The attempt to write with focus and depth about any subject seems scarcely worthwhile until we have collectively chosen a particular path to destruction for our nation in two weeks. One candidate will immerse us in yet more foreign military entanglements, while the other will double expenditures of money we don't have on programs we don't need. Why people take such a keen interest in the kind of catastrophe that awaits us is beyond me. We go to hell, either way. There is some remote possibility, at least, that an Obama Administration supplied with a Democratic Congress may make such a whopping great mess of things that serious, responsible candidates may again raise their heads for mid-term elections in two years.
As I have always said and will continue to say, our real problem is ourselves. We are not innocent victims shanghaied by brigands along the waterfront: we're adult electors in a democratic republic who have freely chosen to put ourselves in chains aboard a vessel headed we know not where. We have shut off our brains to pursue mindless amusements--our heads are quite literally rigged with the gear of our iPods and cell phones where unobstructed portals of the senses are supposed to apprehend surrounding reality for processing by quiet thought. The harvest of freshmen that ended up in my composition class this fall already displays advanced symptoms of social decay. I wouldn't rate the lot as bad kids, by any means--most are even quite personable; but they simply cannot shut up and listen to someone else talk. Not two or three of them, but every student except for a young man who was home-schooled, constantly erupts into very audible mumbles with his or her neighbor as I try to conduct a class discussion, usually staring me straight in the eye while busily moving a winsome teenage mouth. They don't get it. They don't grasp the concept of sacrificing a little instant gratification so that broader objectives may be achieved to the eventual profit of all. The rest of the world is mere images to them. They may not have found my "off" button on their laptops (which I had to order them all to close)--but no matter: they're quite used to jabbering on their cell while flipping through a TV's blaring channels.
The immensity of our cultural peril has not been measured by any public figure within my hearing. It's really NOT the economy, stupid--or the war (any war), or global warming, or even the communal incoherence created by our immigration hemorrhage. It's the stupidity, stupid. We cannot think any longer. A.D.D. is epidemic. We cannot concentrate long enough to follow a thought to its logical conclusion. "Debates" are a series of two-minute recitations of bumper-sticker wisdom. "Analysis" is a sexy blonde newscaster breathlessly reading questions from the teleprompter to the expert's boxed head as the seconds before the next commercial break tick away. "Issues" are blinking icons on a computer screen, or might as well be: Barack is black, Palin is female, Joe's a plumber. Feel like a plumber? Click here. Wanna feel good about your racial broad-mindedness? Click there. Do our viewers' poll. Phone our blackberry. Pog mo thon...
From this lapel-pen thinking will come race riots, among other things. It's just a matter of time. As Pat Buchanan wrote recently, many of Obama's lieutenants are already predicting that Americans of African descent will take to the streets if Il Duce is "robbed" of election. And if he wins? Then expect a "race tax" within the next four years--a handout to dark-skinned Americans, that is, under the absurd banner of "slave reparations". Since the maneuver will in reality be a tax reimbursement to those whose skin is of the right tint, it will amount to a levy upon those of us whose skin is too fair to qualify. Stand back then and watch a true resurgence of Klan-style race-hatred. My God, it won't be pretty.
And most of all, it will be thoroughly stupid--stupid because perfectly avoidable. Such a waste... but it must be so, apparently. We must sound the bottom of this abyss before we can begin to rise again.
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1 comment:
This piece of writing pretty well sums up how I feel as well.
In my world, I see the absolute loss of very simple domestic skills among the young--mostly because their parents were too busy with everything and anything else to bother to teach them. I know another farmer who sells pasture raised chickens in a nearby city. Young people look at the dressed birds and say they would like to buy one--- if they knew how to cook it. I know of 17 year old girls who cannot cook their own breakfast. As we approach hard times, I fear that there is a whole generation that cannot meet their own basic self care needs, much less raise up their children in any kind of even modest domestic comfort.
God Bless you and keep writing.
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