It’s been a wild week in the Looper household. One piece on the conservative use of the epithet “gnostic” and another on climate issues are in the pipeline, and one or both will make an appearance here soon.
For now, here’s the week’s Loop:
(1) “Author of the Mega-Viral Thread on MAGA Voters, Darryl Cooper, Explains His Thinking,” by Darryl Cooper, in Glenn Greenwald Substack.
If you missed @MartyrMade’s Twitter thread this past week, you might count yourself lucky…but you’d probably gain something important by reading it. The right has billed this thread as that of an outsider explaining the Trump movement’s belief in The Big Lie, and MartyrMade (Darryl Cooper) plays that role well in the beginning. By the middle of the thread, it comes clear that Cooper is an out-and-out Trumpist. Even so, he expresses the astonishing paranoia that drives the movement better than nearly anyone I have encountered. His piece here following up on the thread is worth reading.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Trump supporters know the collusion case front and back. They went from worrying the collusion must be real, to suspecting it might be fake, to realizing it was a scam, then watched as every institution - agencies, the press, Congress, academia - gaslit them for another year. 9/x</p>— MartyrMade (@martyrmade) <a href="https://twitter.com/martyrmade/status/1413172878611156997?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 8, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
(2) “The Moral Collapse of J.D. Vance,” by Tom Nichols in The Atlantic
After Hillbilly Elegy, one could imagine J.D. Vance getting more and more vocal about Donald Trump, how his leadership has changed people in rural America for the worse, how Trump support has stained the honor of the people he grew up with. You would even see him turning into a semi-conservative Democrat. Then Vance decided to run for senate. And he bowed the knee. This isn’t the first story on Vance’s turn to Trump that’s appeared in the media, but Nichols’ visceral disgust is worth your time.
(3) “What You Need to Know About the CDC’s New School Guidelines,” by Dana Goldstein and Kate Taylor in the New York Times
I get why the CDC didn’t recommend teachers be required to get vaccinated before a school is reopened. If followed, the recommendations would have made reopening effectively impossible in some places. Nevertheless, many will argue that it was an opportunity lost, and the move will be hotly debated deep into the fall.
(4) “What if the Nones Really Do Herald the Decline of Religion?” by Philip Jenkins, in Anxious Bench at patheos.com
The number of those who identify as Christian in the United States is decreasing more sharply now than in living memory. Philip Jenkins’ view is that the situation is bleak: the toothpaste doesn’t go back in the tube. Secularization isn’t going to be undone. And that is an unmitigated disaster. I wonder though if the church might fine blessings in secularization. Read this piece and let me know what you think.