| At a time of distrust and polarization, the conservative Times columnist seeks to bridge the worlds of the Christian right and the secular left.  Photograph by Adam Pape for The New Yorker In the past few years, Ross Douthat, also known as liberal America’s favorite conservative commentator, has been circling some fringe ideas. He’s been writing about U.F.O.s and mysteries surrounding Jeffrey Epstein—the kinds of subjects that might test the good will of a segment of his readers. In a new story from this week’s issue, Isaac Chotiner visits the Times columnist to talk more about the roots and evolution of his world view. “I have a bunch of what you might call conspiracy-adjacent views,” he explains, and adds that he considers certain “nice secular people” to be “blind to some obvious supernatural realities about the world.” Douthat has written that “to be a devout Christian or a believing Jew or Muslim is to be a bit like a conspiracy theorist, in the sense that you believe there is an invisible reality that secular knowledge can’t recognize”—and he has used that frame to analyze the mounting distrust of institutions expressed by many Americans, especially those on the far right. Still, there are limits to what he will open his mind to. “I spend a lot of my own intellectual energy,” he says, “trying not to let my sort of eccentric views blind me to the fact that the establishment still gets a lot of boring, obvious things right.” Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
No comments:
Post a Comment