En Garde in the bunker…
Just for the record, Mao’s Red Guard destroyed 90% of China’s ancient cultural heritage such as temples, statues, art works and books along with millions of Chinese lives. The Nazis killed millions and caused a backlash which leveled Germany. If that’s rational there’s simply no way humanity can survive with the vastly more powerful weapons we now have. If that’s rational what would irrational behavior look like?
Putin gave an interesting speech last year where he strongly condemned Western Wokeness and called it “a crime against humanity”, and basically said “Been there. Done that. No thanks.” No doubt our Woke ruling class hated him more than ever for insulting their Woke religious faith.
Just keep remembering that it’s largely in good times that a society presumes it has the bandwidth, the slack, to try something stupid. On some scale that is rational, or meta-rational, or something like that. Then perhaps it also comes with failure written in it from the start, but society unconsciously figures there will be enough left over to rebuild. Yet, sitting in the middle of this cycle, it’s hard not to think that this time, it’s different.
Civilization thinnest veneer there is..
There never appears to be a bright line that says, these were rational, those were not. There are plenty of people who suggest evil-and-rational motivations for stuff today, like the COVID reactions for instance. A way of saying that today’s US/western madness is top of the scale, not that there aren’t lots of others to compare it to. What degree of damage has already been done is always a forever-interesting question.
One comes away with the sense that civilization operates on narrow margins and is always on the verge of collapsing into irrationality. That sure is the truth. The distance between these events in the German-speaking world and, say, the Reign of Terror in France or the Chinese Cultural Revolution is not that great. And the speed with which apparently reasonable people moved from the embrace of a new theological idea to a willingness to torture those whose own theological ideas diverged even slightly is startling. Very startling.
Consider also the recurring bloodlettings in European history, Although Europe has led the world in culture, technology and learning in most respects, for at least 500 years, it seems to go into fits and commit mass suicide every century or so. The Renaissance followed by The Age of Discovery in the 15th century initiated a major upswing. Concurrent was the Protestant Reformation, the advent of mass literacy via the printing press, but it devolved into the 30 Years War in the 17th century that devastated and depopulated Central Europe so severely, the region was set back for a couple of hundred years. Let THAT sink in for a while!
Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness: ‘The Thinnest Veneer of Civilization’ …
We are in a great experiment in which regressive progressivism discounts all the institutions and methodologies of the past that have guaranteed a safe, affluent, well-fed and sheltered America.
Civilization is fragile. It hinges on ensuring the stuff of life.
To be able to eat, to move about, to have shelter, to be free from state or tribal coercion, to be secure abroad, and safe at home—only that allows cultures to be freed from the daily drudgery of mere survival.
Civilization alone permits humans to pursue sophisticated scientific research, the arts, and the finer aspects of culture.
So, the great achievement of Western civilization—consensual government, individual freedom, rationalism in partnership with religious belief, free market economics, and constant self-critique and audit—was to liberate people from daily worry over state violence, random crime, famine, and an often-unforgiving nature.
But so often the resulting leisure and affluence instead deluded arrogant Western societies into thinking that modern man no longer needed to worry about the fruits of civilization he took to be his elemental birthright.
As a result, the once prosperous Greek city-state, Roman Empire, Renaissance republics, and European democracies of the 1930s imploded—as civilization went headlong in reverse.
We in the modern Western world are now facing just such a crisis.
We talk grandly about the globalized Great Reset. We blindly accept the faddish New Green Deal. We virtue signal about defunding the police. We merely shrug at open borders. And we brag about banning fertilizers and pesticides, outlawing the internal combustion engine, and discounting Armageddon in the nuclear age—as if on autopilot we have already reached utopia. [-]
[+] … So, we are in a great experiment in which regressive progressivism discounts all the institutions, and the methodologies of the past that have guaranteed a safe, affluent, well-fed and sheltered America.
Instead, we arrogantly are reverting to a new feudalism as the wealthy elite—terrified of what they have wrought—selfishly retreat to their private keeps.
But the rest who suffer the consequences of elite flirtations with nihilism cannot even afford food, shelter, and fuel. And they now feel unsafe, both as individuals and as Americans.
As we suffer self-inflicted mass looting, random street violence, hyperinflation, a nonexistent border, unaffordable fuel, and a collapsing military, Americans will come to appreciate just how thin is the veneer of their civilization.
When stripped away, we are relearning that what lies just beneath is utterly terrifying. [end]
Full link below…..
Civilization thinnest veneer there is. When the whole world needs peace…
Americans of all peoples should also take out their frustrations, ire and righteous indignation on the media and the educators, as well as the politicians, who would not be voted in without extolling propaganda, lies and disinformation first introduced in the classroom and then maintained by untruthful journalists.
One must never be remiss to tell people how and what to think about them, especially in this day and age. The time for avoidance of confrontations about murder, theft, rapes and injuries is over. After all if we had only spoken up sooner and controlled the narrative, and occupied the high ground, it would’ve been far less likely that American cities would resemble scenes from a sci-fi movie based upon a novel written by Steven King about a post-apocalyptic culture.
Take for instance, “2001, A Space Odyssey” although most of us at the time couldn’t quite figure-out most of it. The “gods/aliens” used the monolith as a super-computer to determine which species had the potential to develop to the next stage (of evolution, ie). When their experiment succeeded with the proto humans, they hurriedly buried another monolith on the moon, their reasoning being that when humans find the other monolith, they’ll be well and ready for the next stage; whatever that would be formative of!
And on that note, time for today’s MAGA Pill – Existential warrior-President Donald John Trump – MAGA! KAG!
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- Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness: The Thinnest Veneer of Civilization
