Antonio Tempesta: Canens Searching for Picus (1606)

"It seems likely to be taken down by defensive friendly fire."

Hoping to gain a better understanding of Decency, I initiated a Google search for “Decency In The News.” I received in return references and explanations that didn’t even attempt to define Decency, or even to provide current examples of it in action. I found instead lengthy descriptions of what Decency isn’t, how it so often seems missing from online conversations, and how Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has done little to encourage Decency in online forums, though it has successfully shielded platform owners from lawsuits for such offenses as third-party slander and copyright infringement. “Reports about ‘decency’ in the news consistently focus on its erosion in politics and society, though the Communications Decency Act also remains a topic. Current conversations often frame a decline in decency as a symptom of deeper societal issues like incivility and political polarization.”

One deeper societal issue, aside from the obvious incivility and political polarization, might be the apparent unspeakability of Decency.

Tags: #Decency, #PureSchmaltz

Lee Russel: Trailer of itinerant electrician near Pharr, Texas (1939)
Farm Security Administration Photographs

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Trailer of itinerant electrician near Pharr, Texas" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed September 24, 2025. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/8e15f900-c4fb-0136-ce6e-438981b45b1b

"…it might take such work to set the circuits straight again."

I realize that I have been ReWired. Whether I believe the bullshit or not, and perhaps especially because I don’t believe it, either conclusion could serve as evidence that a successful rewiring has occurred. I wish, and even pray, in my curiously agnostic way, that this situation were otherwise, that my defenses had not been compromised, but I have lately realized that there was no avoiding this experience. Yes, I refused to watch Fox from its inception, except for a few otherwise inaccessible baseball games they alone televised, because I firmly believed that exposure to that poisonous content might rewire my judgment. I had not suspected that just deciding to tiptoe around it was also evidence of its backhanded success. Its premise might have scared me off, but it also motivated me to build a fence around my property to maintain an isolated Dignity, when Dignity rightfully knows no such boundaries.

The insidious nature of shriveling morals affects even the morally steadfast.

Tags: #Decency, #PureSchmaltz

Sebald Beham: Little Buffoon with Scroll (1542)

"Curious how there's so much more effort expended trying not to do something than there ever is to simply repeating it."

We refer to this activity as Doom Scrolling, the practice of aimlessly perusing online media. The scrolling part of the term seems more self-explanatory than the doom portion. The doom comes from the general content found on social media. It tends to be overwhelmingly focused on the catastrophic. On slow news days, plenty of past catastrophes appear to hold the space. Scientists—real scientists, not the phony ones currently enjoying a resurgence on social media—suggest that each exposure to a report of some catastrophe incites something in our brain to dispense an addictive substance that encourages us to continue engaging in the hope of stumbling upon another similar report. Doom apparently better excites the amygdala suspected of dispensing this addictive substance than do more uplifting kinds of content. Fuzzy kitten and fluffy baby duckie pics work to some extent, but apparently not nearly as well as catastrophe.

It's nothing personal.

Tags: #Decency, #PureSchmaltz

Follower of Jan Massys: Two Peasants Looking at a Mirror (c. 1550)

"I will be investigating this notion between now and just before Christmas."

We insist that we are decent people, charitable to a fault. We rail against indecency as if it were the obscenity it always was. Yet we engage in the occasional absolutely indecent activity. We're currently, under the direction of our administration, which, thankfully, cannot administer anything, deporting people without due process. They're initiating, in our good name, a raft of initiatives Decency prohibits. Yet they're still proclaiming from every pulpit just how deep down Decent they are, and we remain.

Maybe Decency is something other than what we've always assumed it was.

Tags: #Decency, #PureSchmaltz