The Last-Century Church

I. What Matter of Man Is This?

Consider Socrates. We know of his existence 2nd and 3rd hand, because he did not write down his own teachings. We can feel confident that he existed, because various independent sources confirmed him even though they disagree in other respects. But we cannot, for example, but sure that Plato’s Apology, which is written as though it is an exact reproduction of Socrates’ words, is actually a word-for-word quotation. Yet, few philosophers or historians are bothered by this uncertainty, because the gift which Socrates left us–the Socratic method–retains its power regardless of how accurately we know the man himself. Indeed, the Socratic method would remain just as relevant even if the man known as Socrates were revealed to be a fictional character.

The same is patently untrue of Jesus Christ. The relevance of Christianity depends upon Christ’s historical reality. ‘If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain,’ (1 Corinthians 15:14) summarized Paul. Jesus’ resurrection–history’s one and only instance of death itself being defeated–is the proof of his teachings. Without the resurrection, Jesus would at best be rendered a mere Buddha-lite on the philosophical scale, since he would have claimed the power to defeat sin and the wages of sin (death) for us vicariously without actually demonstrating that ability. C.S. Lewis rendered this matter definitively in Mere Christianity:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Thus ‘belief in Christ’ is inextricable from belief in the historical reality of his resurrection. Anything else puts one in the category of Thomas Jefferson–taking a razor to the Bible to excise the miraculous passages, leaving only some tatters of ethical advice that, frankly, can be got from other, earlier sources.

I mention all of this to pose the following question. Why, if the historicity of Christ’s resurrection is crucial, do today’s theologians neglect to consider his historicity in general? By ‘in general’ I mean this. There was something about Jesus that struck a chord with many of the pagan Romans that he encountered. First, a centurion at Capernaum (Matthew 8) asked for his servant to be healed, and the way he asked it was with such decorum that Jesus ‘marveled’ that his was a greater faith than he had seen in all of Israel. Then, Pontius Pilate interviewed Christ and thereafter declined to have him executed, even though ego, peer pressure, and mere convenience said to do otherwise. Finally, a centurion at the site of the crucifixion (likely someone who had seen many a Jew hung upon a cross) was overheard to say ‘Truly this Man was the Son of God!’ I would like to pose that very few Christians today, especially in the developed world, and especially again in the United States, could even attempt to provide a historical explanation for this phenomenon, because Jesus is so rarely considered in a general, historical context by pastors or the endless churn of modern Biblical commentary books.

Here is how I would briefly attempt to answer the question. The vast majority of pre-Christian and/or non-Christian classical literature is tragic in nature and genre. Be it Mesopotamia’s Marduk and Gilgamesh, Egypt’s Isis-Osiris-Horus-Set, Greece’s Zeus and Heracles and Achilles, Hinduism’s Arjuna and Krishna, India & China & Japan’s buddhas, etc., all of them basically have the same formula (even more basic than Joseph Campbell’s summary).

The world is extremely hostile and painful.
Only a rare few (heroes) can excel in such an environment.
Even those rare few lose everything in the end.

To take this a step further–these stories are a summary or starting point for the philosophy of the ‘Mystery Schools,’ or the inner workings of the ancient religions themselves. This could perhaps be cursorily re-rendered as:

Accept the hostility, pain, and transience of the world.
Become a hero (aka, the exception to mediocrity/normalcy).
Those who do so reap a reward for doing so outside of the world/after death.

The latter step is often lampooned by atheism as both unprovable and immoral, since to the untrained ear it sounds as though one is being told: ‘be moral in return for cash and prizes.’ However, anyone who studies the Mystery Schools for long, and in particular the people they were known to produce, comes to suspect that this cause and effect are inseparable. In other words, there is no room here for disingenuously doing good, because the ‘reward’ for doing this good involves, or is primarily about, becoming good. Summarized in a phrase, the reward sought by the Mystery School is a ‘spiritual evolution.’

From this one can determine that most every culture before a certain date thought:

The world is inherently tragic
And there is something very wrong with us that needs to be fixed/improved.

(Those fringe groups that disagreed with these points and instead, looking at man’s existential situation, concluded ‘I see nothing wrong here,’ were considered devil-worshippers and deviants.)

Their solution to the world’s tragedy and man’s flaws?

Try very hard to fix yourself.

This was, to say the least, found wanting, although the Mystery Schools and their broader religions saw no present alternative. Thus even Judaism’s King Solomon–blessed (?) by God to be the Wisest Man in the World–penned Ecclesiastes, perhaps the most depressing book in the world, whose recurring refrain is:

Everything is meaningless!

Now consider the three Magi whom followed the Star of Bethlehem and (eventually) found the young Jesus. They were, though lesser than Solomon, arguably in the same philosophical boat. They had trained all of their lives to transcend the tragedy of existence and attain the awaited ‘spiritual evolution.’ Yet one strongly suspects that none of them felt they had actually succeeded in doing so. Then one day, the stars told them something that had never been told before. How to render what they ‘read’ in the sky likely requires a better mastery of astrology and Zoroastrianism than I have, but I imagine it was roughly this:

An exception to the tragedy of the world, and the imperfection of men, has arrived.

And this, I would argue, is precisely Christ’s general historicity. He is The Exception in Mankind’s Story. Note: Mankind’s Story is accurate, and he is an Exception to it. An exception does not invalidate a rule, unless the rule states that it cannot be excepted. Indeed, if Christ were not the Exception to a verifiable status quo, he would not be significant. To recognize The Savior is to recognize that the world needs saving.

To be fair, current Christian theology often skirts this theme with the idea of Faith versus Works salvation, and it is possible that some pastors take care to note that every spiritual-religious tactic before Jesus Christ was Works-based. But on the whole, I feel that the developed/American church has so frail of a grasp upon the classical world (both the world before and during Christ’s lifetime) that this fine point is rather easy to miss. And my evidence for this missed point is unfortunately far more than mere conjecture.

II. Who Do We Think We Are?

The legacy of Christ’s disciples and the 1st century church is of faith during persecution. Of Christ’s 12 disciples, only one did not die tragically as a direct result of association with him: John, the author of Revelation (we’ll get back to him). Other, regular believers met their end at the Roman coliseum in its now unimaginably gory games. The three Apostolic Fathers, men who were ordained by Christ’s apostles to great effect, were:

Polycarp…burned at the stake
Clement I…drowned at sea
Ignatius of Antioch…fed to lions

This legacy continues unabated to this day in the undeveloped and developing worlds. Christ predicted numerous times that this would be the case, even summarizing his call to salvation fatally as “Pick up your cross and follow me.” So, if anything were capable of surprising Christ about his own church, it would arguably be that some portion of it would enjoy a period in the absence of persecution.

If the world is tragic, and man is imperfect, and Christ is The Exception to the status quo of mankind’s world, then it stands to reason that Christ’s followers will be persecuted as an aberration. One might even say that a Christian’s mundane existence ought to be more tragic than that of nonbelievers, in the same way that a Christian’s transcendent existence is far richer, since they have already been granted the ‘spiritual evolution’ through faith in Christ rather than paganism’s works.

Thus, a lack of persecution is actually a troubling sign. It signals that a portion of the Church has come back into alignment with the world to the extent that the world no longer finds it overtly abhorrent. This concern reaches a fever pitch when we consider that the Bible calls Satan ‘the god of this world’ (2 Corinthians 4:4) and does not appear to contradict the validity of this offer (Matthew 4):

⁸Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ⁹“All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

Yet, American Christianity has become downright notorious for:

its insulation from persecution
the great expense of its campuses (indeed, the conflation of physical buildings with the metaphysical Church)
the hefty salaries of its staff, sometimes comparable to or exceeding the private sector
cramming donuts and coffee down one’s throat before worshipping, then rushing out to lunch after worshipping
Irreverence during worship such as gossiping with fellow believers
Displays of monetary or sexual status upon the guise of ‘dressing up for church’
Nationalism (flags upon the dais as though God is on America’s side, rather than the other way around)
selective legalism, wherein homosexuality is wrong but divorce is fine, etc
the extremity of the ‘Health & Weath’ gospel, as though our homeless carpenter-messiah wants you to have two vacation homes and a luxury sedan
the insidious subtlety of ‘Optimism with a side of Jesus’ theology, wherein believers are taught to always look on the temporal bright side…while living in the world ruled by Satan

Thus I am forced to conclude that the American church has perfected the art of having Too Much of a Good Thing. We have managed to reduce the sacredness of John 3:16 to a trite meme, wherein–because we have “fire insurance”–everything is rendered fine and dandy, and we’re free to frolic like puppies through fields of wheat and StAcK tHaT cAsH mOnEy. We then have the audacity to wonder why young Americans are no longer interested in going to church. It’s because our churches aren’t particularly different from anywhere else in the country–excepting that their entertainment factor isn’t really up to snuff, and the wifi’s a bit slower.

This leads me to ponder what would happen if the Mark of the Beast came on the scene tomorrow. The excuses for taking it are obviously going to be colossal. If none may buy or sell without it, then refusing it will initially result in becoming socially marooned, with the tools and calories at one’s immediate disposal constituting one’s only options. For Americans, this will likely be the first time they’ve experienced such a thing. In this existential paralysis, the fear of death will onset. Suddenly people who suspect to varying degrees that God wants them to be happy here on earth will realize that their faith is about to get them killed. Not just they but their family members may starve or be murdered if they do not take it. All of their neighbors are taking it. Everyone on social media is taking it. Some of their church friends are taking it. Maybe even their pastor is telling them to take it. The Rapture hasn’t happened yet, so this can’t be It? God wants the best for you–‘plans to prosper and not to harm’? Etc.

Of course, some theologians attempt to write off John’s eschatological prophecies as symbolic of his own time…but that does nothing to eliminate all of the other Biblical portions, including the Red Letters themselves (Matthew 24), that deal with the massive persecution of believers during the End Times. To say that the American church is in danger of getting caught with its pants down (‘like a thief in the night’) seems an audacious understatement. In fact–how many American Christians even know Revelation well enough to recognize its signs if they were to occur? How many pastors have been crystal-clear that:

An Antichrist will take Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and declare himself to be God
He will compel all to take his ‘Mark of the Beast’
Those who do not take it will die or be killed as a consequence
Jesus has not returned unless it is in the heavens with an angel-army and reality-rending terror upon earth (anything else is an impersonation)

…much less the other relevant details of John’s visions?

Brothers, sisters…The entire world was just ‘shut down’ for the first time in history. ‘Smart tattoos‘ or ‘drawn-on-skin technology‘ are about to be the new Must Have accessory. There is talk that a gene-editing (mRNA) C*VID19 vaccine should be a mark so as to easily attest to immunity. Microsoft has patented ‘060606‘ for cryptocurrency payments based on body activity. Elon Musk thinks we have just five years until Artificial Intelligence begins warping reality beyond human control. His solution is Neuralink–inserting a chip into the brain to become symbiotic with A.I. None of these things definitively spell ‘Mark of the Beast’ yet, but they sure do rhyme. I recommend making your decision now before necessity forces it upon you. It is not unreasonable to plan for the eventuality that you are the Last-Century Church.

If you are not a believer and instinctively recognize what is being said here, please follow these tried and true instructions (Romans 10), then share them with those who will listen:

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

NMAAHC & The Pendulum

I was recently amused to learn that Washington D.C.’s National Museum of African American History and Culture has taken it upon themselves to define ‘whiteness‘. My first thought was, surprisingly, from the leftist parlance: cultural appropriation. My next thought: Please tell me no Anglo-Saxon-themed museum has responded to this by defining ‘blackness.’ Yet, however ill-conceived or ill-fated this attempt to define may prove, my knee-jerk reaction to it was ultimately unbefitting of the attempt’s gravity. Like individuals in Sherlock’s presence, a great deal of useful information can be extrapolated from them, despite the fact that it is not the information they hoped to convey.

Perhaps the most visceral part of the definition, a graphic titled ‘Aspects and Assumptions of White Culture in the United States,’ has very recently been removed. Thankfully, I had a suspicion that this might occur, so I saved it in order to reproduce it here under Fair Use. You may find it at the end of this post.

To summarize that graphic, it defines the main aspects of whiteness as: individualism, the nuclear family, the Scientific Method, Greco-Roman/Judeo-Christian/European culture, Protestant work ethic, and (paraphrasing to condense) capitalist ambition/competition.

Despite the fact that there is nothing controversial or surprising within these aspects, I found myself having to re-read them several times. After all, I was not reading a web page by a white supremacist group–this was produced by an organization rather the opposite (one hopes, anyway). So why, when I was expecting to be chastised or at least criticized for my ‘whiteness,’ was I being complimented at every turn? I considered and quickly ruled out that I was being patronized. No, the authors are quite sincere. The plain fact of it is that the NMAAHC meant for me to feel critiqued by these aspects. To them, these aspects are insults. Cue Led Zeppelin’s ‘Communication Breakdown.’

Rather than laud any of these aspects–seeing as how they have already been so thoroughly explained and defended in Tarnas’s Passion of the Western Mind, Pontynen and Miller’s Western Culture at the American Crossroads, and (less intellectually but more viscerally) in the cultural triptych formed by the King James Bible, the Complete Shakespeare, and the Lives of Plutarch–I would like to briefly dwell on their opposite or alternative. I would render this list as: collectivist, unscientific, anti-work and/or anti-goal-oriented, pagan, socialistic, no emphasis on the value of time in accordance with its finite nature (RIP supply & demand), group AKA mob or vigilante ‘justice,’ and devoid of logico-literary-communication.

Now, perhaps it is just me, but when I stare at the list of anti-‘whiteness’ aspects we’ve just constructed, it seems to me that we have merely described the Bronze Age. Now, I have nothing against that Age objectively. Subjectively I would only return to it kicking and screaming. But objectively I suppose I’m glad it happened, what with the linearity of time. I’m not going to dwell on this Bronze Age issue much more, because I don’t want to strawman the NMAAHC by pretending they are calling for the opposite of their ‘whiteness.’ Certainly they are not, because by their own definition of ‘whiteness,’ American museums themselves are arguably a product of ‘whiteness’, and thus they as an institution would have to disband in order to accomplish their own strawman-goal. Since they have not, we may assume that is not their goal (unless they are blatant hypocrites).

None-the-less, the fact remains that they are either:

passive-aggressively critiquing the aspects of ‘whiteness’ without providing viable alternatives
or, implying the alternatives to ‘whiteness’ by defining ‘whiteness’ and leaving one to imagine its opposites as we just have.

In the first case, they would effectively be those pseudo-revolutionaries who know how to destroy with no intention or ingenuity to create afterwards. In the second case, they would be akin to what I can only render as Rousseauian primitivists–viewing the Bronze Age as more romantic than the USA’s present situation, while lacking the character to voluntarily abandon their present situation ala the Amish, or Chris McCandless, or immigration to another country closer to their ideal. I will go no further in psychoanalyzing them, since it is impossible to narrow down which option is more likely from afar.

Besides, these two possibilities are roughly comparable in the following sense. The first is like a petulant child that breaks but cannot fix; the second is like a petulant child that dreams but will not do. Both, in adults, are states of spiritual dwarfism, reeking of the resentment that Nietzsche lampooned as:

You preachers of equality, the tyrannomania of impotence clamors thus out of you for equality: your most secret ambitions to be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue.

Actually, pagan Nietzsche perhaps doesn’t go far enough. I believe there is another quote more consistent with the latent resentfulness herein, when one considers the absolute havoc that would portend a Bronze Age-ified United States:

So farewel Hope, and with Hope farewel Fear,

Farewel Remorse: all Good to me is lost;

Evil be thou my Good…

That, of course, is Milton’s Lucifer speaking.

It dawns on me that this is probably why the political pendulum is never static for long. The Rightwing in power becomes a trite broken record, fretting over how to endlessly Conserve values when those values have no valid threats. The Leftwing, on the other hand, develops a moral panic or maladaptive perfectionism that ultimately eats itself, because Progress’ing eventually becomes the sole value, even when it calls for Progress’ing away from crucial victories already attained. Thus those who wholly depend upon and exist by virtue of, say, free markets or scientific methodology or Justice Systems (Hobbes’ Leviathan?), come to feel very clever indeed when critiquing those things as though they can do better, without having demonstrated even the slightest evidence that they can in fact do so. This is perhaps, as the Brits say, on the tin, since ‘Critical Theory’ suggests the pitiable state of being a critic…

Critic. n.

A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.

-Bierce, Devil’s Dictionary

In parting, I would like to concede the following.

1. I do not believe that the presence of melanin or lack-thereof can actually/literally/Objectively be assigned any metaphysical quality. In other words, in the same way that I do not believe a black Labrador has ‘blackness’ beyond the fact that it is colored black, or that a white Labrador has ‘whiteness’ beyond that fact that it is colored white, I do not believe that much of anything is conveyed by the coloration of human beings beyond the utility of ‘look at that white guy over there’ or ‘look at that black guy over there.’

2. Insomuch as one disagrees with #1, I consider one to be bigoted, regardless of what coloration they are pretending to elaborate upon.

3. However, insomuch as the NMAAHC’s description of ‘whiteness’ could be accurate if they were correct–I would admittedly be proud to have or be that ‘whiteness.’

4. Yet, seeing as how this ‘whiteness’ is obviously a metaphysical construct separate from mere unalterable coloration, one must concede that these are qualities any person could potentially possess, meaning it is a matter of character rather than ‘race,’ and thus should not be called ‘whiteness’ (unless one wishes to reference the Biblical use of whiteness as symbolic of innocence and/or redemption).

5. Insomuch as the NMAAHC has made any person whom is not ‘racially’ white feel that they are disqualified or less qualified to achieve the aforementioned characteristics of ‘whiteness,’ I consider them to be a net negative upon humanity that ought to cry themselves to sleep each night in shame.

6. This recent collective resurgence of racial obsession is just a byproduct of the economic ruination caused by the coronavirus lockdown. Per historical norms, the lower classes are beginning to blame and scapegoat one another for the ruin brought upon them by their upperclass overlords. Insomuch as anyone perpetuates this blame-game, I find it stunning and regrettable that you were the quickest sperm.

whiteculture_info_1

Moral Tourism: A New Hobby at the Edge of History

Many have pondered whether George Floyd would have received any justice if his death hadn’t been recorded. I’m tempted to take this question a step further: would it have received any indignation at all if it hadn’t been recorded? As I’ve stated previously, it seems as though the Silent Majority of Americans (and perhaps the developed world entire) are incapable of mustering up emotion for anything except the most gruesome of imagery–the towers’ collapse during 9/11, for example, which garnered just enough outraged enthusiasm for ‘W’ to invade several countries that had nothing to do with it. If Floyd’s death had not been captured on video, the newspaper synopsis likely would have read: intoxicated man with extensive criminal record dies after chokehold arrest; police were alerted by a cashier after he passed a fake note. With the race of killer and killed expunged, it seems doubtful any further information would have been demanded.

Being moved solely by imagery is a consummate example of ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ Thus many a Westerner has suddenly, almost miraculously realized their deep-seated feelings of empathy (or guilt) towards African Americans in the late hour of 2020; unfortunately, they have not yet discovered it for any of the people-groups whom are actually enslaved TODAY. That realization would require effort beyond scrolling through social media feeds, and it might prove inconvenient indeed, for one would risk realizing that the Iphones which captured Floyd’s death were made by ChiCom slave labor on Apple’s behalf. But, since enslaved Chinese, including the Hong Kongers currently being divested of their liberty, and the Chinese-Muslim Uyghur minority currently being tortured in ‘reeducation camps,’ have little relevancy to ousting Trump, they are for some strange reason not receiving the same funding as BLM & Antifa from the likes of George Soros. Could this explain why the last time anyone heard these organizational acronyms before Floyd’s death was 2016?

One may rightly note that none of this changes the fact that African Americans have been treated unfairly. Indeed, it was very unkind of the likes of the Ashanti dynasty (of that textile design), or the Muslim pirates of the Barbary Coast, to auction their fellow Africans off to white traders. To see the stain of sin solely upon white hands during these sordid transactions is willful, expedient ignorance. If there is anything exceptional at all about the role American whites played in the vast history of slavery, it is that they were willing to fight & die over the matter in a Civil War. And in order to extrapolate a truly exceptional racism from this, one would have to believe that the majority of Southerners who risked their lives in that war were willing to die for an economic luxury they themselves did not possess. If you are not in the mood to risk your neck for billionaires’ right to keep their private jets, then you have understood my point. Those mystified should reread the 10th Amendment.

My intent, beyond the pleasure of snark for its own sake, is not to dissuade the newfound champions of civil rights; merely to ask that they remain consistent instead of, I don’t know—taking selfies at a rally, donating once or twice, then getting back to the ole Netflix binge with fresh assurance that they are a good little boy or girl. For the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. If we are going to give free money and emotional support to African Americans, I expect to see the same for interned Japanese and the truly decimated Native American tribes next, to name but a few. The business of righting historical wrongs is never-ending, and likely to bankrupt us all—but private & central bankers have already done that in slow-motion, so what the heck?

However, good luck parsing out which pale boogeymen are actually responsible, because, being Emma Lazarus’s melting pot, there are plenty of white Americans walking about whose dust-reduced ancestors were never afforded even the theoretical opportunity to own slaves, either because they were too historically late, or impoverished, or were themselves looked upon as inferior to W.A.S.P.s (see Catholics of all stripes, especially the Irish). I would also like to meet the daring soul who will audit African American ancestry to make sure none of the families of those freed slaves whom then purchased slaves for themselves are afforded a piece of this immaculate pie. Heritages of mixed race will also prove difficult in this regard (will it be the Leftwing that instigates a ‘one-drop rule’ this time around?).

In the meantime, a word of friendly warning to anyone who hopes to live to spend their reparation money. No law enforcement means no enforced laws (beyond whatever local protection rackets pop up). So, good luck enacting anything involving reparations at the same time that law enforcement is abolished. (Cue ‘Defund the Police doesn’t mean Defund the Police’). Furthermore, seeing as how the African American community is beset on all sides by ‘institutionalized racism,’ I should take great care to be sure that there is not some ulterior motive behind banishing police from all communities that cannot afford private security as a substitute. Now, I’m not saying that Margaret Sanger’s eugenics program, aka Planned Parenthood, has proven too slow for Them, and thus They (They being whoever institutionalized the institutions, I suppose) have resolved to speed up the process with some variation in stratagem…but I am saying, stranger things have happened. And this would be a particularly effective approach since no one seems to care about black-on-black violence. Indeed, even citing it currently merits a one-way ticket to the Racist category. For example, a journalist was recently pilloried for reproducing this quotation from an African American he interviewed:

I always question, why does a Black life matter only when a white man takes it?… Like, if a white man takes my life tonight, it’s going to be national news, but if a black man takes my life, it might not even be spoken of…

The answer, of course, is that our concern is not Justice (for she is Blind), only social justice. We care not to rectify present evils, only those which are already long passed. This is textbook, almost passe, Divide and Conquer–to agitate and foment historical resentment between different tribes to distract from current wrongs and lay the foundation for even worse ones in the future. I’m reminded of a Frankie Boyle joke that went something along the lines of:

Black and white people shall finally live together in harmony…in Chinese concentration camps.

I’ve tried holding off comparing our current state of affairs to the Maoist Red Guard’s Cultural Revolution, but a recent anonymous letter from a Berkeley history professor has caused me to think it might be now-or-never. That this ‘person of color’ (God, what a horrendous expression–does that mean I am a ‘person of non-color’?) knows they would lose their job for signing this piece is bad enough. The individual points themselves seem to terminate inexorably at the question: if a violent far-left ‘cultural revolution’ were to occur in the United States, what other warning signs would you possibly desire?

However, if that is in fact what is occurring (and I certainly hope it isn’t), I remain skeptical that it will ‘work’ as any of its adherents would wish. As I understand it, even the likes of Antifa merely want a political ‘anarchy’ in which they are still alive and fairly well. But any earnest attempt to force the U.S. in a socialist/communist direction that involves discomfort on the part of taxpayers would assuredly result in a distinctly apolitical anarchy. If some puppet-master would take the pains to…

automate, outsource, or otherwise disappear the majority of American jobs
prevent the federal government as-is from instituting a reactionary Universal Basic Income
THEN use leftist students to rabble-rouse ala Les Miserables

…we might see a homogeneously far-left USA. Otherwise, any such all-or-nothing bid is simply going to burn the whole place down like the Biblical Babylon due to the populace having not been disarmed beforehand.

Assuming (perhaps out of wishful thinking) that this unthinkable outcome will not occur, I maintain two assumptions about the future. The first is thanks to the astute commentary of @Cernovich ; the second is my own.

Urbanization is finished; anyone with a fulltime job, or a family, or a base-level appreciation of survival is going to flee for the suburbs or country and buy guns.
BLM/Antifa is but the first wave of a new hobby at the edge of history: moral tourism. The social media zombies, rather than craving brains, crave crisis. This is the only stimuli sufficient to jolt their fried nervous systems into feeling alive, however temporarily. Faux-outrage at spoon-fed, IV-dripped realizations that the world is imperfect will be their pastime in lieu of productive or lucrative work, in-person or functional families and friends, or any socio-cultural-historical value system whatsoever. Eventually no statues will stand, for they will all have been pulled down by the suspicion that anyone who did anything worth remembering must have been evil, compared to the immaculate innocence of their utter, grave-obliterated mediocrity. The rich (meaning anyone with private property) will horde the books which this mob would burn, having discovered a new status symbol on the grounds that ‘this, at least, cannot have been tampered with.’ It is even possible that the use of social media (I would not yet go so far as to say the Internet entire) will grow akin to being a Prodigal Son. ‘Poor child, they chose that poison over Real Life.’

There is no telling how many the moral tourists will kill in their first few bouts of Dionysian frenzy, but eventually this new class-based segregation will solidify. Suburban and rural taxpayers will learn to defend themselves, and tax-dependents will stay in their rotting cityscapes except when paid or goaded into kamikaze attempts with political motives. We’ll have done all those sci-fi/dystopia authors real proud.

For those regular persons of any race or creed wondering what to do in this chaotic interim, I recommend consulting Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago (even the Harper abridged edition to save time). It’s a masterful summary of how these waves of memetic violence ebb and flow, and it concludes on the whole that the only way to prevent its worst potential outcomes is total noncompliance when and if Someone shows up at your door. In hindsight, it is painfully obvious that WW2’s Russian kulaks and German Jews should have put their axeheads between the eyes of anyone who came to round them up; if they had done so they would have saved millions of lives and perhaps even their own. In the case of the United States, no force on Earth can forcibly subdue such an armed citizenry–eventually you run out of people willing to volunteer for the abduction detail, since their zealot friends keep coming home in boxes. Farmers with rusty rifles and makeshift explosives have kept the world’s best killing force occupied in the desert for decades now–if we do not do better, it will only be by choice.

How to Lose when You’re Ahead

Roughly 48 hours ago I predicted with confidence that police would emerge from the George Floyd backlash empowered, due to the dismal optics of protestors-as-thieves-and-arsonists. However, I did not account for the post-traumatic collage of excessive force that they have since gifted to the media. A male-on-female groping, resulting in her recoiling, which provokes a beating; shooting out the eye of a homeless wheelchair-bound man with a rubber bullet; shoving the frail Martin Gugino to concrete for daring to stand in their presence, & then quitting to show solidarity with those officers disciplined for said action.

I have since watched the latter clip in slow motion several times, transfixed by the body language and telegraphed motion of an officer who appears to want to beat Gugino with his club after he has fallen, only to be casually dissuaded by another. Not only is Gugino in no danger of getting up; blood is clearly flowing from his ears. Nonetheless the instinct is to ‘finish the job,’ like a rule from Zombieland.

How could anyone want to show solidarity with that? The answer is, I fear, quite simple. The officer is genuinely ‘just doing his job.’ He is an outsourced violence specialist, salaried with the tax dollars of American citizens who would rather not do their own dirty work. It is not we who should be mystified by his actions. It is he who should be surprised that we have so suddenly resolved that we no longer require his sanguine services.

Or so we like to tell ourselves. In truth, the average American citizen has never been further removed, logistically or mentally, from the actual monstrosities that we have (up to May 25th, 2020) tasked our law enforcement with facing. Some of it, certainly, can be remedied in a more intelligent fashion (drug legalization would evaporate drug cartels, for example). But the fact remains that there is a massive ‘out of sight, out of mind’ at play here. Having police be little more than glorified customer service representatives may work in homogeneous and/or unarmed populations. But to defang and declaw law enforcement in a country as contentious and heavily-armed as this is, at best, a way to make sure only robots are crazy enough to take a policing job. At worst, consider what happened in Little Village, a predominantly Hispanic portion of Chicago, but on a much larger scale. Seeing no particular reason why their stores should be emptied and burned, or their Abuela terrified in her own home, just because George Floyd was killed, the Village quickly became a No-Go zone ala Europe–except those who were being ‘told’ No were African Americans and white Antifa instead of police.

I would like to humbly suggest that causing heavily-armed white areas to ‘police themselves’ by dint of defunding actual police, is probably not the best way to reduce racial violence.

How to Lose a Revolution Before It’s Begun

It wasn’t until I impulsively clicked on an MSNBC livestream out of Santa Monica that it dawned on me. I had assumed the position of effete American leftists–especially in the media–would be to endorse an attitude of ‘anything goes’ regarding the George Floyd backlash. But there they were, bemoaning the destruction of The Sake House and gasping as rioters tried to pull a hose out of a firefighters’ grasp. A guest commentator even noted that every box of free sneakers carried out of shattered windows is another few thousand new votes for Trump. In short, their take (that these are bad optics with the potential to put civil rights back incalculably) was indistinguishable from the take being given on Fox News.

Homogeny among MSNBC and Fox, I pondered? What is this–9/11? Traumatic imagery seems to be the only way to shift the fairly indifferent Silent Majority of U.S. moderates in a particular direction. Just days ago, one would have assumed the imagery in question would be, and would remain, Floyd’s murder. The total destruction of a Minneapolis police precinct came and went without batting an eye. Fair enough, the collective consciousness whispered. But the ensuing footage, like B-roll from The Purge, wherein familiar streets and amenities are pillaged and plundered against the Floyd family’s wishes has proved a bridge too far. The message is clear:

BLM, Antifa–you can burn police stations if you want; they can fend for themselves. But don’t you lay a goddamned finger on my Starbucks & McDonalds.

The uniquely leftist way of saying this is, arguably, “Sure, Black Lives Matter–but can’t they Matter without inconveniencing me?”

This reaction, though surprising even to a cynic such as myself, isn’t at all unprecedented. The American psyche is not at all as unpredictable and bipolar as its political extremists sometimes make it seem. At the end of the day, it is a corporation-country. Sometimes you have to indulge a strike, maybe even some Luddite sabotage, but eventually everyone is going back to work, or else.

The fact that the National Guard has not yet been ordered to open fire on looters (despite hollow tweets to that effect) perhaps signifies that the corporation’s patience still has reserves. I think this patience is due–sad to say–to the arguable fact that the role of these looters within said corporation is to wind up in prison. And wind up there they shall, no matter how many times our benevolent bosses decide to let them go. Even if a few get to keep their new plasma TVs and stay free long enough to enjoy them, what is that compared to the astounding budgetary benefits police are going to gain from these temper tantrums? We thought they were militarized before? What do you suppose they will look like once every station is outfitted to repel a city-wide assault? We may have meant to say to police, ‘look here, stop killing unarmed civilians!’ But what they heard was, ‘hey, become so terrifying that you don’t have to kill unarmed civilians.’

As for Trump, the only way he doesn’t get 4 more years* is if he is no longer corporeal (and if that happens, the Republican fallback may well be the Fascistic nightmare that American leftists have long fantasized Trump is). He is getting his Conservative Supreme Court, the NRA is going to eat other special interest lobbyists’ lunches for decades to come, and any newfangled economic recovery methods he (or should I say Jared) thinks up is getting passed. Optional: Israel finishes its plans for Palestine, knowing they will never have a better opportunity again.

Walking to a vandalized church, Bible in hand…God, that’s good. Our Left have been so worried about ‘institutionalized racism’ that they forgot the possibility of causing its far more personal renaissance. They spoke of the devil until he appeared. Although, this time around I expect it will be far more class than color based. The days of the bedsheet wearers are behind us; the days of those with something to lose making sure they are ready to dispatch any irksome have-nots has only just begun. The corporation is restructuring, and our urban department is about to get downsized.

RIP George Floyd. RIP Tony Timpa.

*…OK, if they hijack Biden at the convention with an Oprah/Obama ticket, it won’t be that easy.

The Risks of Not Homeschooling

Harvard Magazine recently upchucked an anti-homeschooling piece, wreaking of desperation to remind parents that the insolvent and corrupt Ivy League is still a thing as quarantine forces them to raise their own children for a change. Just a few days ago I would have said this subliminal and perhaps even subconscious fear–that those who had no interest in homeschooling before quarantine would maintain an interest after it–was unfounded. However, articles like this one, in which all except the most depraved of breeders are finding that being around one’s family for the majority of the day isn’t the hellish curse Hollywood and TV have conditioned us to expect–has caused me to reconsider. This article’s paranoid motivation may be merited if parents thought the deviant and/or depressive symptoms of U.S. public schooling was just ‘kids being kids,’ only to find that those symptoms evaporate in the absence of their source and restore unto them the bright-eyed young beings that loved life and learning before kindergarten began.

If American homeschoolers were not overwhelming white, this article would never have seen the light of day, for, as it readily admits, homeschooling is a statistical minority. Layered atop this (usually self-directed, self-loathing) anti-white agenda is the patently false caricature of homeschooling as something overwhelmingly or exclusively done by fundamentalist Christians. The comment section of the article–admirably still open, to the magazine’s credit–has already eviscerated the author on this front. But, caricature or no, it is interesting to consider that homeschooling would likely not register a blip on these busybodies’ radars, except for their raging W.A.S.P.ophobia. Any return to this country’s white, Christian origins–even if it is confined to culture and has nothing to do with demographics–is for them an unbearable thought, and the best way to prevent this hideous eventuality is apparently to make sure as few people as possible instruct their own children. I wonder what internal proclivity has led them to assume that Caucasians alone are willing to homeschool? What exactly are they suggesting about everyone else?

The surface-level accusations leveled against homeschooling are only slightly less phantasmagoric than the concealed ones aforementioned:

…people can homeschool who’ve never gone to school themselves, who don’t read or write themselves.

[…]

Even those convicted of child abuse, she adds, could “still just decide, ‘I’m going to take my kids out of school and keep them at home.’”

These are some of the flimsiest uncited uses of “can” and “could” I have read in recent years–and that comes from someone who occasionally peruses Infowars articles. Are you, dear citizen, aware of the conspiracy by the illiterate child-haters to keep their offspring as near to them as possible? Yes, I heard they’re going to team up to buy some black helicopters and snatch their own children away from the loving embrace of those high-IQ government employees!

The enlightened lawyer-professor Bartholet then leans upon good old Uncle Sam (whose W.A.S.P. values she would doubtlessly like us to flee from in every other instance) to argue that the country founded in 1776 totally depends upon compulsory education laws that began in the 1920s. She also cites Germany as an ideal example for banning homeschooling entirely (organizing the Hitler Youth would have been far more difficult in the absence of public schooling, to be sure).

“The issue is, do we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages zero to 18? I think that’s dangerous.”

As dangerous as evolution itself, ma’am. Believe it or not, there was a time when we, like most every other mammal with needy offspring, all exercised such 24/7 “control.”

“I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”

So, to prevent the tyranny of the family, let us further empower the tyranny of the government. Was it by chance an acquaintance of yours who coined the phrase, “do not cut off your nose to spite your face”?

I would grade your work here, Professor, but frankly, I don’t give an F. And neither, if you haven’t noticed, do those daylight prisoners in those ugly prison-esque buildings, whose test-scores plummet by the year, while your colleagues twiddle their thumbs and ponder why the children of high-IQ and homogeneous nations are doing so much better?

The Night of Long Nighs

The debt-based bubble of the United States economy found a pin capable of popping it in COVID19. This much is obvious–but it might behoove us to realize that it was certainly not the only point sharp enough to snag and tear us. Increasingly it appears that the U.S. reaction to this virus was an overreaction by any historical metric. Its lethality has statistically been confined to those who were already in dire straights without viral assistance, and asymptomatic herd immunity was already developing before lumbering governments could enforce quarantine. The reaction was a difficult call based on Worst Case Scenario projections concerning overwhelmed hospitals–a rather liberal and humanist tact by life-long Democrat (until 2015) Donald Trump.

Precluding more lethal mutations, it appears that COVID19 is less an apocalyptic Horseman, and more the Grim Reaper whom has always stalked humanity, especially during winters. Nonetheless, this brush with a moderate foe was enough to push us to the brink–and may yet push us over if our oil and farm industries are further disrupted. Representative Massie, bipartisanly maligned for questioning an otherwise unanimous decision to indenture this country to the Federal Reserve, is currently one of the few public servants attempting to forestall potential mass starvation.

This brief resurgence of an actual, real-life issue into our first-world reality produced a chain reaction that will likely fill entire history books where the virus itself is but a blip. The unholy marriage between Treasury and Fed is a bestowal of “emergency powers” akin to those given to a man named Julius who soon thereafter was called Caesar. Buying up junk bonds–rendering genuine price discovery impossible–is but an appetizer. Taking stake in otherwise defunct airlines is likely next, and once the monomaniacal Fed gains corporate voting rights in a single publicly traded company–well, just picture a shark that has got a whiff of blood. Big Business used to have retired politicians on its board for clout; now they’re going to take a seat whether you want them there or not. And we thought the incestuous relationship between government and Big Tech was already indecent…

I would be very happy to report that this is the only Trojan Horse that has snuck in during corona’s eclipse. Unfortunately, this is but the most boring and mundane development.

The Pope has called for universal basic income to end poverty. In other words, the vicar of Christ disagrees with Christ’s “the poor will always be with you” and thinks “Caesar” is a better candidate for solutions than God.

Bill Gates recently left Microsoft to focus exclusively upon his foundation. This has wrought ID2020, a regurgitation of the U.N. initiative to have every human digitally ID’d by 2030, a co-venture with MIT to produce a ‘tattoo’ that administers and testifies to the administration of vaccine(s), and a recently publicized Microsoft patent, whose LEAST creepy quality is that its number is 060606. I wonder if these are at all related?

Meanwhile, France’s President Macron has pulled a very neat trick by proving his newfound ability to make the rest of the Security Council nations sit and stay. Yes, the United States military was told to jump by another country’s commander and chief, and all it asked was How High? Only the steely President Putin has proved a little more reticent than his fellow councilmen to immediately lay down arms at Macron and the Blue Helmets’ behest. Russians have some experience rebuffing charismatic Frenchmen.

For those keeping score at home: we now have viable candidates for the Red Dragon, the False Prophet, the Mark of the Beast #666, the Man of Sin who brings temporary peace…and the Whore of Babylon? All of the U.S.’s populist vices, from drug use to abortion, are skyrocketing under the as-yet moderate stresses of coronavirus and quarantine. Perhaps an even better tell-tale sign is the mainstream reaction to an earnest utterance made by Texas’ Lt. Governor today.

“…there are more important things than living.”

The country–or world–that does not automatically comprehend this sentiment as valid is ready for toppling–be it by a paltry virus, or something coming just around the bend.

The Crowning Achievements of Coronavirus

tp self

Obligatory documentation of the empty toilet paper aisle (suburb of Atlanta, GA).

Staying at home and ordering in is an act of heroism in the developed world.
Staying at home and ordering in is too much to ask of some Americans. Wonder whether the people who attended Spring Break during corona-season are more or less likely to be drunk drivers?
Referring to a virus by the country of its origin is racist. Time to issue reparations to Spain.
Trump didn’t do enough.
Trump did too much.
Trump caused corona.
Thanks, Obama.
The fear of not being able to wipe one’s anus comfortably is worse than the fear of starvation (somebody tell these people that bowel movements cease during starvation, please).
For those who do fear starvation, Southerners prefer alcohol and chips where Northerners prefer soda and frozen meals. How can my fellow Southerners be more obese but have less appreciation for caloric density?!
Bill Gates left Microsoft to team up with MIT on solving this problem. The solution? An infrared visible tattoo that administers vaccine and testifies to the fact that it has been administered. Great. ‘Papers please’ wasn’t enough, we needed to go ahead and incorporate The Mark of the Beast. It wasn’t sufficient that the Dalai Lama has been displaced, Muslims cannot make their pilgrimages, Jews are rumored to have begun reconvening a Sanhedrin upon the birth of the long-awaited perfect red heifer, etc, etc. We needed to start beta-testing the key premise of how the Antichrist will rule the world. Mr. Gates, I know those DMT clockwork elves you encountered at all those Eyes Wide Shut ‘summits’ told you to do this, and that they’re some benevolent talking-to-Jody-Foster-in-Contact aliens, and that you can help them usher in the next stage of human evolution, but unless you consider Dante’s Inferno to be a great vacation pamphlet, it’s time to pump the breaks.
2008 taught us that if a bank is sufficiently ‘big,’ the United States government will not allow it to fail. 2020 now adds the realization that, because these big banks would fail if their corporate debtors defaulted, the businesses they loan to cannot be allowed to fail either. This seems to have given birth to the first purely verbal internet meme in memory: “We have privatized profits and publicized losses.” This wide-spread realization, that the average citizen is required to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, while captains of industry and their financiers are infinitely coddled, is–it seems an understatement to say–the stuff revolutions are made of. Indeed, I am left to ponder whether this meme will eventually be cited alongside “Let them eat cake” in the history books. The fact that this cat has been let out of the bag (more of a tiger) has not entirely escaped the powers-that-be, for instead of a brazen ’08 style bail-out they are now taking public stake in the companies they wish to save. Though no less of a catastrophic precedent to set given enough time to play out, this does at least feel a bit more honest. Instead of having politicians bail out the businesses they are shareholders of, just have their government own them outright–saves on money manager fees. And if that’s not good enough, send a pittance of Fed monopoly money to the masses so they don’t start constructing the guillotines quite yet. I am left feeling numb at the realization that we appear deadset upon discovering a sci-fi dystopia Worst of Both Worlds: small business capitalism alongside Big Business socialism, and no hint of irony in sight.
Farmer and trucker unions should reorganize into massive, 99% bank-indebted corporations ASAP.

Authors’ (Financial) Self-Pity

The Authors Guild has released its report, The Profession of Author in the 21st Century, and therein they play their role as advocates quite well. And though they are arguably on my side, working for my potential, hypothetical benefit, I cannot help but ponder if a similar report was penned by some scriveners’ guild at the advent of the printing press.

We are greeted firstly with the figure that

half (54%) of full-time authors surveyed earned less than the federal
poverty threshold of $12,488 from their writing.

$12,488 divided by 2,080 (full-time hours per year) equals almost exactly $6.00 per hour. So, right off the bat, we’re expected to believe that anyone is writing full-time for less than a fast-food restaurant’s entry wage. Perhaps it is judgemental of me, but it sure seems like these “full-time authors” are either

of independent means, in which case the profitability of their writing does not effect their ability to continue writing
playing fast and loose with “full-time.”

Quickly on this figure’s heels comes the claim that

An alarming 23% of full-time authors reported earning zero income from books in 2017.

The definition of spending 40 hours a week on a pursuit that doesn’t generate income is a “hobby,” not a “full-time” job. I say this as one hobbyist among many who would love to transition to full-time some day.

Later, we get a little less fast-and-loose with the definition when we are told that

For “full-time authors” who earned any income (excluding those who earned zero
income), the median writing-related income was $20,300, of which book-related income was $11,900. These full-time authors contributed 48% of their household’s total income in 2017.

The U.S.’s median household income in 2017 was $61,372. Multiplied for the other half, this means households with a full-time writer in them achieve a median of $40,600, or 2/3rds that of their non-writer peers. I am not economically-fluent enough to hazard a guess, but I would still pose the question: is 2/3rds really that shocking, when one considers that this is an artistic profession competing against trades and sciences?

Perhaps more interesting is the insight that

The number of self-published books increased 40% between 2017 and 2018 alone, to 1.6 million titles, according to Bowker, the agency that issues ISBN numbers.

Here we have a concrete factor that may harm serious authors (be they hobbyists or working professionals). They are being drowned out and diluted down by everyone-and-their-monkey’s-uncle “publishing.” One suspects that this began with social media itself rather than the availability of self-publishing services; for good or ill we have made everyone with an opinion “a writer,” however informed, original, or vice versa they may be. Who dares try to put the lid back on Pandora’s box?

After a few mandatory lashes of leftwing self-flagellation about inequalities in publishing (including the ‘no duh’ instances of Stephen Kings and JK Rowlings financially kicking our collective behinds), we finally get to the heart of the matter.

In 2017, only about 53% of Americans read a book that wasn’t for work or school, down from about 57% in 2002; only about 42% of Americans read a novel, according to the National Endowment for the Arts.

In a country where only half of people read by choice at all, and where most of them–like any other human–are only going to take a purchasing chance on a name they’ve heard before, shame on us if we’re surprised that writing isn’t a viable profession any more. Jeff Bezos may be the antichrist of the publishing world, but he isn’t the one who made Americans decide to stop reading.

The final and perhaps most cringe-worthy instance within this study is its unironic citation of the essay How to Lose a Third of a Million Dollars Without Really Trying. To summarize, this is the sadly-true tale of an author who made the transition from hobbyist to professional, only to find that making the financial decisions of a stereotypical 1980’s rockstar was probably a bad move. Numerous repetitions and variations upon, “why didn’t someone tell me?!” ensue. I have a couple thoughts on this.

If you have the discipline to read books in order to research your own, you can take an afternoon to read Dave Ramsey.
Anyone who could go through the current smarmy hazing ritual of seeking a literary agent, only to then expect that they are going to offer you sage advice at the pyramid’s peak, probably needs to live a little bit longer before they try to impart information to others in book-form.

To summarize: Bukowski was right, and now we know how painters feel.

Political Paradox & What Lies Beneath

I’ve long held, somewhat in keeping with the Eastern idea of yin and yang, that extremes on opposite ends of the political spectrum will eventually become indiscernible. They do, after all, share an inherently extremist nature, and the personalities drawn to extremism are usually slight variations upon one another, whether their wide-eyed, tight-fisted credo be religious or atheist, fascist or communist.

This, coupled with my general sense that the politics of the developed world have become almost entirely faux (more on that in a moment), has caused me to anticipate the day when Rightwingers would espouse liberal ideas, and Leftwingers would espouse illiberal ideas, without the slightest hint of irony. (Self-awareness, after all, tends to put a damper on extremism). Based on myriad recent articles, this wait may be over.

Let me briefly summarize what I mean by faux-politics. I believe the developed world has become jaded and trite to the extent that no significant political change is possible in the absence of mortal danger. To those who live with universal access to indoor plumbing, grocery stores, and libraries, much less the internet, no amount of self-righteous political indignation is going to inspire them to take action in a meaningful (and thus difficult or risky) fashion. Workers of the World Unite, right after I finish this Netflix series! Or, to put it another way, the Orange Man may be bad, but not so bad that it’s worth risking my precious life over.

The only genuine exceptions to this rule are, unfortunately, the lone mass-murderers of the past two decades, who conduct their ‘revolution’ against the entire species. I suspect there is some terrible truth undergirding these madmen–perhaps a mere sense that we have transcended race, class, and all other metrics by which to accurately apportion political blame, since we have all contributed whatever dollars we had to turning God’s creation into one big theme park. One cannot help but notice that they seem to have more-or-less replaced the serial killers are of the ’70s and ’80s. The attitude, the stance, of the contemporary killer is fundamentally different. Theirs is not crime to be gotten away with, but a gospel to be shouted from the rooftops.

I turn, for my examples of this political paradox (illiberal liberals and liberal conservatives) to two articles in particular. The first is by a feminist group attempting to goad governments into banning sex robots before they become as commonplace as Iphones. And while the article is quite old in internet time, their cause is just now gaining traction. Herein we witness persons ideologically liberal calling on the government to ban a sex toy, condemning pornography entire, and opining that there is a

crisis brewing in human attachment. Attachment is the ability for humans to form stable, long lasting, meaningful interpersonal relationships that support mutual co-existence throughout life.

Let us scan the horizon for flying pigs upon the realization that leftists are now worrying about ‘family values!’ One has to wonder how many snide comments were made by these very campaigners against Christian conservatives for the identical hand-wringing and pearl-clutching that they are now frantically engaged in decades later? It appears they who made the promiscuous beds have realized they must now lie in them. One can almost picture their heads spinning ala The Exorcist as they unsuccessfully attempt to figure out how to undo male sexual liberation without curtailing female sexual liberation. Consider these passages:

Hierarchical male loss of power that is organised through traditional power structures have been diminishing over the last 100 years, the 1960s which marked the rise of feminism aimed to improve equality between the sexes, yet a commercial prostitution and porn trade grew up in parallel, that was open and legal…In the 1960s and 1970s, women had less representation in political life to stop the legalisation of pornography and an expanding commercial sex trade. Women are not on the margins any longer, and we can face head on this attack on female humanity by male dominated robotics, AI and sex industries.

To recap:

sexual liberation occurred “in parallel,” but had nothing to do with, “commercial prostitution and porn”
the empathetic, ethical half of the population would have stopped these things if they could, but couldn’t, because reasons
But now they can! And it will be a full-on Luddite crusade! Deus Vult?

The second, far more logical article is called The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake. For clickbait purposes, the title is far less compelling, and even does a disservice, to its own excellent article. And while the author is clearly no ideological extremist, I believe his piece can be taken as another sign of political paradox simply because The Atlantic so proudly published it. Herein we are advised to return to the clans of yore–extended, multi-generational families–rather than the mom, dad, two kids, and a dog model caused by the urbanization of the Industrial Revolution. I would have thought that, clickbait title or no, such a wholesome suggestion would be taboo among journalism’s usual individualism-at-any-cost crowd. But apparently even they have stared into the abyss of San Francisco and recoiled at what they saw there. Put down the fentanyl and get thee to a nunnery–or at least the suburbs, for Chrissakes!

Meanwhile on the right, we find the “alt-right” and the “Intellectual Dark Web” irreverently championing free speech while the far-left embraces censorship in the name of anti-fascism and combating “hate speech.” Thus a Canadian professor of psychology became American conservatism’s figurehead. I am reminded of the scene from The Simpsons Movie, wherein, at the apparent End of the World, everyone in the bar runs over to the church, and everyone in the church runs over to the bar (11 seconds in).

If I could boil this phenomenon down to a single word, I think it would have to be decentralization. Yeah, “everything’s coming apart,” but not in quite the apocalyptic way. It may feel like there are more extremists than ever before, or that they are getting louder–but this is not a sign of their strength. It’s a sign that even they are having a hard time taking themselves seriously anymore. The ego of the developed world is in its deaththrows. This process can be halted by catastrophe. But in the absence of any real problems, we are jousting at windmills. The Right is worried about free speech when there’s never been more of it; the Left is worried about violence when there’s never been less of it. We’re continuing to take turns in a game that no longer exists. I think it’ll end when we really and truly realize that we don’t need each other anymore. Necessity has been removed as a factor. We’re about to find out who we really are, and we’re going to do it alone.