“Is this the emergency services? Then which country am I speaking to?” – The I.T. Crowd
Why don’t Leftists like to talk about the future of what they’ll create? It’s two in tents.
We are on a course to a new country. Perhaps someone has a source for this quote (that I’m going from memory on): It’s been said that every man dies in a strange country. It’s not original to me, but it does contain a lot of wisdom. As our country is aging, it is changing. I’m just hoping it has better knees than I do.
But to illustrate the point, let’s take Pa Wilder:
When Pa Wilder was born, the income tax wasn’t even a decade old. The meaning of a “state” was stronger then than now, though it was subsidiary after the Civil War. Pa was born, grew up, and died living almost all of his time within a 30-mile radius, except for an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe from 1942-1945.
The rock band Flock of Seagulls never toured Iran. Why? Iran so far away.
When Pa Wilder passed away, the world had gone from the biplanes of World War I to a fully inhabited space station and regular flights to orbit, and occasional flights to the Moon. The dollar had gone from gold to gimmick, and the question of freedom had gone from “why can’t I?” to “may I, please?”
The world Pa lived in growing up was one that was difficult. If you had a child and couldn’t afford it, you had to find someone to raise it for you. It is undoubtedly a fact that people died of starvation in the United States, and some certainly died because they didn’t have any money.
After the war, though, his generation had optimism. It looked like there was nothing that mankind couldn’t do. The atom had been split. Rockets had touched space. The largest rivers had been dammed and tamed and the only foe to be concerned about was the Soviet Union, and it looked like all of those people ate a diet of potatoes, onions, sawdust, and sadness. A 1950s Hungarian joke went something like this: “Definition of socialism: the incessant struggle against conditions that would not exist in any other system.”
And, from the looks of him, he certainly could have nursed a drink.
The family had primacy. And culture was built on the idea of that family, and policies at the local, state, and national levels were built around supporting the family and keeping it strong.
It worked pretty well. Was there a cultural prohibition against being a tool? Sure. Was there an upper limit on the things that women could do in society? Yeah, certainly there were few CEOs at the time that were women, and there were demarcations between jobs women would normally do, and jobs that men would normally do. Men got the jobs that had higher stress, higher danger, and sure, higher pay. Women got the jobs that conserved the culture, raised the young, and, yup, didn’t pay nearly as well.
It was a bargain made not to punish women or men, but as a nod to societal stability based on family hierarchy.
This is the America that was, and more than a few people on the Right look to this as the model of a successful society that creates the ability for mankind to make good on the promise of individual freedom, individual responsibility, a role for religion and celebration of individual success.
It is a world where equal chance based on merit is the goal, and winners of fair competition get the rewards.
Yup, pretty hard to take that to dinner, since each one required its own nuclear power plant.
This goal is soundly rejected by the Left. They look for a model of America that can never be. Their world is an entirely made-up concept of what they think the world should be.
What do they think?
- Like Lake Woebegone, all children in their Leftist Utopia are above average.
- Diversity is actually a strength.
- Every deviance in sexuality is celebrated.
- Every outcome is equal, regardless of effort, talent, or merit.
- People have whatever they want, regardless of if they work or not.
- Society owes it to everyone to take from the successful and make them the same as anyone else – equity is the goal.
Whereas I can love the ideas they have as ideas, the truth is that the world cannot be that way. Some children are below average. People who live and work with people that aren’t from their culture typically have lower trust, disharmony, “cultural tension” and conflict.
Oops. Turns out that if you worship the Moon God Gorto and think child sacrifice is okay, Baptists might not be the best folks for the cubicle next to you. And most people won’t applaud if you have sex during Thanksgiving at the table – I won’t explain how I know this.
The Mrs. tried to tell me to not fix my rifle with Super Glue®, but I stuck to my guns.
And outcomes aren’t equal. There are winners, and there are losers. Merit matters. Talent matters. Work matters. If we remove the competition between winning and losing, and celebrate every loser like a winner?
You get a society of losers. You get a culture of losers. And who else but a loser would demand what Elon Musk has without doing what Elon Musk as done? It’s a culture that is built on envy of what others accomplish and greed for what others have.
It is a culture that celebrates and encourages failure. Even Leftists admit it. I had a discussion with an acquaintance. He’s a leftist. My conjecture was this, “So, should we wait a few years to start your socialist empire until we have a cancer cure and maybe some better technology? I mean, if you look at Socialist cultures, they aren’t really good at creating things.”
“You’re right, it would be better to wait a few years.”
Sure, there’s been corruption since the first human, but not every society is the same. And societies like the 1950s in America had less corruption than any communist society, ever. And, I would argue that society was far less corrupt than society today. The outcomes were better – in most places, a locked door wasn’t required. The outcomes of society have drifted negatively in many ways. You could name them, so I won’t go into what would be a very, very long list.
Who had the biggest gender reveal party ever? Japan. In 1945 they had a Little Boy.
There’s more to this, but now, the Left is attempting to drive this world towards a future that is based on nothing but a theory that is no more sophisticated than a three-year-old’s version of what the world should be. Is it any wonder that as we get closer to those fever dreams, things get worse?
As that author I can’t remember said, we all die in a strange country. I’m just hoping that it stops sucking.
A society of complex systems chock full of overgrown infants drooling over telescreens is going to wipe out hard.
Thank Alfred C. Kinsey and other Long Marchers for the destruction.
Evil only destroys and can never create.
Diversity is our strength belongs with freedom is slavery, war is peace, and we have always been at war with Eurasia.
Careful with the Ozymandias sign, it has sharp edges.
If the conditions of the Great Depression hit, I imagine there would be 100,000,000 dead in five years. Not kidding. Who gardens and could feed a family?
Five years? Try five months.
Five weeks…
Well said. And probably closer.
It’s those socialist countries in which Everyone is Equal that the actual inequalities are so much more unfuriatiing, because it’s illegal even to speak about them in public. As Russia is discovering, a society built around corruption and deception simply doesn’t function for anyone, even at the top.
And especially not for the troops. Of course, I’ve heard that only 30% of the weapons we’re sending ever end up at the front . . . .
Yet somehow, they are a THREAT to the mighty US Lead and Equipped (looking at you Raytheon) NATO?
Exactly. But we have to keep corporate profits up!
Reportedly, Ukraine is burning through artillery at a rate that exceeds even our full production with overtime. They are depleting NATO stockpiles. Question: how does that help NATO or the USA?
And what happens when we’ve depleted our stockpile? Oh, yeah, FUN AND PROFIT (for the manufacturers).
Our country does indeed grow stranger by the day. And John, thanks so very much setting me off on an early morning internet snipe hunt to find that quote of yours.
The original use of the phrase “strange country” was in Sophocles in his 429BC play, er, murder mystery, Oedipus Rex – from whence we get the whole concept of “oedipal complex” about…you know. Teresius says to Oediphus (who has murdered his father Laius) of the unknown murderer: “Now people think he comes from Corinth, but later they will see he was born in Thebes. When they know, he’ll have no pleasure in that news. Now he has eyes to see with, but they will be slashed out; rich and powerful now, he will be a beggar, poking his way with a stick, feeling his way to a strange country”. By the end of the play, Oedipus has no need to wear glasses….
A few millenia after Sophocles, William Shakespeare (aka english rapper Billy Shaky) said:
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
A few centuries later, Victorian philosopher John Ruskin said, “Death is not a journey into an unknown land; it is a voyage home. We are going, not to a strange country, but to our fathers house.”
(Side note : Lots of Star Trek associations here…)
A centruy after THAT, the 1889 book Elements of Astrology by LD Broughton has several references to star and planet configurations that will lead a man born under then to have specific traits and go on to “likely to die in a strange country”. Hmmm. One of the descriptions kinda sounds like me…
So it seems like that while “strange country” and “die” have been associated with each other throughout history, YOU may be the first Great Writer to synthesize the now immortal thought, “Every man dies in a strange country.”
Your Nobel Prize for Literature is inbound!
One last quote I found, from author Donna Leon’s novel Death in a Strange Country:
“He looked down at the glass again. ‘I care that these things happen, that we poison ourselves and our progeny, that we knowingly destroy our future, but I do not believe that there is anything – and I repeat, anything – that can be done to prevent it. We are a nation of egoists. It is our glory, but it will be our destruction, for none of us can be made to concern ourselves about something as abstract as the common good. The best of us can rise to feeling concern for our families, but as a nation we are incapable of more.’ ‘I refuse to believe that.’ Brunetti said. ‘Your refusal to believe it,’ the Count said with a smile that was almost tender, ‘makes it no less true, Guido.”
–
Nice quote!
A man can never cross the same river twice, for the second time it will not be the same river, and he will not be the same man.
Truth. I haven’t been to my home town again since I left it. And I’ve been back dozens of times. It no longer belongs to me, but to others.
Same here. I’ve moved away from my people’s land several times now. The first to chase the status of the credentialed because that’s what poor dirt kids were supposed to do to escape the dead end of the “old economy”.
Then to the economics of the cloud city where the carrot dangled in front of every boy heading to pleasure island and girl toward the apple of her sex and the city divine knowledge. The casualties of multi-generational bonds, marriage and family and children – the debt we owed our better ancestors, were repackaged as assets. And of course, it all ends in ruin.
So away from those economics in disgust. And finally, back to the dirt, but of a people I do not know and who do not want me here. A sentiment I understand – more than they know. Yet they seem blind to both the stories we share and what is coming here. I wish the cold sentiment toward this “outsider” had been greater along the solid lines of our once upon a nation, instead of along the blurred dotted lines of the resentful residual of a multi-generational war on the distinct peoples of that nation.
I can never go home – and accepted that long ago. But the harder part is now accepting that I really don’t have a people either. Once the sheeple, the bread and circus drunks, the Muh Economics Americanus, and inverted churchians with callused knees are sorted, there remains so very few. Most of which are hardened toward their own private galt’s gulch. Rightfully so. But alas, what then?
With a people, there are always the seeds of a future place to hold onto. Somewhere to point the wagons. What they destroyed for Progress, traded for magic diversity-equality beans, and plowed under for the great ‘American’ shopping mall that is now who we are, was not a place, but a People. To rebuild that is a spiritual feat. And so, I pray. And work. And when taken by this task that bears no visible fruit, I dwell in loneliness like some ronin waiting for the honor of a proper war and proper death until my faith rights me. I am only human after all. Greedy to set things right by the sword. Guilty as charged.
Thankfully, I’ve found a new home.
I’ve been waiting for the committee to call. I should probably email them my number.
I always look forward to your posts John.
A lot of deeper thoughts hidden within.
That’s a huge complement. Thank you.
“…better to wait a few years…”
Around 30 years ago I briefly dated an ultra-liberal nut case (learned my lesson). She was proud that both her brothers were queer, was training her two children to hate Daddy Bush, wanted Jesse Helms to die immediately (lived in NC then), et al, ad nauseum.
Her comment on socialism/communism was that “it just hasn’t been properly applied, but we will do it in the US one day”.
You can’t reason with these people. It’s like the old saying about putting lipstick on a pig.
And, they will be the first ones their masters send to the GULAG.
The difference between a socialist and an American:
The American looks up at the big house on the hill and says, “Someday… that will be me.”
The socialist looks up at the big house on the hill and says, “Someday… I’ll get that bastard!”
That was attributed to the IRA when growing up. Suggest that with the current sects of celebrity worship we leave it there. Now people will trannify and destroy their lineage to join the IG Elites.
Yup. And they’d burn it down if they had to.
“Every man dies in a strange country.”
Sobering thought. Suggests that my time to hand in the old lunch pail isn’t far away. Because this surely has gotten to be a strange country.
It has, but the biggest joy is in being able to help what will follow be born.
I was around in the Fifties. America then was so much superior to New Amerika that there are no words to describe it. People born after 1970 have no idea the marvelous nation that the U.S. once was. Freedom truly ruled then, even as tyranny rules now.
Envy, spite and greed brought America down to its present state of pathetic-ness. Same as it ever was, even to the beginnings in Eden.
After almost 7 decades on this planet, I understand beyond any doubt that it will take GOD Himself actually living and ruling on this world before anything will begin to improve. So, not exactly a ringing endorsement of the capabilities and capacities of men and angels.
“Envy, spite and greed brought America down to its present state”
Very much so. And the irony is that those most given to envy and spite now control so much, yet they are somehow still the victims. Always the victims, mistreated for no reason at all. Never any reason.
So your point John, about “a society of losers” may be entirely correct, but it came about, in part, from valuing and venerating victimhood above all else.
As you say, the Oppressed Ones cry out in pain as they slap, kick and stab you. Then they go to the local fem-court and pick up a Restraining Order so that they are shielded from the consequences of their evil. They know all the tricks and use every one.
Their power derives from their purported victimization and ‘oppression’ — this is the basis of their Religion of Me.
They should enjoy their moment in power. The consequences of their malice will be unprecedented, and not merely permanent but eternal.
I wasn’t around, but I can certainly see that even during my life how far it has fallen.
Hey Ray,
I was also around in the 1950s to share in those wonderful, halcyon days. Residing in a small, rural town, with about 2,200 inhabitants, we got by on very little, as did most of the residents. Slow paced, knowing your neighbors, NO social media, CRT, BLM, DEI, cell phones, computers or such distractions. A senior citizen can now look back on those times with grand appreciation. Thank you, Dad and Mom !!!
Totally…I used to conduct an informal poll when I was eating in restaurants, asking “what decade would you want to return to?” The 50s got about 80% of the votes, followed by the 60s and 70s….
I do feel like I am living in a strange land and thanks to the stolen elections in all Western countries engineered by the WEF, I see modern civilization hurtling toward a cataclysmic event that will equal the Bronze Age collapse that wiped out several highly functioning civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean region. With the unchecked invasion of Western country borders by the moon good worshippers and low IQ folks from Africa and South America I foresee a number of battles to rival the defense against the invading Sea Peoples by the ancient armies of Egypt.
The one truth about life is nobody gets out alive.
Early ’90s, lived in W-S, NC. A prof at Wake was an expert on “Sea Peoples”. Said they were Phonecians devastated and dispersed, then reorganized. They were like the Vikings, very organized (had a high maritime cuture/technology) and totally focused on plunder, per him. As Mel said in “The History Of The World, Part One”, ‘It’s good to be the King.”
Elijah got out alive. So did Enoch. Two out of a zillion isn’t exactly a stampede, tho.
Very, very true. The good news? We can live on through the memories of our children.
Older people tend to be more “conservative” because they have seen what has changed and that virtually none of it has been for the better. It isn’t an exaggeration at all to claim that this isn’t the same country as it was when many of us were children and young adults, and you would be hard pressed to list ways it is better, but not at all taxed to list the ways it is worse.
Aye, that’s true. And that’s what we have to set our sights on – the eventual rebirth.
Survival now allows the lazy to thrive. History shows only the harshest of times changes a society that allows this.
And that time can be seen. 10 years? Maybe.
I miss the good old days when “gender” meant the plumbing you were born with and not what you want to do with it.
Yup. I saw a video clip of a five year old at a pride parade, and his mom was forcing him to look even though he didn’t want to. Downloaded it. Maybe will use it someday.
LOL! You think we have a choice! Hilarious… Maybe at some point in the past. But NOT NOW. The criminal elite currently in power have insured that our ability to control or change things is LONG DEAD. And it isn’t coming back as long as they exist.
I disagree – that’s what they want us to think. And they wouldn’t bother trying to stop us if we couldn’t win.
I’ve long thought that the major difference between when I grew up, mostly in the ’60s, and today is that back then if something wasn’t specifically talked about in a law we assumed it was legal. Today, it seems that if something isn’t specifically talked about, it’s illegal. I’ve seen government-types say essentially the same thing; if they haven’t said you can do something, don’t even go there.
Agreed. There are rules on everything now, which is why I live in the country.
https://i.imgur.com/2TbtAEG.jpg
They had a Little Boy, You made me spit out my coffee on my keyboard, Well done young man
Thank you!!!!
You note the libturds advocate “Diversity is actually a strength.”
In actuality, they don’t. They believe they can make everyone equal and the same. Hence the drive to obliterate traditional gender roles and equalizing by force the different races.
Oh, in order to destroy the country, they’d do anything.
We cannot look back. Those days are gone forever. All that is left is to brace for impact. Keep prepping. Bleib ubrig.
The only path is through.
I just always remember who I am, what I believe in, and what I want. Yes, it’s f- up like Hogans goat. Yes, it’s an immoral and corrupt shambles. What do you intend to do?
Me? I intend to open up as many eyes as I can.
“Society owes it to everyone to take from the successful and make them the same as anyone else – equity is the goal.” That only applies to us “nobodies”. Try taking from Obama or Bush or Clinton or even the low hanging fruit like Eric holder or Jessica Lynch or the other pond scum used to destroy us… They ain’t giving up shit..
Oh, yes. Orwell saw it long ago. All animals are not equal.
“It is a world where equal chance based on merit is the goal, and winners of fair competition get the rewards”.
This will be so again in the future ending with a lot less people. They should have been careful what they wished for.
I was born in 1950. I had the best America had to offer. I’m ready to go. My God I’m a lucky man.
Oh, it’s a challenge to work to bring about the future we want. And to see as much as I can of that birth.