Thursday, May 5, 2016

Quickies: We Are Doomed Edition

     I’m feeling rather gloomy this morning. I have more work before me than I care to contemplate...probably more than I can finish in what remains of this lifetime. And I look upon the current presidential contest, and the ugly things that are going on within and around it, and the way nearly all of us simply accept it all, resigned to an ever-accelerating fall from any sort of dignity and responsibility to the lowest sort of venality, and I wonder how anyone can remain optimistic about America’s future.

     Yet there remain some who call for a throwing-off of our chains – who insist that now is the hour, and that despite our defaults to this point, we are the people to do so. One of the most persistent and eloquent is Robert Gore:

     Obesity is the apt symbol of our age: physical—an epidemic; mental—social media staring and sharing for hours on end; fiscal—the bloated debt; political—Washington, D.C. Those who murder by poison have done quite well for themselves, but the victim is in extremis, drowning in his own drool, crushed by his own fat. President Obama may represent the final and fatal dose, or he may be the deus ex machina that prompts the patient’s last-second realization that something is dreadfully amiss, rousting him to take action against his would be killers. Newly animated by righteous anger, the victim springs from his putative death bed, flushes the poisons down the toilet, and tells his tormentors to go to hell.

     This may seem melodramatic, but it’s precisely what needs to be done. Government feeds America its poisons, and a little less or variation in the dosages does nothing, except perhaps prolong the death watch. This is the nation whose citizens fought a revolution for its freedom; initiated a dramatic experiment in representative and limited government, the protection of individual rights, and equality before the law; eliminated its shameful slavery; powered the Industrial Revolution’s explosion of innovation and progress and the Information Revolution’s transformation of computing and communications. The idea that this nation requires the malignant mercies of an all-knowing, all-caring, all-powerful government would have been loathsome and repugnant to those Americans.

     Inspirational, eh what? Filled with the spirit of liberty and the fire of optimism. But:

     This is the nation whose citizens fought a revolution for its freedom...

     We are not those men.

     ...initiated a dramatic experiment in representative and limited government, the protection of individual rights, and equality before the law...

     We are not those men either.

     ...eliminated its shameful slavery...

     We are certainly not those men.

     ...powered the Industrial Revolution’s explosion of innovation and progress and the Information Revolution’s transformation of computing and communications.

     A bare few of us can claim to be any of those men.

     We are a degenerate people. Ours is a degenerate age. We lack pride, confidence, courage of conviction, and any sense for what is real and true and enduring. We were bred for our fetters...and few of us even have the force of will to demand that our chains be struck off. We haven’t even the clarity to recognize and name the destroyers we've admitted to our midst. We passively await the rough beast of which Yeats wrote, hoping only to live out our term before being eaten...or failing that, to be eaten last.

     Do not expect a revolution. Do not expect a swelling of resistance to oppression. Do not expect that a people so long and thoroughly conditioned to submission before arbitrary authority will suddenly become a race of heroes.

     What’s that? You say that it must not be? You demand that we defy so many decades of precedent? You are certain that somewhere in our souls there must remain a spark of nobility sufficient to ignite the fires that a century and more of statist subjugation have banked?

     Good luck.

8 comments:

Malatrope said...

Three percent of us. It's enough for a revolution.

Francis W. Porretto said...

Really, Mal? Organize it. Plan a campaign for it. Lead it. Then get back to me -- hopefully before my arteries collapse.

brinster said...

The question is, are we gonna sit back and watch, or do something about it? We're gonna sit back and watch. The reason, I think, is a lack of immediacy. It's not like you're witnessing someone in distress who's in need of your help. We're all pretty well insulated from the s*** hitting the fan. Until the s*** runs out. Too late then.

Anonymous said...

Fran,

Cheer up and listen to this beautiful concert put on by our "enemies?" the Russians in ancient Palmyra:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-05/russian-orchestra-performs-concert-syrias-palmyra-ruins-recently-held-isis-live-webc

Then contemplate that our friends, the Brits are about to elect a Muslim Mayor in London.

Then contemplate that electing Trump could be the vary revolution you are looking for.

MB

HoundOfDoom said...

Well I've been telling my HOA to go f themselves for a while now. It's a start...

RichJ said...

Francis' comment to Malatrope gets at the issue each of us face: it's a matter of scale. What in fact can we really control? First and foremost, can we control ourselves? Can we do it without help?

I think each of us need a personal plan. Here is mine. Check out what David prays (after he sent Uriah to the front and had relations with Bathsheba):

Psalm 51:9 Turn your face away from my sins,
And wipe away all my errors.
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
And put within me a new spirit, a steadfast one.
11 Do not cast me out from your presence;
And do not take your holy spirit away from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation;
Stir within me a willingness to obey you.
13 I will teach transgressors your ways,
So that sinners will return to you.

Things are bad, but there is hope. It will get better.

Eskyman said...

MB said it: "...electing Trump could be the very revolution you are looking for."

I'm delighted that at long last we have the possibility of breaking some of the many chains that bind us: to cut back on the regulations that are smothering our business, to cut back on the flood of immigration (both legal and illegal) that is drowning our culture, to cut back on the pervasive police state that threatens our very existence.

If Donald Trump manages to accomplish even 10% of what he says he will do, he will be the greatest president in our lifetime! And the beacon of the Shining City on the Hill will burn brighter than ever!

Perhaps you're just disappointed that the time for muskets hasn't yet arrived, while instead there is a breath of fresh hope in the air. If so, me too; I was just fixin' for a fight! And now what am I going to do with all that ammo.... ;)

MissAnthropy said...

There is another great difference between us and those men. The problem is that in our age the State is very nearly omnipotent as well as omniscient. Modern technology has virtually eliminated the possibility of hiding in some redoubt, a place from which to sustain resistance against it.

The fire has not completely gone out of the minds and hearts of men. This and many other websites are a testament to that. The problem is that individual or local action will be squashed immediately, yet without individual and local action there is no possibility for larger action to coalesce into a movement.

I don't expect anything to change until people decide that they would literally prefer death, because resistance to the modern State is functionally the same as suicide.