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Intellectually Exhausted
I find myself posting less and less these days. Probably it’s because we have had more than a handful of Ricochet members that have really stepped up their game and set the bar far higher than I can reach. (I’m looking at you, you and you, plus a whole lot more.)
Worse, I have been overcome by a certain malaise, a resignation that the American moment has passed. I see the discourse that emanates from our political class and that seems pretty hard to overcome. We are, as a people, intellectually exhausted.
I keep trying to tell myself that Twitter is not real life. But the media has just become Twitter on steroids, amplifying the same nonsense to a greater degree. Where once we had the “CW,” i.e. “conventional wisdom,” we now have the “CD,” the “cognitive dissonance.” Here’s how this works (or more precisely, doesn’t work) on the Left:
I have my own truth, you believe lies.
I am the #resistance, you are an #insurrectionist.
I believe SCOTUS is illegitimate, the Senate is undemocratic, every red state law must be overturned, you do not believe in “norms” or upholding the Constitution.
I believe the 2000, 2004, and 2016 presidential elections were rigged (not to mention Georgia’s gubernatorial election of 2018), you need to accept that 2020 was totally the most legitimate and secure election ever and any talk of “stolen” elections is downright un-American.
I want to live in a diverse nation, you don’t understand how your views undermine unity.
I believe that the American Right is full of gun-loving fascist nut jobs BUT if we pack the courts, rig the elections and add four sure-fire Democrats to the Senate by granting DC and Puerto Rico statehood those same gun-loving fascist nut jobs will totally roll over and accept that. Not only will they accept it, but when the newly constituted court invalidates Heller and the entire 2nd Amendment they will gladly turn in their firearms.
Any of this may translate into a great eight-minute segment on MSNBC or CNN. As a governing philosophy, not so much.
They discount the possibility of civil war because they are entrenched in a red-state, blue-state mentality. But if that were to happen it will most certainly not be that way. It won’t be the armies of Union vs. Confederation, it will be more like Beirut or Syria, urban and asymmetrical, a bloodbath of innocents. But that’s what you get when you lose the plot and have no idea what holds a country together.
There is, of course, a cadre of those on the Right that have semi-lost the plot, as well. They can see the coming disaster and therefore advocate surrender to the authoritarian Left rather than risk a shooting war. Perhaps they believe they will be a moderating force. Perhaps they believe the crocodile will eat them last. They’re probably wrong on both counts. They, too, are intellectually exhausted.
Where we go from here is the great question. I’m too exhausted to come up with an obvious solution.
Published in General
Just keep on truckin’ (unless something more interesting or exciting comes along).
I have been preaching the dangers of sectarian Civil War for some time now. I saw Trump as the last chance.
The Left is akin to the French aristocracy. They think they can push and push forever.
I don’t want a sectarian Civil War. It scares me.
I hate to see that EJ now shares my despair.
@henryracette This is your cue to come in and say something positive.
You need more of this:
Yes, this!
To your point, the first thing that the ruling class (and their big tech and media allies) must do to begin their real assault is to declare the enemy. This has begun in earnest. Those who were once deplorable are now an insurrectionist, extremist, supremacist threat to them, enemies to be unveiled, surveilled, arrested, disarmed and destroyed. They are quickly painting themselves into a terrible corner. This paint will never dry.
They believe we are a threat to them. We don’t have to be. They must simply follow the constitution and hold fair elections, but they can’t. The constitution and fair elections are part of the threat. If they choose to continue down this authoritarian, anti-constitutional path, we and our founding principles are indeed a threat to them. The military, no matter how hard they try to purge it of our influence, will not be with them. They will lose.
But they have an alternative path. Just fight fair in the public square of ideas and limited, republican, federalist governance. Compete fairly. Or you will lose more than your temporary authority
O ye of too much faith.
You answered your own question (or ‘prayer,’ maybe). Look, die-hard Democrat leftists I’m acquainted with via social media are appalled. It isn’t because their agenda hasn’t been shoehorned or ramrodded into place (though I think they are angry about that). No, at the moment, they’re angry over the same thing we are: the incompetence in Afghanistan.
There is still a place where we care about the same things, and it’s much more than American lives.
I’m also encouraged because the leftists–which do not include all Democrats–keep screaming louder and louder. Yes, we’re all weary of it…yes, we’re all weary of it, except those actually doing it. They’re no longer getting the reactions they want. Met with indifference, they’ve attacked their own. I say, let’s enjoy the show.
They know where things are going and are frightened, that’s why they screech and carry on so. They’ll do anything to keep us from taking the next step, and some of the R’s are right on board with them.
I’m being intentionally vague, but the next thing is already in the consciousness of many Americans. The strife, the divisions, that’s what made (in some minds) the Boomers special for breaking barriers amidst that. If the strife and division sets you apart and you feel special because of it, guess what? You want to perpetuate the thing that makes you special.
The landscape is going to change, and soon. It’s what they’re so afraid of. They are fighting us, EJ, and they know it’s a losing battle. I mean, really, if someone is called “racist” these days do we even register that? Their weapons are gone, their bite. There is some bark left, and it is loud, but we’re getting pretty good at ignoring it.
Very well said. Thank you for expressing what I have been thinking.
Yeah, the military would never even go so far as to level bayonets at the citizens…
While I appreciate your hearty courage, I disagree.
The deep state just installed obvious cat’s-paws in a public coup that not one in ten-thousand Americans was willing to speak up about.
Our punishment is just beginning.
EJ has become Uncomfortably Numb.
With the amount of pain I have on a daily basis, numbness would be a blessing.
I think you’re trying to punish yourself. That’s what I kept hearing on the Flagship podcast for years. It ain’t rare, that’s for sure.
It’s a desperation heave, not a beginning.
Not sure what you mean about the podcast — you may mistake me for somebody else.
I disagree that the forces of the left have somehow expended themselves upon some great rock of, uh, somthing that certainly isn’t political opposition. They won.
Just meant I’ve heard others here go on about how defeated we are.
We’re near the point where we can call it civil opposition, and past the point where we could call it partisan.
I didn’t say we were defeated, I said we’re no longer playing a rational game.
This is the way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdOD9N_gsN8
BDB said it. I didn’t intentionally extend ownership of the thought to you.
I agree the opposition isn’t rational, and the media doesn’t have a problem with it. They twist themselves in circles to make it all fit.
Geez, I don’t know where you live but, somehow, the mind-meld extended all the way into Appalachia.
Since Joe Biden took office, I’ve been in a total funk. Just watching the idiot try to speak leaves me depressed. Except for brief flashes of anger (brought about by watching Jen Psaki) I just can’t arouse the indignation that I had watching the Establishment’s attempts to shut down Trump.
On my next birthday, I’ll turn 75; three quarters of a century living in a country that I’ve always believed in. Now, I just don’t know.
When Saigon fell in 1975, I was depressed for awhile. At times, I thought back to those body bags that I had always studiously looked away from. Still, I would not allow myself to think that it had been a total waste; maybe we would learn something from it.
But the events of last week were a real gut punch. Not just the senseless deaths of 13 Americans but the rush from the Left to either put a positive spin on it or simply forget it.
When I was working on my undergraduate degree back in the late 60s and early 70s, I frequently engaged in (sometimes heated) conversations with my fellow students about Vietnam. What still strikes me about these conversations was that the students could carry on a cogent discussion about the subect.
Today; forget about it. All that exists today is incoherent screaming in which most “discussions” end with epithets such as “a&&hole” or, worse still, physical altercations. Adult behavior has been been replaced by childish antics (and I’m including the Congress of the United States).
Exhausted? A good word for it. An even better word (at least for me) would be disgusted.
The boils are being pierced and there’s pus, but as Bruce Lee said:
“It’s like a boil splashing pus everywhere. Don’t concentrate on the boil and pus, or you will miss all that heavenly glory.”
Most people are going to choose to “go along to get along” so as not to disrupt or endanger their sense of security or be socially ostracized from the main group. So people will give up rights and liberties to stay connected to their society, keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. In our post-modern brave new world most of us are totally dependent on a few super wealthy individuals, globalist corporations and government agencies (foreign and domestic) to provide an income, health care, protect, feed, house, and clothes us. To put it bluntly, we are at a point where a large percentage of us simple do not have the resources, health, knowledge and skill sets to grow, raise and harvest our own food, provide our own security, or manufacture and/or fabricate our own goods. Life would become very hard, very quick, if the system that sustain us broke down.
Progressive always ignore reality if it doesn’t meet their narrative, and reality always will bite them in their, and unfortunately our, collective asses. Progressive want a universal income, no problem just print more money and raise taxes to cover for it. Oh wait, what is this “inflation” you keep talking about, and why isn’t anyone working or paying taxes – it’s their patriotic duty to pay taxes. Progressive want a green new deal to take care of the climate crisis, no problem we’ll go all electric and not produce coal or oil anymore, shut down all nuclear and hydroelectric power plants and depend on wind and solar to meet our power needs. Oh wait, the wind/solar/electrical storage technology thingy doesn’t really work like on Star Trak? What do you mean that Star Trak is fiction, does that mean unicorns are not real either? Progressives abhor a free and open society because feelings are more important than ideas, and something might be said that offends them. So they must stop free and open discussion so that everyone will only speak and think the right things, and feel good about themselves. If anyone resists us, we will cancel them out. Oh wait, some of the comrades are being canceled out too.
COVID has shown us the weakness of our political, economic, social, cultural, industrial, and technological systems and services that take care of us. So, as progressive continue to meddle, you can bet they will overreach and break something. But here is the thing, we can all collectively cash in, drop and tune out, but that does not mean you’ll be unaffected. I constantly hear people say “it doesn’t matter, I’ll be dead before that happens.” Well maybe you will, or maybe you won’t, I would not want to bet my future on that I’ll die before anything bad happens. Besides, you are telling all those that come after you, to piss off. Fight like hell and, “Do not go gentle into that good night.”
The citizens don’t look very worried.
Rest if you need to, @ejhill, but keep the faith. I’m blessed to be able to spend half the year in a small town in rural Florida and the other half in the mountains of North Carolina and I still see reason for optimism. Support for these leftist bozos may be a mile wide and a few inches deep in urban and coastal areas of the country but flyover country ain’t buying it, and it’d take a lot more than being earnestly urged to Build Back Better (really?) to convince them that leftism makes any sense at all.
My husband and I just enjoyed a delicious takeout BBQ dinner from a fundraiser at the local community center for a tree service guy with stage 4 cancer and no medical insurance. Many people bought $10 raffle tickets for items like 15 tons of gravel, 10 tons of mulch, or one of three rifles being auctioned off (hubby said they were just 22 caliber, but still, they had ‘em out on the table like it was no big deal.) People donated what they could for the cause, so two small house plants were being raffled off for $1 a ticket. We didn’t stay for the main event, Bingo, but saw about two dozen donated baskets ready to be given to game winners.When we left we noted that the parking lot was full of pickup trucks from different tree services and other local businesses, most of whom were inside busily prepping pulled pork and chicken for the fundraiser. With good Americans willing to step up so generously in a family’s time of need I simply don’t believe that what made our country great can be so easily destroyed by a bumbling bureaucracy in DC. Not gonna happen. We may have hard times ahead but this fight is far from over.
I feel your pain though, really, I do. I have two highly educated family members from coastal cities who were sooooooo excited when Biden and Harris were elected (Kamala is the very first woman of color to be elected vice president, don’t you know???). They have opinions on everything political, it seems, and are both on social media a lot, but curiously, neither one had anything to say about the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle before, during, or after the evacuation. Not. One. Word. Even the most liberal fans of this administration know how horrendously it has all been handled, and I suspect their support of this administration is waffling too, though they’d never admit it.
So rest up, EJ, because yours is one of Ricochet’s finest voices, and we need you at full strength. Maybe Lee Greenwood’s latest recording will lift your spirits……
This is typical of the exhaustion on the right:
The weekly (or is it daily?) National Review “The Conservative Case for Never Advancing Conservatism” column. Everyone-run-scared-never-advance-the-cause-my-God-everyone-on-our-side-is-nuts style of “conservatism.”
As an ally in the struggle with the Progressive Agenda, NR is France. You only start to win when they join the other side.
I think conservative exhaustion exists mainly in the Acela corridor and on the West Coast. Conservatives in flyover country, including Texas are not feeling it. We, here – as in Florida, North Dakota and elsewhere in America’s heartland – are counterattacking. Y’all on the coasts can join us, but we plan on carrying the fight to the Progs regardless.
Amen. Amen.
Fantastic comment.
The time to imagine we can change people’s minds with our ideas versus their ideals has long passed.
We are at various stages of dealing with our phantom limb, reason.
And it’s almost like they are flaunting the success of the bloody severance.
I’ve considered a spot along the lines of your first two sentences. Usually when I see people start deploying their college duck pond parsing and syllogisms.