Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
Commenter “Mac” expresses what I’ve been feeling too:
I have a sense that politically, culturally, socially, things are *not* going to be ok. Things are *not* going to work out. The America that we knew is not going to survive. The people who will populate the new America do not have the foundation of fundamentally American thinking that we had even when we rebelled against it. Part of the crisis for me is that many or most of my own family are among these new people.
There is no place for people like me in the new America. We will be marginalized and subjugated. I’m old, and I tell myself that I won’t be around, and my descendants will live in a different world and there’s nothing I can do about it. That’s not much help though.
Sometimes, though, I remind myself I’m not the best prognosticator, and that feelings are not facts. I don’t know what the future will bring. I don’t know whether this thing will somehow turn around.
It doesn’t feel that it will turn around, though. But isn’t this partly just what older people often feel? Is that part of this phenomenon? I do know that a lot of my liberal friends don’t seem like happy campers, either. They seem to have a sense of general foreboding, although it’s probably about different things. But it’s not always well-articulated, and I think some of it has to do with a gut feeling of not understanding the forces that have been set loose in the world today.
Here’s a compendium of statements to read, many of them from ancient times, in which old people carp about how society is degenerating and things were falling apart. Of course, sometimes they were correct.
NOTE: The title of this post comes from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats, a poem I’ve quoted several times before on this blog. Here it is again:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Those who do not believe in God, invoke the Creator…
Finally! You are informed why you have two arms…
https://www.weaselzippers.us/485323-biden-covid-advisor-god-gave-us-two-arms-for-vaccines/
Neo, I’ve felt the same way for 2 years now. Obviously the pandemic created a lot of psychological stress that hasn’t abated. Call it mass formation or mass psychosis…whatever. And the left took full advantage of the situation to push their agenda from Floyd riots, to school lockdowns, to the Biden campaign. It was an opening tailor made for their use. Meanwhile the right just watched it all happen.
Funny though, if I don’t read the news, things don’t seem quite so bad. Traveled to Dallas this past weekend for our nephew’s wedding. Except for an uncle on the other side of the family who showed up doubled masked and talked incessantly about evil Trump, the wedding and reception could have been from 2018, and I would not have known. I return home to northern Florida and no one is wearing masks at all. Now except for the $3.50/gallon gas and the fact I spent over $60 for about 4 days of basic food items today, things seem normal, until I see what is happening on the news.
Ignorance can truly be bliss.
Not just the US: world wide.
Japan economy in tatters. China falling apart. The EU and UK committing suicide afaict. The world’s small countries in danger from the whims of the super powers.
things are *not* going to be ok. Things are *not* going to work out. — Mac
From that other great poet, Tom Petty. (joke)
I’ll All Work Out
She wore faded jeans and soft black leather
She had eyes so blue they looked like weather
When she needed me I wasn’t around
That’s the way it goes, it’ll all work out
There were times apart, there were times together
I was pledged to her for worse or better
When it mattered most I let her down
That’s the way it goes, it’ll all work out
It’ll all work out eventually
Better off with him than here with me
It’ll all work out eventually
Maybe better off with him than here with me
Now the wind is high and the rain is heavy
And the water’s rising in the levee
Still I think of her when the sun goes down
It never goes away, but it all works out
A different topic, but endings will always come. It may not be the one you wanted.
I wonder if your perspective and that of your commenter reflect where you live and spend most of your time.
My wife and I split our time among semi-rural Ohio, rural North Carolina and Austin Texas and despite sharing your conservative view point and disgust for most that is post-modern, we are generally optimistic for the American experiment.
I believe we are witnessing the death is urbanism that had been define culture since the renaissance. Got all its faults, technology has already eliminated the comparative advantage the large cities have enjoyed for centuries. Cities and academia which is an adjunct of urbanism are dying before our eyes. They will not go quietly, but they will go.
The country in between our mega-cities is enjoying a rebirth and has preserved much that was and is great about America and Western Civilization. We are doing pretty good our here, although accommodating all of the refugees is challenging and limiting the scope of the MSM is also challenging. However, thanks to DJT, I would give MSM about 10 more years.
Contrary to o popular opinion, there has never been a Golden Age. America has always been hard work but we have made it through a lot of struggles. I have seen a lot of good in 70 years.
As Winston Churchill famously advised, never, never, never, never give-up. So pray, vote, volunteer, don’t send your kids to Ivy League School, move out of California, New York, Chicago … and other places that are bad for your spirit – they don’t make sense any more. Focus your political efforts and contributions locally in places that still believe in America. And, just in case it take longer than I hope it will, stock up on water, food and 9 mm ammunition (the currency of Armageddon).
As we semi-fascists are sorely in need of a semi-comic interlude (i.e., if one is partial to the sort of slapstick that involves putting both feet in one’s mouth simultaneously while continuing to stand and talk gibberish with a serious mien)…we are honored to present the one and only KJP scrambling more than a bit clumsily through the scree of a tweet long ago:
“…Biden’s ‘Election Denier’ Spox Scrambles To Explain 2016 Tweet”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-bidens-election-denier-spox-scrambles-explain-2016-tweets
And yet she seems to be able to carry off this routine almost effortlessly, with nary a hint of embarrassment…if with less aplomb than her distinguished predecessor…but then, Psaki was a phenomenon….
Anyway, giving Chevy Chase a run for his money…
“All shall be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”
Julian of Norwich
Mac’s comment is ‘heartfelt’ and true. I still have hope.
This is an interview that is worth listening to;
https://rumble.com/v1irfw7-tucker-carlson-today-mass-formation-psychosis.html
I’ve always wondered if the unrest and increasing violence, the increasing decadence, the general foreboding, the proliferation of disaster, horror, dystopian, and The End of the World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI) ideas and images in literature and film is a warning, is people’s general premonition of what we seem to be pretty much inevitably heading for.
I recently read a sci-fi story from the 70s where the author made himself a character and the focus of the story was on the end of the world. At first, the author looked a little foolish because the apocalypse he was worried about didn’t happen…but then I realized it did.
The world as defined by the 1970s values and mindset of the author did get destroyed and supplanted by a 1980s that wasn’t ANYTHING like he or any of his peers anticipated.
I don’t know what the future is going to be like. It could suck. One thing I would almost guarantee is that the kind of people in charge of things now won’t be the kind of people in charge of things then. They’ll either be replaced or so transformed (ala hippies to yuppies) to be unrecognizable.
Our world changed with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. There was an explosion of pre-1989 ideas unleashed by the end of the Cold War but they are all spent and inertia is now the only thing stopping us from changing course.
Mike
I am confident you know that the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand was a precipitating cause for World War I. Recently I learned that the assassin was an anarchist and had spent the morning looking for a banker or industrialist to shoot. He was unable to find a target, and in frustration had stopped his search to have a sandwich. The Archduke was visiting, and his driver wasn’t familiar with the town, and while the assassin was having lunch, the driver drove up the street and got the too long car stuck on a too sharp curve. While they were deciding what to do, the assassin came out and shot the Archduke. Now the Archduke was stubborn and vain. His clothes were sewn on each morning by a tailor. He refused to go to a doctor, or have his clothes removed. After hours of pleading, he finally agreed to both, but by then, too much time had passed and the wounds became fatal. Dang it. I hate it when that happens.
Recently I learned that in the spring of 1939 Germany was negotiating with Poland about a city full of German speakers in Polish territory. Negotiations were underway, until the British offered a defensive pact with Poland, and then the negotiations came to an end. War was soon to follow. The Germans claimed their invasion of Norway was because Winston kept spouting off about about the British needed to invade Norway for use as a platform for invading Germany.
My confidence in the people who are supposed to be sensibly guiding us in peace has been greatly eroded. The People’s Republic of China cares a great deal more about Taiwan and reunification than we do, yet we aggravate the situation, with official visits and arms sales.
The boil blanching mess will probably come quickly… we’ll go camping on Friday night and Monday morning find everything shut down, banks, internet, running water, and electricity. Whoops, who remembered to buy matches? At the start of World War II they took inventory in Army bases in the Philippines. Every base needed food, water, fuel, and quinine. Every base had ample supplies of 3 of the 4, which the deficiency varying from base to base.
My guess is one of two things. Either the really, in your face obvious, like the US trying to send the 7th Fleet to visit Taipei, or something small, that only the most astute saw coming. For example, a couple of weeks ago the war lords in Northern Mexico were making some violent adjustments. Something like that spirals out of control, and boom, the old order is gone and new order is being determined.
My recommendation is to stay right with God, and pray the Rosary daily.
A New Zealander who spent years in the States had this impression on the current culture in the USA; ‘When people stop communicating in a country, it can lead to Civil War’. I have notice that there is push back occurring ‘Down Under’ and I notice that there is a ‘swell’ forming in the States. I still have hope.
One thing that makes me pessimistic is that urban dwellers have been waging an unwavering and cruel war on the rural parts of America for decades. And whereas the urban areas USED to be content to with some political give and take with rural areas, in the last 3 decades LARGE parts of the urban experience have proven over and over to be failures. But rather than fix those self-created problems, the urban areas have focused more intently instead on blaming rural areas. They punish rural areas with higher taxes, diluted voting representation, Climate Change edicts that bankrupt farms, water usage policies that kill crops and on and on. They know they’re punishing rural areas and they invent ever-more cruel and ridiculous rationalizations for their appalling and destructive behavior. And they don’t care.
The future does seem grim. Our children aren’t certain what to do next or where they should head. And clearly the government and media are working against conservatives on many fronts.
But in the places I live, the People’s Republic of Ann Arbor, Nantucket and Ft Myers there are people with a conservative outlook and willingness to look further than whatever is put in front of them.
I like Thomas Sowell’s idea of the tragic vision of life. Most conservatives, at heart, see life that way. We know that we all end as dust yet we strive to make things better for all around us. We understand that answers to problems are almost never found by extirpating what we are currently doing or what we did in the past. That method creates further unexpected problems. Which require further leftist solutions and more government spending.
So I’m ambivalent about our future. It’s probably not as bad as it seems…but you never know. Keep yourself prepared, look out for those you love, and keep your powder dry.
I’m confident that Nebraska will remain conservative although much of Omaha and Lincoln are wildly liberal. The Omaha Public Schools and Lincoln Public Schools need real competition.
My buddy is running for the Unicam. He campaigns door-to-door. He tells me that many people don’t even appreciate how bad things are even though they buy groceries and gas.
I suppose we need some traumatic event to expose how terrible liberalism is.
In the 70s I was sure by the 90s I would be living, if I were still alive, in the rubble left after civilization destructed from some combination of nuclear war, over-population, famine and eco-catastrophe.
Instead I found myself living in the most astonishing, prosperous boom of human history.
I doubt such a boom is around the corner this time — too many things are going sideways — but I’ve learned caution when it comes to straight-line extrapolations.
I remain more optimistic about America than most here. I believe we have hit peak woke fascism and that will unravel.
However, whatever happens we won’t be going back the way things were.
well they have to buy food and gas, yes we seem to living through every 70s dystopia, put in a blender, soylent green, thx 1138 with the sterile cubicles and unisex fashion, fahrenheit 451 with the shells, we don’t yet have omega man, but wait a tick,
To be clear, I don’t mean to be saying that I expect some kind of big catastrophe or collapse. Something like that certainly could happen, and there are good reasons to think it probably will. However, what I’m thinking of is the cultural transformation, which is also a political transformation. The constitutional republic is becoming a shell of itself. The ideal of a responsible citizenry choosing its own rulers in a reasonably well-informed way was always very flawed in practice (like everything), but it was a good ideal. Now the ideal itself is becoming foreign. What we seem to be developing is a combination of apparent direct democracy of the type thinkers have always warned against with an actual oligarchy, which commands the tools of mass manipulation and indoctrination which can get the results it wants, with help as needed from force and fraud.
Life will go on, there will be dark and light, good and bad, as always. But I don’t think America is coming back. The crucial thing is that the constitution is becoming a dead letter. And the people are complicit in that.
Here, if you care to read something 1500 words or so long, is something I wrote a few months ago on that topic. The title, “A Republic, If We Want It”, suggests the general point: we don’t in fact want it anymore.
https://www.lightondarkwater.com/2022/07/a-republic-if-we-want-it.html
John Witten: “I wonder if your perspective and that of your commenter reflect where you live and spend most of your time.”
I live in the very reddest part of the country, and much of it is fairly to very prosperous. So that’s not my problem. I freely acknowledge that I’m pessimistic by nature and that certainly has something to do with it. I could argue either way on that “rebirth” you mention, but will let that go for now. Suffice to say that I hope you are more right than I.
There is a silver lining to the Dark Cloud that hangs over us.
Most recently evidenced by Gavin Newsom’s California.
Rolling blackouts are becoming increasingly common now that the State has shifted to inadequate renewable energy generation. Citizens with electric cars are currently banned from charging them, making getting to work… great fun for Californians.
Cherry on top; LA currently has an estimated 60,000 homeless. It also reportedly has 20,000 vacant hotel and motel rooms each day/night. LA voters will soon vote on a proposition that would make it mandatory that those 20,000 hotel and motel rooms be offered to the homeless. Many of whom are mentally ill and many with substance abuse issues.
What could go wrong? What will be the predictable result?
It’s really decent of coastal California voters to provide an object lesson in what happens when control of the asylum is turned over to the inmates.
Milwaukee takes the pretexts offered by malevolent governments at face value.
Regarding Poland, Norway, and that corporal.
Something about how long it took to set up the logistics for the invasion of Poland or Norway and the other story about perfidious Albion. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact comes to mind, funny how that worked for the socialists, of national and international varieties. Really sucked to be Polish.
And of course the tales of Germans being attacked by Poles as the pretext to the invasion.
Believe what you will Millwaukee.
In the 70s I was sure by the 90s I would be living, if I were still alive, in the rubble left after civilization destructed from some combination of nuclear war, over-population, … — huxley
Sounds like “The Mosquito Coast (1986)” syndrome to me. I didn’t realize that they re-made it last year, with a non-apocalyptic plot motivation.
Generally, the last 35 years or so have been relatively terrific. Though I agree with Geoffry B. that just in the last couple years the-powers-that-be seem to be tearing down some of that foundation. Creative destruction is fine if it involves replacing the destroyed with something better. They aren’t. Can we stop them in time?
Political conspirators in Bosnia recruited a half-dozen men to assassinate the Archduke and the fatal shot was the 2d assassination attempt that day. The Archduke and his wife died within 45 minutes of being shot and hadn’t yet arrived at a locus where they could have received medical treatment.
Colonel Apis black hand which was financed by the Russians if memory served,
https://streetwiseprofessor.com/klaus-schwabs-category-error/#comments
I know some make too much of him, but too many beg for his coin, and his approval,
Although there are times when I allow current events to depress my mood, and I despair, overall I am guardedly optimistic for the future.
huxley recently mentioned Peter Zeihan (and I will wrote more, specifically, about him when I have more time). Zeihan uses statistics (mainly demographics and natural resource availability) to predict the future. I recently heard a podcast with demographer Ken Gronbach then read his book, “Upside.” Both men predict uncertainty and hard times for much of the world, but both are very positive about the U.S. We are making a mess of much, but we have much to work with. Who was it who said, “there is a lot of ruin in a nation?” Well, the U.S. is a nation with a wealth of natural resources, a fairly open economy and, unlike most of the 1st world, we didn’t forget how to have children 30 years ago.
I always figured that the apolitical majority would keep the country together. Also, I don’t think I’d like being stuck in a trench even with people I agree with, and a lot of Americans feel the same way. I’m not so sure now. I still don’t think there will be a full-fledged civil war, but we are in for stormy days.
I didn’t take these cultural and political wars seriously, because we didn’t really have them when I was younger, or they weren’t so divisive, and I thought we could just go back to how we were, but being more tolerant, inclusive, accepting, etc. But that’s not going to happen.
People aren’t so comfortable with compromises now, with living in a country that was part religious and part secular, largely capitalist, but not entirely so. The demand seems to be for everything to be centrally determined, without much autonomy for states (except when it comes to “politically correct” experimentation).
Also, it seems like it’s about power now. It’s not enough to have equal rights. What people seem to want is power for their group or the group’s representatives, even if the regime they support doesn’t benefit most of the people in their group. Or perhaps it’s not about wanting power, but about wanting to replace the old White guys, even if it means voting for a very old, very White guy.
Also, technology seems to be driving us in the direction of ever more centralized power, and the political trend under Biden is also in that direction. Where great power can be exercised, there will be people who want to exercise it.
Aside from statistics, which I wrote about above, I am often optimistic (“white pilled” is the term) about the future because of the freedom the Internet and technology have brought us. Yes, there is censorship and cancellation going on, but it’s like trying to kill the hydra. Strike one down and ten more rise up.
Neo’s blog is one of many sources of truth.
And I’m very heartened by the open mockery of the administration, DC, the FBI, the Treasury… Yes, they are doing unjust things. Yes, they are cheating. Yes, they are power mad mediocrities. But we see them! And they are called out for their mendacity and foolishness.
A great many openly mock Joe Biden whenever he appears in public or speaks. And the same for his mouthpiece, the Press Secretary. And his wife. And son. And the cross dresser who is the Admiral of something or other. And others in his administration.
No matter how much lipstick you put on them; Don Lemon is not Walter Cronkite and Jimmy Kimmel is not Johnny Carson. General Milley is not General Patton. Tony Blinken is not Henry Kissinger.
It’s very hard to control a populace that is laughing hysterically at their leaders.
Even on Facebook posts from the Daily Wire usually are in the top ten daily shared items. Tucker Carlson and Greg Gutfeld’s shows lead mightily in every demographic category of viewers. Joe Rogan, Adam Carolla, Tim Dillon, Glen Beck… reach tens of millions of listeners and viewers and they are no fans of centralized government or the Biden administration. Spanish language, conservative talk radio is the biggest thing trending on the radio dial. Nearly every month there is a new, dynamic, intelligent, inspiring voice and face of freedom from the black and hispanic communities, and many are also female.
Conservatism is the new, punk rock. Traditional values are the counter culture.
neo, I think what your are perceiving is your liberal friends’ experiencing cognitive dissonance. To support nearly all their positions, or at least not admit to the fallacies of or problems with such positions, your liberal friends must resort to hypocrisy or abject evasiveness.
I just listened to Neil Oliver’s newest presentation on GBNews, in which he takes square aim at the anti-human and anti-birth propaganda spewed by the WEF, Extinction Rebellion, and other groups as a major cause of the current widespread mood of depression and malaise. Understandably, the first part of his talk rehearses the plight of people in the UK and elsewhere facing a brutal winter of shortages and deprivation made worse by the hypocrisy of the elites. In the second part, however, he discusses the benefits of a large human population, particularly the exchange of ideas and discoveries that can benefit all of us. His words gave me (at any rate) fresh hope for our species:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QnmuAmOgRA&ab_channel=GBNews
We have been on the road to a hot civil war for awhile now. Just saw a story about armed Antifa in Portland doing pretty much what they want. The two visions of the US that exist today cannot be reconciled except by war. I wish it weren’t so but wishing does not make it so.
We are in an Israeli-Palestinian type standoff that makes compromise impossible. Liberals deny that conservatives are deserving of equal rights and application of the rule of law.
How is it possible to survive as a nation when one half refuses to acknowledge that the other half has any rights? The left is knowingly, deliberately and enthusiastically abusing conservatives.
How many times do liberals think they are going to get away with punching us in the mouth before there is a fight? Some of the lefty cheerleaders who keep celebrating the punching are going to see people they love get hurt in the inevitable conflict. Why are they cheering so hard?
I had a childhood where we had no central heat, we bought ice for the ice box, we had party line telephones, and fruits vegetables were either in season or canned and so on.
When I bought my first car, at age 22, it seemed like a dream come true. Such luxury, and no more hitching rides with friends or riding the bus.
In 1961 I spent a year in Navy Post Graduate School and learned about diodes – silicon chips that could replace vacuum tubes. And I learned a bit of Fortran to program a computer that was as big as a small house. I knew big things were coming but had no idea how big the advances would be.
In 1993 I retired, and we built a forever retirement house with a heat pump and a standby generator for electrical outages. It also had passive solar features to conserve energy. It wasn’t to be our forever house, though 🙂
Today we are living in a high-tech house designed for living out the rest of our lives without going into a nursing home.
What I have seen over 89 years is constant improvement in living standards and ease of living.
When I see the Green energy ideas, it fills me with dread and disbelief. They know not what they’re doing. Getting rid of fossil fuels will turn this country into a third world sh*thole.. They seem not to care. Controlling our energy will give them enormous power. And I think that is where they are headed.
If they succeed it will mark the end of a great leap forward for the American people. I’m old and feeble, but still trying to fight the left and its plans wherever I can.
I think we are going to see parents standing up.Look what Younkins accomplished in Virginia. As people learned during the lockdowns what their kids were not learning in school, as they hear about schools not telling them about their kid’s pronouns and receiving puberty blockers, these parents will stand together to get some common sense back into our society. People are getting fed up with the trannie insanity and their seeing how their kids reading and math scores have fallen, they will want better. it won’t matter whether they are Dems or Reps.
Can we PLEASE stop calling today’s leftist democrats “liberals”?
1984 wasn’t like 1984, but 2024, 2034, or 2044 may be.
But I’m pessimistic today. I have Yuval Harari’s book in my player. Grim, posthuman future.
Everyone above is correct; it all depends on perspective.
My perspective is that I have been blessed to have lived through the most fortunate epoch that mankind has ever enjoyed.
I have lived as a white American male Boomer.
I was born to survivors of the Depression and WWII. 3 of my grandparents escaped certain death in Europe by escaping to the USA early in the 20th century, a very common situation, I know.
As one of a dominant group, I believe that we white male American Boomers are unique in history in wanting, and trying, to share our good fortune with less fortunate.
We have opened our society to women, “BIPOC,” immigrants, minorities of all kinds.
It has not worked as well as we naively thought it would, but we are better than when we started, and still better than anyone else.
What we forget is the the American experiment has not always been this successful. I remember hearing in my American history class about the troubles America had in the 19th century. Economic panics, slavery and civil war, poverty, Bleeding Kansas, the Exclusion Acts, Indian wars. It was no picnic being a 19th centruy American.
Then the 20th century. Started out OK, good for 29 years interrupted only by a Great War. A good decade in the 1920s, then Depression, WWII. Only then did we dominate and started living the truly good life.
I remember the 60s, blood in the streets, war in Viet Nam, economic problems.
We have been living off the seed corn of post WWII domination.
We’re still the best, judging by people voting with their feet, even if not as dominant as we once were.
We’ll work it out, probably, but I’m keeping my metaphorical and literal powder dry.
Rufus T.F.
Did you see that in the ratings game, Gutfeld beat out all the rest of late night TV? Kimmel, Fallon, Colbert, etc. Gutfeld credited Carlson for telling him to go for it, when the network offered him the 5 nights/week gig.
Because his show has just the right take on the insanity not so much tonight show but steve allen after he headed the tonight show
I sometimes feel as Mac explains. But it’s a matter, I submit, of proportions. Mine seem to be skewed.
He uses the term “think”. The proportions I worry about do not think. I was kidding around, more or less, about the Thalys train heroes of six years ago. How they were forced–no time to get spiffed up and Americans are burlier anyway and getting a suit off the rack would be less likely in France than here–to show up in Polos and Dockers. I quoted Robin Givhan, style writer for the WaPo. She said, after sufficient remarks about the actual clothes, that they were likely appropriate. Polos and Dockers are what young guys wear when they know they’re supposed to get dressed up but they don’t know the fuss. I mentioned that to my twelve-year-old granddaughter who shrugged and said, “We’re Americans. It’s what we do.”
Liked that. Related to another woman who immediately triggered to the sharp-dressed men of Charlottesville “They had lights and…..” I kind of lost it. “I qualified with the TIki Torch in the fourth grade.” Sort of how I qualified with the M14 in Basic, the M16 and M60 in AIT, so forth.
But everything which has happened since was…..nothing.
We’ll be having dinner shortly with a couple, the woman of which has only one political idea. Mean tweets. Nothing else matters and if you try to talk facts, she gets confused and angry. I try not to, for social reasons and because I think something might break.
Another would be devastated if she were no longer required to do stupid stuff regarding Covid and AGW. We live in Michigan. Her response to the question of shoving the infected into nursing homes to vastly increase the death rate; Airily, “we know more about covid now”. From which, even not knowing the state, you could guess she votes dem and our governor is a dem. And thus the dead don’t matter. But Trump’s death rates….
But…my granddaughter did hear about the Quartering Acts in eighth grade history, in case anybody wondered where the Third Amendment came from. Sort of helps fight the ungrateful colonists meme so prevalent. So that’s good.
IMO, it’s the proportion of the non-thinkers which is the issue and I hope I’m in a non-standard pool here and get the wrong idea.
Mac & others.
I hear you. I got that feeling of “Things are *not* going to work out. The America that we knew is not going to survive.” when I saw the video clip of Obama slyly giving John McCain the middle finger. He knew what he was doing, the crowd knew what he was doing and cheered! And people still voted for him!
How? Why? the guy just gave the rudest gesture you could give anyone! That should have been a “dead in the polls” moment. But, it wasn’t.
Any country that has voters that will not only not condemn, but cheer on, such bad behavior isn’t going to survive.
There have been numerous events since then that have reinforced my pessimism. While I would like to optimistic, I’m working too hard to be and feel like I am failing at it.
Watch a powerful rebuttal to and deconstruction of Biden’s speech from Hell by Rudi Giuliani
See https://rumble.com/embed/v1g5zqj/?pub=4
TommyJay,
I did see that. And Gutfeld’s show must have 1/10th the budget of anyone of those shows. Nothing against Gutfeld, but I think it’s a testament of how lame the others have gotten.
To paraphrase Nora Desmond: at 5’4″ it’s not Gutfeld who has gotten big, it’s the talk shows that have gotten small. 🙂
Rufus T.F.,
Agreed. I only watch bits of Gutfeld and none of the others. Can’t hold a candle to Carson, and I liked Dick Cavet too.
M Smith: “The demand seems to be for everything to be centrally determined, without much autonomy for states (except when it comes to “politically correct” experimentation).”
Yes, that’s a big part of what I meant about dissenters being subjugated. It’s not enough for the progressive technocrats to control things in their own cities and states. There’s this crazed need to enforce absolute uniformity throughout the nation. If a high school coach in Podunk says a prayer after a game, it’s a national issue for them. Even more if the Right-Wing Theocratic Extremist Supreme Court says it’s ok.
Anyone who’s read The Fourth Turning — a jaw-dropping 1997 prophecy by two sociologists – can tell you that it’s never going back, it’s existential, it’s not gonna end in compromise – somebody gonna win, somebody gonna lose – and one way or another, it’ll be over in the next five years.
Theyve been saying that for 25 years now.
Re: Peter Zeihan
Rufus T. Firefly:
I’m reading Zeihan’s latest book, “The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization” and it’s making sense.
I’m also boning up on China and its current crises — real estate bubble, mortgage protests, way over-leveraged banking system, lagging growth, severe problems with Zero Covid policy, high youth unemployment, youth’s “Lying Flat/Let It Rot” response, American corporations reshoring industry back to the US and the demographic crunch — combined with a communist top-down government led by a cult of personality. What could go wrong?
Sure, people have been predicting China’s imminent collapse for decades now, but that doesn’t mean they were wrong.
I notice Niall Ferguson, a historian I respect, is covering the same ground with the same ominous warning re: Taiwan:
____________________________
It’s a point that I’ve made myself more than once. A regime like this, an authoritarian one party state which suddenly finds that the economic miracle it was presiding over has ended and therefore can no longer rely on economic growth for its legitimacy, is highly likely from a historian’s vantage point to become more aggressive in its foreign policy because it knows that it can count on a pretty strong nationalism not only from the masses but from educated Chinese too and that’s why the Taiwan situation is so dangerous I think. We may underestimate just how much pressure Xi Jinping is under domestically and therefore we may underestimate his readiness to take risk on the taiwan question.
–“China in decline, Population and Economic collapse | Niall Ferguson”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_0UWGh96Fc
____________________________
China is not the only pipe bomb in the ointment, but it’s a damn big obvious one.
I wouldn’t try to predict the timing, but a Chinese collapse sure looks like it’s in the cards, followed by a huge ripple effect.
“Some of the lefty cheerleaders who keep celebrating the punching are going to see people they love get hurt in the inevitable conflict. Why are they cheering so hard?” Stan
Fanatics are congenitally incapable of considering that they might lose all.
They are of the mindset which thinks, “it’s not enough that we should win, they must… suffer”.
Fanaticism takes obstinate resistance… personally.
Think Capt. Ahab
Whenever I get that same feeling about the centre not holding, I watch this piece from the 1963 movie “Bye Bye Birdie.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wCXr_6wgns
They want us to lose hope.
They are pressing actively that this despair will cover the country like a volcano-induced carbon dioxide cloud.
!Viva la resistance!
!No pasaran!
(Yes, it’s entirely probable that the Hispanics, especially but not only those from Venezuela, Cuba and Mexico—not to mention a large contingent of Blacks—will step up and help the cohort of the stalwart to save the Republic…)
File under: Jan Sobieski will ride again….
Joseph Samsel,
Great point!
Much, but not all, of the cultural changes are related to the secularization of the nation. There is a reason that Western Europe is further down the hole in these cultural changes than the US is. There is a reason that the less religious blue area are further down the hole in cultural changes than the more religious red areas. And I think Judeo- Christian religious traditions which promote the idea of a personal relationship with God have a different effect than than those where God is approached only or mostly in a corporate setting. A personal relationship effects seven days a week.
Went to a rodeo a few months back when one of my Uncles was being inducted into a state cowboy hall of fame.
They sang the national anthem. They prayed a public prayer. It was old America , or at least a shadowy semblance of it. Men were men there and cowgirls were cowgirls.
I do not know if another “ Great Awakening” would heal the growing divide or hasten the potential conflict….
jon baker
Back when our son was playing high school football, we usually got to the game in plenty of time. Home or away, the spectators seemed to know each other, a lot. Figures, Small town, forty guys on the team, cheerleaders. band. Lots of interested families.
So the teams come out on the field. The band appears. The people stand. Gentlemen remove their hats. Hands over hearts. Veterans may render the hand salute. The band plays the first verse of the National Anthem.
I found it affecting.
Even more so late in the season where the whole thing, from the fans showing up, is in the dark, under the lights. So we’re at least superficially warm, in the light, surrounded by the dark and cold performing a ritual of intensification.
I think that sort of thing counts.
At basketball games, it was usually a recorded performance. Once, the device malfunctioned and there was a request for anybody from the Madrigals. Half a dozen kids came out of the stands, stood in a half circle, hummed at each other to get the key right I suppose, and blew the roof off. Standing O.
I think you are getting someplace, when the local woke oppose public prayer as a First Amendment violation. I talked to an ACLU guy once who opposed the high school soccer team having a voluntary prayer before a game. Couldn’t quite articulate it but…. Was proud of making a high school devote a room for Muslim kids’ prayer times.
I don’t know. I went to the local 4th of July activities in my purple area of Florida, and it was pretty sad. There was a parade — *kinda* nice, with a lot of very old guys on the Shriner/Legion floats — but you could tell they wouldn’t be around much longer. There was a marching band or two — but pathetic: a handful of kids, wearing at best partial uniforms and carrying, not playing, their instruments. At the adjacent little concert in the park, when asked to join in, children did not know the lyrics to any patriotic song.
In fact the spirit seems to have gone out of all national holidays. Thanksgiving is no longer even mentioned in advertising — it is all “Black Friday” and of course, thanks to the Wokeists, it is problematic. The 4th is being made problematic, pointedly so with the new “Juneteen” holiday of “National Independence” adjacent to it.. “Pride Month” is a far bigger deal in terms of store decorations, etc.
At my local Publix (the dominant local supermarket), whose cashiers were formerly noted for their friendliness, none *ever* acknowledges a holiday — no “Happy 4th” or “Thanksgiving” never mind the long-banned “Merry Christmas.” Obviously company policy.
This is all trivial, but I’m afraid I am with Mac and Neo in thinking that “things will not be okay.”
Nancy B,
Here in northeast Florida it could not be more different. Local parades are of the traditional variety, and Publix employees are really quite wonderful. My wife was shocked a month ago when the typical FL afternoon Tstorm hit and all the Publix employees got umbrellas and escorted customers to their cars. NEVER would happen at a Stop&Shop in CT. Of course where I live (Nassau County) is deep red, with plenty of active and retired military.
From your description it’s obvious that as the percentage of Ds living in an area grows, the traditional Americana disappears. My daughter lives in Orlando, and loves DeSantis, but tells me about 50% of the people she interact with hate his guts… D infiltration again.
I remember when the first Publix opened in Daytona Beach back in the 60s. It was a revelation. They even had chocolate-covered ants!
I always wondered who ate them and what they tasted like.
My conservative niece has discovered old movies. She recently watched “Gone with the Wind,” “Streetcar Named Desire,” and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” She loved them all and liked them better than current woke fare.
She wants to watch more vintage films and asked me for recommendations. I was happy to oblige.
Since “Gentlemen” was directed by Howard Hawks, I recommended Hawks’ “To Have and Have Not” and “The Big Sleep” for the great storytelling and the crackling electricity between Bogart and Bacall. Then threw in “Casablanca” for a Bogey trifecta.
I can always watch those. There are more recent films I like but the pickings get pretty slim after 2000.
I tried for all the years my daughters were at home to get them to watch the old classics. The best I could do was Gentlemen and Oz which they both liked. I thought with Gentlemen they might take off into the Bogart and more film noir, but nope, no interest whatsoever. Even now as adults, if it’s B&W, they won’t bite.
I never believed the Flight 93 narrative. The fears expressed there were wildly overblown.
Heck, almost two years in on Biden and barely a minor segment along the path of disaster that article predicted with a Dem win in 2016. Yes, policies I don’t like, I think are ill advised, etc. But…Democracy!
But, it wasn’t/isn’t just that – my own eyes saw/see all the things that US has beyond any other country. There is a loooong way to go to become like Europe, and even looooonger to be worse.
Having been there and in countries on other continents, it is not especially terrible to adopt a more European set of policies (not that I like or advise it at all).
I think most of the fears come from the unknown, and media and political voices are exploiting that. They are marketing FUD.
The ONLY thing that has put the future in doubt, IMHO, is the turn on the “right” to mimic the far left’s tactics (Saul Alinsky all the way down), to only see righteousness on their side, to ignore and excuse things they would and do go ballistic on when the left does it.
Principles they said they stood for no longer matter when it is a “fight” for power (for what then?).
Essentially, it is that a huge chunk have given up on Democracy, once they adopt this mindset. Because they think it is no use? Cannot convince others of our preferred policies and admin priorities?
My question: Was it ever about freedom for those people? Was it ever about any principles?
Maybe it was this fairy tale ideal where we can all live happily ever after and never have to do the work that Democracy requires. And, somehow, “our way of life” is preserved.
That brought on complacency.
This is a rare place in history where we can influence the direction, the priorities, the rules by which we are governed, but many would rather devolve into Monarchy or some other Authoritarian form than do what Democracy requires –
Declaring “all is lost” if we don’t cause some change (by Force if need be) – RIGHT NOW!
Every election then becomes the “last election ever” – everything is an emergency on a national Flight 93 path – because in four years “all is lost”.
Yeah right. There will be other elections.
The Trump years were not so fantastic (and his policy achievements were rather underwhelming vs his promises – which were largely unrealistic to begin with), there was no massive majority who were convinced he was the obvious choice going forward.
Will be other elections… Until we elect someone with the temerity, the gall to declare elections invalid – and succeed!
Right now, in the reality of it all (notwithstanding wild, intricate, and ever evolving complicated conspiracies many are convinced of) the right seems far closer to achieving that than the left.
In the last 60 to 70 years where European countries have been FAR more left than here, have they lost their Democracies?
Then why do we think, that somehow, “all is lost” with every successive “very next” election?
Maybe it is time to walk away from the FUD being sold, get more realistic about where we are / what giving up on Democracy will really get us (and our descendants), and begin to take seriously the things we need to do to make a Democracy actually work for us.
It’s strange that before COVID, the riots, the crime wave, inflation, energy shortages, open borders, the homelessness mess, etc. there was talk of empty nesters moving back to cities, and cities reviving. There was much hype about “new urbanism” and even visionary ideas about dynamic new city-states around the world leading an economic boom. And now all that’s gone. That’s a lesson in how quickly things can change. I wonder if that optimism about cities and urban life will come back, or if it’s gone for good.
I once asked a priest, kind of kidding, whether it was blasphemy to say to somebody “God bless you,” in order to annoy the guy. The priest laughed and said he thought it was probably blasphemy.
There, I thought, go half my “Merry Christmas”.
Nevertheless, I persevere, for pretty much all of our national holidays, the traditional ones.
One sales clerk said she preferred that to “Happy Holidays”, which was likely corporate policy.
But there are other folks who might be watching.
If I’m caught in the act of doing something worthwhile and somebody thanks me, I make sure to say I got recruited through my church. “One of these days I’m going to learn not to answer the phone.”
A drop here, a drop there. Might help.
I recently finished reading Barbara Tuchman’s ‘March of Folly’ truthfully only the first two thirds. But the observation holds. She describes the general attitude in England as they made peace with and agreed to independence for the American Colonies. They felt that the British Empire had just started the irreversible slide into the toilet. From our point of view, we know that the opposite was true. Within 50 years England had become the dominant force in the world again.
I do not suggest that this may happen to the US, but I do say, that neither path is assured. The conflict is not over and we have not lost.
Well it would be 70 years before the mutiny some 50 years before the 1sf debacle in afghanistan
“…have they lost their Democracies?”
Yes.
(All, except perhaps Switzerland, which has more of a—historically—regional, consensual set-up…)
Several years ago, I ran across an Iroquois Indian poem, which I found…unsettling..because of its possible parallels with our present situation. Read it again recently, and it gave me cold chills, for the same reason.
This is a memorial ode for Chief Red Jacket, but it is really a mourning song for much more.
Now listen, ye who established the Great League
Now it has become old
Now there is nothing but wilderness
Ye are in your graves who established it
Ye have taken it with you and you have place it under you
And there is nothing left but desert
There you have taken your great minds
That which you established, you have taken with you
Ye have placed under your heads what ye have established
The Great League.
Woe, Woe! Hearken ye!
We are diminished
Woe, Woe!
The land has become a thicket
Woe, Woe!
The clear places are deserted
They are in their graves who established it
Woe, the Great League!
Yet they declared that it should endure!
The Great League, Woe!
Their work has grown old
We are become wretched. Woe!
(Chief John Buck, 1884)
Physics Guy: Didn’t mean to imply that the Publix people are rude, although I observe much less chat than I remember from shopping on pre-move visits. And the “Can I help you out to the car with your groceries?” that was asked of even the most able-bodied of shoppers has disappeared. Covid, maybe? But even if you’re buying hot dogs and watermelon and charcoal briquets on July 3rd, they _never_ say “Have a good 4th” — or acknowledge any other holiday. It’s so consistent that it’s got to be corporate policy, at least around here.
I of course acknowledge that I could just be grumpy (and old) — Neo’s link usefully reminded us of that. One of the sources of my disquiet is that I although of course I can acknowledge that the vast majority of the young think they mean well — the future will be much better as they are not bigoted, sexist, polluters like those old people in past — I can’t say that the ideologies and policies that are being imposed upon us and them with such terrifying force and scope could have been formulated by people with good intentions. They are recipes for strife that are parasitic upon people’s good intentions.
Actually, Daniel Greenfield has a pretty good take:
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/09/immorality-identity-politics-daniel-greenfield/
Huxley: “My conservative niece has discovered old movies . . . She wants to watch more vintage films and asked me for recommendations. I was happy to oblige.”
If I could be so presumptuous to suggest another, “Mrs. Miniver”. I’d link to the Wikipedia page or something; but, don’t want to give away any of the plot. Except to say that it is a very good movie.
When asked to name my favorite movie of all time I have to list “Mrs. Miniver” as the one. I hope you and your niece get to enjoy it.
huxley:
Old black-and-white movies: Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Rebecca, Oliver Twist, Portrait of Jennie.
Mrs. Deavers would approve.
Black and Whites have a fantasy vibe. At one point, “sepia tone”, bringing shades of very light brown, multiple shades, preceded color and did the same thing.
I like the remake of Prisoner of Zenda with Madeleine Carroll
How’s this for a cast:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029442/fullcredits
No, no relation.
Although my father liked Madeleine who got herself to Europe and helped out in hospitals as best she could. Kissed my dad, so that’s cool.
Nancy B: “They are recipes for strife that are parasitic upon people’s good intentions.”
That’s a pretty brilliant one-sentence summary of the insidious way it works.
Nancy B. But when those holding such great intentions are shown the catastrophic reality, do they think again? Not in my experience.
So, either they cannot leave their self-image as a Good Person, or they intend the catastrophe.
I have been pessimistic about the future of this country for the past several years. As I approach ** years old, my greatest hope is to be able to live a safe, quiet life and have enough income to support myself. If you are a white, heterosexual man you will be marginalized.
Richard Aubrey: It’s the old “road to hell” thing, isn’t it? But I was trying to convey that he fact that many of the current doctrines were *never* intended to improve things is an heuristic clue that all that is going on isn’t simply people following that road, or me being just an old crank who doesn’t like “change.”
I think it’s a misconception that this is fundamentally an intellectual debate. The “Gramscian march” shouldn’t be equated with the gradual acceptance of a set of ideas. The march takes over institutions, not ideas. And it does so by using various tactics. For example, the doctrine that any racial disparity is racism is a political/legal tactic. Hence it is bullet-proof against factual rebuttal. They know what they allege isn’t accurate, but it’s too useful to abandon. And the fact that it’s not true means they have to anathematize saying otherwise. Ditto “trans women are women” etc. etc.
And once these tactics are available, not only can their original wielders continue their projects with them, but lots of other folks can decide they are useful to them as well, quite cynically. In many cases, they are persuasive enough that people don’t see any “catastrophic reality” around them, but rather a catastrophically sexist, racist past they still must escape from, and bad actors like those MAGA Republicans intent on dragging them back there.
Commentators on Biden’s speech noted that there appeared to be a deliberate referencing of the movie “V for Vendetta.”
I’m horribly out of it popular culture-wise, so I did screen the movie. What a weird experience! The dystopian, Fascist setting is uncannily the same, but the good and bad sides from the film have been switched. The villains in the film are persecuting gays and Muslims etc., and are generally the evil repressive Christian/white/bourgeois also highly familiar from “Handmaid’s Tale” etc. Yet at Independence Hall last week, the “victims” from the film were up there on the podium bathed in hell light using *deliberate* echoes of Hitlerian speeches, denouncing the “bad guys” of the film — the *exact same* “bad guys” — looking decked out like them.
You’d think that the Biden speech would cause a “Are we the baddies?” moment to the left, but apparently they loved it.
It’s not an intellectual debate…except that masses think they’re being convinced by intellectual efforts. Your remark about the use of “racist” is correct, but that’s taken as if it’s an intellectual issue instead of name-calling.
Sarah Hoyt used this post as a leaping off point for one of hers.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2022/09/07/things-fall-apart/
Lots of interesting points in the … part.
I know the feeling.
I think having a religious faith helps.
physicsguy at 12:28
How about trying Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious.” It has romance, from Florida to Rio! Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant in their prime.
It came out early in 1946, after World War II ended and the atomic age dawned, and there will still German Hitler followers like our ingenue’s father and smooth older charmer Claude Raines, cast as the villain, left to mop up, while hunt for uranium ore was all the rage in parts of the world like the US West, yet before the Cold War commenced. And thus the tale about future Nazi dreams in Brazil of the nuclear superweapon!
“Notorious” got plenty of Oscar nods in clouding winning for Best Screenplay. Later, the Screenwriter’s Guild of America voted is a top 100 screenplay.
Another enhanced historical note: the real James Bond was based on the exploits of Serbian rich playboy Dusko Popov. He was the Second World War’s greatest spy and a double agent awarded with both the Iron Cross from Germany and the Victoria Cross from Britain.
His importance to the war effort proved in several theatres of info and disinformation.
Popov could not convince J Edgar Hoover of the signal interest of Japan in Pearl Harbor, however. He eventually was called by his British handlers to go to Brazil to track down uranium…years before Hiroshima or “Notorious” was made.
On the ship back to the US, Popov was informed about the Japanese “Surprise” attack on Hawaii.
My point being, there are wonderful documentaries on Dusko Popov, the real life James Bond, on YT — from short to medium to an hour long.
Perhaps could set up for your daughters or family by setting out Popov’s career espionage? And then segue to the fictional story “Notorious” (again, free on YouTube — some have better sound and print quality than other versions), to the happiness of post WWII life, with a surprising sinister undercurrent, that makes this “against all odds” spy romance such a winning thriller down to us, today!
Finally, there is Bond, James Bond. Whose exploits in film and novel draw on current events of international intrigue, power rivalry, technology — and Hitchcock blended all this before out time masterfully. Prefiguring our ongoing pop culture, with the deepest perceptions.
Yes bond was a composite fleming got from popov the gambling devil may care fron reilly the adventuring behind the iron curtain and several other characters
Supposed to look like the american singer hoagy carmichael in manner so craig may have been closer
Miguel cryptically on Ian Fleming’s defining Bond’s appearance:
I think it’s a fools errand.
Between his literary canon and getting swept away by Hollywood success, he opined enough on the subject that one gets a range of ideal or preferred physical types. Thus, one’s left with the problem of “Which one” is paradigmatic? Preferred? Exclusive?
So…eh?
Dusko Popov! I haven’t heard that name in decades. The only book I have that is signed by the author that is addressed to me is Spy, Counterspy by Dusko Popov. Signed in 1974 at the Pentagon.