There's the parade of cartoon characters occupying center stage in the public consciousness: Donald Trump, Caitlin/Bruce, Rachel Dolezal.
There's the danger that inevitable gaps in the consistency of the actual conservatives among the Republican candidates will drive the litmus-test fever-swamp types among the party's base into the arms of said Trump.
There's the new faux legitimacy conferred upon the climate-change fiction by the papal encyclical, a document of stunning poisonousness that calls for yet more global governance and less national sovereignty, and that provides some very potent fuel to the guilt-mongerers among those interested in shaping public policy.
There's the array of real and growing threats, most of which have already reached a degree or peril best characterized as disaster: ISIS, the OPM cyberattack, the baked-in failure of patty-cake with Iran, the flood of unassimilated newcomers to our country, most of them illegal aliens, the rot of our educational system, the marginalization of Christianity, and the collapse of a dignified common culture.
There's the fully achieved dependency of a critical mass of the populace on government for basic survival, as evidenced by the number of people completely out of the workforce, the number of people on food stamps, and the number of people who want Congress to ensure, in the event of a King v Burwell decision that reads ACA literally, that subsidies are available in all fifty states.
Our character, fortitude and fealty to principle as conservatives is being tested as never before.
It's not a matter of whether this nation has ever lived through tougher times. That's really impossible to measure, given the relentlessness of societal and technological change. It's a matter of our understanding that our ideology - when you talk about it as fully formed and standing on all three of its indispensable pillars - is the correct one from among the choices in this dark age, and resisting the temptation to dilute it, or skew the emphasis within it toward one pillar at the expense of the others, or to introduce some exotic new strain of thought that changes its basic character.
We all know about how we are shouted down, mocked and marginalized by the Left whenever we take our message beyond the confines of our echo chamber.
We all know about those among us who aren't committed to the deepest contemplation of the full grandeur of what we embrace. (This is the type who can be led to fall for a charlatan like Trump.)
Let us permit all this to temper our steel. Let our accurate understanding of the human condition appear like a gleaming and unblemished forging to those few remaining fellows who really and truly have not made up their minds.
Do not be dragged into the weeds. Do not be cornered. Above all, do not succumb to the temptation to pack it all in.
We are needed, and we must remain fixed on the glory that comes from an unflinching assessment of reality.
Maybe this can be our moment. You now what they say about the darkest hour and the dawn.
Americans are acting. Home-schooling is at an all time high. People are canceling their cable. Newspapers are going broke. Membership to Unions are at an historic low and millennia's are rejecting Democrat/Republican parties. We have so much more work to do. db
ReplyDeleteAll positive signs that we must use to bolster our resolve. Thanks for pointing them out.
ReplyDeleteThere's the fully achieved dependency of a critical mass of the populace on government for basic survival, as evidenced by the number of people completely out of the workforce, the number of people on food stamps...
ReplyDeleteWell, take a look at this 2009 article in The Atlantic. 6 ears have passed. But until drones and other robot warriors fully assimilate, you can join the military, Yes Sir!
From
As production in the United States evolves to include more machines, programming, and robots, will that have a negative long-term impact on unemployment? Economist Greg Clark says yes, and recent evidence suggests that it may already be happening.
"No, the economic problems of the future will not be about growth but about something more nettlesome: the ineluctable increase in the number of people with no marketable skills, and technology's role not as the antidote to social conflict, but as its instigator...."
Read more at http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/08/robots-and-the-future-of-unemployment/22987/
And don't ya think newspapers and cable TV are simply being replaced(and actually broadened) by the internet, itself a robot? You better look around.
ReplyDelete"There is no political solution to our troubled evolution' --Sting (who had visions on ayahuasca). Damn him to hell!
ReplyDelete"Throw me a bone and leave me alone." --Mr. Dings
ReplyDeleteForget the bone. I'll find my own.
DeleteJD, your contributions to our society's conversation about this are truly invaluable and our gratitude for them is boundless.
ReplyDeleteYou're gonna be idle too pardner. In all your jobs. The robots do all that and some say better. Although I must say you are a fine writer and musician. Drive, he said....
ReplyDelete"You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live." ~William Shakespeare
ReplyDeleteYour obsession with weird little side issues that distract us from the obvious catastrophes immediately before us are a source of wonderment to me. I guess if one has never really taken the time to take in the sweep of the human experience on this planet and commit to separating the profound from the trivial, the essential from the dispensable, kooky little obsessions can seem like worthwhile expenditures of one's mental exertions.
ReplyDeleteAnother way of putting the above comment is this: The grotesque distortion of human sexuality and the human family, the legitimization of communism, and, finally, our defeat and utter humiliation (think watching your kinfolk get gang-raped in the public square) at the hands of an unprecedentedly threatening jihadist enemy will all be upon us way before robotization has its chance to present its set of problems.
ReplyDelete