"Blogfriends" has been added to the sidebar. This is to help make clear that I do not endorse the dangerous, foolish and/or crazy notions that have swept the country and the blogosphere in recent years, and which infest my former blogroll to a degree that saddens and worries me.
No, I'm not going to lecture you on pandemics, public health, the manner in which elections are conducted in the United States or even on the dangers of fomenting riot or insurrection when the normal processes of our free country don't give you everything you want.* I will tell you if you buy into the crazy and find yourself having to do your business in a hole in the back yard and haul bottled drinking water from the relief center sometime in the next five years, and not as the result of a natural disaster, you will have no one to blame but yourself.
Civilizations bend quite a ways before they break. Working to break them is not a winning ploy, no matter how appealing apocalyptic fantasy may look to you.
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* Read carefully. I'm goring more than one ox.
Watching people's cheese slide off their crackers in real time has been unpleasant.
ReplyDeleteI have found it deeply disappointing. The amount of wishful thinking, willing cultivation of person "reality" that is anything but, the elevation of personality and image over philosophy in politics, and the dispargement of genuine expertise in every field has been heartbreaking for me.
ReplyDeleteThis is a country of robust disagreements; that's normal. But they were once sincere and serious -- and many of them could be safely ignored. None of that is true today.
We can now communicate widely - instantaneously and without proper pondering. This has led many of us to despair. (In the case of some of us, the despair is that we, ourselves, fall into the trap.)
ReplyDeleteP.S. I am honored to be a "Blogfriend". Thank you!
This is absolutely worth a read...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/29/opinion/normal-politics-gilded-age.html
That's a remarkably hopeful piece for the Gray Lady -- small wonder it's from an outsider, an historian. Thank you for the link!
ReplyDeleteI don't think the collapsitarians realize what they're asking for and I'm really afraid they're going to get it
ReplyDelete