No, the title does not refer to America. Though I excuse those who go full on doomer, running around with their heads on fire and screaming the sky is falling.
There is a feeling in the air, a sense that things are falling apart, that the center cannot hold, that in fact the world we knew, the world those of us around the mid-century mark of a little past grew up in is gone, and that nothing will bring it back.
That is because this is largely true. And it accelerated in the last three years.
But it doesn't in any way shape or form stand to reason that the world we were born into was the best, or that everything was wonderful -- as opposed to now -- or that in fact we should revert to it. That way lies madness.
It is a very human thing to assume the world and rules you internalized in childhood are "the way it is" and the perfect world. And with a few rare exceptions, it is even true: for you, as a child, that environment was perfect. Someone looked after you. Compared to your limited life experience, everything was stable and nothing ever changed and everything worked.
Sometime around adolescence you started questioning if everything really worked. But while you might have had doubts about your family, you rarely had doubts about the larger structures of the country. In the US and the world in general, for that matter, you took your education, reached for something that worked with what you'd taken from that and you went.
But it is important to remember that around the mid 20th century what was imposed on America (Started around the 20s or so) wasn't in any way part of the American system. It was, in fact, a form of centralized "scientific" governance given to us by people who knew that central government and command economies were more "efficient" and that this was the future.
Were they right?
Well, this phase of development gave us things like the highway system, wider commerce, and other things that are probably good. It was also, however, being a centralized system, run by a self-proclaimed elite that was getting its ideas from abroad, quickly subverted. Sending jobs abroad was arguably the last phase of this, but the welfare system, the various "compassionate" rules that are supposed to help people but just distort the economy, and things like the EPA and the Education department were terrible ideas and disasters already in the process of happening seconds after they were formed.
So, now, we can't trust any of the official institutions that we grew up thinking of as trustworthy and places who would come in in last resort. And it feels like the world is coming apart.
If the CDC came in tomorrow and told us that there was a plague in New York City that made people turn purple, buzz for a few seconds, then explode all over the landscape, and that the way to prevent it was to take six aspirin, would you even bother to stop and take aspirin? EVEN IF THEY SHOWED YOU VIDEOS?
Yeah, no. I don't think I would either. Heck, I might avoid taking aspirin under the assumption there was something in there that would react with the weather in my area and turn me green or give me tentacles. Because if the Federal government wants you to do something, at this point the way to bet is that it's at best pointless, and at worst bad for you. And it's amazing how many times it is bad for you.
And as for the FBI and CIA and the rest of the alphabet soup, while it's true, probably, that there are still decent agents, doing decent things and trying to protect the public, most of those agencies are a sh*t show and either actively harmful, or would be if they could find their ass with two hands.
And it feels like everything is coming apart.
But in fact, none of this is recent.
During the lockdowns, I did a deep dive into the institutions and their history, and the best you can say about all the three letter agencies and pretty much every department of the federal (feral) government is that sometimes, in brief shining instances, they don't do more harm than good. But those instances are limited and rare.
I'm not the only one who did this. So, among us, the trust in anything that comes out of DC is close to zero. And the fact that the left captured the levers of that power through fraudulent elections isn't helping the case any. But our distrust extends way beyond that.
Until recently the US public trusted the armed forces. A lot of them had served. A lot of them sent their children into the armed forces. Serving was a tradition of honor in the US, linked to love of family and love of country. Not only has the fact that military commanders lied to the president, when the president was Trump, in order to circumvent his orders, but most military families are telling their children to stay away from the military with a vengeance. Yes, yes, there are patches of shining sanity, but by and large no one can trust a military that is now working to woke rules and desperately trying to fit themselves into the vision of the idiots who took power in a color revolution.
Where we're headed there's no respect for the military, because they are just another governmental boot on the people's neck. Oh, there will continue to be decent people in there. There are probably decent people in the PRC and we know there were decent people in the Soviet army at its fall.
The thing is, the decent people have to stay quiet and submerged, same as they have in the Universities for decades now, while the whole thing tilts more and more out of control left.
And speaking of, the universities. So, while my family -- and husband's -- have some sporadic traditions of service (Father in Law was Navy. Dad was Army) that is not as consistent, going back generations as what I'll call the "university tradition."
On both sides, our families have a pretty deep tradition of going to university and being learned, mostly in "useful" things like engineering or medicine, but also stuff like finance and law and math. Going back generations and for some of our lines centuries.
I would not encourage any of my grandkids (ducttape or possible biological in the future) to go to college. I'm deeply regretful that husband and I didn't stick to our idea, oh, going back 25 years or so, that we'd both apprentice both kids in our trades then release them into the world to be who they want to be. Deeply regretful.
Now for a while, I suspect, you'll still need university credentials for some things, but I suspect it won't go on. It won't go on because the credentials are completely divorced from actual competence or ability to do things.
Now, I'm talking about those institutions of our culture because recently my attention was called to them. But if you look around, in your area of expertise, you'll find the same is happening everywhere. A bit all over.
Look at my very own profession: when is the last time you bought a book and actually verified that the imprint it was released under belonged to one of the now big four or whatever?
It used to be that being published by traditional publishing was a badge of honor. You knew you had gone through an exhaustive selection process, and you were likely to know what you were doing. Heck, you coudn't get on bookshelves without it, so you know, the public was thoroughly protected from those fools in their pajamas writing about things...
It was never true -- and yeah, above I allude to journalism, a field I also have a bit of visibility into -- not even in the fifties and sixties. Already back then people were being published or selected for editing jobs based on things other than competence. I have it on credible information that some of the things people were selected for involved "leftist beliefs" since at least the 40s, not uniformly, but in most presses. And there were of course the usual human "Went to the right schools" etc.
But the perception is that if you were traditionally published, you might be worth reading. You'd gone through a selection process, not simply put up whatever.
I used to be pretty proud of that badge, even while having to be quiet about my politics, and often eat live frogs when fans asked questions like "Why did you drop x series I loved" because I couldn't tell them that it wasn't my decision at all, and I had to fake enthusiasm about the new thing, making me seem fickle, and not the publisher random.
... And then I started noticing the people who got decent treatment coming in to traditional were self-published and successful before. And then I started noticing the people who didn't bother with traditional were making decent livings, actually.
And now, fans and other writers are noticing that you get blacklisted from publishing for wrong opinions, the conventions have gone stupid, the books are unreadable, and they think everything is coming apart. But it was for a very long time. There was just this facade.
So, you know, what happened is that anything centralized is always more inefficient, and tends to be captured by left leaning ideologues -- which makes sense, since for them centralized is a religion -- but you can keep the impression it works, and is great and trustworthy by controlling information, and keeping the absolute crazy nonsense off the public eye. (Like FDR picking the price of gold according to his lucky numbers, say.)
Then the wrecking ball of distributed communications hit. And the facade fell off.
What you're seeing: the boiling mess behind the demolished facade, the rot and maggots? It was always there. It just looked pretty and orderly. It never was.
You know d*mn well, this is not even the first color revolution we've had, or the first time an entire government was frauded in.
It was just the one of the new era, when we can see them.
At some level, dimly, they realize we're watching. And they're terrified. Hence those famous barricades that stayed up in DC forever, and their ever more outrageous power grabs.
But here's the thing, the first rule of tyranny is that it can't be visible. So is the first rule of fraud and corruption. It has to take place behind the scenes, hidden, tidily away, while in front you present a beautiful and clean facade and call everyone who opposes you crazy and conspiracy theorists.
None of this works in a nation that lost faith in its institutions.
And were every additional power grab and skin suiting of an institution just shows how corrupt they are, and how crazy.
Yes, they can grab all the formalized institutions, even the army, but by the time they have the army, they'll be able to be defeated by fifteen sixty year old women with their fabric scissors.
Because the more they try to turn institutions into instruments of their -- non functional, counter reality -- philosophy, the less are those institutions able to carry on their stated purpose.
It's easy to get discouraged, scared, upset, when things we believed in and organized our lives around -- institutions of knowledge, or defense, or even public protections -- are subverted and corrupted and made into mockeries of themselves.
But it's important to remember, they never really were the paragons we believed them to be, or at least the corruption has been laid in for a long time.
You can't clean a house if you go around wearing a blindfold and declaring loudly that it was always super clean, even while you slide on cat poop and careen into surfaces covered in dust.
And you can't even guess the shape of future institutions, which might very well be more local, more responsive, and therefore better, while you equate the fall of the centralized state that FDR consolidated with the fall of the USA.
This centralized nonsense is okay for Europeans, with their bonsai countries. And even there it's not great.Look how many times their countries go to ill defined wars and the continent convulses in fire and blood because some centralized tyrant is in the grip of an idea.
We're Americans. We came here because we didn't want the same. If we must have governments and bureaucrats let them be as a local and small as possible. If the bastages come up with some green new deal abortion of an idea, we want to be able to go to a public meeting and give them pieces of our minds. Loudly.
Yes, it feels like everything is coming apart.
I've experienced this before. These are the contractions, preceding a birth. It feels pretty awful. It feels like your body is coming apart. In a way it is. Because if it didn't, you'd die and the future in you.
Yes, it's going to hurt. Yes, it's going to feel pretty awful. Yes, there might be blood, and other not so pleasant substances.
Did you think things could change painlessly and with a wave of the hand? That's an illusion fostered by centralized governments and bureaucrats.
Really change is always painful, messy, and there's a good chance what we birth will be a monster.
But this one has good genetics. It has the Constitution. Remember that.
Build over, build under, build around. There is only one way to get through the pain, and closing your eyes and wishing it would all go back to the way it used to be, ain't it.
Push.
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