Back in the 1970s America went off the rails. The cities became drug and crime infested hell holes. The economy cratered into stagflation. Public trust in government and other institutions nose dived and Americans were afraid for the future.
And this low point was followed by Ronald Reagan’s election and a renewal that ushered in the optimism of the 1980s and beyond.
By my scorecard we’re even lower now than we were in the late seventies. By every social, economic, cultural and physical measure, our world is shaking itself apart like an unbalanced rotating machine. So many things are out of whack that it’s hard to see how the whole damn thing doesn’t smash itself to bits and lay across the landscape like a shrapnel field.
But someone once said, “There’s a lot of ruin in a nation.” And he was right. There have already been reactions to the madness of George Floyd and Joe Biden in places like Florida and Texas. Someone like Ron DeSantis is sticking his neck out to defy COVID lockdowns and illegal alien invasions and crime waves and pedophile grooming in the elementary schools.
The pendulum will swing back against the stroke of madness. The only question I wonder about is how far. You see, I think we may not end up in positive territory after this latest debacle. Back in the 1970s we didn’t have gay marriage, defund the police, sanctuary cities, legalized drugs, doctors castrating children and cancel culture. I’m not sure we’ll get back far enough to keep the lights burning.
There are basic problems with our society that may preclude our survival as a culture. Western civilization has convinced itself that abandoning things like petroleum and nuclear power will be possible without abandoning their benefits. For the last century and more we’ve enjoyed the luxuries that electricity and the internal combustion engine have provided us. The freedom to live our lives the way we want has been provided by the automobile and the instant communication inherent in the telephone. Things like central heating and air conditioning were made possible by fossil fuels and the chemistry that they provided.
Now our descendants have become detached from reality and in order to pay homage to the Earth Goddess Gaia they demand that we cover the landscape with windmills and solar panels and pretend that this will allow us to carry on as before. Screeching mental defectives like that Scandinavian harpy Greta Thunberg cow the leaders of modern countries into shutting down the resources needed to keep the wheels of industry turning. Currently the price of fuel has doubled and when winter returns to the Northern Hemisphere we may see some truly frightening increases in the cost of heating oil and gas.
So, all of this is my way of wondering out loud whether we can turn this thing around. Suppose we banish the Democrats from their leadership positions in the House and Senate in November. That’s a start. And suppose we retake the White House in 2024. And suppose the Supreme Court overturns the constitutionality of gay marriage and affirmative action. Will that be enough to push things back to normalcy? I’m not so sure.
What I hope is that if those minimal things happen then some of the states will start nullifying federal actions that they find unconstitutional. Sort of like the blue states did with sanctuary cities and legalized pot. And that may be as good as it will get. For some areas of the country, it’s probably too late. Places like Baltimore and Philadelphia may not make it back to the rule of law. Baltimore has been seven years without a working criminal justice system. There may not be the will to reestablish law and order there. Even New York and Chicago are becoming thugocracies. Packs of teenage children hunt down and batter old people to death for sport. This is not something you fix with an election or two.
Leave your comments below. I’m curious to get the consensus from the readers. Will we get back to where we were in 2000? What do you think?
As long as the large cities are run by todays democrats nothing will change.
And therein lies the question. Will the cities allow themselves to be destroyed by crime rather than admit that their program is madness.
The first step in fixing a problem is admitting the problem exists. This is the hardest step for most, and definitely the hardest for the Progs: to actually admit they were wrong, and their policies are failures.
Well, a runaway crime wave might work.