Let’s Win Again: An Opening Statement

Contextually bizarre, curiously quixotic, a whiff of the too-little-too-late – whatever earnest motivation Jeff Bezos may have had for penning his October Washington Post editorial, the sound bite that seems to have emerged is this: “Reality is an undefeated champion.” So, it would seem, is the American spirit.

The wet slap of said editorial was the admission from a hallowed media institution that Americans, in general, no longer trust the news media – and indeed, not only an admission, but a grasping at comprehension that this is a problem for which accountability ought to be furnished. It was a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West. And in finally – bracingly – turning the mirror to face a major culprit of national malaise, it sounded an initial death knell for what has been referred to as the “woke era.”

It is not so much my intention to drag this opening statement through politics, but alignments are such that this has become more or less inescapable. What I am concerned with, firstly and primarily, is what “wokeness” tried to choke out. The aforementioned “American spirit.” And these are vague terms, I realize, so let’s set about defining them.

An Expatriate of the Fourth Estate

I think potential readers of this publication deserve some type of introduction to its editor, and the truth is that I can think of no better way to get at what I’m trying to say than sharing a bit about myself. It’s pretty obvious to anyone who lives here that Americans are uncomfortable with elitism – that is, elitism is a quality generally held to be un-American – and my life started out as a story of seeking to enter and then defecting from what came to be a clear journalistic elite.  

Bezos describes its development this way: “The Washington Post and the New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more, we talk to ourselves.”

And here is what happened to me:

My talent for writing was recognized early on in life and I spent my school years positioning myself to get into a college like the University of Chicago. Once I was there, I got into magazine journalism – focusing specifically on culture and the arts. Journalism jobs at my graduation year of 2014 were cutthroat and thin on the ground, so, anxious for employment, I re-routed into the nonprofit sphere. And as I came into myself with all of my honest values and opinions, I came increasingly to realize that there was no place for me in arts and culture journalism anyhow. 

I was apprenticing as a writer in that 2012-ish environment when the woke movement was beginning to pick up speed. And to be clear, I don’t like throwing around these broad generalities, but as most of us recognize, this time was marked by the overwhelming ascendancy of philosophies which have their basis in critical theory. The zero-sum of gender relations. Engineered equity over equality protections. Inherent inconsistencies such as an avowal of feminism while simultaneously attempting to protect Islam.

College was a time when I began to cast myself as a bit of a gadfly and occasional devil’s advocate when faced with the ideologies of my professors and peers. It wasn’t until I left and began to witness the acceleration of these trends that I realized I disagreed with them entirely. This has put me in a difficult position, as I’m sure it has many of you. I realized – cancel culture raging outside my digital door – that there was simply almost nowhere – there were very few journalistic outlets – at which I could cover what I wanted to cover and hold true to my values and views. This is still true today. I know of one magazine focusing on arts and culture from what is termed a “conservative” or non-postmodern perspective; by some miracle, years out of college, I was able to interview for a fellowship there, but it wasn’t my day to shine.

And so, stating this, I’d like to move on to a bit more of what I mean by “the American spirit.” Woke culture is all that is set against this; that can be traced, like so many tributaries from a polluted stream, to poisonous ideologies – in my view – which have their bedrock in class and identity resentment and revenge. We have seen their works; by their fruits you will know them. But there is a better way. And we can still remember it – indeed, many people never lost it, or are bringing it back to life. The coals of this country’s first aspirations are smoldering, and by God’s grace they have never gone out.

Our Brightest Days are Ahead

There is a great fiction that Americans have been subject to over the past decade or so, which is that no one who loves this country and its founding principles can be found in the creative arts. An alarming phenomenon has been made manifest, such that the simple display or endorsement of the American flag, for instance, has been painted as tantamount to hatred and xenophobia – and furthermore, correlated solely as the purview of one of this nation’s political parties, when we are meant to be a United States.

That aside, allow me once again to step out in faith and reveal to you that there is at least one individual – myself – who both believes in the American project and loves arts and culture of all kinds. I studied ballet and piano until I was in college. In high school, I sang in a touring choir and participated in drama and musical theatre. Today, I’ve become engaged in the study of film, and I have a passion for vintage clothes. At one time I worked for an art consultant – not to mention the years I spent serving an arts council. I am a creative individual. And I have taken exception to many of the trends that in recent years overtook the arts. 

Why do I say all this? Because I am optimistic – I am convinced – that there are others who like to sing and dance and act and write who have also found themselves as strangers in a strange land. I come to the purpose for founding this magazine. I am hopeful that, together, we can cultivate and encourage a new and fresh release of all that brings joy into creativity – beauty, romance, passion, revelation, and inspiration that awakens the truth within us all.  

This is sorely lacking in our current creative soil. At the risk, once again, of peddling generalities, I feel that I can say art in America has gone, on any given day, in either of two directions: either tasteless, hopeless, and ugly academic postmodernism; or else the superficial ubiqiuity of “content” and endless recycled IP.

Why do I feel that a magazine nurturing the “American spirit” is one remedy for this? Please don’t take it from me. Hear our vision in the words of a far more distinguished American – which I feel, admittedly, personally – represents the best of who we are:

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1962

“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it — and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.”

John F. Kennedy, January 20, 1961

“There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts. The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo da Vinci. The age of Elizabeth also the age of Shakespeare. And the New Frontier for which I campaign in public life, can also be a New Frontier for American art.”

John F. Kennedy, September 13, 1960

How can we, in reinstating any of these attitudes, do anything but win? And indeed, how do these sentiments do anything but resonate with the Founding Fathers’ vision for a free nation touched by Providence? For those of you who have faith, I submit to you that God is not done with us.

I look for inspiration to some of the great artworks of our past, Walt Disney’s first feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, for instance. Not only the ambition, not only the assembly of talent, not only the groundbreaking animation achievement was remarkable about this work – but also its grace, its authenticity, its power to touch audiences and move them to tears even today.

 You will notice that Columbiana is big on celebrating American cultural heritage – not out of a misguided longing to revive the past, but to be reminded of the imaginative and enterprising spirit that has defined practically all great Americans, and what I would argue – if America has ever been great – makes it so.

For it is possible to read the phrase, “Make America Great Again,” with a cynical ear, and tie it to a supposed sanction of our past’s ugliest aspects, but I tie it to a promise in one foundation of the West. This promise is present here, if crudely rendered, and even if we are not students of or believers in the Old Testament and the New, we cannot help but be influenced the Scriptures’ narrative arc.

And it is one of redemption. It is one of continued refreshing and renewal. It is one that returns to first principles to shape new movements and achieve new benchmarks with the people, materials, and technologies contemporaneously on hand.

So that is no less than what I am hopeful of. Columbiana is named after the figure of Columbia, an early iteration of our Lady Liberty and a representative of early Americans’ dreams for the nation. It has taken generations and subsequent generations to hit closer at the mark of what was first laid out for us. And the blessed news is that when we fall short – or when we forget who we are – we have always made the appointment to discover our mandate again.

Emily Holland, Editor
7 January 2025

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