Measuring society by its conversation stoppers
Jim Gaffigan is my favorite comedian. In fact, he may be the only current stand-up comedian who makes me laugh. He generally does not use vulgarity, but he is not self-consciously “clean”—no dry-bar comedian. A Catholic of Irish-American descent, in his stand-up routines he adopts the persona of the lazy Catholic in contrast to his wife (and co-writer), whom he describes as a “Shiite Catholic.” He has a way of working in serious cultural commentary while never adopting the self-righteous pose of comedian as cultural critic. In one routine he notes how parents love to see their children dress up as pirates at Halloween—that is, they think it is adorable to see their children dress up as marauding, murdering rapists. He continues in the voice of these parents: “Darth Vader . . .’It’s fun!’ The Devil . . . ’It’s cute!’ Hitler . . .’No!’”
The Hitler trip wire is back in the news again with the unearthing of North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson’s past social media posts identifying himself as a “Black Nazi.” There is much pearl-clutching outrage that a candidate for high office in a liberal democracy would dare to speak well of a fascist leader responsible for the deaths of millions. For liberal critics of Robinson, the fact that these comments appeared on a porn site called “Naked Africa” has received little comment beyond pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of a public Christian visiting a porn site. Repeatedly insisting that “the personal is political,” left-liberals seem unwilling to consider that the libidinal anarchy of online porn might provide a free space for entertaining any number of positions intended to challenge mainstream norms. Thus, New York Times coverage of the coterminous sex scandal of a counter-culture figure like rapper Sean Combs makes clear that the problem is not porn but coercion. Apparently, it is perfectly normal for consenting adults to wish to film their drug-fueled orgies; Combs erred only in not securing the consent (written?) of all actors beforehand.
As tawdry as all this may be, it is all too appropriate for this presidential election season. Many see this moment as one of existential political crisis, with nothing short of the future of our democracy at stake. The Christian columnist David French has not only denounced Robinson but endorsed Kamala Harris, despite his disagreement with her on any number issues, most especially abortion. I am not going to take issue with French’s voting choice; democracy has routinely presented voters with only lesser evil options. I will, however, take issue with the principles and priorities that underlie that choice.
Apparently, we may compromise on abortion but not democracy. Reasonable people, people of good will, may disagree on the taking of innocent, unborn human life, which since 1973 has a death toll of over fifty million in America alone. Any cavalier, sympathetic references to Hitler or slavery, however, are nothing short of blasphemy. And yet, democracy has plenty of blood on its hands. In this, it differs little from every other known political system. Given this historical reality, I see no reason to abandon democracy; at the same time, I see no reason to treat it as something sacred.
I also see no reason to continue to use Hitler as a conversation stopper. The United States has been doing this since World War II, identifying all its enemies (communism, Islam) as the moral equivalent of Hitler. This in turn has served to obscure the outrages committed by democracy itself. The sad historical fact is that there is hardly any aspect of Hitler’s murderous regime that did not have precedent in the nineteenth-century political order captured by the phrase “liberal democracy.” The only clear departure lies in his rejection of representative government in favor of rule by the strong leader. Even here, though, the distinctions are actually quite fine. What principles and ideals did the strong leader embody? Hitler’s cult of the Aryan race was in surprising ways a mirror of liberal modernity itself. Hitler celebrated the Aryan as Prometheus, the one responsible for all the great achievements of the arts and sciences throughout history. Presumably, liberal democracy is superior by allowing people of all races to participate in the cult of Prometheus.
Does liberal democracy offer anything more than a Promethean will to power? Surely some will respond: “Yes, of course. Justice!” But is modern liberal justice anything more than equal access to exercising our individual will to power?
Consider the morality of pornography. Despite objections to the degradation of women in other contexts, liberals have embraced pornography as liberation, because it undermines traditional sexual norms and empowers people to make their own sexual choices. Donald’s Trump’s erstwhile lover, Stormy Daniels, has recently been praised for making female-centered porn that empowered women; Sean Combs sinned in imposing his will on others in the production of his homemade porn, thus dis-empowering them. Yet even here the moral distinctions are muddy. Is Stormy Daniels’s role reversal, some version of “women on top,” morally superior to traditional male-centered porn? Would Combs’s filmed fantasies of domination have been legitimate if only he had secured the expressed written consent of all participants? I fear that pursuing these questions risks being dragged down into the muck of these tawdry moral dilemmas raised by the cult of sexual freedom.
Cult it is, with its central sacrament not even sex itself but abortion. Studies show a declining interest in sex among the young, one factor in the declining birthrate and looming demographic crisis facing the developed world. The mean-spiritedness of J. D. Vance’s attack on “childless cat ladies” aside, the fact is that large swaths of the professional middle class, who for Democrats represent the socio-economic ideal to which all should aspire, have simply given up on having children. This is, literally, an abandonment of the future. This is a social reality to which the mainstream of the social science profession attests. It links those who die of despair in trailer parks with those “living the dream” on Park Avenue—two sides of what St. John Paul II identified thirty years ago as the “culture of death.” As offensive as I find Mark Robinson’s comments, made ten years ago on a private porn site, they seem to pale in comparison with this reality.
Neither party possesses the spiritual resources to promote a culture of life. Perhaps we should not look to politics to address the culture of death, whose roots surely go far deeper than politics. Still, it is curious to me that a Christian like David French, who has spent much of his public life defending life, can deem Robinson’s comments symptoms of MAGA extremism while judging Kamala Harris somehow reasonable, albeit flawed. I do not doubt that on most issues I would be able to have a reasonable conversation with Harris in a way that would be impossible with Trump. Yet I do not believe I could have a reasonable conversation with her on abortion. In clarifying her “values,” Harris has made support for abortion not simply one issue among many but her lead issue in opposing Donald Trump (despite his own waffling on that issue). What exactly is the higher good for which I, a pro-life Catholic, am supposed to look the other way?
I have no advice on how to vote this November. I will likely cast a conscience vote for Peter Sonski, the candidate for the American Solidarity Party. Some may see this as a “wasted” vote, but it is the only way I know how to participate responsibly in our democratic system. Whoever wins in November, I ask only that people keep this election in the proper perspective. Abortion remains the true existential threat to our civilization.
Christopher Shannon is associate professor of history at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. He is the author of several works on U.S. cultural history and American Catholic history, including American Pilgrimage: A Historical Journey Through Catholic Life in a New World (2022).
My mornings are usually filled with devotions, the NYT, and then Current—big follower. I never comment on articles. But today, after reading this article, I must say, “Oh, for goodness sake!” Big eye roll. A plethora of LIFE issues are at stake in this election (the lives of Ukrainians, for starters), and the author’s sole issue focus is on abortion. The author has chided those of us who value democracy TOO much and implored us to keep the election in perspective. I beg the author to broaden his perspective and see that the pro-life issue many of us espouse has many tentacles, and sometimes, one must fight for the broader approach. David French is, in my view, a heroic example. The author and his nominal civic participation in voting for a candidate of whom I doubt he could spend 60 seconds extolling the virtues is not a courageous example. And a final note: for me, who loves Jesus as much if not more than this author, this is NOT an election between the lesser of two evils.
I’m not sure “pearl-clutching” is quite the right term for people’s reaction to this Republican identifying as a Nazi sympathizer. “Pearl-clutching” refers to overly dramatic expressions of shock at some vulgar or immoral statement.
I don’t think anyone is shocked at this point by conservatives cozying up to literal fascists. MAGA-folk displayed swastikas at January 6 and continue to do so at Trump boat-parades. Being fascist adjacent is becoming, if not the norm, then far from unusual, for 21st c. American conservatives. (Whether this is a genuinely new development, or if people are just feeling more comfortable at being “out” about it, is a question.)
I do think people have yet to become accustomed, however, to Black Americans aligning themselves with a movement that was and is so intent on their extermination. That aspect of the event was shocking, and no fake drama was or is required.
Responding to Chris’s substantive point: Let’s grant his observation that “Abortion remains the true existential threat to our civilization.”
If that’s true, what electoral choice isn’t a “compromise” in some way? (I’m not actually sure that “compromise” is the best word for what a pro-life voter like David French is doing, but I’d need to think about what term might be better, and prefer not to quibble about semantics now anyway.)
The Democrats have for some 40 years been more overtly pro-choice than the Republicans. But the situation has always been messy. Republican actions–say, through the votes of their justices which comprised a majority in both Roe and Casey–have never quite aligned with their rhetoric in their campaign platforms. Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II showed various levels of commitment to the pro-life cause but usually kept their policy interventions at the periphery (the Mexico City policy, partial-birth abortion ban, etc.). No Republican presidential aspirant has ever made abortion a priority in his campaign or governance that would reflect Chris’s claim that it’s “the true existential threat to our civilization.”
As such, a pro-life vote for any Republican candidate since Roe also constitutes a “compromise.” This is even more true, now, in 2024, as the Republican party under President Trump is rapidly moving away from its previous platform rhetoric.
Is a vote for the American Solidarity Party’s presidential candidate uncompromising? Again, let’s note that the ASP is less a “party” than a web-site, but let’s not despise the day of small things, either. From little acorns mighty oaks can grow. Of course a lot of those acorns don’t actually produce, as I expect is the case here.
As for now, a third party vote will have no effect on the abortion regime as it is in America. I’m not sure if that’s a “compromise” per se, but it’s not any different from a vote for either major party’s candidate as far as efficaciousness is concerned. We can argue about the relative merits of conscience versus pragmatism, but wherever we land on that, actually affectling the “true existential threat to our civilization” remains, sadly, off the table.
That being the case, many pro-life voters will adopt the approach that matches an “all other things being equal” situation. They will ask themselves, “Since there’s no way to vote that can be guaranteed to solve–or even make obviously better–this problem, what else do I care about that I can expect to be affected–for good or for ill–by this election’s outcome?”
There was a lot of interesting stuff here, but it feels like reading a sharp mind tinged with a lot of naĂŻvetĂ© about the social realities of sexuality in the private and political spheres. Like when he laments the ‘celebration’ of Stormy Daniels’ “woman on top” production focus, and he tries to draw a comparison to male-centric pornography–yeah man, the superiority of a given audience-focus (male or female) in the commercial exploitation of sexuality is always an emphasis people make to sell money to their niche, and in this instance lend the image of feminism to pornography, as if a sex-positive rhetoric and historical feminism are the same thing. Why are you so worried about it? It’s the product of American capitalism in a pluralistic empire.
And why is he trying to link pornography to abortion as a political issue? For the same reason the Catholic mind tries to link all non-Catholic sexual expression to a single oppositional force contra the regulative influences of the church: “The Cult of Sexual Freedom” as a satanic idolatry that can be resisted only by embracing the written expression of sexuality represented in the magisterium. I would imagine.
I do like that he’s throwing his vote away (and I don’t mean that in a snarky way). When they ask you to choose between the lesser of two evils, it’s always a trap. Vote your actual conscience, if you have to vote. That’s one reason I don’t understand why–given the apocalyptic rhetoric used in every. American. election–he would be so surprised or outraged by the use of this rhetoric by either the right or the left? The binary choice between red and blue creates this illusion of participatory citizenship, and the apocalyptic language used by politicians is the application of false urgency to a mundane situation. It always is.