The Streets of San Francisco
If you feel as though American civilization, perhaps the most successful variant of western civilization, is hell bent on destroying itself, you aren’t wrong.
Issues ranging from the complex, i.e. concepts like “gender fluidity”, to the most basic such as pubic defecation on the streets of San Francisco seem ample evidence of a culture in retrograde. I don’t recall Detective Lt. Mike Stone and Inspector Steve Keller ever having to deal with poop perps (people of a certain age will remember Karl Malden and Michael Douglas in the TV series “Streets of San Francisco).
Why?
Why does a culture look upon a history of advancement, a record of improvement of the human condition unparalleled by any other civilization, and say to its members, “Let’s just forget about what got us here?”
I have a theory, newly formed. It is because true human progress is hard.
It is painful, costly and difficult. It requires sacrifice, strong backs and even stronger minds.
America once measured progress with dams built, depths mined, acreage irrigated, miles of track laid, and roads built – but most of all America rewarded hard work and problems solved. Today, we reward just the opposite. “Progress” is measured in the number of dams destroyed, land placed off limits, mines closed, and vehicles taken off the roads.
It is sad to see the prosperity won through actual progress be condemned. Destroying human progress is not very difficult. Often, all that is required to begin civilizational decline is nothing but simple neglect.
Rather than pushing ahead, America’s prosperity has allowed many to coast along without really having a stake in the game. They can sit back and develop absurd theories of being and it costs them nothing to be wrong, no penalties are assessed for wasteful or worthless thought. Mediocrity no longer is a disqualifier – more weight is given to what a person wants than of what they are capable. Frivolity is encouraged…and often rewarded.
As Steely Dan sang, “The things that pass for knowledge, I can't understand…”
But American prosperity also brought something else along with it – safety.
If a man believes in his mind he is really a woman (or the opposite) – or even that they do not even have a gender, there is no more tolerant time in history to do so. If a same sex couple wants to be a family, they can. If a black man/woman chooses a white man/woman for a partner, they no longer must fear a lynch mob. Overall crime is down even as firearms ownership is up. In spite what social justice warriors who make up the Legion of Woke tell us, there has never been a time of more social acceptance and economic equality.
And not a single inch of this territory was won by contemporary navel-gazing, community organizing, Alinskyite social justice “warriors”. It was won by people of Judeo-Christian heritage coupled with an American constitution guaranteeing equal opportunity (not outcome) for all. Today’s societal conflicts are not about equality or fairness, it's about sticking it to traditional American values and poking God in the eye with a sharp stick. Progressives have become reactionary contrarians, reflexively opposing anything that is good for the culture.
Destroying is always easier and faster than building. Demo day is always faster than the reconstruction. It takes far less skill to destroy a house with a wrecking ball than it does to build one with hammer and nail.
Something to think about.