The Way Back Home
We have roadmaps back to traditional America. We just need to follow them.
I hear these lines from Reelin’ in the Years by Steely Dan in my head all the time now:
“You been tellin' me you're a genius since you were seventeen
In all the time I've known you I still don't know what you mean
The weekend in the college didn't turn out like you planned
The things that pass for knowledge I can't understand…”
Things are different now. Not better, but certainly different.
For all our technological advancements, in some things we remain pitifully (and often willfully) ignorant.
Last night I was thinking about what a different world my new granddaughter will grow up in versus the one most of us of a certain age (we Boomers) matured through. I have often posted my experiences growing up in rural North Mississippi, only to have people comment on how similar their childhoods were – and these comments came from all over America.
From farms to towns and cities, there was one commonality.
All of us grew up in the same America – the traditional one.
One thing strikes me about the current political and cultural rhetoric.
America is at a tipping point; it is going to be impossible not to choose sides - and there are only two sides.
At some point, traditional America was weighed, measured, and found wanting, and people anointed themselves to invent a new America based on the rejection of the “old” and the assumption that anything new was automatically and inarguably better.
In the process, America was split.
There is a new America that is based on trends, fads, irrational philosophies, global collectivism, "flexible" moralities, and false religions.
There is the traditional America based on transcendent principles, logic and reason, capitalism, right and wrong, and Judeo-Christian religions.
The new America can never deliver on its promises because it has made too many conflicting promises to too many conflicted groups. Absent a cogent, rational basis, it cannot stand – or even abide by its own rules without conflict – and that is why the rules are always changing.
“New” America is a fickle and feckless ally, an indecisive, milquetoast, weakling, which eschews traditional alliances in favor of “going along to get along” with imaginary new “friends.” “New America lives in a fairy tale world where enemies are friends and outcomes are invented to justify outcomes contrary to policies based in yearning fiction.
The new America rejects anything it did not invent, no matter how irrational and illogical, meaning it can never evolve, it can only evade.
The traditional America wasn't nearly as bad as the new Americans imagine it to be. Most of the "bad" are lies the "newbies" tell themselves to justify their own ideological and philosophical views.
Traditional America does evolve. It finds new ways to obey the founding principles - the truths we hold as "self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The traditional can absorb new ideas, if those ideas are based in reality and adhere to the tolerance of being “left alone.” Traditional America can absorb deviations if those deviations are not in violation of the individual’s unalienable rights.
Traditional America doesn’t abandon its allies - it truly embodies the phrase “no better friend, not worse enemy.” We stand with those who stand with us and we make that clear through word - and deed.
Kamala Harris says she won’t allow us to “go back,” but the traditional America isn't the same as "going back". It is simply continuing a nation with a reality-based culture, one featuring honesty, truth, loyalty, tradition, tolerance, and all the limits the Constitution places on people in government like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris – even on Donald Trump.
Even though it has been severely abused, the Constitution does not discriminate based on political affiliation.
The Declaration of Independence begat the Constitution of the United States of America – the two of them representing the most visionary mission statement (the Declaration) and the most complete organizing principles (the Constitution) with which mankind was ever blessed.
These two documents are the path back to traditional America, the America of our childhood.
This is the way.
A wise and learned friend from the Great State of Georgia emailed me about this post this morning with some salient and valid points.
He noted that everything wasn't peachy keen in the good old days, that "there are many other points at which the federal government in the hands of assholes and fools fucked up the people's trust and in which the Greatest Generation collaborated.
He noted, and accurately so, that "Both you and I can remember with shame and embarrassment our youthful embrace of racism and the foolish perpetuation and defense of segregation."
I take his points to heart, and I did consider those very points - but I limited my post to transcendent principles for a reason.
The crashing down of the reality of the injustice and the lies are what allowed (and continue to allow) us to overcome the worst of ourselves.
I look at where we were in the 80's and 90's - before the "new" America began to be created - and to a large extent by hewing to the founding principles and our religion, we had overcome to a significant extent the negative legacy of the 50's and the 60's.
Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly better.
I would argue the "new" America has no such basis for self-reflection - I see in it the same mistakes we made, just aimed at different classes and people - and without the principles to guide it, there is no possibility for course correction. In the new America, the way people "correct" is to make up another lie to cover for the last lie.
New America can never get better, it can only get worse.
We were on a downward sprial since we gave away our monetary freedom to central banks in 1913 , its just been a slow walk to destruction , the political puppets installed on either side have done the bidding of the banking cartel only two us presidents Andrew jackson and john f kennedy tried to stop them . We ditched God to the curb somewhere in the 1970's and started worshiping the pension plans that were offered by these corporate entities owned and controlled by the same banking cartel. There is no fixing this system its on its last leg and no matter who is installed in november this system will end and the new central bank digital currency will be next , dont be suprised if the biometric tracking system is employed as a way to secure the border. This can end if people humble themselves and ask for forgiveness but they wont that 401k and sailing off into the sunset in retirement trumps all