Society

The pandemic is not quite over, but we are getting used to its inconveniences. What disaster will be next? An antibiotic-resistant strain of the bubonic plague? Climate collapse? Coronal mass ejection? Will the next catastrophe be natural — perhaps a massive volcanic eruption, the likes of which we have not seen for more than two centuries, since Tambora in 1815? Or will it be a manmade calamity — nuclear war or a cyberattack? And might we inadvertently descend into a new form of AI-enabled totalitarianism in our efforts to ward off such calamities? To all these potential disasters it is impossible to attach more than made-up probabilities. So what can we do about them? The best answer would be that we should strive to imagine them.

Covid rates are abating just in time for surging gas prices to eclipse the pandemic as our crisis du jour, and people from both sides of the political aisle are crying out in unison: something must be done! The current energy crisis debate consists of a few camps: one group professes that they can’t abide fossil fuels being used at all, while another can’t imagine living without them. The third group makes up the middle of the Venn diagram, and though a paradoxical state of mind, it contains the most members. Choosing a winner from among the prevailing arguments is no simple task.

Last month, President Biden tapped Dr. Eric Lander to be his science advisor and lead a new "war on cancer" initiative. Just five days later, he was unceremoniously dumped. Nominees come and go all the time, of course, yet there was no doubt over Lander's scientific and managerial qualifications. He is a professor of biology at MIT and Harvard University. He was instrumental in steering the Human Genome Project to a point of actual utility, providing detailed genetic maps of heritable diseases, and proceeding from those clues to novel treatments. He is a skilled political operative, hobnobbing with the wealthy and powerful on his way to becoming the president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

On February 25, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, Pope Francis met with Aleksandr Avdeyev, Russia’s ambassador to the Holy See. Yet rather than summoning Mr. Avdeyev to the Vatican, Francis called at the Russian embassy, just two blocks from the Castel Sant’Angelo. The visit was a violation of diplomatic protocol. Heads of state don’t just pop ‘round to the local embassy. Over the next couple of days, it became clear that Francis wouldn’t be paying the same honor to Ukraine’s ambassador. Even more strikingly, Francis refused to condemn Russia for the attack. Vatican-watchers fumed. On February 28, the Vatican’s secretary of state released a video condemning the conflict “unleashed by Russia against Ukraine.

Fox Nation, the online streaming counterpart to Fox News, recently dropped a new investigative series by Maria Bartiromo called Killer Apps. The program digs into the rise of dangerous social media trends, internet addiction, and the facilitation of trafficking via social media. The Spectator World caught up with Bartiromo about her new show. Amber Athey: What was the inspiration behind your deep dive into the dangers of social media? What do you hope to achieve with this investigation?     Maria Bartiromo: One trigger was what appeared to be dangerous "challenges" going viral on social media, such as 'who can swallow the most laundry detergent?' or 'who can tie a belt around your neck and see how long you can stop breathing?

As the pro-life movement in the United States looks with optimism to the very possible overturning of Roe v. Wade by the US Supreme Court later this year, the tide seems to be flowing in a different direction down south. First came Argentina, where the Senate passed a highly contested bill in early 2021 legalizing abortion in the first fourteen weeks of pregnancy. The vote was preceded by months of protests, debate, and even a series of personal pleas from the world’s most famous Argentinean, Pope Francis. In September, Mexico’s Supreme Court struck down abortion bans in two states, effectively paving the way for decriminalization nationwide. Most recently, Colombia effectively legalized abortion in the first twenty-four weeks of pregnancy.

Last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent for Christians in the West. Many of us will give up sweets or video games or online shopping. Some intrepid souls will even give up coffee. I tried that last year, but my priest reminded me that my wife didn’t choose “dealing with a crabby husband” as her penance, so I found another penance. It’s a little different for our brothers in the East. Their season of fasting begins on Meatfare Sunday and ends on Pascha (Easter). They’ll give up meat… then dairy… then fish…then wine... then oil. They’ll go from eating three meals to two, and then from two to one — and their one meal is basically just a peanut butter sandwich and carrot sticks. The most devout won’t eat at all from Holy Thursday until Easter Sunday.

Christopher Hitchens, allergic to the idea that secular regimes might actually be more bloodthirsty than religious ones, infamously attempted to blame the atrocities of Stalin’s Soviet Union on the Russian Orthodox Church. It was an end run worthy of the NFL Hall of Fame, and no doubt Hitch would be attempting something similar if he’d lived to see Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. He would be wrong, but as Putin fights to reclaim territory once held by the Soviet and tsarist empires, the church appears to be conducting its own parallel campaign of spiritual imperialism. There’s little doubt Putin sees the church as politically useful.

Deep in the gloomy last days of winter, Ash Wednesday once again descends upon us. Dutiful Catholics worldwide, soaked with enough sugar and spirits from Mardi Gras to last forty days and forty nights, will drag themselves to church to have their hungover heads smudged with ashes and be reminded that “You are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” Ah, Lent. As a Catholic myself, this time of year always fills me with mixed emotions, sort of like going to the gym: I know it’s good for me, I know I’ll feel better afterward, but the Good Lord knows I’m no saint…let’s get on with it already! Lent is a season that bewilders a lot of non-Catholics. Fasting? Abstaining from meat? Almsgiving? It's 2022, guys.

Over New Year’s, I came down with the Omicron. Or as I put it to my wife, civilization as I knew it almost came crashing down around me. Why are men so bad at being sick? I ask that fully aware that even saying the word “men” is enough these days to get you tossed off a college campus by a mob of tots screaming about how they identify as Chevy Impalas. The fun and flirty battle of the sexes has given way to an assault on the very concept of sex itself. And patriarchal oppressors versus birthing people just doesn’t have that same snappy “Summer Nights” ring to it. Yet even allowing for the ongoing abolition of gender, the difference between how men and women get sick is one of the few sex distinctions we’re still allowed to notice.

The introduction of body cameras as a staple of the police uniform has been a transformative piece of tech. After just eight years of their use, it’s hard to argue against the impact of body cams in stemming police misconduct. According to a recent study by the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab and the Council on Criminal Justice’s Task Force on Policing, civilian complaints about police misconduct are down 17 percent since the introduction of body cams. Physical encounters, whether fatal or non-fatal, are down 10 percent. It was a struggle to get here. Many cops said that complaint statistics did not justify the indignity of policing the police taping every interaction they have with the public. A vocal minority countered: “If everything is so cool, we will see it.

I live in a blue city in a blue state, meaning I can't so much as walk to the CVS without seeing a certain sign in half a dozen front yards. You know the one: "IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE: BLACK LIVES MATTER, SCIENCE IS REAL, WAR IS PEACE, MY LIFE FOR AIUR" and whatever the hell else they're on about these days. The sign has become so commonplace, so utterly oblivious to its own irony, that it feels less like a show of defiance than a profession of faith. Think of it as the left's very own Nicene Creed, the statement of belief that Catholics recite every time they go to mass. One imagines a congregation of the pink-haired standing in pews: "I believe in Science, and in xis only son Dr. Fauci, creator of BIPOCs and TERFs...