Food Fascism?
The weekend after last November’s national election, I had the privilege of participating in a conference hosted by the John Paul II Institute on the campus of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. I had joked with friends that, just two days after what was expected to be a close, contentious contest, I might be traveling into the site of a civil war.
As it turned out, the city was quite calm. This does not mean, however, that some were not distraught over the outcome of the election. Men and women at the conference were amused by reports that the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown, the other large Catholic university in D.C. (make that a university “in the Jesuit tradition”), was offering its students a day off to recover from the “stressful times.” On offer for the soothing of political trauma were comforts such as “Coloring and Mindfulness Exercises,” “Milk and Cookies,” “Legos and Coloring,” and “Snacks and Self-Guided Meditation.”
I laughed along with everyone else. When nominations to cabinet positions in the incoming administration began to be announced, however, it turned out that the students had real cause for alarm. The nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services must have been especially wrenching: what student wouldn’t be traumatized at the prospect of being deprived of his Fruit Loops? A clear sign of fascism on the rise!
R. V. Young is Professor of English Emeritus at North Carolina State University, a former editor of Modern Age: A Quarterly Review, and the author of Shakespeare and the Idea of Western Civilization (Catholic University of America Press, 2022). He and his wife are parishioners at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church in Tarpon Springs, Florida. They have five grown children, fifteen grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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