Where We Are This Week 2.10.23
Promises, Sam Smith, and aid to Turkey and Syria.
I’d like to begin this week with a commitment. Hopefully, you, dear reader, have gleaned this about me so far. I try to only write about the things that I actually care about, and the matters of which I believe I have something worthwhile to contribute to the conversation.
I could write - or riff - on just about anything for hours on end, but I try not to make a habit of doing such things; especially, when I’m asking you to entertain my weekly diatribe. So, you can rest assured, I won’t be intentionally wasting your time by rambling about something I’m only tepidly interested in. If any time of yours does end up being wasted, it at least won’t be for that reason.
Secondly, this week’s topics vary in their gravity, and because of their adjacency, I’d like to make a distinction. I think you know this, but I want to make it clear. I don’t compile topics each week based on their levels of importance. The only reason that the earthquake in Turkey and Sam Smith are sharing this column is because of their temporal relation.
By no means am I equivocating the two - though it’s one of the best examples of the privileges and insularity we’re accustomed to in the United States. On Monday morning, while the reaction to Sam Smith’s Grammy performance was unfolding, countless Turks and Syrians were living through some of the worst possible circumstances that could befall our fellow man.
It can’t be helped that these two things happened within 24 hours of each other, but it certainly offers vital perspective.
So, this is why there are only two topics this week. I could’ve expounded on the Chinese ‘spy’ balloon for ages, though; I recommend you read Walter Kirn’s analysis of the story over on the Free Press. Other stories of note: Seymour Hersh’s report that the US was in fact behind the Nord Stream sabotage, the surprise nationalism of Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, and Chat GPT’s new marching orders.
More next week. Maybe.
Sam Smith
My wife and I make a habit of at least watching the musical performances from the Grammy’s every year. The performances have been in sharp decline as of late. If we don’t watch the entire broadcast, I would usually read the list of who won what, but that tradition has certainly waned.
The event itself has become increasingly insufferable, the pandering, the virtue signaling, and most distressingly - the music. Rarely these days does an artist win an award where I’m not left rolling my eyes. St. Vincent has won the odd award or two over the last few years, so I guess some people at the Recording Academy are paying attention.
Most of the time, at least one or two performances are worth watching. A few years back, a giant ensemble of musicians from the last half century performed The Band’s The Weight to mark the great Levon Helm’s passing. Last year, Jon Batiste’s performance of his song Freedom was incredible.
Now, for whatever reason, videos of musical performances at the award show are almost impossible to find.
But those aren’t the ones that get top billing, they’re not the performances that will make headlines. Not like Sam Smith’s last weekend.
For the uninformed, the milquetoast Smith - whom I always referred to as the male Adele - performed his song Unholy with transgender artist Kim Petras - I had no idea - at the show this Sunday. The English singer has frequently been in the news lately. He was once out as a gay man, then he was gender fluid, and now, he’d like you to know he’s nonbinary. This is all well and good if that’s what you’re into, but Smith’s latest output smacks of an artist who is reinventing himself - themselves? - desperate for attention.
Smith made headlines originally with his music video for his song I’m Not Here to Make Friends where he revealed more than anyone ever should while simulating sex acts. On Sunday, he upped the ante, where he played the role of Satan on national television.
This is the second time he’s done this. A few weeks ago, he donned the same top hat affixed with devil horns on SNL, but it didn’t seem to ruffle many feathers - admittedly, there was less red and less latex. I complained immediately to my wife about it upon the grand reveal, it’s an oft-repeated trope I’m so sick of. I suppose the outrage regarding his Grammy’s display is because the show is ostensibly family-friendly. I’m not sure if it ever has been, but regardless, it’s not anymore.
It is offensive, however. It’s not religiously offensive, I don’t believe in the Western or Christian version of Satan. Even if you do, it shouldn’t be offensive on those terms. Smith’s costume was a lousy parody of the archangel - besides, depictions of the devil in modernity aren’t exactly cannon to the New or Old Testaments. The horns, the hooves, the pitchfork, etc., didn’t come about until the 9th century AD.
It’s offensive for every other reason. It’s insulting to the whole art form that the otherwise banal Smith resorts to these antics in order to appear ‘edgy.’ The song is terrible, the lyrics are exceedingly terrible, and the performance is trite, overplayed, and distasteful - Lil Nas X beat Smith to it two years ago. It’s not just offensive because it’s bad, it’s repulsive because it's lazy - never mind the content. For example, here is Kim Petras’s verse from the song, it’s literally indistinguishable from any other verse in Top 40 right now.
Mm, daddy, daddy, if you want it, drop the addy
Give me love, give me Fendi, my Balenciaga daddy
You gon' need to bag it up 'cause I'm spendin' on Rodeo
You can watch me back it up, I'll be gone in the A.M.
And he, he get me Prada, get me Miu Miu like Rihanna
He always call me 'cause I never cause no drama
And when you want it, baby, I know I got you covered
And when you need it, baby, just jump under the covers
“Unholy” is on track to eclipse 1 billion plays on Spotify before the middle of this year.
This newfound plaything of the woke initiates isn’t religiously dangerous to Christian America - the devil serves as a convenient mascot for the left because of his antagonistic role in Christian theology. In the West contemporarily, Satan has largely represented autonomy and the worship of the self. I empathized with this when I was younger, the idea that individualism was the sole greatest virtue one could aspire to.
But, it’s this narcissistic, hedonistic solipsism that is destroying our culture from the inside. Don’t tell libertarians and the woke how ideologically aligned they really are. It’s a recipe for disaster. With zealots of this new pseudo-ideology at the helm, we’ll never accomplish anything of note. Already, we don’t undergo multi-generational projects like Notre-Dame or la Sagrada Familia, and if we’re preoccupied with worshipping ourselves, we won’t accomplish anything worthwhile within a single lifetime. Besides what awe-inspiring feat of ingenuity, perseverance, and passion has been facilitated by Satanism?
Not only that, it’s the perfect analog for where we are as a culture. Our society is eradicating any distinction of preference or hierarchy of value. The devil doesn’t ask you to be better, to transcend. The devil wants you to remain flawed, to embrace your most unpalatable impulses.
Do you know how awful I would be if I never changed from my 17-year-old immaturity; ff I looked in the mirror and thought, “Yep. Not getting better than this,” a la the Fonz? If you can believe it, I’d be much more intolerable than I am now.
The poles are reversing in Western culture writ large. Satisfaction and pleasure are the pillars on which our impending Brave New World will rest. As counterintuitive as it seems - I am writing from the Bible Belt after all - conservatism will be the counterculture of the future.
Turkey and Syria
On Monday, Turkey and Syria experienced a major 7.8-magnitude earthquake. A humanitarian crisis of massive proportions has ensued.
Partially due to poor regulatory building codes in Turkey, and a decade-long civil war in Syria, the damage to the two countries has been catastrophic. The majority of casualties have been in Turkey, where the quake originated, but over 4.1 million Syrians in the Northwestern region of the country - a part of the country that is controlled by rebel forces - were already in dire need of humanitarian aid before the natural disaster.
At the time of writing this, over 21,000 casualties have been reported after search and rescue missions got underway, while thousands of families remain unaccounted for. In Syria, due to the war, the majority of the population that occupied that region were women and children. Some reports suggest that only 5% of the affected area in the country is being searched as a consequence of a lack of machinery in the region. The situation is exacerbated still by freezing temperatures and snow.
In politics, or conflict in general, we often expect the narrative to be good vs. bad, and we lose sight that governments are often not representative of their people. The Syrian Civil War and the subsequent American involvement don’t live up to that expectation; it’s not a tussle between heroes and villains. It’s murkier than that. While the Syrian government’s actions have been deplorable, so have ours.
The Syrian Civil War is yet another complex prolonged conflict that America has inserted itself into. Under the Obama administration, the war machine was in full boar. American troops invaded Syria amid potentially exaggerated claims of chemical weapons deployed against Syrian citizens by their own government. Nonetheless, America and its Western allies used the reports to justify and galvanize support for its military interjection.
Drone strikes and military occupation were a near constant from the Obama years, the Trump presidency, and into Biden’s first term as American forces and their presidents committed themselves to a policy of regime change in Assad-led Syria. WikiLeaks reported a leaked document from the U.S. Government that showed that regime change may have been a covert aim of America’s as early as 2006 - well before the Arab spring, and the Syrian Civil War began. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported similar testimonies that corroborated that intention.
Since then, American troops have continued to wage a proxy war with Iran via the Assad regime in Syria. There are reports claiming that American troops have been stealing oil and wheat from the Middle Eastern nation during their occupation. While this hasn’t been widely substantiated, it should come as no surprise given Trump’s ‘bomb the oil, take the oil’ statements regarding Libya, and Senior Advisor to President Biden Neera Tanden’s similar comments in a leaked email.
So, you have a variety of military forces, foreign and domestic, who have been pillaging the landscape for over a decade, and now, the Assad regime, despite the crisis in the northwest, still refuses to allow any foreign aid to pass from Damascus, the capital, to that region of the country. Sanctions imposed by America and the United Nations - i.e. 2020’s The Caesar Act - on the Syrian government are being over-complied by international banks for fear of severe consequences. As a result, less and less aid will reach those who need it the most.
For context, the federal government has allocated $113 billion to Ukraine, but has yet to move to lift the sanctions on the war-torn country, even temporarily. Turkey will no doubt receive the aid they deserve; they’re a NATO member. But Syrian lives will be left in the lurch until diplomats and politicians get their act together.
My point is this; at the heart of every geopolitical contest lies the people it subjugates. This is no different. The people are real, and so is their suffering, yet it tells an inconvenient story of the unintended consequences of the political chess match our officials play, using their people as expendable pawns. We must strive to be better and demand more from our elected representatives - for us, our brothers and sisters, and our children.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has been providing support to the victims in Turkey and has reported that they’ve been successful in delivering aid inside Syria. If you’d like to donate, you can do so here.
With love, and to a better next week.
~FDA