I have all the volumes of Edward Gibbon's the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. I haven't read them. But they look lovely in my library, in which reside many books I have actually read. I think it came as some special gift in a book club and I liked the look of them, and I did hope that one day I would open up the first volume, at least. But it didn't happen that way. There's still time. Well, until this particular part of Western Civilization, once known as the United States of America, falls, a circumstance that feels to this denizen of Los Angeles imminent. Our Lord said of the Catholic Church, also on a downward spiral in modern society, that the "gates of Hell shall not prevail against it". He did not say thusly about the United States, and I fear therefore that my hope for and faith in the Church of Christ does not translate into a similar hope for and faith in the continued survival of the United States.
Rome, in its various historical iterations, lasted about 500 years. The United States has been in existence 245 years. If things continue apace, I don't think the States will make 300 years, and even that I 'm not sure of.
Sorry to be so gloomy. It's one of the reasons I haven't been writing too much in this forum. I did publish, two or three weeks ago, a writing of my father's. A friend God bless her, actually wanted to hear more from me rather than one of his stories. (She might regret that if she is reading this now). But I haven't had the heart. And I might add, if my father were alive right now, and he had gotten into blogging, there would be volcanic fire, verbally speaking, flying from his page. My father was predicting all sorts of dire things back in the 1960s. I'd say, "I should have paid attention", but frankly, I don't know that my attention would have made any difference. So much of what is happening seems the inexorable result of human hubris that never stops to learn from anything in history. It's easier to rewrite history. And it absolves, secularly speaking only, of all societal sins. Until the next time. There always is a next time.
So, what's this entry about? It's a kind of letter to the future, if there is one. A letter to whatever the United States becomes, devoid of its founding essence. And perhaps to the remnant of Western Civilization, since that has become anathema, its culture, its writing, its music, its philosophy, its theology, all useless to the wisdom of feeling and power that characterizes the ruling class of today and while telling the Glory of the West to stop imposing itself on them, imposes every burp, giggle, and pleasure need onto the rest of us. Morality is an ever moving goal post, born of the id and untamed by the ego and definitely without any reference to a superego in the secular sense, and in a frenzied rejection of anything so silly as a God of the Universe in the theological sense.
You want to marry yourself? Go ahead. You think men have babies? Of course they do. You think abortion is a right? You are a high schooler who thinks that it is a positive good? If I showed you an abortion, little girl, would you think it is still a great thing? That's why they won't let anyone show pictures of abortions. It's a little too much. Too alt-right. Alt-right is now anything that used to be of societal value, those things we all used to agree upon. Not perfectly, but more than now when everyone is placed in opposition to one another. If a baby is aborted, it's a choice. If someone is for capital punishment, she is a viper. No logic ever considered that the child is ab initio an innocent, and there is a question about the person subject to death by the government after a trial. (Now by the way, I am not unerringly pro-capital punishment; but there is a distinction, a nuance). And you know what, if someone showed that "courageous" high schooler an abortion, I suspect that she and her followers would say, "so what?" It's just not as important a life as mine. Since the wisdom of the elders is meaningless, those elders being attached to that despicable Western Civilization, nuance is irrelevant. And if the person who articulates that perhaps there are truths, and goods, that do not require one's subjective approval, and they are part of your group, and they are going against "your truth", they are simply said not to be a member of your racial, social, religious, cultural, or experiential frame. They are, well, cancelled. They are made invisible. And, in time, that history which is being rewritten, will be repeated.
This civilization killing mentality about the big things in life also appears in the little things. The other day I got a letter from my city leaders. I got it because I own a private piece of property. I happen to live in it right now. But the letter advised me of the laws regarding renting my private property, about how long the lease HAD to be, and some other things that really are none of anybody's business. And then a while back I got a letter from my electric company. They let me know that I had during the previous three months used a bit more electricity than my neighbors, and they had advice for how I could reduce my electric use. Now, anyone who knows me, knows that I hardly use ANY light. My apartment is virtually dark. I like it that way. But I think in those previous winter months, during something, what was it, I think they called it Covid-19, I was using my electric heater more because I was compelled to be AT HOME. The lovely state that I live in is going to increase property taxes for water runoff for the three or four days of rain we receive every year. I guess my neighbors are better people than I am. Perhaps so.
There is no consistency in any rules that are being imposed. It is purely a matter of control over the organs of the society, and their power. I said that before. What you or I are required to do or to forbear doing depends on who has power, and they no longer have to exercise it according to a common principle upon which we all agree. So, during Covid, there were some businesses or non-profits, and even now, when purportedly the society is no longer in the throes of Covid as we were months back, that had very strict rules. Hospitals and rehab places and nursing homes. And others, not so strict. I know this stuff not by report, but by experience. In one place you were allowed to wear a certain type of mask; in another, you were told you couldn't. Each place had relaxed or strict rules according to who was in charge. "The CDC! The CDC says this!" I have seen some cruelties imposed in the name of public health. There are the big public ones like putting old people with Covid into nursing homes. But mama couldn't be visited by her own family and died ultimately of isolation. I know of at least one priest who in these later days of Covid protection, who had been visiting people in a hospital was suddenly stopped by the powerful person du jour and not allowed.
The times, they are 'a crumbling. That's the glory of change which doesn't replace the foundational stuff that it is overthrowing, overtaking, destroying. And more than that, where human beings put priority on their desires and every private urge they have and pronounce that "It is good". There is a billboard on my main drag. It's just another exampe that everything is permissible, big and small, as long as someone can make it so.
It's very cute, I am sure the publicist, the creator, the managers, whoever, told each other. It's a new TV series. "Tell Keving to F--- Himself". The F word is purported covered by the face of one of the stars.
There's a cute little cartoon out there too. It is "educational". It teaches children, little kids, how to well. . . .pleasure themselves. Make sure it's private they are told. Why? Why? What is the reason it must be private? It can't be any objective moral reason. It has to be that someone in control says it must be private. Until they decide it doesn't have to be. We are at the bottom of the slippery slope. There really is little slope to go.
There are a million things that I see day in and day out, that those of us without a voice see, day in, and day out. It is mind numbing. More so that so many are embracing it. Walking off the cliff with a smile on their faces.
So, if you are able to read this say, 100 years from now. . .and boy do I hope that I'm wrong that the United States is long dead and that the frenzy of pleasure and power have brought about a cataclysm, what was it like. It was soul killing. I am hanging on merely by virtue of my faith, and the support from the leadership is, as I have said, less than stellar.
What's worse about being in the middle of it? It didn't have to happen. Human beings did it to themselves. To their fellow human beings. They chose it. They chose to destroy. And they told themselves as they did it that it was not merely fine, but good in some definition of good that I will never understand. It would be so much easier if I didn't care. I'm old. I have no kids. (I do worry about the children of good friends though and some of them I love much and hate that they might suffer).
I feel like I am in the middle of a Biblical conflagaration. And I don't want to be there.
And I have no choice. That's where faith has to keep me afloat. Suffering for a purpose. Some purpose I do not yet know, in terms of my little part of tthe tapestry.
Will your generation do any differently? I doubt it. Until you learn that Man is Not the Measure of All Things. He is a Creation. And he has to answer to a Creator.
But I'm not betting on that lesson ever being learned by a human civilization. And this one, the United States, it had a real chance, once.
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