Do you ever feel as though …
… you’re trying to bail out the Titanic with a teaspoon?
Or that you’ve got your finger in the dike against a tsunami?
I get that feeling sometimes, when I ponder today’s politics and today’s values.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
I am inclined to say, “you ain’t seen nothing yet”.
For instance; today, the digital version of the local rag reports that high school students in Temecula, Ca. walked out of class for the third time since the school board sided with parents over transgender notifications.
So, these children are aligning against their parents. There is mounting evidence that the very pampered next generation may be more radical (I will not use the word “Woke”) than the present.
I forget who said, and I paraphrase; Hard times build hard people. Hard people build good times. Good times build soft people.
I might substitute frivolous for soft.
I suspect that it will take some hard times to modify the trajectory of society; and the result could be problematic.
Yes, yes, I do feel that way. Often.
A human trait apparently. At least I don’t think the stray kittens I feed out back are bothered by it, or the birds I feed out front. Luckily we have the “Serenity Prayer” (along with a couple deep breaths) : )
Yes. And it’s very depressing.
Faith in higher things. Only thing that gets me through.
I don’t feel exactly that way, because I don’t feel like I’m doing anything as significant as putting a finger in the dike. Almost everyone I know either already agrees with me or is immovably on the progressive side. So I just get depressed. :-/
I did take the trouble to write a book about the whole ‘60s cultural revolution. But I’m not having any luck getting it published.
Bit of trivia for you since cb brought up the Serenity Prayer. A man named Reinhold Niebuhr wrote it. He was a very famous theologian last century, at the height of his fame around WWII. He went to Elmhurst College (class of 1910) which is a few blocks from me. I walked by his statue this morning while walking the dog.
Yes I have that feeling and I am sad that my parents worked hard for a good life for the family. But, I am glad that they are not here to see it all fade away. I do feel sorry for the grand nephews and what their life will be like when they grow up.
When I was going through my parent’s home, I found papers related to interviews that my mom gave to a local paper and a radio station. They were interviewing her as a war time bride and how she found life in the US. She made some interesting comments of the US vs life in Latvia and Germany. If I can locate them again, I’ll include some of the better quotes as comments some time in the future.
Sure do. Pretty much every time I read the news or political commentary.
This is why periodic breaks from the endless news cycle and the tsunami of distressing developments (with only a trickle of hopeful ones) is necessary for one’s mental health. I took a week long break shortly after the midterms (once it was confirmed the GOP would get a narrow House majority). I took another one after the first two Trump indictments. Very beneficial.
Every day; sometimes all day. It’s exhausting.
Mac…”I did take the trouble to write a book about the whole ‘60s cultural revolution. But I’m not having any luck getting it published”
Why not self-publish for Kindle on Amazon?
David Foster: I may yet, but I really don’t want to. It would almost certainly find a lot more readers if it came from a “real” publisher. I’ve self-published one book and I don’t think it ever topped a hundred and fifty copies. It’s a “best of” from my blog, and was never going to be a big seller–the blog has never had all that many readers. But I had hoped it would do rather better than that.
Here it is, fyi:
https://www.amazon.com/Sunday-Light-Selections-Night-Journal/dp/0997470801/
My border collie and I herded sheep today. When border collie people raise a glass in toast we say, “Here’s to calm sheep and a biddable dog.” Well, today the sheep were quite calm and my dog was very biddable. She’s an indefatigable worker and a great pal.
Today, my world was just fine.
When you no longer care what people think:
Zelensky taps ‘Spirit Cooking’ artist who cut pentagrams into her stomach as new ‘ambassador’ for Ukraine schools
Good heavens! What’s with the Biden/left/Democrat side of things and Satanism?
This should cheer you up, Neo. Take a short trip to Hydra:
https://greekcitytimes.com/2023/09/22/of-love-and-legacy-inside-leonard-cohens-house-in-hydra/
There are still some places of relative peace and calm out there.
Bookworm had a meme that expresses to me the main reason that we can’t seem to get the general public to care about the Titanic-tsunami that is our political milieu.
https://www.bookwormroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/America-01-2.jpg
The Left / Democrats have taken great pains to keep it that way.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to KNOW nothing.”
The site debunking Burke as author of the popular maxim has a quote from Mills that is similar, and very appropriate for today.
https://www.openculture.com/2016/03/edmund-burkeon-in-action.html
“Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”
Mills is John Stuart Mill.
Tyops strike again.
Professor George is in the news again this month, being shouted down by mostly peaceful protestors for practicing what he preaches.
2019:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/princeton-professor-robert-george-calls-on-conservatives-to-be-more-courageous/
2023:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/rowdy-protesters-shut-down-conservative-princeton-professors-truth-seeking-speech/
I think we have gone so far down the path of vanity and self gratification that we will have to hit bottom before we can climb back up.
And that’s a pretty depressing thought.
But there is reason to hope. When I visit my son and his family I attend church with them. Conservative Lutheran.* There is a sizable young adult and young family membership. Probably due to the church’s K-8 school but nevertheless, a new faith generation. And these young people are highly educated with professions in research, medicine, tech, etc. Moderns. Hardly the ignorant, mouth breathing yahoos portrayed by the media. They are very intentional about their faith and the values they want to live by and instill in their children. My point being that if and when we do decide to crawl out of the pit and restore virtue to this country there is a new generation ready, willing, and able to do it. We might not live to see it but they are out there keeping the flame alive.
*LOL. What’s bred in the bone will out in the flesh.
In some church-based discussion groups. I think I make a bit of progress. Some of the subjects cross paths with my experiences or skill sets and so I have some credibility. Even though it conflicts with lib/protestant stuff we are handed.
My position helps. Friday, about twenty of us were working on a hunger program. Feeding America. The director said, with a rueful grin, that we’ll be handling big watermelons at one stations. Some of the folks yelled, “Aubrey”. All fun, but they know I go for the heavy end, metaphorically speaking. Helps, I guess.
I’m not depressed. I’m an Eastern Orthodox Christian. The history of my church is repleat with oppression, torture, executions. My priest (and my Church) have always taught not to place any faith in political systems. After looking at history I don’t. There really is no such thing as a long term, workable political system. If your depending on humans well……
In this specific instance we are on the tiger and cannot get off. Once you remove all restraint the end will not be good.
AesopFan
We lost that fight in the 60’s when the left started the march through the institutions. And we did not fight.
This revelation regarding the Sainted Dr. Fauci is pretty awful, if totally unsurprising.
The fact that it can be publicized may be, perhaps, a reason for hope…
“Skeleton Crawls From Fauci’s Closet, Shows Him Saying Benefits Of Gain-Of-Function Research Outweighed Pandemic Risk”—
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2023/09/23/skeleton-crawls-from-faucis-closet-shows-him-saying-benefits-of-gain-of-function-research-outweighed-pandemic-risk/
Politics follow culture. Work to fix culture in your area, help others do the same.
When neither their person not their property is touched, the majority of men (and women) live content.
I learned something very interesting yesterday. I chatted with a couple of old friends on Facebook. They are both progressive Trump haters. This is what I learned, they believe that the indictments were brought because there was evidence of a crime. Not for political gain. “If Trump didn’t want to be indicted in Georgia he shouldn’t have committed a felony in Georgia” they actually believe this is on the up and up. This ties in perfectly with another friend who didn’t believe there was election fraud until I showed him an indictment online. This was from Texas. Does anyone else find people who are progressive to be naive about government and the Justice system? If they are it would explain a lot.
Tonight starts ” Yom Kippur” aka ” Day of Atonement” . It was the one time per year that the Jewish High Priest entered the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept.
Leviticus 16: 1-34
Matthew 27:51
Hebrews 9: 1-15
Zelensky and Abramovic, another gruesome twosome!
Tucker and Vlad? Is that another pair? Or Vlad and Col. Macgreagor?
Just askin,’ Jordan?
Fog of war and propaganda.
The source of my despair is our election system. With 8-10m new illegal aliens, on top of the 20m that are already here, the Dems will probably win the WH in 2024 with Michelle or Gavin.
I don’t know how we recover from 4 more years of the Dems.
I saw Dem cheating firsthand when Ben Nelson ran for Governor of NE. We both worked at the same law firm. One of the other lawyers was deep into the campaign. On Election Day, he went to minority part of Omaha and helped distributed “walking around money” to the Black pastors. This was SOP for the Dems. I was shocked.
Blacks in Omaha have never voted in numbers, but the idea of cheating just repulsed me. And I’m sure it has only gotten much, much worse over the years.
Ben Nelson won. He’s the last Democrat to have won any statewide office in NE. My lawyer friend became the State of NE’s lobbyist in DC for a long time.
JFM. In my experience, they claim to believe something is true, or not, and defy information to the contrary.
And there’s the two-step; “It’s not happening…and it’s a damn’ fine idea to see it happening.”
I don’t have much time left and have decided to try and give myself as much joy as I can. This view seems to often mean turning away from all of the nonsense, which is a struggle.
The young folks y’all mention are basically screwed, don’t want anything to do with my viewpoints, and might as well be hoisted with their own petard. Of course, the tragedy is that my generation laid much of the groundwork for all of the nonsense that is now so prevalent.
My local library, in a tiny town of about 1,000 souls, had a “climate” thingie. They brought the kids in from out tiny school, about 45 students, and had materials and “information” for them. Essentially, they were to be brainwashed. I contacted the librarian and suggested some reading that gave a more balanced perspective and was politely blown off.
Where are those petards? They may have a different form than what Shakespeare envisioned but I do feel they are there and will have their impact.
The Destruction of the United States Is Intentional. Here’s What Will Happen Next.
A “nice” little summary.
https://pjmedia.com/columns/kevindowneyjr/2023/09/23/the-destruction-of-the-united-states-is-intentional-heres-what-will-happen-next-n1729390
Things will get worse.
Then, they will get better. As bad as things seem for us as Americans in 2023, we are far better off than the Brits in 1940-41, better than Americans in the 1930s, better than just about everybody else in the world right now. Many of us Neofolk are old enough to remember the riots and killings and violence of 1968 (way worse than recent years). We will see more violence, some state sponsored, over the next decade, more polarization, and then we will begin a rebuilding, similar to what happened under President Reagan. There will be violence directed against illegal immigrants, probably centered in large cities such as NYC, Chicago, any other that foolish state and city govts direct huge resources to care for them. The leftists will be dispatched, one way or another, once enough Americans get tired of their nonsense.
I’m not worried about China destroying us- they have way worse problems than we do (they will continue their current sabotage via universities and infiltration of our government, of course). I expect they will get frisky about Taiwan and may even go kinetic, with a Ukraine-like outcome- they will hope for a quick victory, get bogged down, and a lot of people will get hurt and killed with an outcome that pleases nobody. The only way it will hurt us directly is if Biden if foolish enough to get us more involved than we have in Ukraine.
There will be worsening of the current cold civil war, with more families rendered asunder. There will be violent pushback by normies against the woke. States will become more sharply leftist or rightist.
It will be interesting.
West Tx….yet. Things look very grim…but they have looked grim in the past. I’m inspired by something written by the French author Georges Bernanos, then living in exile in Brazil, in December 1940:
“No one knows better than I do that, in the course of centuries, all the great stories of the world end by becoming children’s tales. But this particular one (the story of England’s resistance) has started its life as such, has become a children’s tale on the very threshold of its existence. It mean that we can at once recognize in it the threefold visible sign of its nature. it has deceived the anticipations of the wise, it has humiliated the weak-hearted, it has staggered the fools. Last June all these folk from one end of the world to the other, no matter what the color of their skins, were shaking their heads. Never had they been so old, never had they been so proud of being old. All the figures that they had swallowed in the course of their miserable lives as a safeguard against the highly improbable activity of their emotions had choked the channels of circulation..They were ready to prove that with the Armistice of Rethondes the continuance of the war had become a mathematical impossibility…Some chuckled with satisfaction at the thought, but they were not the most dangerous…Others threatened us with the infection of pity…”Alone against the world,” they said. “Why, what is that but a tale for children?” And that is precisely what it was–a tale for children. Hurrah for the children of England!
Men of England, at this very moment you are writing what public speakers like to describe in their jargon as one of the “greatest pages of history”….At this moment you English are writing one of the greatest pages of history, but I am quite sure that when you started, you meant it as a fairy tale for children. “Once upon a time there was a little island, and in that island there was a people in arms against the world…” Faced with such an opening as that, what old cunning fox of politics or business would not have shrugged his shoulders and closed the book?”
Yes, the last two elections were disappointing to say the least. The thought control machine is working very well.
The self-correcting mechanism isn’t working, thought. You can’t count on people believing their own eyes and having common sense and drawing the right conclusions anymore.
But if China is also having troubles, I guess that’s a good sign.
David Foster:
Well, of course, this old fox:
Also this:
I do fear though, that after all that, the Western World is now committing suicide.
Paul Johnson referred to the 60’s as “America’s suicide attempt.” When I first read that, right out of college, I didn’t much get it, but I now I do.