Note: This is the first of a handful of posts testing out what will be a paid subscriber series I’d like to provide that goes a bit beyond the style of my more intermittent writings, providing a window into what I’m thinking about each week and the deeper matters we can contemplate behind the surface level events of our world, our media, our Church, and our lives.
I’ll be posting these for the next few weeks throughout August (the rest this month will be more paywalled than this one). If you all appear to want more of this, I’ll continue beyond. God bless, and thank you for caring to read my thoughts below. I’m honored.
As last weekend began, we looked to be on the verge of a new chapter—one of significant escalation—of the Iran war. Notices were issued by US embassies across the Middle East advising US citizens to prepare to leave as “escalation” was likely. Military movements both in Iran and by the US and its allies indicated a significant escalation was imminent, and both sides were preparing.
Then, today, as we’ve become far-too-accustomed to, a “Truth” was posted to Trump’s Truth Social account. The “perimeters of a deal” had been reached, and the big bad war wasn’t going to happen after all (for now).
Oof. Where to begin? There are layers to unpack here, all of which say something about our society; about the rapid decay of our norms and values.
The Typo
First off, I hate the casual and nonprofessional depths we’ve degraded to. I think we often forget that it’s not normal by any standard of history for the President of the United States to issue public notices that could change the course of history via the equivalent of internet post-it notes, typos and all (“perimeters” should certainly have been “parameters”).
I work in marketing. When there is a typo in a professional post, it’s not a small deal. Every so often the guy who used to post content for my team at a nonprofit I previously led marketing/development at would mistakenly post with a typo. It’s not a particularly huge issue, but each time we would have a quick meeting, touch base on our process, identify corrective action to prevent it happening again (typically it was due to a rushed post without proper checks), and go on with our days.
The fact that the President of the United States is making public announcements about extremely significant military actions, actions which would end the lives of thousands (if not tens of thousands), and there are typos in it?
While that may seem like a superficial nitpick on the surface, it betrays how deeply unserious and irresponsible our present leaders (and those in their command) really are.
Typos in posts may be inconsequential enough. Typos in, say, target coordinates? Suddenly much more serious (and we’ve had one too many targeting mistakes in this war). The latter is downstream of the former. We’ve discarded the professionalism that is critical to a highly functional society, and it shows.
Discarded professionalism indeed! Professional used to mean a defined education, usually, to use an old-fashioned word, apprenticeship (see law, nursing, medicine, pharmacy, engineering) and a code of professional behavior. No more.