findings to more effectively attract and hold your fool’s attention. Call this targeted advertising.

Sex sells. So does self-righteousness and homicidal rage. Thanks to your personal targeted advertising robot, you will soon discover that some types of content, and some types of human emotion, are more successful at attracting and holding your fool’s attention than others. Put simply, you want to be manipulating emotions that are easily activated, intense, overpowering, and self-reinforcing. You want to be able to hold up a picture and have your fool be instantly and intensely focused, resulting in a fool who is more pliant and receptive to similar content for all time thereafter. Call this, depending on the precise emotions targeted, pornography, advertising, political action, or the news.

Truth is stranger than fiction. It turns out that if you show a man a picture of his best friend being beaten to death by his oldest enemy, you will attract his attention very strongly. However, you will also produce any number of other highly incalculable effects, such as wailing and gnashing of teeth, intense depression, ritual acts of mourning, and so on, most of which stand in the way of attracting his attention again soon. Instead try showing him a picture of someone he has never met, who slightly resembles his best friend, being mildly to gravely inconvenienced by someone else he has never met, who has some random feature in common with his oldest enemy. It turns out that while this distant and possibly fictitious scenario produces a similar emotional reaction and gets the man’s attention just as effectively as a truthful account of a meaningful personal disaster, his reaction will be much more repeatable and manipulatable. Call this the news cycle.

Despair is the opiate of the masses. If you show someone a grave act of injustice happening to people they care about a few feet from them, odds are they will want to do something about it, whether that involves stopping the injustice in progress, punishing it, or perhaps creating a systemic societal revolution to prevent it from happening again. Show someone a grave act of injustice happening to perfect strangers half a world away, and they are much less likely to either want or be able to do anything about it. Show them five-hundred such injustices consecutively over the course of twenty-four hours, and they will enter a state of functional despair where the impulse to do anything meaningful in response to any injustice anywhere has totally disappeared. Minus hope, your fool’s reactions to injustice will become, as if by magic, shallow, manipulable, self-deluding, and selfish. Call this, depending on the personality of the man in question, either blackpill or entertainment.

It is expedient that one man should die for the people. Even when constantly subjected to injustices about which he can do nothing, your subject will still react to visual stimuli, building up a great deal of tension and anxiety and anger and stress. Given enough time, the man is capable of doing any number of regrettable things with these feelings, including acts of violence, rituals of mourning, psychological breakdowns, disengagement from mass media, religious conversion, or connection with other human beings. To stop these unprofitable trends in their tracks, do everything in your power to associate each and every injustice he is made to witness with groups of his fellow human beings. This will provide him with an outlet for his emotions, particularly if you can provide at the same time an arena where he can performatively and self-righteously condemn such people and be randomly cruel and hateful towards them. Find a way to monetize that, and call it social media.

Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards. Follow this process to its logical conclusion and you will have produced a society full of despairing, isolated individuals whose time, attention, and energy is totally and continually taken up with passively absorbing media that preys on their emotions and/or being randomly cruel to each other on the Internet. Meanwhile the stock market flourishes. Call this, in a final flourish of black humor, politics.

I repeat myself: nevertheless, don’t follow the news. Don’t follow the news because it’s trying to monopolize your attention for ad dollars. Don’t follow the news because most of what it shows you is either false or is deliberately designed to prevent you from doing anything about it. Don’t follow the news because it will consistently appeal to your basest instincts. Don’t follow the news because it will train you to be totally inactive and despairing in the face of injustice. Don’t follow the news because it will isolate you and teach you to hate your fellow human beings. 

A Catholic is called to live a virtuous life, a life in which through habitual action, aided by divine grace, his immediate, unthinking reactions to people, places, and things are more and more conformed to the true, the good, the beautiful, the just, and the charitable. A virtuous person does not react to injustice except so as to mourn it or work towards setting it right through  prayer and virtuous action. A virtuous Christian does not give himself over to hatred or contempt for fellow human beings, but works for their salvation through prayer and charitable action. All this requires, however, a great deal of training and retraining of our basic habits and affections. And this training requires, as its absolute sine qua non, that one not spend all one’s time and energy on a training regimen with precisely the opposite purpose.

I concede that it is not impossible to follow the news in a virtuous, charitable way. One can learn about evils happening a world away, and pray for those affected. One can learn about evils happening close to home, and work to correct them. To a limited degree. 

We live, however, in a society of addicts, and when dealing with addicts, moderate approaches are seldom effective. Which is why en masse, on balance, I would say to my fellow American Catholics: don’t follow the news.