Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah

and don't ever be the first to stop clapping

Endorsed:

Walter Kirn @walterkirn

We are led by such preposterous figures, like no one you ever see at home, in life. They insist on inflicting on us such bloated theater & they seem not to know how false it all appears. They bluster & strut among the marble columns, waving, saluting. Honoring the lie.

This will be my final transmission to the starfleet before we spend the holidays threatening our families with our terrifying unvaccinated bodies. (Personal note to the child’s grandmother: rainbow cookies.) I hesitate to say any of this, because it’s December 22 and none of us should be thinking about the grotesqueries of the political and media classes, but it’s been a busy week for them. I started writing here a little more than a year ago, and have argued since the beginning that our notional leadership classes have developed a set of ritual behaviors that are entirely severed from any form of reality you’ll ever see in your own daily life. (Dana Loesch: “You can’t run a country you’ve never been to.”)

And so here’s one of the least subtle court eunuchs with a message about ritual obedience:

Michael Beschloss @BeschlossDC

For any Members of Congress who refused to clap for Zelenskyy, we need to know from them exactly why.

I wish I could replicate the awkward burst of nervous laughter that came out of me at the moment that I saw this message. The policing of performative applause in a formal political setting is so obviously a theme of totalitarian societies that…well, that Chief Eunuch Michael Beschloss can be counted on to not notice what he’s just done. I didn’t get a harumph outta that guy, he said, from deep inside a cloud of obtuse self-regard.

“They insist on inflicting on us such bloated theater & they seem not to know how false it all appears.” The Ukrainian president made it all the way to the Capitol in his combat fatigues, doncha know, and was greeted with a rapturous standing ovation by members of Congress, seen here in this actual footage:

Are there any normal human beings who don’t taste bile when they see this performance? And, Thomas Massie and Rand Paul aside, are there any normal human beings left inside the Beltway?

The Post Millennial @TPostMillennial

Congress gives Zelensky a standing ovation as he arrives.

“Squee! Squee! Squee!” they explained, shaking their pom poms in a dignified ritual of state.

Our political systems select for awkward, not-quite-human-sounding, vaguely reptilian social performers, who can be counted on to not ever notice themselves:

Dr. Theresa Tam @CPHO_Canada

Parents and Caregivers, I had a great chat with Mrs. Claus about things we can do to make this a happy and healthy holiday season. Here’s the scoop from the #NorthPole:

I survived Lori Lightfoot’s appearance as ‘Rona Destroyer, and I thought the shock to my psychological immune system would last for a few years, but I was not prepared for the spectacle of Angelo Codevilla’s performative ruling class attempting to simulate the human spectacle of being festive. There’s a Christmas video online of Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer offering her holiday thoughts, with a holiday-themed song about public health, but let us back away from this thought in silent and link-free horror. Take this as a substitute:

Endless falsehood, endless off-key performance, endless disconnection. In the strongest possible terms, I encourage you to read the oncologist Vinay Prasad’s recent essay on the state of his discipline:

The Tragedy of Oncology

This is an essay about every practical discipline at the end of 2022: “The tragedy in oncology is that we have dismantled the system that is meant to tell these two apart (real innovation from pseudo-innovation). Almost no one understands the problem, even few care about fixing it, and instead most hope to fatten themselves of the riches, while the opportunity exists. Meanwhile, we have entirely lost sight of the goal — the purpose of our task.” That’s a description of the federal government, of the regulatory agencies, giant corporations, academic institutions, and a good number of our state and local governments. It’s our institutional condition. We have a long series of declining systems, things in real life that work less and less well, while the performance of the ritual class is we need to question the members of Congress who failed to clap.

In the face of failing systems and broken institutions, go do Christmas. Fall back on homes and families, draw real people close, and we’ll try to find a path out of decline when 2023 rolls in. Thanks for reading.