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Staring into the Abyss
One of our newer members, Annika Hernroth-Rothstein, made a splash with “A Love Letter from a Swedish Conservative.” Despite all the doom, gloom, and raining I’m about to do, I’m very glad for that essay. I’m also glad that Rob, Peter, and James still have the time to drop in on new members’ posts and say welcome. Someone should be optimistic and happy and in love with the United States. I regret that I am not among them.
My inability to put my distress in words accounts for why I haven’t created a serious post in months. I still can’t put it in words, but I’ll try to be less scattered than in the past. It started with one of the podcasts quoting Norman Podhoretz’s My Love Affair with America. I don’t remember anything else about the podcast, but as I mulled it, I realized I don’t have any particular fondness for this country. Not anymore. I don’t have any particular fondness for any other country, either. I couldn’t put my finger on why, though.
I still can’t put my finger on it, but I think it is related to three related things: 1) we are all, collectively, insane; 2) despite the insanity, we are boring; and 3) bored insanity is stifling and confusing.
Our insanity manifests in many ways. Kevin Williamson marked some of the contours with his article “Laverne Cox Is Not A Woman.” The expectation that we are to be shown one thing, but all collectively pretend it is something else and this will magically make it so is nuts.
In sexual mores and behaviors, this has been going on for decades. We’ve argued the point here enough that everyone should recognize this as a species of the same-sex marriage arguments. It spreads across all social issues — as a matter of politeness, pro-lifers are expected to simply put up with the “anti-choice” epithet, but it’s rude beyond compare to retort “pro-infanticide.” I am to be shown the dismembered remains of what was once a fellow human and antiseptically say “choice.” I feel the need to take a shower just thinking about it.
It extends beyond the social issues, though. The IRS becomes an, at best, rogue agency trying to influence elections and I’m supposed to call it a few renegade agents. We betray our allies across the globe left and right, turning ourselves into liars on a grand scale while leaving our once friends to be slaughtered by ISIS or swallowed by Russia, and I’m supposed to just call it “politics.” And while I won’t regale with 4,000 words on masks again, our everyday interactions are scripted both to hide our faults from ourselves, but also our friends — and also to avoid burdening our friends with our troubles. Then we turn around and post pictures of our privates on the Internet (a link to an article on the phenomenon, not a picture — feels like I should be clear about that).
This lunacy infects every aspect of life, so much so that it feels like operating in society requires a level of two-facedness. (Wait, I promised not to go 4,000 words on this again.) It is like we live in a mass delusion, but since we aren’t actually all deluded, we are trying to take our cues from everyone else to figure our what delusion we should be living.
The delusions exist only so long as everyone acts like they exist — and no one wants to be the one to experience the wrong delusion, risking ostracization (except weirdos like George Will, Brendan Eich, the Duck Dynasty guy, those two brothers from HGTV, Chik-fil-A before them, and apparently now Gary Oldman). If I thought people actually cared about this stuff, I’d still think Americans were misguided, but the sense that it is all just sidling up in the network makes it pathological.
We’re destroying the lives of millenials, and our solution is to destroy more lives. When that doesn’t work we will surely destroy even more lives and not even for the reason that it is for the benefit of the people being crushed. It’s for our own benefit and sense of self. That it is bland and predictable should make it even more horrifying. “I just wanted to fit in” become the next generation’s “I was just following orders.”
Yet, given the mass delusion we live under, the marauding mob, how is anyone to try to figure anything out? You must conform to the delusion, yet the delusion is clearly wrong. We know this because people are less happy, and they aren’t doing the things people normally do, like getting married. But if you try experiment outside the delusion, the mob will descend upon you. Under such circumstances, I am utterly unsurprised that, for example, less than half of millenials marry. They don’t know how to do it, no one will tell them. The only thing I am sure of in my 30th year is that most of what I was told was wrong, and the only question is the relative proportion of lies to mistakes.
In such circumstances, there are 3 possible solutions:
- Ignore it, live your own life. I try to do this. It is lonely, and ultimately (bravado aside) I am too much of a coward to openly risk ostracism. I vote, I teach, I talk, but it is within narrow bounds.
- Join the insanity. Would that I could, but pride and honor disallow it.
- Disengage. Go through the motions, but don’t believe any of it. I think I mostly do this. Unengaged that I am, then, it is quite impossible to love this country. It is quite impossible to muster any feeling for it. This is the geographic location in which I go through the meaningless motions of pretending along with everyone else. Does it really matter whether it is this people or that people who tyrannize me?
I do hope that, one day, when disengagement is no longer an option, and they come for me, I can choose the first option. This is hardly the sentiments of love stories.
America the Idea has always been better than America the Real.
The problem, as you so eloquently put it, is that the chasm between the two has never been larger. And, more seriously, the majority of Americans no longer share our belief in the classic American Idea.
This is why I cling to the dream of secession. Our country has tipped, but if local leaders have the courage, creeping secession may end up bringing hope back. That’s my plan, at least.
I was going to say, so many of us love America because of her potential, certainly not for the current state of affairs.
We want to be those “seeds” that germinate within her boundaries, who grow, strive and stretch to reach that potential–to live up to the dream. We want to be like our Swedish Rico Annika, and embrace the American framework as an opportunity.
What we need in America is the child from the fairytale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” to share the insight that all the masked people know to be true, “But he isn’t wearing anything at all.”
Of course, in the world of grown-ups, “No prophet is accepted in his hometown.” Which is why we are perceived to be numbskulls by the liberals, who are all too happy to praise the various “emperors.”
Thanks for sharing the Williamson article, and your “4000–mask” essay…wow. The fact that you can acknowledge the various masks, and live with them makes you SANE. Too many people are oblivious.
I love this post. Have been mulling over something similar (actually my last essay discusses insanity and my “solution”). I can relate to exactly how you’re feeling. And to see friends buy into it is discouraging to no end.
Quite a cri de cœur. I empathize, although I must admit I have always gone my own way and not worried about ostracism or anything of the kind. Being so freakishly abnormal that one cannot hide it can free one from concern in these areas.
As for love of country, counter to what many will tell you, it is not a good thing. Appreciating the genius that went into the Constitution, appreciating the founders, and appreciating what initially made this country so different and allowed us to exceed all others who had come before us, is apt. Fighting to re-awaken those values is a worthy goal. But as similar values were applied as the Kingdom of Rome became a Republic and Rome became great, we can see that there is nothing special about the land of the United States or the people of the United States. If those extraordinary ideas were applied to Russia or any other country, that land and people would become worthy of praise. It is not the government, the people, or the land, but the spirit embodied in the principles that limit the governments and allow people to pursue their lives that made us.
I hear you, Sabrdance–been feeling this since 2008. Absolutely, we are living under some seriously destructive delusions right now. But try to remember that delusions don’t last because they can’t. The nation is currently in the grip of something akin to the crazier aspects of McCarthyism, though there was actually some validity to McCarthy’s fears and accusations. The current madness is deeply discouraging, but it has succeeded because it has been trumpeted by a crazy and deluded media and Hollywood. IMHO the number of people who know we are gripped by madness outnumbers the deluded, but the sane ones don’t have the voice to say so. That can change. People don’t trust media. The sloppy and scandalous behavior of the Obama administration shows where a fawning media leads. 75% of the country thinks the IRS is guilty– a good sign.
For you I would say, get married. If you want to meet some eligible conservative women, you can get help with that here on Rico. Do you attend a church? Find a community that shares your values. We need conservatives in academia too. Stay there and find a way to quietly make a difference.
Several months ago, while traveling in Europe, I started a post titled “A Patriot in Crisis.” I was realizing that for the first time in my life, I’ve lost faith in the American experiment.
Maybe I’ll finish it someday.
Meanwhile, I haven’t given up hope entirely. Eric Cantor’s defeat was heartening. There are a lot of good young leaders on our side.
Most often, though, I think it’s too late. The Tea Party insurgency is basically a rear guard action. We lost when we legalized the slaughter of innocents in the name of freedom. The fact that Rick Santorum alone among prominent national politicians is willing to put up a fight for marriage tells us everything we need to know.
The only real hope of national salvation lies in a religious revival. We have to repudiate our evil ways and turn back to God. If we don’t do that, we’ll lack the power to resist the forces of darkness now overwhelming the world.
I believe the world has felt out of control and chaotic at other times as well. I am sure that during the Civil War and World Wars I and II that it felt to people that all was lost.
I have a deep faith in God that there is a plan, he knows what is going on, and there will be light at the end of this tunnel.
Just as our military personnel do every day, we need to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep going, even when we don’t know where we’re going.
I’m squarely in the #1 camp. I refuse to succum to perpetuating delusions, and I refuse to spend more energy than is enjoyable trying to alter it.
I don’t necessarily have all the nostalgia for “America the ideal,” or “America as it was.” But I believe the country and the world is getting better and will continue to improve in the most important ways. Looking at the sliver of time we are living in can give the impression that all is lost, but progress isn’t a straight line. You can’t hide from the truth for long without suffering the consequences, and I believe the consequences will pull people back to the truth.
Marriage as an overall positive thing. More children is an overall positive thing.
Trying to get everyone to change outward reality to each person’s individual introspective reality is intractable. We can acknowledge their introspective reality without having to pretend physical reality is something that it’s not.
Given that we’re talking about people who are born between 1981 and 1996, should the correct verb be “have married”?
I’m not saying there isn’t a problem — either with Millennials delaying marriage too much or skipping it entirely — but let’s hold back on the doom and gloom a little.
I’m reminded of a character in a Douglas Adams book (in the Hitchiker’s trilogy) that went insane when he read the instructions on a box of toothpicks.
Stipulating that anecdote is not evidence, and that I’ve said this many times before…
In the past few years, my Facebook feed has been awash of engagement notices, weddings, and pregnancy announcements in that order. In the last two years, I’ve attended three weddings of fellow early-thirty-somethings, and missed two that I badly wanted to go to. During the first half of this year, five friends, all of whom are married, gave birth to their first children. Just this weekend, I learned that one of the couples whose wedding we attended last year is pregnant.
While I openly confess that I live in an upper-middle-class bubble — and that, even within that bubble, there are problems — it’s not that small a bubble and it’s pretty good.
In fairness, though, the stats for non-college educated young folks regarding marriage and legitimacy are pretty damn depressing.
I think we are reaching the top of the bubble for cultural insanity that not coincidentally corresponds to the bubble in fiat currency. While I hope the cultural bubble pops first giving us the right leadership for the popping of the financial bubble, I am afraid that it will be the reverse. A lot of middle to lower class people are going to go through significant economic hardship causing the cultural bubble to deflate. Nobody will have the time or energy to care much about the insane social demands of the left, and traditional social mores will be economic necessities. If things go well after the collapse then in 30 years you may be in love with United States again.
I had the good fortune to be able to take a job outside the U.S. in 1991, when it had become apparent to me that the Reagan Revolution was just a pause in the inexorable ratchet of tyranny which began around 1912. Looking at the U.S. from the outside, especially from the perspective of a more or less free country, made it obvious that the U.S. was no longer the home of liberty I believed it to be for most of the years I lived there.
Now, I look at visiting the U.S. like visiting the Soviet Union in the 1970s: it may be necessary for business or family obligations, but not something one does otherwise.
This short video and this long video really help explain what’s going on in this country:
Also, the (relatively) recently published book, Disinformation, by Ion Mihai Pacepa and Ronald Rychlak corroborates what Yuri Bezmenov tells us in the videos that I linked to in my previous comment.
Unless we can find a way to effectively and quickly neutralize the brainwashing of our society, we’re just whistling Dixie and deluding ourselves that some knight in shining armor (e.g. Ben Carson, Ted Cruze) is going to rally the troops and right the ship—IT AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN.
I try to remember that it is all somehow in God’s hands. But the country I grew up in, imperfect as it was, has been hijacked. Honest hard work is for suckers now. An illustration from several years ago: I got a brochure advertising a dozen assorted continuing education seminars for civil engineers in which fully half of the topics were how to minimize your legal risks and how to be an expert witness. A country where it’s more important for engineers to study law than engineering is not a country that will excel in engineering.
Those videos are chilling!
Good post. The problem is that the Country Class is rudderless, and the Political Class has deluded us into thinking that we can do nothing about that. Maybe someday we stand up and reclaim our nation (of, by, and for the people) or we continue to drift rudderless downstream until we go over the falls. I don’t intend to be on that boat if and when that happens. Meantime my back up plan is to find Galt’s Gulch.
“It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.” (G. K. Chesterton, The Oracle of the Dog (1923))
“You hard-shelled materialists were all balanced on the very edge of belief — of belief in almost anything.” (G. K. Chesterton, The Miracle of Moon Crescent (1924))
With all due respect to one of Ricochet’s most revered members, I could not disagree more and quite frankly believe that this type of talk simply annihilates the GOP in elections because it is parochial and not the least bit representative of national thought. BTW, this comment even disturbed my conservative octogenarian father who is an elder in his church but believes religion is a private matter.
Eric Cantor understood about “branding” the GOP to win and congrats to all the nimrods who voted in Brat who quite possibly isn’t even a RINO and has zero knowledge of insider politics.
Alexander Hamilton’s worst nightmare has been realized.
I am not sure that a full-scale religious revival is necessary. Something more modest is, however, absolutely necessary; a belief in an objective moral order, i.e. a moral order that does not rest simply on individual preferences. The republic’s founders would have agreed, I think.
The OP does articulate a certain inchoate queasiness I have felt in observing public debates in the US. A kind of collective insanity or mania on the Left appears and spreads like miasma (or the Blob from that Steve McQueen movie in the 1950s) whenever certain hot-button issues come up: abortion, gun control, ‘gender identity’, sexism, SSM, economic inequality, climate change, race, immigration, ‘separation of church and state’, etc. Rational debate is quickly extinguished and a kind of group psychosis takes over. It is most unsettling to observe.
The miasma/Blob has not yet reached Australia, but we are usually about 15-20 years behind the US in social trends, so I am dreading the future for Oz.
I think about this a lot since I’m surrounded by progressives – people who consider hurt feelings by name calling as horrible as a psycho in the middle east killing off those who disagree with him. In fact, one of them posted an article on FB about young men in the south and midwest who are turning their trucks into black smoke belchers mostly for additional power, but also to “blow smoke” at “rice burners” (Japanese sedans) and Priuses. She said it made her blood boil, a sentiment that most of the commentors agreed with, and I was hard-pressed not to say something like, “my blood is already boiling over those Nigerian schoolgirls, but, whatever.”
The thing is, these friends lead deeply conservative lives for all their carrying on about progressive politics. They are married with children, have mortgages, are very involved with extended family, volunteer at the school and around the community. They are good people that I can call on to help out at a moment’s notice, who rally behind each other and treat everyone with kindness and grace. I cannot demonize them even though I disagree with them on many issues.
cont.
cont.
To loosely quote Milton Friedman, I believe in their good intentions even if I don’t agree with their premise. I spend quite a bit of time trying to gently challenge them without creating barriers to a deep conversation. That means I have to be more careful than they are when making points and using labels, annoying but necessary to winning people over. I accept that even while I often want to throw things and start yelling.
I sometimes think that it would be nice to live somewhere where more than a closeted few shared my worldview.
Some of us seem to get by.
I haven’t lost faith in the American system because the system is fine. The founders gave us a perfectly good political structure with which to solve our problems. The dilemma is that the system relies on the wisdom of the American people to make the right choices through the ballot box and civic affairs. The people are the problem. We have become a lazy, selfish, whining, short-sighted and venal culture and today’s politics is only a mirror of that culture. I don’t blame the politicians because they are will only do what the people allow them to do. The problem, dear readers, is not in the stars but in ourselves.
And this problem does not get fixed unless/until there is some sort of qualification to vote. Now that the takers outnumber the makers we are kaput without reorganizing the right to vote.
Of course, because of our history, that ain’t going to happen so we’ll just have a second civil war instead. See you on the other side.
As with the despair and disinformation about firearm ownership and usage, this topic suffers from the overexposure to the malign aspects of our society. Don’t read about Weiner’s xxx, run for a seat on your local school board. There is an “off” button on the web, just like the TV. Some people regained sanity by getting rid of their TV and reading. The current analog is to get away from whatever glowing flat screen is in your face, divorce yourself from social “networking”, and DO something. (Most of our society is just fine, except for the slice of criminals and the inner cities ruined by socialism. Put the criminals away, and get the Democrats out of the many incipient Detroits.)