Upon reflection I’ve decided that more than half of my mental anguish over our current situation is due to my own gullibility. Without a doubt, those running our country are terrible people. They run roughshod over the laws that we supposedly live by and the decencies that allegedly define our public morality.
But on closer inspection, hasn’t this always been the case? Haven’t there always been political bosses who manipulate our politics and government, to profit themselves and their cronies and haven’t they used immigration from time immemorial to control who came to power and what the terms of life for the common people would be?
Whether it was Tammany Hall in 19th century New York City or Mayor Daly in mid-20th century Chicago hasn’t hypocrisy and dishonesty and just plain graft been the rule and not the exception? The only thing that has changed is that today the things they teach children as regime propaganda is much closer to suicidal than in former days.
Believe it or not, this realization has brightened my mood substantially. Knowing that the evil regime I live under is more or less representative of the historical norm for these things gives me hope that most of us can figure out a way to negotiate our trek through this gulag.
Certainly, it doesn’t make it a more wholesome place than it is. Our children are certainly being pumped full of poisonous lies about themselves and the world around them. Certainly, we are being discriminated against by our own government and the elites that control almost everything around us. But if you consider that it’s always been this way (more or less), then it stands to reason that we can find a way to survive and thrive in this environment too.
If after all, my own stupidity convinced me that a better world was the norm then educating myself to the reality should afford me the advantage I need to mitigate the damage done by the noxious aspects of the system and also allow me to see where I can get the best return on investment from my efforts.
In general, selecting friends and associates carefully to avoid entanglement with woke zealots and other crazy people is highly important. And children will need to be schooled by sane teachers. Later on, children will have to learn how to carefully navigate their way through cancel culture by very judicious use of silence.
All of this is sad and inspires a feeling of indignation when thought about in the context of the supposed basis of American liberty and values. But if the reality is that those values have never been in force for the last hundred and fifty years then the rational approach is to figure out what is needed in the here and now. Banging our heads against a wall that will not disappear is foolish and even dangerous. After all this is a wall that is just as likely to open up and unleash a platoon of FBI agents with an arrest warrant.
So, I’m actually cheered by my new way of looking at things. What I’ll be looking for are groups and individuals who are writing the book of how to survive and thrive in the here and now, not in the perfect world we wish were here.