Thomas Apolis: Or, Intellectual Encounters Of A Wandering Mind

Ross Douthat’s op-ed columns for The New York Times usually trickle with a charade of self-deprecation – a charade because it’s clear he thinks he’s winking down from atop the highest chair in the room – while readers mistake the whiny drone for a squeak of his sneaker against the polished mahogany: an affront from which it is best to turn away. To be fair, as a young social conservative writing for a prestigious left-leaning periodical, he has his work cut out for him. And, with only the brilliant David Brooks even approaching Douthat’s end of the political spectrum at the Times, one can expect his ideas to be frowned upon by many of his readers.

Luckily for Douthat, he expresses a steadfast ambition and a gumption with which only his impotence can compete in degree. His most recent thoughts, under the socially-conscientious title “Why Monogamy Matters,” drew my attention just as yet another unclean image had just flashed before my mind’s eye. Naturally, I wanted to see if he had an insight that would help me to overcome these almost fortnightly moments of impulsive, and repulsive, imaginative infidelity.

…So, holding my breath after a short prayer for assistance – one that increased the urgency of my plight, since upon closing my eyes I saw that the sexual act I had imagined moments before was still calling out for attention – I tried to read beyond the drivel that dripped down the page before me.

And, as expected, it was difficult to get past the fact that he’s simply unable to build a strong case for values that he holds but that are not objective standards against which individual choices can be measured, or that can be recommended to and imposed upon society at large.

Monogamous relationships possess (and possess is perhaps the precise word for its use in this article, since as a socio-conservative “value” monogamy assumes the mutually-agreed possession of bodies; despite my tease above, social conservatives seem unconcerned with issues created by unrealized notions of promiscuous desire, or any desire, and instead carry repression behind tightly-puckered faces like so many badges of honor) enormous benefits, not least of which is the Continue reading →