{"id":72543,"date":"2026-01-04T16:14:49","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T21:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=72543"},"modified":"2026-01-04T16:14:49","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T21:14:49","slug":"bad-for-the-brain-worse-for-the-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2026\/01\/04\/bad-for-the-brain-worse-for-the-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad for the brain, worse for the heart"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I cannot keep up. I can barely keep up reading the posts of others who are trying, bravely, to keep up. But they can\u2019t keep up either.<\/p>\n

Heather Cox Richardson valiantly tries to present a matter-of-fact daily keeping-of-the-minutes for future historians. This attempt to keep up earns her criticism as \u201calarmist\u201d or \u2014 because she is a woman \u2014 \u201chysterical.\u201d Because the attempt to maintain a dispassionate record of current events is, due to the current events being recorded, inevitably alarming. Even her deliberately neutral convention of titling all of her posts with only each day\u2019s date is somehow perceived now as partisan or alarmist. The title \u201cJanuary 3, 2006<\/a>\u201d thus gets interpreted by some as hyperventilating, even if the post itself is merely a terse account of the actual events of that day.<\/p>\n

But Dr. Richardson didn\u2019t create or curate those events. She\u2019s just trying to keep up.<\/p>\n

My generation of old-school bloggers are also struggling to keep up. We\u2019ve done this before \u2014 opposing ill-conceived, dubious American invasions and occupations is how a lot of us first got into this whole blogging thing, after all. But the pace and chaos and incoherence of the present has us running ragged to keep up. Here, for example, is Robert Farley at LGM<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I suppose at this point that we hope that Maduro isn\u2019t immediately replaced by a more brutal successor, that Venezuela does not collapse into civil war, and that the United States does not get further drawn into that conflict. That\u2019s all I got, folks; hope. And not much of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Adam Silverman got tasked with writing up an \u201cexplainer\u201d for Balloon Juice and seems unhappy with the assignment<\/a>. Even prolific link-and-snark curmudgeons like rmj at Adventus are struggling to keep up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No blogger or reporter or pundit or historian or commentator is going to be able to help us make sense of what\u2019s going on when the people in charge are, themselves, unable to make sense of it. \u201cAfter Venezuela operation, Trump says the whole hemisphere is in play<\/a>,\u201d Politico<\/em> reports, with the president hinting at invasions of Cuba, Greenland, Mexico, and Colombia, by name. So far.<\/p>\n

I keep thinking of this scene, from Heart of Darkness<\/em> and then from Apocalypse Now<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cAre my methods unsound?\u201d Kurtz asks. And Marlow\/Willard says \u201cI don\u2019t see any method at all, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lurking beneath that scene, of course, is the horror of Kurtz\u2019s description of the only real method he understands: \u201cExterminate all the brutes.\u201d Or, as Kurtz\u2019s heir put it yesterday, live on television on Fox & Friends<\/em><\/a>, \u201cWe can do it again, nobody can stop us.\u201d<\/p>\n

That statement seems alarming, which I guess is why I have to source it to a post on BlueSky and not to the more official channels of mainstream journalism, where that quote hasn\u2019t gotten much attention at all. I suppose that reporting on the president of the United States saying, \u201cWe can do it again, nobody can stop us\u201d might seem \u201calarmist.\u201d<\/p>\n

The title for this post comes from Wendell Berry\u2019s \u201cFirst Amendment\u201d to his \u201cMad Farmer Manifesto\u201d:<\/p>\n

To be sane in a mad time
\nis bad for the brain, worse
\nfor the heart. The world
\nis a holy vision, had we clarity
\nto see it\u2014a clarity that men
\ndepend on men to make.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We cannot hope to keep up with the unholy visions. But we can seek and perhaps create the clarity to see something better.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I cannot keep up. I can barely keep up reading the posts of others who are trying, bravely, to keep up, but they can’t keep up either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":72546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nBad for the brain, worse for the heart<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I cannot keep up. 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