People don’t know who I am. But more than enough people know who Roy Edroso is.
I sorta came to him by way of his blog (how could you forget a band name like his?), and now he is a Substacker, which I am happy to pay for even if I don’t have the time to read him every day. He’s kind of like I am, wandering into musings about culture and politics, but he’s also a master satirist and deep thinker. He even writes short micro-plays.
I’m OK with satire in person, but I don’t have the discipline to write it. So I encourage you to support his Substack while I clean my mess here. Here’s his latest about polling and how no one knows how to interpret them and that different news outlets will spin the numbers.
The Wall Street Journal and the National Opinion Research Center did a poll that has rattled some people. The Journal did its bit in that regard with a story about the poll luridly entitled “America Pulls Back From Values That Once Defined It, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds.”
For our present purposes, the significance of the Shared Suck is that, while in election season and at the fringes it leads to conflict, in quieter times and in quieter precincts it leads to emotional adjustment. I mean, I’m kinda fringe and mad over this stuff a lot of the time, but I’m also someone who has to go on living and working in this society, so over the years I have adjusted my feelings about God and America and Work and a lot of other things.
On that last subject, COVID probably has a lot more to do with how Americans of every kind feel about work than any ideological trend. As for “having children,” gotta go with the classic: in this economy? And in an era where Catholic priest pedophiles are rapidly being replaced by youth pastor pedophiles as the go-to answer to dopes freaking out over Drag Queen Story Hour, attitudes on religion are bound to undergo some changes as well.
In brief: Things are fucked up, and Americans are doing what they can do to cope. Low patriotism “scores” don’t make us less American.
I have a lot to do today, so I don’t know if I will hit the headlines. But go see Roy. Tell him I sent ya.