Meanderings, 27 April 2024

Good morning, friends! Love our crabapples at this time of year:

Photo by Jael Coon on Unsplash

Taylor Swift and Wheaton student disdain:

Just as there was an anti-Hutchinsonian sentiment in Boston, there has been a swelling anti-Swift sentiment as well. On the album release day, I asked my history students at Wheaton College how they had received the new Taylor Swift album, I was surprised by how much disdain I heard from some of the students. It reminded me that, around the time of the Super Bowl, there was an equal amount of disdain from these students and the middle school students at my church concerning the Kansas City Chiefs and Swift’s intervention in the world of football. Many of these young people were anti-Chiefs because they were anti-Swift.

Is it because of her poetic genius? Is it because she is a successful businesswoman and a powerful billionaire? Is it because she encourages people to vote? I think these are all part of the whole Taylor Swift package that both inspires her draw and detraction. But there’s something more there too.

While I’m still pondering the motivation for anti-Swift sentiment among these young people, I can’t help but see how they have been raised in a certain kind of nursery of social and cultural thinking that has trained them to have a disdain for powerful and influential women that break the mold of conservative values. …

Furthermore, I think it’s possible that anti-Swift sentiment is also driven by how she has awakened the imaginations and curiosities of young women globally. She is an inspiration to young blossoming artists and poets. She has enchanted them with a desire to unlock all the mysteries that her poetry offers. Quite frankly, as a human artist, she awakens the imaginations of her audience in the same way Scripture did to its readers during the era of pre-critical exegesis. She has drawn her audience in to read her story carefully, and she has succeeded in enchanting a generation of listeners.

Taylor Swift has become a symbol of liberal power that has not bowed to other structures of authority. Her audience searches her poetic genius for catharsis, inspiration, and strength to persevere through pain or setbacks. Perhaps, that’s why she released her album on the anniversary of the “shot heard around the world,” the first engagements of the American Revolution at Lexington and Concord. As Swift keeps building momentum globally, this album is her poetic shout heard around the world.

Helping the poor of Vegas:

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Rising grocery costs continue to put a strain on household budgets everywhere. In the Las Vegas valley, community members are coming together to help feed Las Vegas. It’s part of an initiative formed by a local father-son duo to give back to the community – one bag at a time.

On Sunday morning, a bus carrying pounds and pounds of food made a special delivery near Flamingo Road and Valley View Boulevard. Hundreds of people lined up for the “Feed Vegas Food Drive”, waiting to fill up their bags with free groceries. Some, arriving hours before the event began to ensure they had food to take home, emphasizing the need in our community. 

“I got in line at three o’clock this morning and I’m very happy to be able to get some food to my house,” Las Vegas resident Guadalupe Rodriguez said.

One resident, who is legally disabled and blind, said the Feed Vegas Food Drive is one of the only ways he is able to provide food for himself.

“Food is very expensive,” Timothy Perkins said. “It’s helping me on the food bill. I can save a little money here and there; everything counts.”

The Feed Vegas Food Drive has been providing groceries to the Las Vegas community for more than a year. In each of the bags are dozens of food items including frozen meats, bread, milk, fruits, and vegetables which are expected to provide families with about a week’s worth of groceries. The food is donated by organizations and warehouses that have an influx of supplies.

On those student protests, John Hawthorne’s Substack looks at the issue more theoretically than most:

By my count, that’s 22 campuses out of the 3,000 plus campuses across the country. In addition, some of these specific protests are fairly small. Photos of the Berkeley protest for example, seemed to show about a dozen tents. In light of the size of the student body there or at Columbia or Washington St. Louis, the vast majority of students aren’t involved. Some passersby rightly may feel intimidated by a crowd but its not like there’s only one way across campus.⁴ Yes, the crowds have been noisy as one music professor complained, making it hard to hear the compositions he was playing for his class.

Here’s another component impacting the protests. It’s what I call the Governor Tarkin rule. In the first (fourth) Star Wars film, Princess Leia tells Tarkin, “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.” Once the Columbia students were arrested over the weekend, it was bound to spawn more protests.

Yet another component is the connection to the BDS movement. Standing for Boycott, Divest, and Sanction, this has been part of college activism for years. This is especially true of the high-endowment institutions. Advocates argue that the university’s huge investment portfolio benefits various bad actors. It was a big part of anti Apartheid protests over South Africa. A theme across some of the current protests is the call for institutions to divest from the weapons manufacturers who are part of Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

Then there is the concern over an eventual Palestinian state and over the mass casualties resulting from Israel’s actions since October 7th. Such concern over human rights has been part of campus activism for decades. Painting these concerns as antisemitic and pro-Hamas is unfair and demagogic.

Finally, there is the collective action problem. Critics of the protests will read my last paragraph and ask, what about the anti-Jewish slurs that were shouted? What about the student whose way was blocked by protestors or the one who was poked in the eye (the story about it said “stabbed”) by a flag pole that was tossed in her direction? …

Protests are happening on a minority of campuses, involving a minority of students, protesting for a variety of reasons, and often met with draconian institutional responses. Demagogues will attack them as representative of students today as part of villainizing higher education or declaring their fierce support for Israel at all costs. They forget that these are passionate18-22 year olds who aren’t skilled at broad collective action. Just like the critics were when they were that age.

For those of us in ACNA, the story about Church of the Resurrection’s failures is being told well by Chris Marchand.

Daniel K. Williams has some interesting reported facts about abortion since Dobbs:

The Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in June 2022 was supposed to reduce the number of abortions in the United States.

In the summer of 2022, jubilant pro-life advocates eagerly forecast an increase in the number of childbirths and encouraged churches to be prepared to help care for all the extra children in their communities who would be born to women in crisis situations who would otherwise have had abortions. And advocates of abortion rights issued dire predictions of a country in which women denied legal abortions would be forced to give birth to children they did not want and could not adequately care for.

Yet a curious thing happened: According to two separate studies, the number of abortions in the United States increased in the year after Dobbs. And according to the CDC, the number of childbirths in the United States marginally decreased in 2022. (It then experienced a very slight increase in 2023).

Pro-lifers in Mississippi forecast that an additional 5,000 babies per year would be born in the state as a result of abortion becoming completely illegal the summer of 2022. But instead, the number of childbirths in Mississippi declined in 2022 and dropped again in 2023.

So, there was no post-Dobbs baby boom, and there was no net reduction in abortion in the United States – even though more than a dozen states banned nearly all abortions.

This was largely what I predicted in a series of posts that I wrote for Anxious Bench in the spring of 2022 and in my book The Politics of the Cross, published in early 2021. A few weeks before the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs, I wrote on the Anxious Bench, “For pro-life advocates, the initial excitement over the demise of Roe v. Wade is likely to give way to disappointment when they discover that the end of Roe does not mean the end of legal pregnancy terminations in the United States.  Far fewer unborn lives will be saved than many pro-lifers imagine.”

But why would more women have abortions in the United States if abortion became less available?

Actually, abortion did not become less available. In most of the country, abortion is easier to obtain today than ever before – and that’s why pro-lifers’ strategy to reduce abortion rates by legally restricting abortion has backfired so badly.

Yes, Hank was one of the greatest ever:

CNN — Today is the first full day of what was my favorite Jewish celebratory holiday as a kid: Passover, which commemorates the Jews escaping bondage in ancient Egypt.

This time for celebration helped to remind me of a conversation I had a month ago with my friend Noam in which I said, “Hank Greenberg would have been a top-100 baseball player had it not been for World War II.”

Noam expressed some skepticism, so I decided to dig into the numbers. It turns out that I undersold Greenberg; he was one of the greatest hitters of all time and gives Sandy Koufax a run at being the greatest Jewish baseball player of all time.

For those that don’t know, Greenberg was the first truly big Jewish sports star in America. He faced a lot of abuse at a time when Hitler was rising to power in Europe. Long before Koufax sat out for Yom Kippur, Greenberg did so for the Detroit Tigers during the 1934 pennant race. Yom Kippur is the holiest day on the Jewish calendar when adherents atone for their sins of the past year and don’t eat for the day.

Greenberg’s religion had already made front-page news when the Detroit Free press had, about a week earlier, run a large headline in Hebrew – probably the first time a major English-speaking newspaper ever did – when he played on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year). The headline was complimentary: “And so to you, Mr. Greenberg, the Tiger fans say, ‘L’shana Tova Tikatevu!’ which means ‘Happy New Year.’”      

Greenberg deserved that much attention. He finished sixth in that year’s Most Valuable Player voting. The following year in 1935, he won the award, as the Tigers came out victorious in six games in the World Series. He would go on to win another MVP in 1940, before joining the armed services just a few games into the 1941 season.

Greenberg could have easily gotten out of the US Army after 1941 because he was honorably discharged, and Congress released those men 28 and over from service. However, he re-enlisted after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December of that year. Greenberg went on to serve 47 total months – more than any other major leaguer – including seeing overseas action.