Detachment

 Ordinarily, I write a year end wrap-up with a list of “best ofs” in music, film, books, and so on.  This year, I’m going to do something a little different because the times demand it.  There were, I believe, a paucity of things to rave about as we emerged from our COVID cocoons.  Oh, in the literary world, I enjoyed Ian McKewan’s Lessons and Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses and Top Gun: Maverick was quite inventive for such a long awaited sequel, but beyond that, I didn’t find much that was compelling.

Instead, I’m going to write my final essay of 2022 on what I found to be the theme of the year, and that is detachment.  It was during the year that I finally came to terms with the reality that my relationships with certain people and certain institutions have been severed.  The combination of COVID and Wokeness took their toll, as did the polarization of the Trump years (although I do not affix blame solely on Trump). 

One casualty was my relationship with The University of Chicago.  As someone with two degrees from that once august institution, I credit that place with developing my intellect in ways that probably could not have been done elsewhere.  And, as a former-student athlete, I formed many lifelong friendships there and I often returned to campus to renew my connection at homecoming and Reunion Weekend.  I count my time there as an undergraduate as the happiest of my life.

Yet I began to see things falter when one of the chief architects of the “Chicago Principles” of free speech, law school professor Geoffrey Stone caved to demands that he stop using the “n” word in his First Amendment class when the mob came after him. It seemed like a small concession at the time, but the mob always comes back for more.  You can’t give an inch to them.

Then, following the George Floyd riots, the English Department announced that in the coming academic year, it would only admit students into its graduate program that were interested in Black Studies.  Being “inclusive” absurdly meant a de facto exclusion of white students. 

The final straw came this autumn when the school proposed to offer a course entitled The Problem of Whiteness, triggering a backlash when a student called attention to it on social media.  Claiming she received death threats and a “flood of racist, misogynist, and homophobic” emails, Rebecca Journey took to media calling the student a cyberterrorist and otherwise smearing him and justifying her faux scholarship and racist course as an examination of the “problem of whiteness” from a “philosophical perspective.” 

What does that even mean?  And doesn’t this student also have a right to express his views?  There were no allegations that he violated the law or university policy.  Yet the university permitted a professor to defame a student.

With this incident, I finally came to the conclusion that I had to detach from the university completely.  I finally understood that while there were some holdouts like Japanese soldiers on remote islands that fought on long after the war had ended, my alma mater had largely been swallowed up in the wave of Wokeness and, reluctantly, it was time to say goodbye.

The second major detachment is from professional sports.  It’s hard to believe now but watching the Chicago Bears and NFL playoffs was a weekly ritual for me.  But since Colin Kaepernick began kneeling before the National Anthem, I stopped altogether and haven’t watched a game in three years. I simply lost all interest.  The antics of LeBron James and the NBA’s deference to the CCP caused the same distaste for the NBA and when major league baseball decided to jump into politics and move its all star game from Atlanta due to Georgia’s tightening of its voting laws (in addition to changing the name of the Cleveland Indians), I dropped baseball too.  Hockey was my last holdout but when the league recently announced that it was “too white” my affinity for that spectator sport flickered too.  I can’t say that I miss it much, actually.   And the benefit of detaching from pro sports is that I have shifted those hours into actually doing physical things rather than spectating. 

Perhaps the hardest part of this is detaching from certain people.  Jodi Shaw, who was canceled at Smith College, said that Wokeness in our culture necessarily means that your circles will shrink.  Some old friendships have disappeared, both by my choice and theirs.  I even lost a relative, who adhered to the Greta Thunberg theology of climate science.  When I stated my case based on facts and data, I received a nasty, vituperative email in return (from someone that claims to be a devout Christian, no less).  I lost my entire regular golf foursome to Trump Derangement Syndrome (even though I attempt to be even handed about Trump, seeing his positive traits and his deficiencies, I was considered a “Trumper”).  I lost one friend when he criticized my concerns about Biden for being “provocative” and said that he expected Biden to govern as a “moderate.”   I save the email in a separate folder but have not heard from him since, nor do I expect to.

Life moves on.  Perhaps I never appreciated how fragile and ephemeral some of these relationships were.  And I certainly underestimated the strength and pervasiveness of the Woke movement.  But 2022 for me was a Year of Detachment.  I finally admitted that these relationships could no longer be sustained.  As it occurs with a relative or friend that is a drug or alcohol addict, there is only one avenue open—detachment.  Just disconnect and don't look back.