The day's minutiae, the big picture, and our society's need for a good laugh

I have a confession to make.

I don't brim 24 / 7 with inspirations for LITD posts.

I love the times when I do, and retrospective has shown the posts composed under that circumstance to be the ones with the most continuing relevance.

This blog, and others like it (the ones I frequently link to), have as a mission keeping a particular vision front and center amidst the constant cats-in-a-pillowcase atmosphere of government, other outposts of public-policy influence, and cultural outposts.

The way it's put here is that the Three Pillars are the starting point.

1.) Free-market economics, which begins with the premise that a good or service is worth what buyer and seller agree that it is worth - period. No other party has any business being involved in that agreement - certainly not government.

2.) An understanding that Western civilization has been a unique blessing to humankind. (Judeo-Christian morality, Greco-Roman model of representative democracy, the great scientific and artistic achievements.)

3.) A foreign policy based on what history tells us about human nature. This plays itself out as our allies knowing we have their backs, our adversaries respecting us, and our enemies fearing us.

I revisit this formulation frequently, checking to see if it omits anything fundamental. I ask myself if recent developments might have revealed some aspect of reality that isn't covered by it. My conclusion: Not so far. Everything currently going on, from US-China back-and-forth trade tariffs, to treating gender dysphoria as just another prerogative of self-inventing individuals, to school shootings, to Trump White House chaos is addressed under one for more of the purposely broad pillars.

But the point of a blog like this is not to scan the day's news for the five most relevant stories and then analyze them in light of the three pillars. That can become a formula real fast, and a boring one at that. 

There is just not something timeless to say every day about Robert Mueller, Stormy Daniels, Senate race prospects in swing states, how family leave might be accomplished in a non-statist way, or the latest nut with a gun bringing horror to some workplace or school.

One must allow oneself some time to periodically step back and see a bigger picture.

Thus it was with delight that I came upon Bill Murchison's piece today at Townhall. He comes to his larger point, excerpted below, by way of discussing the Roseanne reboot and its cultural implications. He then compares and contrasts that show, and reaction to it, with the way All In The Family burst onto the popular-culture scene in the early 1970s, noting that we all had a greater capacity to chuckle at how weird America was becoming. Now we all root for our tribes, with our badges affirming our membership unavoidable situated on our chests.

But Murchison has tied up his observation with a point that is indeed timeless:

Quite a few of us recall an America with a better sense of humor than today's. That isn't saying much, really: today's America has no sense of humor, period.

Back in the early '70s, Carroll O'Connor and crew, in "All in the Family," could kid the pants off a country seriously divided by the standards of the time but ready to laugh about it. Today? Oh, brother. Archie Bunker's heckling of "Meathead," his depreciation of Edith's non-corporate-executive abilities, and his own "woyking-class" way of talking (shouting, really) would bring the alt right and the alt left, plus the #MeToos and a few Tea Partiers, to his doorstep, angry at the presumption of the show.

Yes, angry. Furious! Outraged! That is what the new humorlessness makes us. We didn't used to be humorless. We used to laugh. Shall I tell you why? It was because we had, in ye olden time, a sense of proportion; we agreed, basically, that we're all, without exception, a little bit wacky, some of us more so than others. Imperfect, that was us: no smarter, really, than Archie; no more tolerant and forgiving than Meathead. And willing to admit it, with a grin, or friendly poke in the ribs.

What happened to honest, as differentiated from mocking, laughter? I think a couple of things. Politics got so large and engrossing we set it in the middle of our affairs. Everything's political now, and every political opponent deserves a punch in the jaw or at least a shout of outrage.

So how'd that happen? I think the origin is in large part our slow abandonment of religious faith -- the great human leveler, the guard against pride and self-satisfaction, and thus against hostility to folk as batty as ourselves. A society with suspicious eyes trained on others rather than on the Kingdom is by definition a jealous society, an angry society, with no time for Archie Bunker but plenty for the mockers and railers who followed him.

From Thursday through Sunday, I'll be absent. I'm participating in something - a retreat, I guess is the best way to put it - that I'm pretty sure is going to bolster an elevated perspective. I'll have more to say after I've had the experience.

But as the time approaches to go to the event, I can already feel myself looking at the passing parade and seeing that the reason it's so utterly un-fun to watch is that something elemental is missing.

Most post-Americans - indeed, most post-Westerners - now view Christians - and practicing, believing Jews - as escapist weirdos ill-equipped to address the pressing issues of the day, but I contend, as does Murchison, that what they know is the key ingredient to our healing.

I want some art and some laughter back in my life and in our culture. I want to say and hear some utterances that aren't immediately subjected to ideological scrutiny. I want a society in which both sides in an argument follow a line of reason to its conclusion without fail.

We can't get there on our own. We must appeal to Him who so desperately wants to see it all finally united.

What's that saying? The solution to a problem is not going to be found on the level on which the problem was caused.

That's what's missing.