LITD is obviously not the only opinion venue looking at the onset of 2019 this way

I've run across three pieces that resonate with my post from yesterday about the spiritual state of post-America as one year transitions into the next.

I was mightily impressed by Roger L. Simon's public admission at PJ Media of his recent movement upward from agnosticism. It was the increasingly dark state of things that spurred my own such movement:

There is and has been an emptiness in American society and I am going to suggest a cause I never thought I would, not because it is unique to me -- it hardly is -- but because I have, until relatively recently, been a rather typical agnostic of my generation.

It is the absence of God, augmented by the ongoing secularization of our culture largely perpetrated by that same generation (mine). We now almost have in America what the French call laïcité. It doesn't work there (they hate each other more than we do) and it won't here.

And before you go after to me to remind me that church- and synagogue-going people can be just as bad as everybody else, I will say, "Yes, of course," then continue on to say that the majority of believing religious people, especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition (I don't know the others well enough to comment), tend not to live lives as dominated by hate.

They are the people we see in the old Hollywood movies that we like to watch over the holidays. They are Americans from an era that may never have existed but may actually have more than we realize. (Excuse the Zen-ish  deliberate contradiction.) It's Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." You can bet he went to church. Why can't we be like that now?

Dennis Prager says that the last arena upon which the Left has set its sights in its quest for total destruction of the nation is politics:

 . . .  Democratic Party and the media will do to American political life what it has done to the arts; the universities; the high schools; the Boy Scouts; race relations; religion; the happiness of so many women (misled by feminism regarding marriage and career); the moral fabric of American life (morality reduced to feelings); late-night television; mainstream Judaism, Catholicism and Protestantism; pro football; and the sexual innocence of the young: It will poison it.

From the French Revolution to this day, the two great aims of the left have been promising utopia to the malcontented and accumulating as much power as possible. All moral values are subservient to these goals. After all, what could be more important than “social justice” (the left’s term for everything it advocates); “equality” (of result); women’s liberation from the “sexist oppression” of the “patriarchy”; combating “white privilege”; fighting the “rape culture” that pervades campuses; saving life on planet Earth from the “existential threat” to it; “resistance” to the “authoritarian,” “fascist,” “white supremacist,” “racist” Trump administration; supplanting national identities and institutions with a “world citizen” identity and international institutions; and undoing the most fundamental built-in identity of the human race, that of male and female, in the name of transgender rights?

Not that the Right has demonstrated much of an ability to rise above this fray, as Brandon Morse at RedState points out:

 This has also had something of an effect on the right as well. Too many either worship Trump as a sort of infallible god or find themselves defending his every move in an effort to not give their opponents a foothold in the collective war of ideologies. Trump can do no wrong because if Trump is wrong about one thing, the left will begin to think they can make him wrong about other things.

We call this “owning the libs,” which generated its own meme wherein members of the right point out how they own themselves or the principles they stand for in an attempt to justify anything Trump does with “owning the (insert person or group here) to own the libs.”  Needless to say, it’s not a good look.

Both extremes are extremely ridiculous but are extremely potent within our culture. Our mainstream media and activist groups deal in extremes, and our politicians are only too happy to cave to or lead the ideals they believe are prevalent in America. Where common sense on an issue may have prevailed even with the left a decade ago, the shifted galeforce winds of political change has swept politicians into ideals no sane person should have.

It's going to take constant mindfulness to be girded with that full armor thing I mentioned yesterday.

Onward into 2019!