Charles Hugh Smith catalogues a long deterioration in American life, but does so without pointing out that it corresponded to the growth of the federal government. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:
I hope we gain the wisdom that we need each other, not as enemies but as colleagues, not always in agreement but respectful nonetheless.
I fear for our nation, and I am not alone. The echoes of the past are becoming louder, and I recall the decades between 1961 and 1981 with trepidation, for that era was marked by crisis, tumult, discord, civil violence, war, a near miss of nuclear war, extreme polarization and assassinations.
Many Americans sense the country never really recovered from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, or from the assassinations of presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. five years later in 1968. An attempt on the life of President Gerald Ford was narrowly thwarted in 1975, and an attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan very nearly succeeded in 1981.
A terrible madness swept the land, as dozens of bombings and the bizarre kidnaping of media heiress Patty Hearst by a domestic terror cell pockmarked the 1970s, a decade marked by a failed presidency, revelations of domestic spying by federal security agencies and runaway inflation.
It was a very long night before morning dawned in America again. From the longer view, the twenty years of tumult can be understood as the political and social reaction to what changed in America in the previous twenty years of 1941 to 1960: America had been roused from isolationism to fight a world war, forced to protect allies in Europe and Asia from the threat posed by an expansionist totalitarian Soviet Union, and a century-old reckoning with the racial divide that made a mockery of our nation’s principle that “all men are created equal” and should be treated equally before the law. The promises made by the founding documents of the nation had yet to be fulfilled.
The very success of our protection of war-devastated allies created an economic crisis of our own, as the old, less efficient industrial plant of America was outpaced by the new industries that arose in Germany and Japan with modern technologies, industries aided by America’s open door to exports and the strong dollar.
We will never forget Ashli Babbitt, Corey Comperatore, WAR hero JFK and many more.
Victims of the Long March.
These things happen when a few eggs have to get broken on the Long March to the progressive statist utopian (commie) free rainbow stew bubble up workers utopia AKA faculty lounge bongload horseshit from a 19th century satanic German bum.
Watching 1947 Harding College HQ animation Make Mine American with some good anti-commie philosophy and had to watch encore Mr. X meets Garrison.
I couldn’t help but notice the Obelisk in the background when JG asks who.
Morale, maintain it, by any means necessary.