Wednesday, I wrote about the dreary history of demoralized, rootless societies. I focused on France of 1940 – for whom the end of World War I was as recent as 9/11 is today.
France had an excuse, of course; out of 8 million Frenchmen that served in World War I, 3 million became casuaties; applied to America in World War II in proportional scale, that would have amounted to 4.5 million dead, wounded and missing. A million dead out of a 1914 population of 8 million, proportional to today’s United States, would amount to 11 million dead. Plus 20 more million maimed or disappeared.
That’d be a tough hurdle to get over.
America doesn’t have that excuse today – but we’ve been through similar emotional straits. The loss of about 58,000 in Vietnam, combined with a decade of social struggle and economic turmoil as America adjusted not-always-gracefully to being not the only functional economy in the world left us with a case of the national blues that was in full depressing fury when I was in junior high and high school.
Back then, America’s moral fundamentals were strong enough that when something came along to blast us out of the moral, intellectual and economic blahs, it was a little like the first bit of screen door weather in the spring:
And yes, even this, much as the interpretation mortifies both the singer and his more dogmatic critics…
…and it’s not just my opinion.
Of course, in 1980 America’s moral fundamentals were still strong. When Herb Brooks and Ronald Reagan and even Springsteen’s wild pitch hit, Americans were still patriotic – even our left of center 39th president believed in what America stood for, even though he was lost at the controls. America still oozed testosterone, metaphorically and literally.
If you believe that there’s a move among transnational “elites” to destroy western civilization and it’s crown jewel, it’s not a stretch to think they’ve been more careful this time around about gutting the fundamentals that could lead to a recovery of our national mojo.
It’s a WSJ survey from a few weeks back, that found among other things that:
- Only 30% of 2023 respondents overall said having children was very important to them. That’s down from 59% in 1998, and 43% in 2019 – literally, down by half.
- Patriotism is down to 38% in 2023, as compared with 70% in 1998 and 61% in 2019 – again, off by just shy of a half.
- Only 43% said marriage is very important – not measured 25 years ago, but certainly a dreary decline.
The only value that went up? Money, up from 31% to 43% over the past 25 years:
“Aside from money, all age groups, including seniors, attached far less importance to these priorities and values than when pollsters asked about them in 1998 and 2019. But younger Americans in particular place low importance on these values, many of which were central to the lives of their parents,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
In the 2023 poll, just 19% of the respondents overall said they attend religious services once a week or more. Some 31% of younger respondents said that religion was very important to them, compared with 55% among seniors, the Journal reported.
Who knew – after decades of undercutting the traditions of family and virtue and idolizing an utterly materialistic view of the universe, family and virtue are undercut and people are crassly materialistic, even to the point of societal leaders calling material entitlements like housing “rights”?
Whether by accident or conspiratorial design, American society at large today is not fertile ground for another Morning, another Miracle.
And it gets worse. More Monday.
This is literally insane babble from Emery, the kind of thing some drug-addled homeless guy might mutter to himself while he looks for secret messages hidden in the pattern of discarded cigarette butts in the gutter.
AIUMMP, I think the toxic fumes emanating from his piles of rotting garbage, feces and dead cats is getting to rAT. Simple alcoholism and low IQ do not account for the shallowness of his inane nattering.
I don’t understand why Musk didn’t buy Breitbart instead. It would have been much cheaper and little to no work for the same result.
^^ Oh…sharing your financial prowess again? Did you get a super double plus good deal on that Berkeley horse, rAT?
tia!
Hey, Emery, maybe you should switch to commenting on Breitbart? Or maybe just blast your gibberish on Twitter?
Parler’s New Owner Shuts Down Site: ‘No Reasonable Person Believes Twitter For Conservatives Is A Viable Business Model’
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/17/parlers-new-owner-shuts-down-site-no-reasonable-person-believes-twitter-for-conservatives-is-a-viable-business-model/
It’s almost as if basing a social media business entirely on pandering to a political wing was a bad idea.
Democrats cried when Andrew Gillum lost to Ron DeSantis by < one half point in 2018.
Now Gillum is in Federal court, facing up to 345 years in prison for political corruption.
Care to comment, Emery? Apparently you won't be able to read about it on your Parler account.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article274329430.html
You see what I did there? I made a claim (One time Democrat candidate for Florida gov faces possible sentence of 345 years for political corruption), followed by a link to an MSM source.
Emery doesn’t know how to do this. He only knows how to link to weird, fringy sites with like “Teckdirt.”
⬆️ SiTD’s ‘fluffer’
Kevin McCarthy’s Debt-Ceiling Marker
https://www.wsj.com/articles/kevin-mccarthy-debt-ceiling-negotiations-house-republicans-biden-democrats-default-congress-spending-84c2a5ce
The time for negotiations is when the spending is being authorized in the first place, not when the bill comes due. The entire concept of the debt ceiling is ridiculous and highly uncommon across developed economies because other governments recognize the obvious: that you can’t retroactively decide not to pay for things that you have already bought and opening up the timely servicing of public debt to a second round of political machinations serves no one’s interests.
The next time one party or the other has unified control of government, they would be well served to do away with the thing altogether and put the point of negotiation on spending where it belongs…at the point where the laws are passed which direct said spending.
^^Financial genius who panic sold on November 10, 2016.
Emery is frequently wrong, but never in doubt.
Wish I had the time to compile a list of Emery’s incorrect economic predictions, maybe side by side with his nutter comments that reveal his profound ignorance on the topic of economics & politics.
Maybe AI can help?
Montana lawmakers vote to ban TikTok in the state
https://www.reuters.com/technology/montana-lawmakers-pass-bill-ban-tiktok-operating-state-2023-04-14/
What is the relationship between algorithm-driven information dissemination and the operation of First Amendment-based free speech? Does algorithm-driven information have free speech rights?
What is the role of foreign-controlled algorithms on domestic US information dissemination? Do American-owned algorithms have some intrinsic superiority or privilege over foreign-owned algorithms? Why Fox and not Beijing? How do you tell the difference?
You negotiate over how to spend, not on whether to pay your bills. McCarthy, who has failed to produce a budget proposal to date, is entirely disingenuous on this. Sadly some material percentage (woolly) of the population fails to grasp this, as they likely fail to understand the deficit impact of the 2017 Tax Plan.
Say, rAT?
His much did you pay for your PhD in ChemE?
How about that MBA, JD and MD?
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