How many times have pundits (including my humble self) declared that we are already irrevocably tobogganing down the slope toward the decline and fall of the American Empire?\u00a0 Probably too many to count.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not as if there isn\u2019t a lot of dysfunction everywhere you look.\u00a0 I won\u2019t go through the litany.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost endless but all we have to mention to provide an undeniable example of societal rot and insanity is the spectacle of the American Medical Association embracing \u201cgender affirming\u201d treatments for minors including hormone therapies, mastectomies, hysterectomies and castration.<\/p>\n
But what if things are about to improve?\u00a0 Suppose the Trump administration is followed by the Vance administration and during this reprieve from leftist lunacy the country gets its financial health back to a greater extent.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go with that scenario.\u00a0 People have enough money to buy houses again and raise kids and plan for the future.\u00a0 What would that look like?\u00a0 Of course, I have no way of actually knowing but let\u2019s play the game and throw out some ideas and see if it leads us somewhere.<\/p>\n
First off, I think it\u2019s important to say what it won\u2019t look like.\u00a0 It\u2019s not going to look like America in the 1950s or even the 1980s or 1990s.\u00a0 The adults and children today; the millennials and the zoomers are very different from my parents\u2019 generation and mine.\u00a0 They\u2019ve been propagandized in school and through social media to despise the world from those olden times.\u00a0 They\u2019re ashamed of their parents and grandparents and want to conform to the norms they\u2019ve been taught.<\/p>\n
Some of this can be seen in the situation playing out in New York City\u2019s mayoral race.\u00a0 The last two mayors have been liberal Democrats and under their administrations all the improvements in quality of life and safety gained during Republican mayors have been lost and the city is on the verge of collapsing into chaos.\u00a0 So, what do the people there want in the next mayor?\u00a0 A communist!\u00a0 Now this is just an example.\u00a0 There are others.\u00a0 A similar radical is running for mayor of Minneapolis.\u00a0 So, there is no lack of evidence that the millennials believe insane things.\u00a0 Now it is true that there is precedent for people who believe these things being gob-smacked by reality and changing their minds.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to see.\u00a0 It happened to the baby boomers in the nineteen seventies and eighties.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019ll happen again.<\/p>\n
But regardless, things will be very different.\u00a0 I believe there has been a breach between the older America and what will follow.\u00a0 It will not be the monolithic culture.\u00a0 It will be several, or possibly many separate cultures.\u00a0 Identity groups have been spawned and they will not disappear.\u00a0 Ethnic and locality identities will develop and they will complicate social cohesion.\u00a0 Hollywood and other purveyors of cultural content won\u2019t be able to put out one product that resonates with everyone.\u00a0 We already see that.\u00a0 The multicultural experiment with superhero movies and other content have fizzled because people recognize they\u2019re being handed a narrative to cheer for someone else\u2019s team.\u00a0 How many teenage boys want a female superhero beating up on much larger men as the template for the movies they are being handed.\u00a0 They just stay home and play video games that allow them to control the narrative.<\/p>\n
So, America might recover and even thrive.\u00a0 But it will take generations for it to coalesce into a common identity.\u00a0 In the meantime, we and our descendants will have to look out for our own interests, forming alliances and voting blocks where advantage exists.\u00a0 There may even be a shining city on a hill.\u00a0 But on the next hill may be a hellhole.\u00a0 And that\u2019s just the way it\u2019ll have to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How many times have pundits (including my humble self) declared that we are already irrevocably tobogganing down the slope toward the decline and fall of<\/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":[552,5,551],"tags":[4324,1626,1469],"class_list":["post-34252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-country-music-reviews","category-current-events","category-music-reviews","tag-america-that-was","tag-american-empire","tag-american-identity"],"yoast_head":"\n