Here’s our bimonthly roundup of subscriber writing! Please click around at anything that catches your fancy. People work hard on this stuff, and every single time we do this, I learn things and find entertaining pieces I wouldn’t have otherwise. The era of internet creativity is an era of overabundance - thanks to the constant deluge of everything, it’s next to impossible for creators to get their work in front of an audience and almost as hard for consumers to find the stuff they’ll really enjoy. This means that it’s inevitable that talented writers are plugging away, doing great work, unable to find the audience they deserve. I’m very good at my job, but I have also been very, very lucky. So cast your nets wide, as readers, and please check some of this stuff out. As always, the ~66% of you who
I usually do my (stupid mental health) walk each morning while listening to a podcast and occasionally checking my phone, but after reading that piece I decided to leave my phone behind this morning. It was boring and very pleasant. Often the podcast I listen to duels with the thoughts I have pop up while walking (to the extent I have to rewind the pod because my thoughts caused me to miss something) so it was nice to have only one audio track in my head.
Looking forward to digging through this list. I’ve found a lot of great stuff from these subscriber posts so far. Grateful to be included—thank you for your work.
That nationalism, broadly defined, is always a bad thing, and corrupts Christianity (and, maybe, vice versa? He never says) for reasons ... somehow? In some way?
Just a reminder that nationalism and Christianity are neither inherently friendly nor even necessarily hostile.
Nationalism is simply a (admittedly limited) solution to a certain set of problems, and Christianity is as valid a set of premise for a nationalist solution as any of the others thrown out there over the millennia.
Nationalism is the scandalous notion that a people - however defined - will never truly control their destiny without an actual to call their own.
It solves the same problems that Thomas Jefferson, Mohandas Gandhi, Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela thought it would solve.
And no, nationalism is not a panacea, or a one size fits all solution. But it solves what Lenin's "national question" (just not in the way the Bolsheviks imagined it, obviously).
I'm seeing a kind of bluriness between nation and nationalism and ethnonationalism in the examples you gave. I could be wrong but would like to believe that a nation can prosper (and the citizens can "control their destiny" as you put it) w/out becoming nationalistic. It can welcome immigrants, engage in fair trade (actual fair trade, not NAFTA-style fair trade) with other nations, refrain from pillaging and attacking other nations and respecting their sovereignty. And domestically, it can be egalitarian with respect to religion, race, gender, etc. So the problem, as I see it, with Christian nationalism, is that it presumes that the observance of Christianity is what will make the nation thrive.
The reason the left ties itself into knots now over "nationalism" when it never did before is precisely because of Donald Trump. Before that, nationalism was explicitly understood to be a Good Thing among the left, because of Malcolm X, Gandhi and Mandela. Surely, if nationalism was good enough as a project for them, we needn't feel guilty about anyone else adopting it, right?
After Trump, of course, came the freakout - THIS IS BAD NOW.
Can nationalist projects based on religion go awry? I think this is less a question for Christians in America at first glance than it is for India and Pakistan. And I urge anyone to think carefully about automatically saying that was all bad either.
I wrote about what it means to experience those brief, transcendent moments that are true and right and authentic. It's a bit woo-woo, but I gave it a shot.
Very sorry man, it happens every time. Switching to a Google Form should eliminate the problem but I will rectify this with a link in the newsletter soon.
I picked one at random, supposedly about Ponzi schemes by an Alex Ile and it turned out to be an absolutely unhinged anti-vax COVID denying anti-Netflix(!?) rant. I enjoyed it very much, if perhaps not for the reasons the author intended.
Jesus H. Christ, Freddie! How do you read through the (likely) massive number of submissions to winnow it down to this still huge list of excellent articles. Do you even sleep at night? Well, anyway, thanks for your superhuman effort. These are outstanding.
I'm working my way through and so far the main thing I've heard from all the essays is that wokeness is the cause of every problem we have and the main thing I've learned is that writing something interesting is much harder than people think
George Menz. Loved it. You have my attention. Already on my third essay.
Benjamin Smith. I am an artist. I love art, particularly painting. Creating it, looking at it, talking about it, reading about it; one of the great joys of my life. The problem is that executing any of these things is extremely difficult to do without coming across like a total schmuck. (See the first sentence of this paragraph for all the evidence you need). I’m not sure this essay was quite successful, though I appreciated the effort. Keep at it.
Joe Mayall. Oh boy. To me, a devout centrist, this reads like someone showing me their 43% score on a true/false test and bragging about all the questions they got right. After reading this essay, I was astonished to find a bright red MAGA hat had magically appeared on my head. No thank you!!
Yes - I found it really moving. I’m going to think on it for a long time, and maybe even act on it.
I usually do my (stupid mental health) walk each morning while listening to a podcast and occasionally checking my phone, but after reading that piece I decided to leave my phone behind this morning. It was boring and very pleasant. Often the podcast I listen to duels with the thoughts I have pop up while walking (to the extent I have to rewind the pod because my thoughts caused me to miss something) so it was nice to have only one audio track in my head.
Looking forward to digging through this list. I’ve found a lot of great stuff from these subscriber posts so far. Grateful to be included—thank you for your work.
Andrew Berg's essay is a hilarious, and depressing, example of starting with a premise and working backwards.
However, I can hardly fault him given the space in which Good White Men are allowed to work in on social media, including Substack.
I liked Andrew's article. Can you explain what you mean by "starting with a premise and working backwards?"
That nationalism, broadly defined, is always a bad thing, and corrupts Christianity (and, maybe, vice versa? He never says) for reasons ... somehow? In some way?
Just a reminder that nationalism and Christianity are neither inherently friendly nor even necessarily hostile.
Nationalism is simply a (admittedly limited) solution to a certain set of problems, and Christianity is as valid a set of premise for a nationalist solution as any of the others thrown out there over the millennia.
Thx for explaining your thoughts. How do you define nationalism, and what problems do you see it solving?
Nationalism is the scandalous notion that a people - however defined - will never truly control their destiny without an actual to call their own.
It solves the same problems that Thomas Jefferson, Mohandas Gandhi, Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela thought it would solve.
And no, nationalism is not a panacea, or a one size fits all solution. But it solves what Lenin's "national question" (just not in the way the Bolsheviks imagined it, obviously).
I'm seeing a kind of bluriness between nation and nationalism and ethnonationalism in the examples you gave. I could be wrong but would like to believe that a nation can prosper (and the citizens can "control their destiny" as you put it) w/out becoming nationalistic. It can welcome immigrants, engage in fair trade (actual fair trade, not NAFTA-style fair trade) with other nations, refrain from pillaging and attacking other nations and respecting their sovereignty. And domestically, it can be egalitarian with respect to religion, race, gender, etc. So the problem, as I see it, with Christian nationalism, is that it presumes that the observance of Christianity is what will make the nation thrive.
The reason the left ties itself into knots now over "nationalism" when it never did before is precisely because of Donald Trump. Before that, nationalism was explicitly understood to be a Good Thing among the left, because of Malcolm X, Gandhi and Mandela. Surely, if nationalism was good enough as a project for them, we needn't feel guilty about anyone else adopting it, right?
After Trump, of course, came the freakout - THIS IS BAD NOW.
Can nationalist projects based on religion go awry? I think this is less a question for Christians in America at first glance than it is for India and Pakistan. And I urge anyone to think carefully about automatically saying that was all bad either.
Thank you Freddie! Looking forward to reading all of these. Thanks for including my piece 🙏 Bram
Ah! Thank you Freddie for including my piece, I've opened a million tabs and can't wait to read all this stuff.
Hi, just commenting here to re-up my submission that appears to have been omitted.
Nigel Writes a Blog, On Seeing One's Self, Authentically
https://nigelcantwrite.substack.com/p/thoughts-on-what-it-means-to-authentically
I wrote about what it means to experience those brief, transcendent moments that are true and right and authentic. It's a bit woo-woo, but I gave it a shot.
Very sorry man, it happens every time. Switching to a Google Form should eliminate the problem but I will rectify this with a link in the newsletter soon.
I picked one at random, supposedly about Ponzi schemes by an Alex Ile and it turned out to be an absolutely unhinged anti-vax COVID denying anti-Netflix(!?) rant. I enjoyed it very much, if perhaps not for the reasons the author intended.
Ooh, thanks for including me! I am excited to dig into the rest of this treasure chest of links.
Amod Sandhya Lele, I absolutely LOVED your piece and learned so much.
🤭
Jesus H. Christ, Freddie! How do you read through the (likely) massive number of submissions to winnow it down to this still huge list of excellent articles. Do you even sleep at night? Well, anyway, thanks for your superhuman effort. These are outstanding.
I'm working my way through and so far the main thing I've heard from all the essays is that wokeness is the cause of every problem we have and the main thing I've learned is that writing something interesting is much harder than people think
muchas gracias, Freddie. Appreciate the link
I’ve read three so far:
George Menz. Loved it. You have my attention. Already on my third essay.
Benjamin Smith. I am an artist. I love art, particularly painting. Creating it, looking at it, talking about it, reading about it; one of the great joys of my life. The problem is that executing any of these things is extremely difficult to do without coming across like a total schmuck. (See the first sentence of this paragraph for all the evidence you need). I’m not sure this essay was quite successful, though I appreciated the effort. Keep at it.
Joe Mayall. Oh boy. To me, a devout centrist, this reads like someone showing me their 43% score on a true/false test and bragging about all the questions they got right. After reading this essay, I was astonished to find a bright red MAGA hat had magically appeared on my head. No thank you!!
Thank you for sharing! Means a lot. Hope women reading your substack especially can find some validation in this.
Really great stuff here. Thanks for continuing to do this.