"Teenage" America Says "yeah, Whatever."

Yes, I’ve been saying this all along…

A while back (pre-Obama-surge) I wrote:

Come on – the last president who had a “D” after his name saw the 5.6% unemployment rates trumpeted as “essentially full employment” with no “ifs, ands or buts” about it. Every day was a rainbow day when the last “D” President was in office, and most of the news was good news. If the stock market went up – you heard about it. If it went down, that was just a correction and some profit-taking; no big whoop. And even if American interests and vessels were being blown up here, or overseas, there was no terrorism. The only real terrorist was the homegrown one, and I think he was the only one put to death for it, too, if I recall. When the American president had a D after his name, the troops that were deployed were never in harm’s way, and they were all going to be “home by Christmas.”

If the American President had a D after his name, do you think you would have to be your own news service in order to get some relief from the unendingly bleak-everything-everywhere-is-bad-and-the-world-will-continue-to-spin-into darkness and all-nations-will-continue to-hate the USA until-W-is-out-of-office and -our-guy-presumably-Hillary is-in-the- White House?

It’s going to take getting another D into the White House for good news to be allowed out to play in the American psyche, again. It may well take getting another D into the White House for our troops to be able to rely upon their funding, for their heroism to be noted and applauded with appropriate fanfare.

It’s very tiresome, isn’t it? The agendas and double-standards of the press and the willingness of the American people to accept superficial analysis and headlines. Yes, things are more expensive right now, mostly because of oil prices and the soaring food prices that are part-and-parcel of the enviro-hysteria that has America held-hostage to foreign oil (rather than independently supplied by her own resources) and is content to starve the world to burn dubiously “clean” bio fuels. I am at a loss to understand – and a little worried by – America’s willingness to be led about by the nose on these issues.

And I am coming concerned about how easily some Americans digest rank antisemitism without discomfort. That’s chilling.

Many Americans – seemingly more and more – are so busy entertaining themselves – with their flip videos, ear-buds, increasingly balkanized personal lives – that they don’t really care about the details; they just wants to plug in, tune out and (increasingly) let whoever they assign to be “Mom & Dad” in the government take care of them while they stay in their rooms, chat online and try to do as little around the house as they can.

For them, the coup is complete.

The ending, of course, is the coup d’état. Believing that the rest of us, now disillusioned, are no longer clinging to romantic ideals of honor, or truth or nobility, these always-restless First Children, devoted to deconstruction, believe they are about to take down the presidency, the churches, the “old” government and even the “old” media. They expect to put into place something “brand new.” But believe me when I tell you what they are building is older than dirt. And up from it. Which is why they will need their fortresses. Castro lives in one, too.

They’ve been practicing all of this, by the way, perfecting the Art of the Painless Coup so thoroughly that most ordinary folks do not even realize what has occured.

Over the past 40 years these hyperactive First Children have been pulling off small scale coups with varying levels of success. They managed to deconstruct the academies, so that education is less a broadening of knowledge than a narrowing of perspective. They have deconstructed the liturgy to insist that a pantomime in clownface is a vast improvement over 2000 year-old sacrament and liturgy. They have deconstructed government by constructing something so huge and unweildly that nothing coming out of it is reliable or dependable, and almost no one is accountable, either. They have deconstructed the press to the point where the truth of a story is less important than how it may be framed and spun. They have deconstructed the idea of fascism to mean “those democracies in Israel and America” rather than the freedom-suppressing regimes which surround them.

And all the while they have been busily pulling things apart, they have kept the rest of the family distracted with the television, with the radio, with the cinema – any or all of which have instantly been called into service whenever someone got a little bored and looked around, wondering what these kids were up to. “Abortion?” said Aunt Sally, “Abortion is a terrible thing!” Suddenly every news story is about the grim circumstance of illegal abortion. Suddenly sitcoms are showing the way. “Well, if Maude had an abortion…maybe sometimes it’s a good thing…”

“Free love,” sputtered Uncle Jim, “it’s immoral! It’s damaging to the family!” Suddenly every film hero or heroine is having free, uncomplicated, undamaging sex, and flashing some gratuitous T and A at Uncle Jim in the process. “I dunno,” he smiles to Aunt Sally as he settles back, “maybe it’s not all that bad…”

What we’re now being told is “not that bad” is the sort of socialized medicine that is bankrupting Britain and has her citizens pulling out their own teeth. We’re being told that we have no right to choose what sort of light bulbs we will use, what sort of television we will watch. We’re hearing that the inexorable creep of suppression of our free speech and our free press is meant to protect liberty, whose definition seems flexible for some.

Again:

Well, one way to prevent the coup is to be utterly fearless and authentic in pronouncing the things we believe. Pope John Paul II made enormous headway against the Painless Coup which had gone so far as to turn our beautiful churches into bare concrete monstrosities (ready-made for quick-conversion into temples to secular reason) and he managed to reclaim the liturgy and renew appreciation for the Eucharist by repeating the truth over and over, with the reminder, “do not be afraid!”

Thus so, we must repeat, over and over, that while illusions may well be all around us, some amorphous notions, like honor and freedom and truth, are still real. They are not just real, they are Eternal.

We must repeat again and again that America’s honor is no illusion. Imperfect as it may be this is still the land to which – in large or small ways – every free nation owes its current liberty. This is the nation that has routinely sent its idealistic young men off to foreign lands, to die there, not for empire, not for real-estate, but for the protection and advancement of that unseen thing that is freedom, the strengthener of the human spirit, the burnisher of human potential…this is still the nation to which millions of every creative or industrious person wishes to come, it is the nation to which the oppressed call out for rescue and relief.

We must repeat, over and over, that the American Presidency is, like a papacy or a monarchy, larger than the person who occupies the office, and it is noble. The American President freed slaves when too many would not entertain the notion. The American President has carried the big stick used to overthrow tyrants and bullies both foreign and domestic. The American President has put his airmen to use to keep his vanquished enemies in Berlin from starving in a brutal winter, he has used his navy to bring aid after tsunami. The American President has dreamed great space voyages into reality, has opened closed markets, has encouraged a people to tear down walls. The American President has envisioned tens of millions of people raising purple fingertips to the sky, and made it so.

We must repeat, over and over, that Liberty is the means by which we created creatures are meant to live and to grow and be. That Liberty lives in the Truth. That Liberty lives where people can speak freely, without fear of injury or reprisals. That Liberty lives only when the press is free and unencumbered – when it is detached from events instead of entwined in them. That Liberty lives when people refuse to be intimidated into silence or acquiescence, whether in the workplace or within the community. That Liberty is the fragile thing that diminishes whenever one refuses to acclaim it for oneself.

In between all of those repetitions, we must do something else, if we are to stave off the Painless Coup. We are going to have to turn away from our distractions – the television, the radio, the magazines, the talkshows, the films, the fashions, the escapist entertainment, even the internet. We will have to turn away from these empty things – to make them smaller in our lives, where they and the popular culture now loom so large – and we are going to have to get quiet.

A good musician knows that music is not created only by playing notes, but by understanding the spaces between the notes, and their value. Just so, it will not be enough to simply repeat what is true – if that is all we do, it will only add to the din – there must also be silence, in which to do our other, more powerful work.
[…]
It is true that there are many illusions in the world. And on the world stage there stride some masters of the sleight-of-hand and the misdirection – you can recognize them because they are all of a mind, and of a piece, and they are all working different parts of the same trick.

But if you can recognize a trick for what it is, you can prevail against it.

We are down to a few shabby illusionists, and if the audience is distracted enough, they can finish the misdirection and convince you that the best way for Americans to grow and be free is to submit to an ever-increasing and intrusive government. The noise is deafening, as everyone turns away, chattering amongst themselves – even here in the blogosphere.

I don’t have a good feeling. I think we really have to get our free – and by free I mean unencumbered and disenthralled – press back. And soon. I wrote someplace else:

There have only been 43 American Presidents in 230 years. There have only been 267 popes in 2000 years. There have been billions of other people. Greatness is not an illusion. And it is not fomented with easy praise. I worry sometimes that our over-indulged, over-applauded youngsters may not have the requisite strength within themselves to find “greatness” when we will need it.

How are you feeling about things, these days?

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” Lincoln’s Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862.

"Teenage" America says "yeah, whatever."