I’m still up in northern Minnesota after two weeks of working from a campsite, on my way back this weekend. My lawn needed mowing when I left, and I know of no one who might have mowed it. And with the temps falling, it’s time to winterize my camper (until Big Sur, California, in Jan/Feb/March), which isn’t built for four seasons, so the heater has been busy as the temps here have dipped below freezing a few nights. And although I’m not a big NFL fan, the Vikings vs. Lions game on Sunday seems culturally important if you live in the Midwest.
Recently I had a thing published in the Star Tribune about fall colors titled “The call of fall reminds us to take a moment.” It’s pretty hard-hitting stuff, as you can probably imagine by the title. And then even more recently I had something published in Minnpost about politics of all things (which I’d titled “We are a hat and meme society,” but newspapers like to change titles to be more literal). I rarely write about politics, and frankly the last eight years or so have broken me, changed me politically, from someone who was fairly studious about politics to someone who is resentful, bitter, and tired of politics.
In any case, I’m pretty happy with what I wrote there, even though it has its share of platitudes and wishful thinking. Coincidentally, a few days after I wrote it The New Yorker published something on a similar topic that went much deeper and offers some real insight into the state of political beliefs/opinions in America and our justifications for holding them; it feels like a window into the psychological basis behind the cleaving of our democracy.
There are some real gems in that New Yorker piece, like “We desperately want a stable sense of ourselves, yet our views are profoundly unstable. What this adds up to is the near-total subordination of political discourse to group identities.” And also, “We’re far more likely to try seeing ourselves as the good guys; we might accomplish this most efficiently by dehumanizing those who have accused us of being bad.” It’s a wonderful read, and there’s even a book about the same topic, but I don’t pay more than $10 for books, so I’ll have to wait to read it until 2026 when the price comes down and we are all smoldering piles of bones.
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