“And as the morning light comes streaming in you get up and do it again, amen. – Jackson Browne
As we all live our lives it sometimes seems that the radical changes and disruptions in our society that the Left has instituted must overwhelm the system and everything will come apart at the seams forcing us to abandon normalcy once and for all and take up a new existence as 21st century hunter-gatherers living off the released zoo animals and other feral survivors of a better age. As we struggle to survive, the weak will go to the wall. When cannibalism reappears the hopeless, like John Fetterman, will be the first to go in the pot. And he may have his finest hour as soup or stew.
But what I notice is that despite the almost unending downward spiral of our world, people get up every morning and throw some water on their faces and figure out how to put food on the table and fuel in the oil tank. And somehow, they do it with a laugh and a joke. Now it may be gallows humor for sure. But they still manage to make the joke.
And they’re right. You can’t get through life no matter how bad things get with your teeth perpetually gritted. You can do it for a while. But if you keep it up too long, you’ll go mad. Sure, when the latest atrocity occurs, you’re got to rail against it and shake your fist and maybe say terrible things about your enemies. And maybe some people finally crack and go berserk.
But if you’ve got a wife and kids or even if you don’t, somehow you have to make it to Friday and you have to do all the things that get you there. And more than that you have to somehow find some joy in the world. Unless you’re a Dickensian villain like Uriah Heep or Ebenezer Scrooge grinding through your entire life clutching at thorns without a friend in the world is a fate worse than death. Even a man on death row probably talks to the guards sometimes just to break up the monotony.
And that’s something I rediscovered recently. After the 2020 election I was morose to a remarkable extent. Other than family I couldn’t see what was going to keep this world going for me. Disillusionment with our government was total. I had little interest in day-to-day events and the news from Washington was nauseating. And I think this had a deleterious effect on my peace of mind. Apocalyptic thinking was becoming routine.
But even though things have continued to degrade in our day-to-day life I have had a chance to reflect. Rather than thinking that the world has truly hit some all-time low, what I realize now is that we were formally living in a kind of golden age. And through the foolishness of malicious people, it has been stamped out. And in reality, most of mankind’s existence has been under conditions much, much worse than even this.
If we’re not as free as we once were, at least no one has branded us and sent us to work in the salt mines. We may not be middle class Americans anymore but we haven’t reached North Korea levels of starvation. We’re no longer proud of our leaders and our government but so far inflation hasn’t reached triple digits.
We live under a banana republic but so far, I can still make fun of Dementia Joe and the Keystone Gestapo he employs. No one has dragged me off to the gulag yet. And I seem to have rediscovered my sense of humor.
So yeah, things are bad. As Howard Beale said “We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy.” But when things are crazy you still have to live and maybe you can laugh at the crazy once in a while, even if you laugh while cleaning up the latest result of the crazy.