Ask Nathan Anything: Quarantine Edition

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Shoot.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'll bite:

As an S avatar, how do you interpret the non-democratic socialist powers of past and (perhaps) present? While acknowledging that your view of foreign policy is probably outside of the first standard deviation from the mainstream in either direction, how do you as an S avatar and small-d democrat believe we should (have) treat(ed) with them?

I don't approve of any non-democratic governments, regardless of their ideological orientation. I think that the United States should probably respect such governments as members of the international community in the basic sense, but I believe it's morally wrong to embrace them as close partners.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Are you strongly religious? I am picturing every mother's dream: A 21 yo virgin with a nice haircut.

You seem very young but with a thread of conservative intelligence from maybe a strong religious upbringing.

You're right about some parts of this assessment but wrong about others! I'm an observant Catholic (and, yes, a permavirgin, albeit not a kissless one), but I'm 27 and I came to Christianity from a Generic Theist family background as a teenager. Opinions on my haircut vary.

What do you expect to happen in the next Japanese general election?

LDP landslide because There Is No One Else , just like the last five or six nationwide elections in Japan. The revisionist bloc's seat count should get chipped away at by at least a little, though (as, indeed, happened in last year's upper house election).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Whose ban did you think was most justified in your time on atlas

opebo and Matthew.

In opebo's case, the issue was less that he was a uniquely bad person by Atlas poster standards (although he was) and more that he was what we'd recognize today as a serial thread derailer, somewhat along the lines of Fuzzy Bear, only worse because almost all of the hobbyhorses that opebo derailed threads with were morally repugnant in themselves. In Matthew's case, not only was he a bona fide neo-Nazi with a five-digit post count on Stormfront, he was stupid enough to volunteer this information about himself in a Forum Community thread. He would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for his meddling oversharing!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Top ten hottest saints?

In no particular order:

Teresa of Ávila (was noted during her lifetime for being physically attractive)
Francis of Assisi (ditto, although he wrecked both his health and his appearance eventually)
Rose of Lima (ditto, although she deliberately wrecked her appearance to deter male attention)
Sebastian (needs no introduction if you're at all familiar with LGBT Catholic history)
Marie-Azélie Guérin (if you have a Victorian fashion/corset kink)
John Paul II (very good-looking as a young man, even though as Pope he looked like Jack Nicholson)
Æthelthryth (getting married twice and persuading her husband to respect her vow of perpetual virginity both times? Queen of the swerve!)
John Henry Newman (lots of good-looking portraits from when he was younger)
Seaxburh of Ely (an alternate spelling of her name is literally "Sexburga")
Bartolomea Capitanio (not a ton to say about her, she was just "my type" appearance-wise)

Opinion of Christina Aguilera’s Genie in a Bottle?

Catchy!

Any interest in Jewish ethics?

Lots of interest. I've read whole books on the subject, mostly from Modern Orthodox or Conservative perspectives. Buber and Heschel are the Jewish ethicists I've read who are closest to being well-known among people who aren't theology types.

Do you believe the witchcraft allegations against Christine O’Donnell?

Hell yeah I do.

Regardless of your answer to the previous question, should O’Donnell have been burned at the stake?

Yes, but not for that reason.

Opinion of the tv show Gilmore Girls?

An absolute delight for about four and a half seasons, took a nosedive afterwards, the reunion specials were an abomination.

Does your family know about Ayelet Shaked?

Ayelet Shaked is a part of my family. (joking)

1. Favorite Anglican philosopher?

Either George Berkeley or George P. Grant, depending on whether or not I'm in the mood to overlook the things I don't like about the latter.

2. Favorite Catholic philosopher?

Massive category but, defining "Catholic" broadly but "philosopher" narrowly, probably either Pseudo-Dionysius (whom, in grad school, I insisted on calling "Denise" because there's no way to actually prove he was male) or Erasmus.

3. Favorite secular philosopher?

Hume.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

How would you compare New England of a century ago compared to New England today?

Lots of similarities, lots of differences. It's still a region with a deeply moralistic political tradition, but no longer moralistic in a specifically religious way. It's still a very urban region--often entailing pretty unpleasant cultural patterns as part of how it's urbanized--but it has many fewer people living in cramped tenements and many more living in either "leafy, liberal, and loaded" suburbs or run-down row houses and duplexes. It still thinks of itself as superior to the rest of the country in what amounts to a moral way, but that sense of superiority is based on new issues now. It's still in love with moderate or pseudo-moderate Yankee Republicans beyond all reason when it comes to statewide offices, but no longer when it comes to federal offices. The forests that were all clear-cut in colonial and antebellum days grew back, then started getting cut down again. Younger New Englanders lost their accents, and in some cases developed new ones. The moral authority of the Catholic Church in the region collapsed pretty dramatically after the events of 2002, but much of New England still "feels" more Catholic than anywhere else east of the Mississippi. Lots of Puerto Ricans moved in and some Irish-Americans and swamp Yankees died off or moved out. All in all, life goes on.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What does the future look like for "Yankee" identity and culture?

Bleak, although "Yankee" aesthetic--hay fields, fall colors, apple pie, gun-toting hippies--is as robust as ever.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What would you say is the single biggest influencer on the accents of New England, and what secondary influences exist?

Western New England English, which is what I speak, is basically a slightly more conservative form of Inland Northern (although my speech does also contain a few quirks picked up when I was living in Boston). So it's influenced by what's going on further west--say, in Upstate New York and the Great Lakes--and, of course, by the monoculturalizing effect of nationwide and worldwide media. My elderly aunts have much more conservative versions of the same accent that sound a lot more like what you think of as "a New England accent" (similar to, as much as I hate to say this, the way Peter and Lois talk in Family Guy).

Eastern New England English (your classic Boston, Mainer, or "Kennedy" accent) I'm less sure about, although my suspicion is that it has some of the same extremely conservative features that have been observed in much of the South.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Would you consider joining AAD?

Absolutely not.

I mean, speaking of Matthew in my opinion the issue was not technically that he was a Stormfront poster, but that he was an unreformed Stormfront poster. Hypothetically I imagine Atlas would  welcome someone who had genuinely changed their ways and what not.

In fact, had he not gone on a rampage and melted down I could see him remaining; as I don't recall him ever posting overtly or even closetly white supremacist content on Atlas (then again I pretty much knew him only because of Atlasia, not sure if he was worse elsewhere). He would be totally shunned and ignored, but it's not hard at all for me to imagine an scenario where Matthew gets to stay; or at least one where his ban would be controversial.

Sanchez is a reformed or semi-reformed white nationalist and he's a poster in good standing (although plenty of people probably wish he wasn't), so you're probably right about this. Regardless, Matthew was unreformed, and he did melt down after admitting to it. So he's gone and he deserves to be gone.

Since the topic of old Yankee identity has come up, I must ask whether you have read the book The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America by E. Digby Baltzell originally published in 1964. This is one of the many, many books sitting on my shelf that I have yet to get into.

I haven't! I've heard of it, though, and I'd like to. Another book on "old New England" culture and identity formation I've been meaning to read is The Flowering of New England by Van Wyck Brooks, which focuses on the antebellum period.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Are you strongly religious? I am picturing every mother's dream: A 21 yo virgin with a nice haircut.

You seem very young but with a thread of conservative intelligence from maybe a strong religious upbringing.

You're right about some parts of this assessment but wrong about others! I'm an observant Catholic (and, yes, a permavirgin, albeit not a kissless one), but I'm 27 and I came to Christianity from a Generic Theist family background as a teenager. Opinions on my haircut vary.

What do you expect to happen in the next Japanese general election?

LDP landslide because There Is No One Else , just like the last five or six nationwide elections in Japan. The revisionist bloc's seat count should get chipped away at by at least a little, though (as, indeed, happened in last year's upper house election).

I have to add honesty of 10/10 to your character because no one makes that stuff up.

Great stuff. Very admirable.

[insert Superintendent Chalmers quote here]

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Are you a communist?

My answer to this is basically what somebody said about Bernie Sanders in an "Is Bernie a Marxist?" thread a while back. I do think Marx had a point with a lot of the descriptive claims he made (base and superstructure, surplus value, his account of primitive accumulation, etc.), but if you're asking if I agree with Marxist-Leninist or what we commonly think of as "commie" policy goals or moral precepts, no, of course I don't.

Opinion of Oliver Cromwell?

Big-league HP who turned early democratic and even early socialist movements into a tinpot military dictatorship and committed genocide in Ireland. The sort of leader who, if alive today, would parade down the main boulevard of a conquered city in an open-topped jeep wearing sunglasses.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Have you seen Avatar: The Last Airbender? What did you think?

I watched it in its first airing on TV when I was in middle/early high school and I rewatched it with friends a couple of years ago. I think it's great. As a writer, I've always noted that it has some wonderful teleplays; I still use "oh no; what a nightmare!" and "I am a fan of [X]" in everyday conversation.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Another question I just thought of: who and what are your favorite composers/works of the Catholic choral tradition? I like Palestrina, Byrd, and pretty much all the other Renaissance polyphonists. My favorite works are probably Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli and Allegri’s Miserere mei.

When I was in grad school I had a flatmate who was studying jazz piano at one of the music conservatories in Boston. He'd occasionally bring women back to his room (presumably to f**k, but I never actually heard that happening, so who knows), put on "Miserere mei", and get stoned with them. So that's what I associate Allegri with. It's divinely beautiful, of course, but still.

Palestrina, Byrd, et al. are wonderful, obviously, but my taste in polyphony trends slightly earlier. There's an all-women early music group called Anonymous 4 that does a lot of medieval polyphony and I often listen to one of their albums, An English Ladymass. As the title implies, it's a collection of late medieval Marian pieces, most of them in Latin but a few in Middle English. Here is my favorite from that album.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What would you say is the single biggest influencer on the accents of New England, and what secondary influences exist?

Western New England English, which is what I speak, is basically a slightly more conservative form of Inland Northern (although my speech does also contain a few quirks picked up when I was living in Boston). So it's influenced by what's going on further west--say, in Upstate New York and the Great Lakes--and, of course, by the monoculturalizing effect of nationwide and worldwide media. My elderly aunts have much more conservative versions of the same accent that sound a lot more like what you think of as "a New England accent" (similar to, as much as I hate to say this, the way Peter and Lois talk in Family Guy).

Eastern New England English (your classic Boston, Mainer, or "Kennedy" accent) I'm less sure about, although my suspicion is that it has some of the same extremely conservative features that have been observed in much of the South.

I forgot to mention that within Eastern New England English there's a north-south spectrum; if you're used to Maine accents it's hard not to hear the difference with people from Rhode Island, and vice versa. The Rhode Island accent in my experience is pretty close to the accent I mentioned my aunts (Springfielders) having, so perhaps we could tentatively call it a "smaller New England cities" accent as of 1950 or 1960 or so.

(There's nominally a difference between "Southwestern New England English" and "Vermont English" too, but personally, I have trouble picking up on it. I'm told I speak the former.)

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

did the accent of western MS and Vermont change in any major way due to migration from New York City and other areas?

It became less pronounced. Since it's at heart a more conservative form of Inland Northern, it was "sanded down" a bit due to in-migration from areas where Inland Northern was spoken. (Of course, there are also New Englanders who straight-up have pronounced accents from other places, like how Bernie Sanders's accent is pure midcentury Brooklyn to this day.)

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Did you ever get around to watching Legend of the Galactic Heroes/Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu? If so, do you have thoughts?

I watched LoGH years and years ago. It's awesome. I didn't like everything it did thematically--the "benevolent despot" stuff with Reinhard (which is key to the whole show), certain proto-New Atheist vibes in its portrayal of religion--but it's a really well-done, smart space epic.

Some great memes/reaction images, too. This one's my favorite:

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

did the accent of western MS and Vermont change in any major way due to migration from New York City and other areas?

It became less pronounced. Since it's at heart a more conservative form of Inland Northern, it was "sanded down" a bit due to in-migration from areas where Inland Northern was spoken. (Of course, there are also New Englanders who straight-up have pronounced accents from other places, like how Bernie Sanders's accent is pure midcentury Brooklyn to this day.)

Where would you find a good audio example of the speak of, say, mid-1950s VT?

Here is an hour-long, shamelessly hagiographic documentary about George Aiken, which includes archive footage of Aiken and people who knew him speaking about his life and times. (The narrator also has a somewhat old-school accent.)

Do you notice that a lot of animes seem to have “beta” main characters? And if so, why do you think this is?

It makes them easier to relate to for the typical hardcore Japanese anime fan, who is not a socially adept person even to the limited extent that the typical hardcore Western anime fan is. (And yes, I'm including myself in that last remark.)

Also, are the integration of Western references—Jazz, Shakespeare, the Bible—in Japan-produced anime’s the result of a deliberate marketing strategy, or an organic cultural assimilation of Western works?

Mostly the latter, with a few notable exceptions. The most famous exception is probably the omnipresent Jewish and Christian imagery in Neon Genesis Evangelion and its various spinoffs and elseworlds, which by all accounts was thrown in to create an atmosphere of ~cool foreign occultism~ the way a Western show might throw in mandalas or something. Jazz in particular has been fully assimilated into the Japanese music scene (to the extent that when I was in Japan I actually got sick of hearing so much jazz over intercoms and store radios; even lots of Japanese classical and soundtrack composition--Hisaishi, Sakamoto--shows a jazz influence), and some of Shakespeare's and even Dostoyevsky's more #iconic plots and characters are quite well-known in Japan.

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Update: I watched the entirety of it. Do you personally think it is incorrect at any point? Should I take it at face value?

I admire Aiken myself (fun fact: we share a hometown, and I knew some of the Putney old-timers in the video when I was a kid), so somebody with a more critical overall view of him would probably be a better person to ask this question. (ETA: It does go into his opposition to Lend-Lease, which is my main problem with him.) I didn't notice any factual errors, no.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Also, are the integration of Western references—Jazz, Shakespeare, the Bible—in Japan-produced anime’s the result of a deliberate marketing strategy, or an organic cultural assimilation of Western works?

Mostly the latter, with a few notable exceptions. The most famous exception is probably the omnipresent Jewish and Christian imagery in Neon Genesis Evangelion and its various spinoffs and elseworlds, which by all accounts was thrown in to create an atmosphere of ~cool foreign occultism~ the way a Western show might throw in mandalas or something. Jazz in particular has been fully assimilated into the Japanese music scene (to the extent that when I was in Japan I actually got sick of hearing so much jazz over intercoms and store radios; even lots of Japanese classical and soundtrack composition--Hisaishi, Sakamoto--shows a jazz influence), and some of Shakespeare's and even Dostoyevsky's more #iconic plots and characters are quite well-known in Japan.

Yeah, NGE was one of my main references for that question, but also the jazz of Cowboy Bebop (the person who introduced me to it said it was made by "Westaboos") and Shakespeare references found elsewhere.

The thing about Cowboy Bebop is that its creator, Watanabe Shin'ichiro, is ideologically opposed to the nativist and ethnocentric aspects of Japanese society, and makes a conscious effort to depict culturally and racially diverse or "blended" worlds in his work (CB, Samurai Champloo, the more recent Carole & Tuesday, etc.). This is a minority view in Japan--mainstream opinion in the country is actively proud of the ethnocentrism and perceived homogeneity--but he's not totally alone in it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What have you changed your view on that you wouldn’t have expected to change your view?

Growing up and even into my early twenties I assumed I'd spend my whole life as a highly partisan Democrat. At some point between 2015 and 2017 I realized that the Democratic Party was no longer the "party of the little guy" that I grew up with my family and family friends teaching me it was. (I don't expect I'll ever abandon the belief that the Republicans are way worse, though.)

I've also adopted more nuanced and critical views of several individuals whom I hero-worshipped when I was younger, both people I know (my mother; my uncle) and public or historical figures (Bernie Sanders; FDR; various Christian literary figures).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Also, are the integration of Western references—Jazz, Shakespeare, the Bible—in Japan-produced anime’s the result of a deliberate marketing strategy, or an organic cultural assimilation of Western works?

Mostly the latter, with a few notable exceptions. The most famous exception is probably the omnipresent Jewish and Christian imagery in Neon Genesis Evangelion and its various spinoffs and elseworlds, which by all accounts was thrown in to create an atmosphere of ~cool foreign occultism~ the way a Western show might throw in mandalas or something. Jazz in particular has been fully assimilated into the Japanese music scene (to the extent that when I was in Japan I actually got sick of hearing so much jazz over intercoms and store radios; even lots of Japanese classical and soundtrack composition--Hisaishi, Sakamoto--shows a jazz influence), and some of Shakespeare's and even Dostoyevsky's more #iconic plots and characters are quite well-known in Japan.

Yeah, NGE was one of my main references for that question, but also the jazz of Cowboy Bebop (the person who introduced me to it said it was made by "Westaboos") and Shakespeare references found elsewhere.

The thing about Cowboy Bebop is that its creator, Watanabe Shin'ichiro, is ideologically opposed to the nativist and ethnocentric aspects of Japanese society, and makes a conscious effort to depict culturally and racially diverse or "blended" worlds in his work (CB, Samurai Champloo, the more recent Carole & Tuesday, etc.). This is a minority view in Japan--mainstream opinion in the country is actively proud of the ethnocentrism and perceived homogeneity--but he's not totally alone in it.

That's pretty interesting, especially given the aforementioned apparent organic infiltration by Western culture.

An infiltration that was of course itself fostered and implemented (starting in the third quarter of the nineteenth century) by tastemakers in Japan with various degrees of ideological commitment to Westernization.

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what is your opinion on Miyazaki, the famous anime producer?

Miyazaki's one of the greats. His movies are uniformly fantastic (sort of the Hank Aaron of anime directors; the consistency is even more impressive than the quality of each individual film) and I appreciate that in recent years he's been making more of an effort to foster younger directors so that Ghibli and the Ghibli mindset can eventually outlive him. He's also on the right side of most of the public issues--feminism, the environment, war--facing Japan and its place in the world. Not much of a family man by all accounts (his son, also an anime director, reveres his father's work but doesn't have much good to say about his parenting), but that's sadly pretty typical for Japanese men with successful careers.

Why did you become more critical of Sanders?

Frankly, it's just because I know things about politics (and the moral compromises that go into politics) now, whereas when I was a kid Sanders was just my wildly popular Congressman who was known for caring about the little guy. I also just don't like the 2020 model as much as the 2016 model. I don't think Bernie's succeeded at bringing in new people the way he banked on doing and I think he's started to talk like someone whose popularity has gone to his head. He's still far better than 95% of other American politicians, though, and I did vote for him in the Massachusetts primary.

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A take of mine is that Bernie Sanders had a better campaign in 2016 than this time around in part because he wasn't a household name outside of Vermont - he's famous there for meeting with and helping constituents, with ordinary people: including small business owners, farmers, workers, all of the people from his days in Burlington.

He understood his own state and local conditions there, he knew everyone and they knew him, he was deeply rooted there (as opposed to a bunch of Brooklyn cargo cult left activists and Online types who latched on to him, especially post-2016).

What do you think? If you anything to add, I'd love to read it.

I think that's exactly right. And I think Vermont recognized that last month, obviously not the point of falling completely out of love with Bernie (I doubt that's possible at this point; Vermont loves its Institutions, of whom he is one), but to the point of...a relatively underwhelming home-state landslide rather than the megatsunami of 2016. "Local boy made good" makes a good story; "local boy gone nationwide", not so much. At least not for the Vermont mind.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Would you consider running for local (or any) office again?

I don't think I have the stomach for an election cycle at this point. Maybe that'll change some day. Recently I've been considering applying for a position on one of the appointed boards in my town like the Historical Commission or the Disability Access Commission.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Can you elaborate on how exactly you envision the relationship between religion and secular authority? To what extent should the State be involved in supporting religious practice (both financially and in terms of special legal protections), and to what extent can the state legislate in ways that might (directly or indirectly) restrict religious practice?

I'm a pretty by-the-book First Amendment "muh basic freedoms" American on most of these questions--no direct organic links between church and state; no attempts on the part of the state to influence religious belief or teaching (this principle leads me to be suspicious of the Johnson Amendment); legal restrictions on religious practices only if it's the view of the vast majority of the population that those practices manifestly imperil individual rights or the public good; no attempts on the part of religious bodies to seek special legal or political favors for themselves (although the idea that people of faith should or even can just ignore our religious beliefs when acting as officeholders or voters is beyond ridiculous). One of the great contributions to world affairs that the neoconservative movement--or rather, an individual who was retroactively associated with the neoconservative movement--did manage to make was John Courtney Murray overcoming the Catholic hierarchy's often-justified suspicion of American politics and culture for long enough to get the traditional American view of freedom of religion legitimated within the Church at Vatican II.

I tend to favor the right to freedom of religion, which is explicitly enumerated in the Constitution, over unenumerated rights against which it's sometimes counterposed, but that's an opinion that stems from my view of the Constitution rather than my ideals about church and state. The vast majority of the time in cases like muh wedding cake or whatever my personal sympathies are with the gay people.

Has your thinking on these issues changed in the past years?

Yes. Between about 2013 and 2017, I was much more receptive to the idea of an organic partnership between the state and religious bodies than I was before or am now. I still don't object to that on a purely theoretical level but a deeper study of history, including Church history, led me to conclude that in practice that is always going to taint religion with the agenda of whatever worldly power structure the religious leaders become implicated in.

Also, on a lighter note, is there any anime that we somehow haven't discussed yet that you'd like to recommend?

Watch Serial Experiments Lain! It's better than sex.