by Edward Champion

The House of Mirth (Modern Library #69)

More than a century after its publication, Edith Wharton’s masterpiece remains a brutally honest and emotionally devastating novel that tells the truth about class trappings and peer pressure. That we haven’t learned a goddamned thing from it is one of many reasons to read it!

(This is the thirty-second entry in the The Modern Library Reading Challenge, an ambitious project to read the entire Modern Library from #100 to #1. Previous entry: The Alexandria Quartet.)

“But brilliant young ladies, a little blinded by their own effulgence, are apt to forget that the modest satellite drowned in their light is still performing its own revolutions and generating heat at its own rate.” — The House of Mirth

Our universe has become more hopelessly transactional. Vile narcissists with limitless greed and an absence of smarts and empathy have taken over the landscape with their blunt bullhorns. At every socioeconomic level, you will find a plurality of mercenaries who will push any bright and promising head beneath the waterline with ruthless cruelty. Perhaps I’m finally understanding, at an embarrassingly late age, just how commonplace such self-serving treachery is in our world. But what’s the alternative? Cynicism? At times, I have a sense of humor that is darker than the nightscape above the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, but no thanks. I’ve always been a cautious optimist with a healthy handle on reality, but I still detest this state of affairs. I will still speak out vociferously against it and fight the business-as-usual cowards who uphold this great sham known as the status quo at any personal cost. I stump for the outliers and the misfits. The people who have authentic and vital voices. I don’t care who they are or where they come from. I will stick up for the gas station attendants and the baristas. I will listen to their full stories rather than judge them from a fleeting glance or a superficial and supercilious position. I despise bullies and opportunists. I believe in affording everyone basic dignity. I believe that everyone has it within them to grow and to learn and that inquisitive efforts should never be mocked, especially when genuine curiosity is now in such short supply. Reprobates who use their positions of power to denigrate the marginalized and the underprivileged are scumbags who need to be fought and, if necessary, destroyed.

So you can probably imagine how much The House of Mirth means to me. It is one of the best books on the Modern Library list and it should have been ranked much higher. This is my favorite Edith Wharton novel, although The Custom of the Country is a close second. Just this year, I have purchased four copies of this book for friends, urging them to read it with every ounce of exuberance I can summon. And you need to read it too, if you haven’t already. This book is vivacious and brilliant and funny and utterly heartbreaking. I rooted for Lily Bart. I wept for her. Even when I knew her fate. She did not deserve her downfall. She is one of the great tragic heroines in all of literature, right up there with Emma Bovary, Dido, Anna Karenina, Ophelia, Bertha Mason, and Francesca da Rimini. Much like Muriel Spark’s masterpiece The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, you can read this novel multiple times and always discover a new angle. That the rules of the game haven’t changed all that much in the one hundred and seventeen years since this classic was published is a great testament to Wharton’s sagacious and prescient genius. And if you finish this novel and you’re not in the “ride or die” wagon for Edith Wharton, then I’m sorry, but you simply have no literary taste.

Should Lily Bart be blamed for her fate? Conservatives (and privileged neoliberals) will likely condemn her for her apparent financial irresponsibility, but the peer pressure from her rich friends to gamble away vast sums she doesn’t have at bridge will be deeply felt by anyone who can recall the youthful horrors of trying to fit in. (In fact, I’d say the only contemporary writer today who could be an Edith Wharton in the making is the ferociously talented Adelle Waldman, whose excellent novel, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P, mined similar territory. MacArthur people, are you listening? Award her a fellowship already! We really need to get her writing more books so we can find out!) And Wharton is exquisite in communicating to us precisely why Lily is so susceptible to social pressure from these higher-ups and hangers-on:

Her naturally good temper had been disciplined by years of enforced compliance, since she had almost always had to attain her ends by the circuitous path of other people’s; and, being naturally inclined to face unpleasant facts as soon as they presented themselves, she was not sorry to hear an impartial statement of what her folly was likely to cost, the more so as her own thoughts were still insisting on the other side of the case.

More than a century later, with the Dobbs Supreme Court decision and the Democrats’ failure to revive the Equal Rights Amendment serving as disheartening signs that a Handmaid’s Tale future could be in store for us, women are still pressured to be “good” and compliant. And while women have a lot more freedom today than they did in 1905, patriarchal conformity upheld through peer pressure has ensured that a lot of women silently endure such internal and external conflict.

Lily is lucky to have true friends like Carry Fisher (initially described as a “professional sponge” and “a mental habit corresponding to the physical titillations of the cigarette or the cock-tail,” but she turns out to be a hell of a lot more than this) and Gerty Farish (an indefatigable charity worker who doesn’t easily buy into any of the false charges eventually leveled towards Lily) when she eventually slips, but the affluent allure of the Trenors and their circle amaurotizes (and thus amortizes and possibly amouritizes?) her to the deadly puppetry of the Trenors and, most diabolically, the repellent and calculating bedhopper Bertha Dorset, whose doctors, we are informed, forbid “her from exposing herself to the crude air of the morning.” (Such a beautifully compact way of foreshadowing Bertha’s vampiric nature!)

Wharton was a master of gentle ambiguity nestling just beneath the surface of narrative clarity. The first time you read Mirth, you don’t buy Simon Rosedale’s mercy near the end. With his “small stock-taking eyes,” he’s little more than a bean-counting arriviste and his despicable tabulating also applies to people. (When Rosedale says, “I can’t help making love to you” to Lily near the end of the book, he’s basically every vulpine loser hitting a singles bar at 3 AM, scoping out the remaining women who haven’t gone home with anyone.) But the second time you read Mirth, you’re not so sure. Rosedale says, “The wonder to me is that you’ve waited so long to get square with that woman.” Can Rosedale be forgiven for simply being socially clueless? Is he a product of the system? And does his gesture actually mean anything? I’ll leave it to the capable writers of Jezebel and The Cut to argue the culpability of mediocre men.

Mirth‘s vast cast of characters tend to glom onto the split-second flourish of a socialite’s physical gesture to fuel gossip and umbrage. Consider the way that Mrs. Peniston is described as “the kind of woman who wore jet at breakfast.” But Wharton’s meticulous study of mercenary manipulators is far from vapid. She hoped to show that “a society of irresponsible pleasure-seekers…can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys.”

Perhaps one of the reasons why The House of Mirth is so authentically devastating is because Wharton was undergoing a great deal of stress as she wrote it. Her husband Teddy had just experienced a nervous breakdown and his erratic behavior was worse than ever. Her fiction was in demand and was being published everywhere, but her social calendar was spiraling out of control. Scribner’s editor Edward Burligname needed a serialized novel at the last minute after another writer had dropped out. And amazingly, Wharton produced this masterpiece in ten monthly installments, with Mirth appearing in publication before Wharton had even finished it (although the tale had gestated in her notebooks for at least five years under the working title “A Moment’s Ornament,” taken from a Wordsworth poem).

Scribner’s knew that it had a big hit on its hands and promptly placed sensationalist ads on the cover — packaging that Wharton objected to — when The House of Mirth hit bookstores in October 1905. The publicity forces also talked up Wharton’s social movements and, while Wharton was happy to have her novel read, she feared that her work would be seen as nothing more than a juicy gossipfest.

She need not have worried. The book was fiercely debated in various letters sections, with many wondering if Wharton was accurately portraying the leisure class or mercilessly skewering them for her own gain. And the robust discussion lent greater credibility to Mirth‘s considerable literary merits.

In her excellent Wharton biography, Hermione Lee has suggested that The House of Mirth can be defined by the presence of books within the book: largely decorative and untouched by few outside Lawrence Selden, the young lawyer who toys with Lily Bart’s need to land a husband. But Mirth can also be epitomized by the actors recruited to entertain the wealthy at Bellomont:

Indeed, so skillfully had the personality of the actors been subdued to the scenes they figured in that even the least imaginative of the audience must have felt a thrill of contrast when the curtain suddenly parted on a picture which was simply and undisguisedly the portrait of Miss Bart.

If all the world’s a stage, why then are we still susceptible to objectifying people? It’s actually quite astonishing how effortless it is to transpose the cruelty of class trappings to the casual character assassination that now passes for “truth” on social media. (As Wai-Chee Dimock has observed, Lily Bart spends most of the novel marketing herself, attempting to appeal to the highest bidder. This is not unlike the behavior of a comely Instagram influencer or, if we want to take Gus Trenor’s sinister insinuation on its face, an OnlyFans model willing to say or do almost anything to extract money.)

Many disgusting creatures in high places fancy themselves Lily Barts — even as they stab with the fierce sociopathic duplicity of Bertha Dorset. (On literary Twitter, there can be no better contemporary parallel to Bertha than the monstrous bully and largely mediocre writer Jennifer Weiner, whose relentless attacks on other writers are quietly circulated among those in the know and whose odious demands for “literary respect” were smartly captured by The New Yorker‘s Rebecca Mead in 2014.) They jockey for precarious perches to cleave to their careers while piling onto the week’s “main character” with gossip and lies. An otherwise innocent figure’s glaring mistake is used to perpetuate further prevarications and even those in the know, like Rosedale, will not lift a finger to salvage their own shaky ascent into a perceived predominance. Indeed, as someone who has been the target of multiple smear campaigns, I can report that a literary man of modest renown — a figure who once maintained a blog inspired by Wharton — treated me, when I was homeless, with the same false solicitude that Rosedale tenders to Lily Bart in the final crushing pages of The House of Mirth. He strung me along with phony plaudits about my writing talent and he offered me the sham promise of a prominent magazine gig that I would have killed to land at the time. He was not unlike Rosedale. Indeed, like all of Wharton’s socialites, he inevitably deemed me invisible — likely with a cognizant irony. It is doubtful that I will ever forgive this motherfucker for tinkering with my dignity and my then shaky self-respect to delude himself into thinking that he was a “kind and decent man.”

So Lily Bart’s awful and needless plunge into the abyss resonates deeply and painfully with me. Today I am tremendously grateful to be gainfully employed, doing what I love, tackling new creative mediums, and to be very much alive. That there are so many “influencers” who hold this book up without comprehending or practicing its emotionally instructive lessons about the need for empathy says everything about the vicious myopia of the contemporary literary world, which now thrives on stubbing out noisemakers and ruining outliers. They cancel anyone with an even remotely disagreeable opinion and they murder anyone who stands in their way of their self-serving and meretriciously earned “success.” Cutthroat capitalism and opprobrious opportunism at its finest! Edith Wharton had her finger on the pulse of 1905 life. And sadly 2022 life.

Next Up: Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street!

by Edward Champion

For All Mankind is the Best Show on Television — Why Aren’t You Watching It?

For All Mankind has been criminally overlooked by audiences and the media. It’s time for you folks to get on the bandwagon. This show is too brilliant to be ignored.

Every now and then, television demonstrates that it is capable of rising to the level of great art. Think of the excellent BBC miniseries Our Friends to the North and its sweeping storytelling ambition, which involved following a group of people from Newcastle over the course of thirty-one years. Or the amazing Albuquerque worldbuilding depicted in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. (The latter series, now about to air its final episodes, is so great that it is presently on track to outdoing the predecessor! No small feat, given that Breaking Bad was a masterpiece.) Or pretty much anything that David Simon has written.

But now — with its latest episode “Seven Seconds of Terror” (it dropped today) — I can state with absolute confidence that For All Mankind is the best fucking show on television. Hands down. And I say this as a huge fan of Better Call Saul. Nothing on television matches For All Mankind‘s acting, its narrative reach, and its ballsy and spellbinding storytelling. This is a show that has not only dared to present an alternative universe as a vast and bustling panorama. (In For All Mankind‘s timeline, the Soviets landed on the Moon first.) It has followed a series of utterly fascinating characters over the course of nearly three decades. People we come to care for and are mesmerized by. Earlier this season, the show presented us with a years-long montage of Margo and Sergei getting into an elevator while attending an annual conference. And the “Will they or won’t they?” question that undergirded this dynamic created exquisite and deeply felt sexual tension — one later played out in a hotel room in one of the hottest television scenes I’ve seen in years with the simple question “I would like you to kiss me.” (And this in a show that is primarily about a space race!) For All Mankind introduced a fascinating pre-Elon Musk entrepreneur named Dev Ayesa: a man who wants to use his private money to land the first person on Mars. Where other shows would have presented him as a sinister capitalist, For All Mankind was simply too nimble and fastidious to take such an easy way out. Instead, we see Dev as a man who is inclusive of his employees’ thoughts and opinions. There’s a part of him that actually cares about furthering humanity. But, of course, he’s also a businessman. We see geeks being unapologetically awkward and geeky. We see flawed heroes. Awesome women! Tons of women astronauts! And it’s multicultural! We get Aleida Rosales — a brilliant woman from Mexico who is the daughter of a janitor — and Danielle Poole — who has survived racism and tokenism to become a badass space jockey! But perhaps most important, we see what happens when perceived failures or marginalized types are given another chance. Indeed, the gentle (but by no means hokey) optimism of this show can be compared favorably to Star Trek at its best. And at a time in which the world seems to have become largely hopeless, For All Mankind reminds us of the greatness that humanity is capable of. And it does so without being saccharine about it.

The space travel in this show is not only tremendously exciting, but it’s rightly portrayed as deeply dangerous. And, as such, I have found myself hollering and shouting at the screen every week. I have felt a large and genuine thrill each week that I feel in every bone. During one particularly exciting and jaw-dropping moment a few weeks ago (I dare not spoil it), I gripped the arm of my chair so hard that the side knob on the undercarriage broke and I fell on my ass. But dammit if I didn’t smile and cheer my way through the episode with my newly accrued bruises, thinking absolutely nothing of them!

So, yeah, For All Mankind succeeds at being super-smart and terrifically emotional!

The writers are so consummate and attentive to detail that just about every single historical event has been factored into their plan. When the show jumps forward a decade, we get a zippy montage at the start of what has transpired in the intervening years, one that invites the kind of heavy scrutiny that has been applied to the Zapruder film. (To cite just a few of the historical switcheroos, Ted Kennedy and Gary Hart have been President. John Lennon was never assassinated in this universe. So we see the Beatles getting together for a reunion tour.) The show’s third season even had one of its characters run against Bill Clinton for President and win and it somehow managed to pull this amazing story move with confidence and believability!

Yet this television masterpiece is criminally overlooked by the critics who put together their year-end lists. They have completely ignored this tremendous creative achievement. While everyone has rightly raved over another Apple TV offering (Ted Lasso, which somehow managed to win over a skeptical realist like me), where are the For All Mankind stans? And why aren’t they more ubiquitous? We For All Mankind fans — those of us who have been watching from the very beginning — have to knock on secret doors and knock the rap on speakeasies just to find each other! But why? It is a goddamned crime that For All Mankind is not being talked about everywhere with the same rapturous glee that once accompanied every fresh episode of Mad Men.

The only bad move that this series has made is the clunky Danny/Karen subplot. But even with this fumble, For All Mankind‘s most recent episode indicates that it is about to rectify this mistake.

I believe in this show so enormously that I am not only telling you to watch it. I am ordering you to watch it. Art this great does not happen all that often. If we know each other, I will personally watch the whole damned run from the beginning with you. (Tonight, I made a pledge to do this with one dear friend.)

And to all you dopey television critics who think you’re so fucking intellectual, where the hell are you on this? Why have you stayed silent about For All Mankind? Yeah, I know who you are. I read you. And I’m going to make you a deal right now. If you talk up For All Mankind and you’re a member of the New York media who is on my shit list, I will completely forgive you and sing your praises. I’ll never write a hit piece on you. Because, goddamit, this show is too fucking important and too fucking great for you to sit this one out.

So watch For All Mankind. Start from the beginning and get together with friends. And tell them all that the wacky books guy from Brooklyn sent you.

And if you’re too lazy to read this longass rave, here’s my enthusiasm captured on video:

by Edward Champion

Peter Alexander: An Unethical Mediore Gossipmonger Following in the Chuck Todd Tradition

NBC News’s Peter Alexander continues to demonstrate that he is a mediocre man of the Chuck Todd school, more committed to unfounded gossip than substantial journalism.

Every time Chuck Todd says something particularly idiotic (which is about 74% of the time that he’s on camera), my 2019 Todd takedown, in which I outlined Todd’s considerable mediocrities and his wholesale lack of qualifications in lively vitriolic style, goes viral on Twitter. But now that I’ve seen how Peter Alexander — another dim bulb at NBC News who inexplicably hasn’t been replaced by the janitor — has used his Twitter audience of more than half a million followers to whip up conjecture and unsubstantiated rumors as a vital investigation into an attempt to overthrow the government is underway, I’m wondering if the problem isn’t so much Chuck Todd, as it is the way that NBC newsroom culture continues to tolerate piss-poor “hot take” “reporting.” I mean, just look at the man’s eyes. It’s clear that he was manufactured in a hatchery. Has this dullard ever had an original thought or a big scoop? One rarely encounters this level of innate dudebro vacuity outside of aspiring Wall Street sociopaths meeting for an early lunch at some otherwise charming Water Street bistro. But it does tempt me to posit a thesis. NBC News is apparently the ideal place for any mediocre man to rise up the journalistic ladder with the speed of the Parker Space Probe. Not only can you get away with mediocrity. You don’t even have to practice journalism at all!

Here was the “big scoop” from Alexander the Far From Great:

If I told you that “a source close to a prominent DC sex club has told me that Peter Alexander is a bottom who enjoys being flogged every Friday night by tall men who weigh over 300 pounds to the point of profuse bleeding and to the point where Mr. Alexander yells, ‘Keep going, big boy! I want to be Phyllis Schlafly’s he-bitch!'” you would rightly ask, “Well, wait a minute there, Ed. Why didn’t you confirm this with Alexander or the club owner?” Or you would ask me what that source is. Or you would ask me what my journalistic motivations are. But because Alexander works for NBC News, his journalistic malpractice — fueled by the type of Bob Woodward “on background” sourcing that he wishes he were capable of — is completely sanctioned by institutional incompetence. Never mind that Secret Service agent Bobby Engel has already testified before the Select Committee behind closed doors and that a professor of law at NYU has already stated that Cassidy Hutchinson is consistent with what Engel has already said. For a low-class Trump rentboy like Alexander, the truth doesn’t matter.

That Alexander is both arrogant and stupid enough to believe that a Select Committee assembled to expose Trump’s wrongdoing would not go out of their way to get it right after two unsuccessful impeachments says everything about Peter Alexander’s pathetic and desperate lunges towards relevance. It’s the kind of bullshit that would be roundly denounced by other journalists (and where is that aging and fatuous gasbag Jack Shafer on Alexander?) only five years ago. But I’ve been waiting for other journalists to call this self-serving turkey out. And they haven’t. So I guess it has to be me. Again.

In the eyes of a grasping and hopelessly corrupt opportunist like Alexander, any form of hearsay is fair game. And sure enough, the right-wingers have scooped up Alexander’s “alternative facts” with all the hunger of a starved beaten-down puppy who just wants to be loved but who will likely die in a ditch because it can’t meet the adorable criteria.

This isn’t the first time that Alexander has tilted at windmills (though without quixotic flair). Just two months ago, as White House Correspondent, Alexander inserted a desperate hoot into a garden-variety dismissal of Republicans by President Biden. Knowing that he didn’t have a story, Alexander tried to manufacture a story through a belabored hem that wouldn’t pass muster at community theater.

And now he’s done it again. Except that the deplorables who wrap their fat idiotic asses in the Confederate flag are lapping this Alexander tweet up as the smoking gun — despite the fact that Alexander’s “scoop” is the epitome of laziness. But Alexander is doing this not only because he knows it gets him inflated attention and artificial “hits” that are the new standard of “success,” but because he knows that NBC News will do nothing whatsoever to reprimand him. The only way that Alexander would suffer serious repercussions for his malfeasance (and even do some serious soul-searching) is if we lived in the Time of Icarus.

[6/30/2022 UPDATE: Snopes has now weighed in on L’Affaire Alexander and debunked his story as “False.”]

[7/1/2022 UPDATE: While Peter the Scumbag was busy coasting on his illusory “source close to the Secret Service” rumor to gain traction, CNN was doing actual reporting and talking directly with multiple sources at the Secret Service, who confirm and corroborate Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony. It’s mind-boggling that a tenth-rate amateur like Alexander still has a job.]

by Edward Champion

Alison Steinberg: All-American Homophobic Mouth-Breather

I really do try to see the best in people, but there is literally no reason I can summon to justify why the vile and pestiferous propagandist Alison Steinberg should be granted the privilege of breathing oxygen. There is nothing but evil in her heart. She is a hate-fueled, homophobic, truth-denying jackal who, like many alt-right opportunists, traded in her dubious cerebral powers to propagandize against human rights and inclusive dignity for a job at the One American News Network — which is swiftly dethroning FOX News as the venue to transform a horde of thoughtless and aging cabbages into budding fascists. Steinberg’s latest tirade, which went viral on Twitter on Sunday morning, is truly the mark of an irredeemable monster. For what Steinberg did was completely unacceptable — particularly since her bilious biogtry, directed at a harmless rainbow flag, was aired during Pride Month.

Here is a full transcript of her unhinged diatribe:

…in San Diego. And guess what I came home to be greeted with? This fucking bullshit. [points to Rainbow Pride flag] What the hell is that? Huntington Beach is the town of good old-fashioned hard-working American people, much less human. People who worked all through the COVID lockdown. Yes, that’s right. Huntington Beach never shut down through any of the COVID nonsense fuckery. And now we’re peddling this garbage? What the hell is this? The only flag that should be up there is that American flag. This is a disgrace to our city and it should be taken down immediately. Whoever the hell is running this town needs to be fired. Make America great again. Make Huntington Beach great.

This is unequivocal and unmitigated hate speech. And the timing here, hot on the heels of Justice Clarence Thomas suggesting within the hideous Dobbs opinion that an overturn of Griswold v. Connecticut (the precedent that established a constitutional right to same-sex marriage) could very well happen, is no accident.

What’s disturbing and unforgivable about Steinberg’s psychotic rant is the way that she declares any LGBTQ+ person to not be American. She is so blinded by her venomous enmity that she cannot even consider that those who aren’t straight and hetero and cis may very well be just as “hard-working” (and indeed “old-fashioned”) as she professes to be.

This is the textbook definition of bigotry. Steinberg is so hopped up on her rage that she not only wants to dehumanize LGBTQ people, but her “rhetoric” involves discluding them from the American nation. Making them invisible. Much in the way that Pastor Dillan Awes declared only weeks ago that gay people should be executed.

For all of its problems, Huntington Beach ranked highest in Orange County for LGBTQ rights in a 2013 Municipal Equity Index study. Largely because Joe Shaw, an openly gay Councilman, worked tirelessly to create greater acceptance for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. Because of Shaw, the city of Huntington Beach became, for a time, a safer place. That is, before the atavistic CHUDs of Huntington Beach voted him out of office, forcing Shaw to flee back to the Midwest.

But for every noble Jon Shaw, there is a bona-fide mouth-breathing motherfucker like Alison Steinberg. If we lived in a condign world, she would be out of a job. Banned from all newsrooms.

Unfortunately, we live in the worst timeline. All the progress we have made is in serious jeopardy of being evaporated if we do not push back hard against true evil. We must not stay silent. Alison Steinberg is pure evil. And there is no universe in which her hatred is acceptable.

by Edward Champion

A Federal Erection Ban

I have found God and I now have the answer to all of America’s problems.

On Friday morning, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — effectively overturning the constitutional right that has allowed women to have reproductive rights and bodily autonomy for nearly fifty years. The message from the high court could not be any plainer: women have no agency over their bodies. Even though this decision openly contradicts any number of civil rights laws that have been designed — in theory, at least — to protect women from discrimination, the Supreme Court Justices have decided that past precedents were not settled, despite claiming so during their confirmation hearings.

But if women are not guaranteed a constitutional right to do what they want with their bodies, then the time has come to level the playing field and deny men any and all constitutional rights too. It seems only fair. And it neatly aligns with some recent personal developments that I feel an overwhelming need to shove down your unenlightened throats.

Before I introduce my ideas, I should note that, after many years of being an atheist, I have finally found religion. The Church of Gelding may be a little-practiced faith, but it is, as far as I’m concerned, the only one that matters. It is far more important than all strains of Christianity. Last week, I cut off my own penis with a hacksaw to find a new life of inner peace. There was a bloody mess in my apartment, but the holy ritual of severing my member has secured my position in the afterlife. In addition, my singing range on the high notes has dramatically improved. The Church of Gelding’s priests and archdioceses — operating out of a storage facility in Gatlinburg, Tennessee as we raise funds to build a proper church so that we may properly and hygienically castrate all members of our loyal congregation — have reviewed this essay. They have declared me a visionary for a faith that will soon be sweeping the nation. It’s all part of the new theocracy you haven’t yet heard about.

I propose a national ban on erections at the federal level. And if we’re fated to pull the RU-486 abortion poll from pharmacies, then there also needs to be an FDA ban on Viagra. After all, isn’t it unnatural for older men to have an artificially created erection? Since the pro-lifers insist that it’s “unnatural” for women to have abortions, then we need to ensure that all other unnatural male enhancements are also prohibited. Hair transplants, Botox, and, most importantly, septuagenarian men who foolishly believe that they are still twenty-five years old and who have cultivated the mistaken impression that they have the God-given right to fuck any twentysomething into the middle of next week. This rampant immorality must end today!

Let us establish a Federal Erection Bureau office in every city, giving every American male thirty days to undergo a surgical procedure that will block the corpora cavernosa — the twin chambers running along the length of the penis that are responsible for the bloodflow that causes the penis to grow. Those men who wish to have children with their partners can fill out a detailed 564 page questionnaire, submit this to the FEB (along with a credit report and a list of references), undergo a hearing supervised by a Propagation Consideration Panel, and, upon approval, have a temporary reversal of this surgical procedure. If they copulate with their partners without written consent, then let their treacherous corpses hang from the traffic lights as a warning for all men who do not abide by the new way.

If men were deprived of the testosterone that turns them into abusive and boneheaded idiots, then much of this behavior would stop. We would have fewer conflicts and wars. Women would not be bombarded with unsolicited dick pics. Because men would be too humiliated to photograph their shriveled and useless chorizos, thus finally understanding that the penis is a wildly overrated and fundamentally silly-looking anatomical appendage. I have learned this myself by finding God.

Men who insist on having erections — or who have erections in a speakeasy or through any underground network established to give men an illegal venue with which to have an erection — should be chemically castrated for the greater good. And the most egregious erection offenders should be castrated with a sharp axe. Imagine the diminished problems! Think of the great culture that America will create when more castratos enter opera halls and recording studios! You may not have been able to control yourself when you had a penis. But your new life (and your new voice) will set you on a new path!

If the five paleoconservatives on the Supreme Court seriously believe that women cannot be trusted to do what they deem right for their bodies, then it can be equally argued that men are just as incapable. Hitting any bar on a Saturday night will reveal quite swiftly that men are probably more incapable of not knowing how to control themselves in public. Men are especially clueless when it comes to reading a woman’s intentions, much less actually listening to what a woman has to say. Even when told “no” by a woman, this feeble and wildly overrated gender is hopped up on too much testosterone and has proven time and time again that it cannot comprehend a simple two-letter word.

Remove erections from the equation of life and we would see sexual harassment rates significantly drop. Unwanted advances and catcalls from men would disappear overnight. One source of an unwanted pregnancy would be nipped in the bud. And we would have far stabler families. Children who aren’t forced to live in poverty. And without their precious penises, men would at long last get in touch with their feelings and not be as afraid to cry.

So let the Republicans lead by example. Let Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh drop their pants and proffer their schlongs for castration. Let Justice Amy Coney Barrett be the one holding the knife and carving away at her colleagues’s dicks with the same gusto that she uses to hack away at the Constitution. Let every Republican who truly believes in life step forward and proudly announce that they will no longer be erect. After all, only the permanently wilted can grow a true garden.