Decline of the West

Bernie may have billions, but Mdm. Flu was years ahead of him on this.

Americans are fat, dumb, lazy and self-satisfied   



Says the man whose mammoth corporation has put plenty of smaller operators out of business and makes it harder for newcomers to break into it. It's called creating a wall against competition. That's part of the business/political model of the USA. Globalism is based on it. 

It is true that tools and specialization have removed most of us from nature. (I think this is essentially what the author is talking about) I use a supermarket as an example of how this is the case. The shelves are full of beef, chicken and pork, but what one sees has little resemblance to a cow, chicken or pig.  If left to their own devices, modern children would believe that a chicken always looked like this, not this. 

It is also a fact that historically, "communities" were made up of people related to each other to one degree or another. This gave an inherent stability and unity to the community. If one screwed up, one was held to account by one's "relations." This type of thing was hammered into the minds of people. Catlett saying "If the art of loading brush dies out, the art of making music will finally die out too. You tell your professors, when you go back, that you met an old provincial man, a leftover, who told you: No high culture without low culture, and when low culture is scarcest it is the highest. Tell ’em that. And then tell me what they say” may sound extreme, but it is true in the broadest sense that once standards fail at the bottom, they tend to continue to fail upward. We see this in the West today. But this fact has little to do with tools or modernity per se. It has to do with culture. 

I believe the author's focus on "machines" is Machines are merely tools. The use of such tools has the potential to improve or worsen our lives, but it is people who decide how to use the tools available to them.  Of course tools and their use have had enormous influence on the world. But the use of the steam engine didn't cause the collapse of morals and civilization. The rot originated elsewhere, i.e. in mankind and I think it is inherent to us all.  

There may be something about human nature which finds it hard to deal with the leisure/free time and plenty which tools enable. I believe the writer is on to something regarding abstract and real. But I see much of the problem arising from people having too much free time which they need to fill.  Many fill this time with witless entertainment.  Anyone who watches much TV would classified in this group. Then there are others who might be looking for something more that TV, but who do not have the knowledge or wisdom to handle abstract thought in any logical or systematic way.  That would be most of us.

One of the great gifts of the Judeo-Christian religions is that they gave society a foundation, framework and standards which were real for the majority of people. This was extremely important. Only the few grappled with the more esoteric ideas of the creed, splitting theological hairs.  

Have to go out now. Will complete later. 

Not either/or, in this case. What could contribute more to the problem of the abstract and the real than watching television? Or playing video games? Or watching the news? You may not believe this, but I commonly watch commercials with an objective eye. If one does that, you will be well aware of the complete disconnected-from-reality bizzaro world of commercials.

It's not so much that commercials are exaggerations or outright lies sometimes. It's that they are a major trivialization of every trait that Western Civilization once tried its utmost to instill. Obviously the programming content that commercials are interspersed with is usually not much better.

Think of it this way: If an alien species wanted a cheap and effective way to turn people into idiots so that they could be controlled and conquered, they could do no worse than to create modern entertainment including the commercials that go with it. The modern university/public-school system further entrenches our escape from reality.

Good point.



You'll excuse me if I say that just describes nearly every woman I've known. Leftism is thoroughly and inextricably infused with feminism. And the job of women is never to be happy or satisfied. It is fascinating to watch the younger men in the culture take on this vibe. They obsess and dramatize over things that they normally wouldn't have given a shit about. Even Michael Medved (perhaps mostly intellectually honest) admitted that the main reason he went to protests back in the day was to pick up women.

My father bought a small piece of property way back when just to fool around on. Maybe I just have mother issues, but my mother gave him constant hell about that. She didn't understand (and, more importantly, a man having fun and a place of his own outside of the woman is verboten). That small plot was definitely a sense of place for him.

I'm actually amazed that domestic violence rates aren't worse than the are. But, of course, half the story of that is the younger men are now having relatively little to do with today's toxic feminist woman. I wouldn't have predicted that because of power of p***** usually overcomes all obstacles. Quite surprising in this case that it does not, at least for many young men….whose sense of place (of just being a man) has been stripped from them by the NAGS.

Where is Almaric when you need him?   Joking aside, the lefties will push until sane people have no option but violence. As you say, lefties cannot stand to see anyone happy. Misery loves company. 

Here is an example of why the country is doomed, in my opinion. These actions are both planned and reactionary. Reactionary in the sense that the ISD officials involved are only reacting to the sorry situation facing them. They are planned as the situation has been brought about over the decades by people like Bill Ayers.

This type of thing is at the root of our problems. The continual slide goes on. We are far past mediocrity in this country. We have reached incompetence and will soon hit the bottom where everything taught and done is the opposite of that which is true and should be done. Bork's Gomorrah is a stone's throw away.

The solution is "Lower the Standards"

This is the proper place for the word, "Yikes."

I often criticize writers for being namby-pamby. I don't believe the needle even moved on my Namby-Pamby-o-meter for this comment:

Okay, this guy captured my full attention: Not just a "descriptive conservative." Takes balls to create a conservative newsletter in the middle of Weirdo World.



That is called intellectual honesty and self-awareness.



Cafeteria? Cafeteria? Gone are the days when the perverts and degenerates at least had the good sense to practice their perversions in the proper domain: the toilet. But they accommodate this in the cafeteria? I had no idea.



The central enabling role of feminism, most likely. But you tell the story. You're doing well.



The fact that merit is being replaced by a fixation on skin color; that feelings are replacing objective facts; that the desire to remain forever-children, and to be taken care of, is replacing the need to grow up, mature, and take care of yourself; that the ennobling and humbling Christian/Jewish idea that we are all equal under the eyes of god is being replaced by a prickly atheism that can never cease to judge and to be cranky about something; and finally, all the good traits of men are being besmirched and demonized while all the worst traits of women are being catered to, sanitized, and romanticized. Did I miss anything? Yes. The idea of "liberty" has been completely disembodied from the necessary corollaries of honor, duty, self-denial, responsibility, sobriety, and even self-respect.



Wow.



Good point. In short, everything is being dumbed down with merit and objectivity being taken out of the system.



Don't get me wrong. I can't parse the equations. I'm not smart enough. But over twenty years ago, I knew something stunk about that whole subject...just the way it was presented.



I don't know enough to say this is so. But is certainly could be so. I does seem that advancement in basic physics has stalled over the last 40 years.



I choose both.



We hear over and over again from yutes (and their parents) that they must get out an experience "university life." What that life is is the young adult version of Disneyland. Yes, I can totally understand how this can rightly be viewed as a real estate racket. Ostensibly these idiot yutes are paying for an education. In reality, they are paying very high costs in order to keep all the animatronic puppets in Disneyland functioning, including all the ideological puppets ("diversity" directors, etc.).

I'll read the rest after lunch.

I think this theology is very flabby. Christ is not the victim. He went to his death willingly.

And although it's true that the Judaeo-Christian faith tends to pull for the underdog, it's only because the Seven Deadly Sins (and other transgressions) are so rampant in this world, you'll rarely find them in the rich. But outside the Catholic heresy, the poor are not to be venerated merely for being poor. Being poor is not in itself virtuous, for unvirtuousness behavior could (as it is with the "homeless") be behind their condition, not "oppression" by "the rich."

Christ was not Che in a robe. There is zero correspondence between Marxism and the Judaeo-Christian faith . . . unless "good intentions" is all one asks of one's ethics.



Like I said, I disagree. The "woke" religion has no God Almighty. And it is exactly opposite to the Judeo-Christian tradition whereby one must conquer oneself and conform to Holy ethics that are outside and above oneself. In the "woke" religion of atheistic Cultural Marxism, it's never a matter of taming one's own devils. The devils are always them other guys out there: the SIXHIRBs (Prager).

What this guy is unintentionally describing is just how atheistic Cultural Marxism was able to penetrate into existing institutions. Too many people were not willing to call a spade a spade, were moral cowards, or just so out of touch with the essence of America and their faith that they were easily bamboozled. And I think anyone who says that Cultural Marxism is closely related to Judaism or Christianity has been suitably bamboozled.

I think this guy had a lot of good to say. But I think he ran off the rails later in his article. But even if he is too intellectual for his own good, or too close to academe, he sums it up well:



He might also note that Libertarians and "classical liberals" have acted as the gateway drug to full-out Leftism. It's strange, because the guy has been in the middle of it and yet still doesn't seem to recognize large parts of the problem.