Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
For those who are paying attention to recent events around the margins of society, it seems as if the United States is devolving towards Third World status.
Each day brings a new story of marauding gangs invading stores or shopping malls, vandalizing and looting at will. In Peoria, Illinois, a pack of black youths rampaged through the streets, shouting, "Kill all the white people!". In Philadelphia, there have been repeated instances of "flash mobs", organized by Facebook, texting and Tweeting.
All across the nation, gangs of thieves are dismantling public infrastructure in order to strip scrap metal from the electrical grid. In Chicago, thieves destroyed the air conditioning system of a local animal shelter in order to steal copper components.
In Las Vegas, empty foreclosed homes with dead lawns are occupied by vagrants or simply vandalized, leaving entire neighborhoods of recently-built homes looking like Mogadishu.
In Central California, immigrants - both legal and illegal - roam the countryside, invading homes and farms, stealing at will, justifying their actions on the basis of racial entitlement, as though California were Zimbabwe.
The Obama administration, which sounds more each day like Hugo Chavez, flouts the rule of law, ignores the Constitution and governs by regulatory fiat. Barack Obama engages in bald-faced class warfare, while the members of the Congressional Black Caucus stir up racial resentment.
Meanwhile, a recent Pew poll finds that only 38 percent of Americans surveyed - and only 27 percent of those aged 18 to 29 - believe that America is the best country in the world. And a poll by Business Insider indicates that 39 percent of respondents do not expect the United States to ever return to the level of prosperity we knew a decade ago.
Is America past the tipping point? Are we destined for either mob rule or an authoritarian regime? Can we turn this thing around?
- Comment (54)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (6)
Comments :
Feb '11
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
Kenneth: I'm as much a gun-owning doom-prophesying guy as the next Ricocheteer, and I have major concerns about America's future. But I'm not sure violent crime (or even property crime) is a big concern. When I want opinion, I come to Ricochet. When I want facts (about almost anything) I go to Wolfram Alpha. Does this make you less worried?
May '10
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
Prepare for Armageddon as Kenneth and I are about to agree twice in the same day.
This center cannot hold. We are either a rational people who will accept that we made foolish promises in the past that we cannot hope to keep, or we will do the Full European Monty and begin rioting for over our entitlements. Citing past crime statistics are like betting on the past performance of a stock. How's that GM share looking now?
Since we are in a full-on Coulterpalooza this weekend, where do you wish to place your bet? On the rational or on the Democrats and the unions ginning up their mobs?
Edited on Jul 2, 2011 at 10:48amJul '10
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
No, it doesn't. That's the rear-view mirror. I'm concerned about the current trend. When we suddenly have a plague of marauding, vandalism and race-based mob violence, yesterday's statistics are small comfort.
Mar '11
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
How does this compare to the riots of the 1960s? What's happening now seems spontaneous, not planned like many of the riots of the past. Not sure, just wondering.
May '10
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
No nation can long survive as a free people while as much as a quarter of its population has no respect for the basic civil rights or even the natural rights of their fellow human beings. The Left regularly, publicly and unashamedly speak of their political and cultural opponents as if we are incapable of reason and civil participation. We are not, in their eyes, worthy of lawful or moral regard. I witness such speech and actions not only in TV reports, articles and entertainment, but also from my neighbors and peers.
America is on a deadly path. I was not alive during the civil unrest of the hippie era, but at least conservatives still stood up for each other back then. I expect this tension will come to a head in 2013, regardless of the election outcome.
May '10
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
It may seem that way, but I think appearances are deceiving. The recent rioting in Vancouver is a prime example. From CNN:
Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu is blaming "criminals and anarchists" who, he said, disguised themselves as Canucks fans for the riots.
"These were people who came equipped with masks, goggles and gasoline, even fire extinguishers that they would use as weapons," Chu said of (the) melee.
There is a large element of Western society that has been planning for this opportunity for a long time.
Jul '10
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
Interesting question. I'd say the riots of the 1960's were, for the most part, an extra-political reaction to events: the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., or the shooting of a black youth by white police officers.
What we're seeing now is criminal nihilism; feral youth doing what unfettered feral youth are inclined to do - but with a veneer of righteous racial resentment fed by the messages they hear from black political figures.
May '10
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
Were the 1960's so unique?
Mar '11
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
Good points, guys, especially EJ's list. And that's partly why I'm wondering how to take the current riots. We look on history as a bastion of law & order, but there's a lot of ugliness. The anarchist riots of the 1890s were very serious, as were the 1848 revolutions.
To what extent are the recent riots a sign of a civilization collapsing, and how much is normal noise? The Athens riots, the general unrest among "Asian youth" in France, etc. seem a more serious problem.
The Vancouver riots had anarchist elements but the chief is too defensive about how his police handled the crowd. The serious damage was done by normal people who just jumped into the fray. A Vancouver student caused a minor sensation by publishing an apology for her part in it. After the apology itself, the piece is remarkably self-serving. She had the presence of mind to tell people not to destroy trees along the road (she studies "conservation biology") but curiously lacked the self-control to resist walking into a store and stealing a pair of men's pants.
May '10
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
While I certainly agree with EJHill and Kenneth on the severity of the situation I'd like to suggest that we change the question from "Can we turn this thing around?" to "How can we turn this thing around?"
And I like to thank Doctor Bean for the link to Wolfram Alpha. Exiting example of smart and rational people building marvelous things.
Nov '10
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
I dunno -- just look at the whole trajectory of the country. Take the following as a small portal onto the larger problem: I grew up in Pacific Palisades, CA. People of the WWII generation (and older) when I was growing up told me that back then (prior to the 60s) people didn't even bother locking their homes. That astounded me hearing that as a child -- something that has always stuck with me, because certainly since at least the 1970s the thought of not locking one's home is utterly ridiculous. Follow-home muggings (and worse) are not all that uncommon in Brentwood/Palisades, and they almost always go unreported in the news.
Edited on Jul 2, 2011 at 12:26pmApr '11
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
We probably won't know when a tipping point, if any, occurred, until we are long past it.
However, Progressives have gifted us with an infantile culture nearly half-full of people who think that government creates wealth, at least for them personally, since the government signs the checks that those people receive. I believe that that is what will kill us, if anything does.
That said, November 2010 was a hopeful sign. But as we saw in Wisconsin, to cite only one example, those who feel entitled to Other People's Money will drag the whole edifice down on our heads, like screaming two-year-olds, if given half a chance.
Edited on Jul 2, 2011 at 12:41pmMay '10
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
Canuckski:
To what extent are the recent riots a sign of a civilization collapsing, and how much is normal noise?
In France, cars were torched by hoodlums on a massive scale, and repeatedly, with no significant response from government or civilians. Yet life returned to "normal" and I doubt many tourists have abandoned their plans to visit Paris.
It's certainly difficult to predict which spark will start the fire.
Nov '10
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
This is a good post Kenneth (as usual, you're so right on so many things; and, of course, you go completely off the rails on certain other things....heh). You correctly put you finder on what is the central, underlying problem with the country, and whose name is rarely spoken*: identity politics.
It's appalling enough when in 2008 John McCain gave a warm speech at La Raza. That pretty much sums up the rabbit-hole into which the country has descended.
A Republican actually giving an ingratiating speech at an organization that is no different than racist pan-Germanist organizations that presaged the NSDAP...unbelievable.
For me, that was the straw the finally broke the camel's back.
-------
* "Rarely spoken:" Sure, we hear the term "identity politics" thrown around. But the real thousand ton invisible elephant in the room that nobody has the courage to mention the inundation of CA (and elsewhere) with Hispanics that has resulted in permanent Democratic majorities. And of course, it goes without saying, people impugning this line of argument with reference to earlier assimilations of Italian immigrants, etc., is contemptibly fatuous.
Edited on Jul 2, 2011 at 1:36pmJun '10
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
Here's a quote from Christopher Dawson, the great British Roman Catholic historian (1889-1970), writing in 1933:
“The central conviction which has dominated my mind [is] that the society or culture which has lost its spiritual roots is a dying culture, however prosperous it may appear externally. Consequently the problem of social survival is not only a political or economic one; it is above all things religious, since it is in religion that the ultimate spiritual roots both of society and the individual are found.”
I believe Dawson got it right, and that we are in the midst of a cultural decline (41 percent illegitimacy rate, over 12 million Americans in cohabitation arrangements). The problem for the rest of the world is that most other countries are well ahead of us in the cultural decline department (and many of them aren't even reproducing at replacement rate). Thus, in a few years, the argument may be something like: "Yes, I know America really stinks, but [insert name of country] is a lot worse."
Gertrude Himmelfarb argued a few years that we have been "de-moralized" in the sense that nothing we do has a moral dimension anymore.
Sep '10
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
This is part of the reason why I live where I do--in the country, fairly close to a small city, but far enough from Wichita that potential Wichita unrest could be planned for.
This is also why I own a shotgun and the wife a niner. The Korean grocers in LA did not get looted as a result of the Rodney King riots, because the rioters saw the Koreans atop their store roofs brandishing firearms.
Feb '11
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
Kenneth & Robert Lux: No question that the trajectory of the culture is worrisome. Also no question that past performance is not a guarantee of future results. My only point is that I'm not sure that the occasional rioting that we're seeing is either (1) more rioting than we've had before or (2) symptomatic of larger trends that you and I agree are worrisome.
Skarv: You're very welcome. Wolfram Alpha is a wondrous thing and gets better all the time. Wolfram Alpha is to making human knowledge accessible what Google is to searching. Play with it and you'll be hooked. Try putting in any country. Any math problem. Your favorite astronomical body. A date and a city. Try "Israel vs Syria" and check out how their populations, land areas and GDPs compare. I have just enriched and wasted your life...
Jun '10
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
Doctor Bean:
Skarv: You're very welcome. Wolfram Alpha is a wondrous thing and gets better all the time. Wolfram Alpha is to making human knowledge accessible what Google is to searching. Play with it and you'll be hooked. Try putting in any country. Any math problem. Your favorite astronomical body. A date and a city. Try "Israel vs Syria" and check out how their populations, land areas and GDPs compare. I have just enriched and wasted your life... · Jul 2 at 6:13pm
Oh man, I'm just checking this thing out. Goodbye people, I'll be at Wolfram Alpha for a while.
Aug '10
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
Quoting Yeats is love-talk as far as I'm concerned.
However, the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem is already here, and made an especially dramatic entrance soon after Yeats wrote the poem in 1921: the political messiah, or rather, the State as Messiah, symbolized in a man (Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, FDR).
Yeats believed he was a prophet, which was mostly crazy, and filled notebook after notebook with the "dictations" he took from "the spirit world". Still, even crazy prophets are sometimes right.
Yeats especially had this thing for "gyres" -- in plain language, that history seems to repeat itself, but never in exactly the same way: history is helical.
A helical model of history is not so crazy, but unlike some, I'm not prepared to place bets on any one model.
Oct '10
Re: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
Aaron Miller
Canuckski:
To what extent are the recent riots a sign of a civilization collapsing, and how much is normal noise?
In France, cars were torched by hoodlums on a massive scale, and repeatedly, with no significant response from government or civilians. Yet life returned to "normal" and I doubt many tourists have abandoned their plans to visit Paris.
It's certainly difficult to predict which spark will start the fire. · Jul 2 at 12:44pm
Yeah. "Hoodlums." C'mon Aaron, we know you can tell it like it is.