How fast can a civilization rot?

Michael Brown at Townhall uses a recent two-day period to illustrate the intensification of transgender militancy on our society:

Within a 48-hour period this week, a Federal court ruled that a school could not require children to use the bathroom that corresponds to their biological sex, Target announced it was making all its bathrooms gender neutral, a school council in England sent out a letter to parents, telling them to encourage their 4-year-old children to choose the gender they most identify with before starting school, be it male, female, or something else, and baseball legend Curt Schilling was fired by ESPN for sharing an “anti-transgender” post. (Note that ESPN fired Schilling because it is an “inclusive” company. The Orwellian doublespeak continues.) 

Recall that this cascade of developments comes fairly closely on the heels of the North Carolina legislation and the reactions of Gavin Newsom, Andrew Cuomo and Bruce Springsteen. 

One of the causes of Western civilization's terminal illness is relativism, but it's moved  beyond the situational-ethics stage, or the embrace of moral equivalence in the international realm. Relativism has come to its confluence with narcissism for a new phase in which the psychotic New Age notion that one can create one's own reality is accepted en masse and is in fact reinforced by corporate policy and even law.

The synthesis of cultural movements has brought us to each step in our deterioration. The "peace" movement of the 1960s, 70s and 80s (which was really a nest of Communist front groups and fellow travelers) found common cause with feminism when those who enlisted the illumination of history pointed out that most generals, heads of state, inventors, artists, and, indeed, violent criminals had been men, by an overwhelming percentage. It may at first glance look unfair to those hesitant to acknowledge the profound differences between the masculine and feminine approaches to life, but there it is nonetheless. The peace folks and the feminists came together in a chorus to say, "That's why it's time for a brand-new way for humankind to do things."

Never mind that history also teaches us that brand-new ways never pan out. Human nature is fixed, even as the species advances materially.

Even at the margins, where such statistical necessities as homosexuality are found, human nature expresses itself with great predictability. Even before the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots that began the modern militant-homosexual movement, everyone knew that homosexual men gravitated toward certain occupational fields -  hair styling, arts administration, fashion design - as did lesbians (basketball, folk singing).

Again, there was a confluence of two cultural movements - feminism and homosexual militancy -  in the 1970s. By the middle of that decade, it was clear that such events as women's music festivals were mainly attended by, and the music performed by, lesbians.

This worked itself out in an uneasy equilibrium for a few years. Sectors of the economy that strongly represented particular demographics, to say nothing of public restrooms, didn't have to worry about being subjected to upheaval on the name of some sort of "justice." Folk singers and aeronautical engineers each found their niches and proceeded comfortably, generally speaking.

Lurking under the surface, however, was a a growing sense on the part of homosexuals that they were an aggrieved minority, in the same sense that black Americans had been able to claim that status.  It was no longer enough that one could work at a job for years and engage in civic life in one's community with everyone's tacit acknowledgement that the person of the same gender with whom you'd been living was in fact a companion and that your relationship with him or her involved intimacy and perhaps even commitment. Some of those in the mainstream of society so acknowledging may have had disapproving thoughts, some may have been indifferent, and some may have seen it as wonderful to witness. Whatever the reaction, people were entitled to have those thoughts privately.

This would now no longer do. Along came the wave of hate-crime legislation, which entitled the state to parse the workings of a citizen's mind.

And then came the first talk of homosexual "marriage."

And then came disparagement of the talk of slippery slopes. In hindsight, those pointing out slippery slopes seven, eight years ago used a less effective example when they brought up polygamy, which hasn't caught on in any big way at least yet, than if they'd used transgenderism. I would wager that the reason it took second place as an argument is that it seemed so way out.

But gender fluidity assumed legitimacy as a concept in university classrooms, and, of course, on any classroom-building hallway, there are restrooms.

It's significant that post-America was getting softened up by virtue of the other reality-denying narratives gaining ground simultaneously. Along with the idea that you can think yourself into being of the opposite gender, or having an identity at some point along a supposed continuum between the genders, lots of post-Americans swallowed such hooey as the endangerment of the polar bear population due to human industrial activity, or a legitimate role for government in the eating habits of individual citizens.

Post-Americans were getting softened up, and at the same time, being trained to hate the foundations of their way of life, particularly Christianity. Again, it was an unfolding process, starting with, "Oh, come on, you expect anyone to believe in a one-time appearance of a son of the Creator in one particular place for a lifespan on thirty-three years, beginning with a virgin conception and birth, and ending with a resurrection and ascension? I mean, if the guy existed historically, yes, he was a great moral teacher, but this other stuff . . . " And from there it reached the stage of "People who will swallow that are inclined to be so rigid as to be intolerant of those who have what Christians call sin as the core of their lifestyles." And then it was on to, "You can't do that."

Is it scary to imagine what comes next? Most definitely. In a year when, as Peggy Noonan puts it in her Wall Street Journal column today, "the great choice in a nation of 320 million may come down to Crazy Man versus Criminal," we ought to take a weirder and weirder future as a given.

It's not a consolation, but it is a perspective provider to realize that the civilizational peak we experienced over our lifetimes was a blip, that most societies and nation-states don't reach such a peak.

We are actually entering into more normal times, historically speaking, times in which people are on their own if they want to escape the smothering of a capricious and ubiquitous state.

If it is consolation one is looking for - well, as near as I can tell it comes in the basic message of the faith that is being outlawed in this darkening land: Our true home is in another realm.