Can I recognize winning when it happens?  That's the question behind this post, really.  

Some background:

Since before 2016, I've been having an argument with friends and colleagues over whether identity or economic issues are more powerful political motivators for people in our current situation.  In fact many of us, around the world, are having this argument.  It's an old argument--it goes back to Marxist analyses, in fact, which people like me see as too-ruthlessly reductionistic.  Our opponents mostly disagree, and think that identity...

Good Friday is all about social distancing--of the Romans from the Jews, of the disciples from Jesus, of Jesus from life, and perhaps God the Father; and perhaps Jesus from humanity as well.  Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?  May we all remember this Good Friday as an especially palpable Good Friday, now and in days to come.

And also, I have links for you.

I meant for this to be one of my "links," but I decided it needed independent acknowledgement--both as a useful analysis of the state of American politics right now, especially in the role of religion in American politics; and as an example of how to give evidence for the independent power of religion as a political force.

Here is an...

Mellow day, some links for you, wherever you are.

“I doubt, in its 200-year history, the University has ever been quieter.”  This is true—a series of pictures of the eerily, spookily empty spaces of the University of Virginia, my school, in the midst of Coronavirus.  

So this is a bit counter-intuitive, especially given where we are in the world right now, but I've been sitting on it for a bit and want to think out loud.

I don’t know why I’ve been thinking of blogging as a daily activity.  I mean, I really don’t know where that imperative came from.  But it’s here, definitely; I can feel the iron of it wrapping around my soul.

Loneliness today, and how to exist in it: “The weird gift of loneliness is that it grounds us in our common humanity. Other people have been afraid, waited, listened for news. Other people have survived. The whole world is in the same boat. However frightened we may feel, we have never been less alone.”  

Social isolation? The Faroes say, hold my beer.  A...

Some links for your Thursday.  Almost Friday, people!  

An opinionated, but still interesting and worth hearing, perspective on the crisis in the academy, which for this guy is mostly a crisis in the humanities, and also a crisis caused by traditional institutions.  What I would like to see is more information about the rise of for-profit institutions...

Mostly I don't find this review very gripping, playing as it does with the whole "end of [x]" genre, in this case about the novel, but then it has these two paragraphs which seem to me both significantly right and worth mulling over:

The art of writing, too, has undergone a metamorphosis. Once a way to engage with reality, it has become primarily a status-seeking...

Tips for surviving the now and seeing the big picture:

An article about “one of the oldest political frontiers in the world,” the foothills of the Zagros mountains.  For five thousand years the border separating present-day Iraq and present-day Iran has been here.  There’s even a new “discovery” of a wall there—the Gawri Chen wall—though presumably for the people living there, it was no...

The story of the “Florentine Codex,” one of the few documents saving a remembrance of pre-Columbian Aztec life; it was written in the midst of plague in Mexico City in the late 16th century.  An inspiration for people today, writing Coronavirus diaries, or Coronavirus...