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Watching the flotsam and jetsam on our information water bodies, I despair for our world. If I turn it off, will I miss some important warning of something headed my way? If I turn it on, will I be sucked into the mass formation psychosis that social media generates and maintains?
None of the scenes I see playing out in Iran or Minnesota are occurring in my own neighborhood, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening, or that the outcomes of those conflicts will not affect my life in some way. If I "like" and "repost" X (formerly Twitter) postings, am I doing "my part"? Is my online activity contributing to any desired end?
I have been much less active in postings on Ricochet in 2025 than I was in 2022, 2023, and 2024. My cause was focused: throw out the then-current US regime by lawful means and decry the unconstitutional activities it was engaged in. That was accomplished, but I was under no illusions that the work was done. I expected that the task of reformation would be hard and the outcome uncertain. That has proven to be so.
John Adams said:
Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition and Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. [emphasis added]
We are witnessing the "Whale," but there is fundamental disagreement on who is the whale and who is holding the harpoon.
As I have been watching what is going on in Minnesota, I was put in mind of the 1989 movie "War of the Roses," starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas. Here is Grok's summary:
The story is framed as a cautionary tale told by Gavin to a client considering divorce. It flashes back to how Oliver (a driven Harvard Law student) and Barbara first meet at an auction in Nantucket, playfully fighting over the same antique figurine — a spark that leads to marriage, two kids, wealth, and a stunning Washington, D.C. mansion filled with prized possessions. After 17–18 seemingly perfect years, cracks appear. Barbara, feeling unfulfilled as the homemaker while Oliver obsesses over his career, starts her own catering business. A turning point comes when Oliver collapses (thinking it's a heart attack) and writes Barbara a heartfelt note thanking her for their life together. When he recovers, she coldly admits the thought of him dying made her feel liberated. She wants a divorce — but neither will leave the house or give up their lavish lifestyle and belongings.What follows is an escalating, no-holds-barred war of attrition inside their own home. They sabotage each other viciously: Oliver humiliates Barbara during her dinner parties (including sabotaging the food), she destroys his beloved sports car; he accidentally kills her cat (or so she believes), she traps him in a sauna; they vandalize priceless antiques, destroy rooms, and turn the house into a battlefield.Their children flee to college in horror, the housekeeper quits, and the couple barricades themselves inside, booby-trapping the place. In the chaotic climax, they end up dangling from the massive dining-room chandelier — a symbol of their once-glamorous life — trading final words of love and hate as it crashes down, leading to a darkly ironic ending.It feels like Americans are ready for a divorce, but we can't have an amicable property settlement. Each "side" (as if it were truly binary) has too much to lose. Our finances are too intertwined — separating our homesteads would easily be as traumatic as the partition of the Raj. Whole systems would collapse, with rebuilding timeframes uncertain. These are revolutionary/counterrevolutionary (you pick) times. It is "winner take all" with "all" being a lot less than we think. Iranians are dying by the thousands -- many of them young -- in hopes of a better future for the survivors. Pray they are right. Americans are suffering, too, in much different ways. But the carnage uses a very different metric: not in body bags but "mind bags."
I have no idea whether Iran has a drug problem, whether the death meted out by the mullahs compares with death meted out in the US from fentanyl and other substances. But many Americans are in "mind bags" from their miseducation, from their narcissism, from their desire to be "cool," from their neuroses. Some will move to body bags while others will continue in a zombified state in service to progressive ideology.
As Americans look to outcomes that involve the least sacrifice, and I number myself amongst them, we do not serve ourselves well by ignoring the sacrifices that future generations will make due to the choices we make today. Iran is not in a War of the Roses -- they are putting it all out. America is in a War of the Roses because we are fearful of losing material wealth, even as we lose our minds.
This post was promoted to the Main Feed at the recommendation of Ricochet's members.
Discussion (52)
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I think it's important for someone who is as intelligent and erudite as you are to be on X right now. I believe that X and other public social media are, to some unknown extent, shaping and affecting world events. I'm relieved to know that people like you are on that forum.
However, the fact is still true, and it probably always has been and always will be, that most people are not engaged that way. They are working on taking care of the people they love, and that work consumes most of their time. And their faithful work keeps the world steady as she goes. :)
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The left just reached its breaking point before the rest of the country. Think of it as a person who is diagnosed with cancer but refuses to take chemo because it also harms the body. Eventually the cancer wins but its host dies.
Why does the left not fear economic ruin and the destruction of our constitutional republic? Because those are the left’s goals.
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Is a country that is the world's last/best hope for human flourishing worth saving? When the once prosperous people of Venezuela were reduced to eating zoo animals for sustenance, they surely understood the gravity of bad governance.
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May we learn it much, much sooner.
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Judging from the pushback Trump is getting, sooner might not happen.
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