Back in the 1970s America went off the rails.\u00a0 The cities became drug and crime infested hell holes.\u00a0 The economy cratered into stagflation.\u00a0 Public trust in government and other institutions nose dived and Americans were afraid for the future.<\/p>\n
And this low point was followed by Ronald Reagan\u2019s election and a renewal that ushered in the optimism of the 1980s and beyond.<\/p>\n
By my scorecard we\u2019re even lower now than we were in the late seventies.\u00a0 By every social, economic, cultural and physical measure, our world is shaking itself apart like an unbalanced rotating machine.\u00a0 So many things are out of whack that it\u2019s hard to see how the whole damn thing doesn\u2019t smash itself to bits and lay across the landscape like a shrapnel field.<\/p>\n
But someone once said, \u201cThere’s a lot of ruin in a nation.\u201d\u00a0 And he was right.\u00a0 There have already been reactions to the madness of George Floyd and Joe Biden in places like Florida and Texas.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
The pendulum will swing back against the stroke of madness.\u00a0 The only question I wonder about is how far.\u00a0 You see, I think we may not end up in positive territory after this latest debacle.\u00a0 Back in the 1970s we didn\u2019t have gay marriage, defund the police, sanctuary cities, legalized drugs, doctors castrating children and cancel culture.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure we\u2019ll get back far enough to keep the lights burning.<\/p>\n
There are basic problems with our society that may preclude our survival as a culture. \u00a0Western civilization has convinced itself that abandoning things like petroleum and nuclear power will be possible without abandoning their benefits.\u00a0 For the last century and more we\u2019ve enjoyed the luxuries that electricity and the internal combustion engine have provided us.\u00a0 The freedom to live our lives the way we want has been provided by the automobile and the instant communication inherent in the telephone.\u00a0 Things like central heating and air conditioning were made possible by fossil fuels and the chemistry that they provided.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
So, all of this is my way of wondering out loud whether we can turn this thing around.\u00a0 Suppose we banish the Democrats from their leadership positions in the House and Senate in November.\u00a0 That\u2019s a start.\u00a0 And suppose we retake the White House in 2024.\u00a0 And suppose the Supreme Court overturns the constitutionality of gay marriage and affirmative action.\u00a0 Will that be enough to push things back to normalcy?\u00a0 I\u2019m not so sure.<\/p>\n
What I hope is that if those minimal things happen then some of the states will start nullifying federal actions that they find unconstitutional.\u00a0 Sort of like the blue states did with sanctuary cities and legalized pot.\u00a0 And that may be as good as it will get.\u00a0 For some areas of the country, it\u2019s probably too late.\u00a0 Places like Baltimore and Philadelphia may not make it back to the rule of law.\u00a0 Baltimore has been seven years without a working criminal justice system.\u00a0 There may not be the will to reestablish law and order there.\u00a0 Even New York and Chicago are becoming thugocracies.\u00a0 Packs of teenage children hunt down and batter old people to death for sport.\u00a0 This is not something you fix with an election or two.<\/p>\n
Leave your comments below.\u00a0 I\u2019m curious to get the consensus from the readers.\u00a0 Will we get back to where we were in 2000?\u00a0 What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back in the 1970s America went off the rails.\u00a0 The cities became drug and crime infested hell holes.\u00a0 The economy cratered into stagflation.\u00a0 Public trust<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3686],"class_list":["post-19811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-renewal"],"yoast_head":"\n