POLITICS: The Weekend Press: Totalitarianism Can Be Relaxing – USSA News

Welcome back to The Weekend Press! Today, the Metropolitan Opera has reimagined the forlorn lover in “Carmen” as an ICE agent, and Liel Leibovitz is not happy about it; Sascha Seinfeld writes an ode to the dearly departed app that taught her what a meme is. And more! But first. . .

Imagine a world in which you could spend all day watching television, drinking gin and tonics, and ignoring the phone when it rings because someone else will pick it up. In which you don’t have to fight for anything, or work very hard, or try to charm someone into going on a date with you. Sounds pretty good, right?

Wrong, says Rod Dreher. A world with no struggle, no hardship, no effort is not a world worth living in. That was the lesson of Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, published in 1932, and it’s the lesson of its modern-day ancestor, the Apple TV show Pluribus.

Written by Vince Gilligan, who gave us Breaking Bad, the show imagines what it would be like to live in a very high-tech, very relaxing dystopia, in which nobody disagrees or offends, because everyone is living a life of endless ease. The protagonist is a woman who resists—who’s fighting for the right to be miserable, and annoyed, and passionate, and free.

You’ll root for her, says Rod. In a wonderfully enlightening essay, he explains why Pluribus—which gives us everything we want, then reminds us that “to be human is not to be perfect”—is essential viewing for anyone currently living a comfortable life.

After this week’s news that the “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams had died, Coleman Hughes wrote an excellent essay about how Adams made him a better thinker. We also ran a great excerpt of a new book by Baptist pastor Ryan P. Burge about why his churches keep closing. Catch up on both—plus the latest column from Arthur Brooks:

How should you spend your weekend? We asked our producer Isaac Grafstein for his recommendations . . .

📚 Read . . . I somehow made it this far in life without ever reading Catch-22, but I finally picked it up recently and was transfixed. With global tensions mounting, Joseph Heller’s classic satire about the absurdity of war is the perfect novel for this moment—and it’s also very funny. If your attention span has been hopelessly degraded by the internet, listen to this podcast about the book instead.

💆‍♂️Buy . . . After a proper dose of postwar disillusionment, it’s time for some self-care. I recently tried out a scalp spa. Have you ever seen the crusty, Parmesan-like skin on your head under a microscope? Neither had I. But that’s what happens in a scalp spa. I know it doesn’t sound relaxing, but I promise that it’s very satisfying to get the flakes scrubbed away and then look under the microscope again, at your squeaky clean scalp, like a pressure-washed driveway or freshly Zamboni’d ice. It’s also good for hair growth.

🍳 Eat . . . Peking duck. There is nothing better. If you’ve never had it, I strongly suggest organizing a group dinner immediately and demolishing one. Fair warning, though: This dish may inspire a sudden and powerful urge to renounce your American citizenship and move to Beijing forever.

Behold, a still from the beautifully shot “Pluribus,” which Rod Dreher recommends in today’s Weekend Press:

That’s all, folks! Enjoy the weekend.

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