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Politics Will Never Save You; You Need to Save Yourself
Biden might have mouthed the word “unity” in November but whenever he gets the chance to act on it, he refuses. Today, he decided to stoke racial grievance again.
Biden: "No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn't have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that's true, and it is unacceptable. Totally unacceptable." pic.twitter.com/TfWa25VzEt
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 7, 2021
Every official on both sides condemned the Capitol Hill riot and four “protestors” died. When BLM protests/riots hit DC, a street was named after them. As @PostmodernHoplite wrote, reacting to the Capitol Hill mob was a lay-up for Biden but, as always, he chose to divide.
Kamala continued in the same vein, poking and prodding at the nation’s racial divisions.
.@KamalaHarris: "We witnessed two systems of justice when we saw one that let extremists storm the United States Capitol, and another that released tear gas on peaceful protesters last summer…We know this is unacceptable. We know we should be better than this." pic.twitter.com/Uc1FC8aZKg
— CSPAN (@cspan) January 7, 2021
No one in DC wants unity or healing. No one wants to calm the waters. Be it Trump or Biden, they just want to ratchet up the divisions until it all breaks apart. This isn’t some grand conspiracy; politicians are too incompetent to launch one. Instead, they are hyperfocused on winning this day’s news cycle, then 2022. A few bold visionaries look all the way to their 2024 prospects, but no thought is given to the long-term implications for the country.
Our institutions are failing us day after day. We’re still in Afghanistan 20 years later. We’re $27 trillion in debt. Cuomo and De Blasio are blaming each other for not delivering vaccines instead of, you know, actually delivering the vaccines. Blue states watch their lockdowns fail so they mandate stricter ones.
None of this is sustainable and our political class couldn’t care less. They want us to keep yelling at each other.
My humble suggestion for all Americans is to detach yourself as much as possible from governmental dictates. This is far easier in red states and rural areas, but do what you can. Prepare also to be detached from corporate politics since cancel mobs are on the march. Accept that you might have to live below your means and certainly below your desires.
Get involved with your neighbors and with local groups — especially non-political ones. Many small businesses in my area only survived 2020 by working together and building support communities with their customers. (My wife and I are basically ad agencies for our local favorites and we happily accept their products as compensation.)
You need to build Russell Kirk’s version of “little platoons.” Edmund Burke’s version was class-based, while Kirk pointed to countless small institutions for every walk of life. As a severe introvert, this is tough for me, but I’m making an effort.
If you’re a believer, build up your faith communities. You might need to move to a new one that refuses to blow with the winds of culture. Same goes for schooling.
There are many great ideas for all of the above in Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option, which I just read. When the book was released a few years ago, it was criticized as “alarmist.” Today, it feels downright optimistic.
None of the above is a “The End Is Nigh” screed. I’ve seen it coming for many years and it becomes more obvious every day. As I’ve made several of these adjustments over the past decade, I’ve noticed that I’m happier, freer, and have far more opportunities to help others. No one in politics, tech, or big business notices, which is just how I like it.
America is made great from the bottom-up, not the top-down. And while politicos in Washington are distracted by their self-destructive turf battles, We The People can get a hell of a lot done.
Published in Culture, Politics
Very good at convincing people who don’t know better, anyway.
Yes he was saying that, but he wasn’t even in the country at the time and giving his real-time rough impression. Then he had time to work and look at it. Which is why we should wait at least 24 hours to jump to conclusions about stories. It looks really bad for intelligent people to over react based on incomplete facts
Yeah like Jon Gabriel.
It’s a poor choice of words, snd I should have thought twice before posting.
Send that sentence to Jon Gabriel.
He might have thought twice, but someone in his situation may need to think 20 or 30 times before posting.
@exjon can fight his own battles, but the almost universal assumption of bad faith on this thread is unsettling.
I don’t say it’s necessarily about bad faith, but it might easily be about ADD.
How does bad faith enter into this? Who has accused Jon of arguing in bad faith?
I dunno…comments #2, 16, 34, 46, etc. have a certain vibe. If you mean that no one has literally said, “Jon! Stop that arguing right now! It’s in bad faith!” then I guess you’re right.
Yeah, I’m right.
Mind those vibes.