Mr. Butker casually mentions that “Congress just passed a bill where stating something as basic as the biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in jail,” a not-so-thinly veiled reference to a recent bill passed in the House to combat antisemitism.
The Jesuit Review concludes:
Mr. Butker quoted the lyrics of his “teammate’s girlfriend” (Taylor Swift), “familiarity breeds contempt.” But he demonstrated what contempt for the outside world breeds.
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UPDATE: THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE KICKER
UD thinks the contempt point really gets at it. Here’s another writer:
A sort of loneliness radiates from Butker’s speech; there is the sense, in his words as in Aaron Rodgers’s increasingly dire podcast riff sessions, that all of this displeasure has been bubbling away in there for quite some time without an outlet. Mostly, though, there is just disdain, not just for all the sinful things of the world but seemingly everyone and everything else in it.
… There is no room for anyone else in this worldview, no space for anyone to live or breathe. It’s striking how Butker is unable or uninterested to connect his own faith with those of the coreligionists listening to him; this whole belief system vibrates at the frequency of cable news, and so there’s nothing for him to share but a list of demands. If Butker’s speech works as a commencement address, it is only as an opportunity for new graduates to learn how they will be treated by the sour and vengeful mediocrities who are also the most powerful people in the world they are joining: as a series of shadows whose only purpose is to be harangued, so that they might learn to be less displeasing. The advice Butker offered at Benedictine College is not really trying to be a part of any kind of conversation. It’s just a kicker moving further and further out, to see what he can get away with.
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Masturbation is nothing to be ashamed of, any more than running away from a mob you yourself have excited; but if Butker and Hawley are going to present themselves as national avatars of generative masculinity, these are not their best looks.
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More deeply: If you want to find the world contemptible, babe, the world will always oblige. Piece o’ cake. Look around. But it’s kind of a mistake – one that is obvious to all of us when you make it – to confuse your misanthropy with unworldly piety.
May 17th, 2024 at 2:52PM
No doubt. But he’ll have to get in line.