Imagine it is the year 2050 and mobs of lunatics are pulling down the Washington Monument on the grounds that Washington was a racist slave holder. Earlier they had stormed the National Archive and burned the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. These were deemed to be unwelcome reminders of the nations patriarchal past and violation of the new America. All around the country mobs are destroying symbols of the evil past.
It sounds crazy, but erasing the past is a popular past time with the lunatics. The Soviets would airbrush people in and out of the the past whenever it suited them. The Nazis tried hard to recreate things like Christmas to fit the official Aryan narrative. The 18th century has been rewritten to read like a first draft of Roots. Currently, our lunatics are creating a mythological past where homosexuals were enslaved on lavender plantation in the South, thus making them vicitms.
America is becoming a different type of Iran. Their lunatics believe in flying carpets, invisible imams and sorcery. Our lunatics believe biology is a social construct, everyone can be above average and humanity can be saved through mass extinction. The point of comparison between various types of lunatics is their belief in utter nonsense and their willingness to kill for it. That’s why the Left is obsessed with a rapprochement with Iran. They see themselves in the eggplants.
The scenario above sounds crazy at the moment, but look at what lunatics will do if given the chance. These sites they are destroying are harmless to normal people. They are important historical sites that help define the people who live there. That’s what makes them so dangerous to the lunatic. Anything that contradicts the narrative, the prevailing orthodoxy, must be destroyed. If that sounds familiar, it should. Look at the list of people destroyed by PC fanatics in the last few years.
It was not so long ago when Arabs were proud of their cultural history. Western archaeologists and researchers were invited to these countries to dig around and find stuff, even Christian stuff. That was one generation ago, give or take. Most people reading this were alive when that was common. Here’s a picture of Afghan women at university in the 1970’s:
In the 70’s, a whole lot of Muslims looked at the lunatics and thought they would burn themselves out eventually. The more sophisticated Muslims understood the threat, but were sure they could deal with it. Others were convinced the people would never let the lunatics gain dominion over them. Everyone had a reason to think it would all work out in the end, even the lunatics. The difference is the lunatics had a plan and everyone else had wishful thinking.
It seems people will work harder to change things than they will to keep things from changing. And lunatic fanatics are more dedicated to their cause than are those who are satisfied with the way things are, and just want to be left alone. Change can even get politicians elected.
Goy,
Your comments are appreciated. A related observation I have made in recent years is that while children today aspire to being adolescents (when before they looked forward to becoming adults, a critical devolution), adults today also aspire to be adolescents! It is the ideal state where mindless hedonism and raging hormones can flourish. If you make enough money you can go right back there again.
Tangential to the “endless compromise” you cite, I just had a conversation with one of those liberals who believes the nation has been only trending conservative since the 1960s. I have encountered this type before and it is quite a curious outlook. They are typically Boomers and how they miss the fact that the Republicans have been only a half-step behind the Dems as they slash their way through anything and anyone that smells of tradition for the last 50 years is beyond me.
As for cycling, it is one of the merciful aspects of the natural order.
Hannon, IMHO you have hit the nail squarely, and have also echoed here a thesis I have promoted for years. That is, only ‘adult children’ – or Moral Adolescents as I have come to see them – are attracted to the socially suicidal, narcissist fetish that comprises collectivist, nanny-state ideology.
Once examined from a clinical standpoint, where the moral sensibilities that drive one’s notions of ethical priority can be analyzed, it turns out that this behavior is actually quite predictable. The problem we face as a society today is that moral adolescence is not only self-reaffirming in a lateral sense, but also self-perpetuating in a generational sense. That each successive generation of Americans since, oh, the New Deal, appears to exhibit a more pervasive level of moral adolescence does not bode well for the sustainability of this nation.
Self-labeled ‘conservatives’ (i.e., classical liberals) haven’t recognized any of this as yet, and persist in endless compromise with morally adolescent ideologues as if they were fully realized adults with a legitimate point of view. The resulting policy ratchets our society and our culture closer to the abyss with each successive session of Congress.
As time goes on, I become convinced that some version or form of this phenomenon is responsible for the rise-and-fall cycle of every past civilization/culture – from the Greeks’ to the Brits’.
http://bit.ly/DmoX7
Radical Islam is a blight on the world
Your last point is one that has been observed often: that leftward thinkers capable of rational thought tend to plan and execute the future they want to see. They have been very successful over the last 2-3 generations. Conservatives and the mainstream are their foil, essential for traction but remaining relatively inert and hardly generating inspired, energetic planning of their own. This is essentially an unchanging relationship owing to the nature of both groups. We are the responsibility-minded parents and they are the adult children run amok in the toy store. They will inherit the wind.