When I woke up this morning, the title to this essay was going to be WHAT IS TRUTH? (with the subtitle WHAT IS REALITY)
My intention was to begin by quoting the almost-certainly fictional exchange between Jesus of Nazareth and Pontius Pilate (John 18-37-38).
It ends with Pilate asking the hypothetical question, "What is truth?"
It begins with Jesus saying, " Everyone on the side of truth listens to me." (NIV)
I'm sorry. I love Jesus as much as the next boomer; but wasn't the Savior of humanity indulging in some vanity and virtue signaling?
And to my shame, this essay is nothing more than my own indulgence.
We conservatives and libertarians often have occasion to criticize the WOKE for their virtue signaling, but we are just as guilty of it as they are when we preach to the choir.
I get most of my ideas from the Claremont Review of Books and the current edition (in the context of an essay entitled BLEAK NATION) challenges the assumption that America's early elites believed and championed the idea of Manifest Destiny. When history was taught in high school, I had it drilled into my head that early Americans believed it was their right to control and occupy the entire area now known as the United States from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
According to Allen Guelzo of Princeton University's Council of the Humanities, "..the leading edge of America's westward expansion belonged almost entirely to the oddballs, the cast-offs, and the square pegs that did not fit polite American society's round holes. The trans-Mississippi was the storm drain into which every American undesirable was allowed to flood - Mormons in Utah; the Amana colonists in Iowa; misfits and fugities like Sam Houston, Jim Bowie, and William Barret Travis in Texas; Jim Bridger and William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, Calamity Jane, and Blly the Kid."
Talk about a Reality Check: Were these legends of the Wild West simply misfits and oddballs?
Much of America's mythology has been attacked by leftist Progressives and racists. Popular opinion of George Washington, Robert E. Lee, and Lincoln has recently been challenged and history has been rewritten. It wasn't long ago that Columbus was demonized and the heroic deeds of Lewis and Clark were minimized and made to seem trivial.
Now, it seems, everything we have held dear, every value, every tradition, every Christian concept is open to ridicule. Cheryl Tiegs has been replaced by Yumi Nu. Chester Nimitz has been replaced by Rachel LeVine. Because of student protests, a John Wayne exhibit was removed from USC in July, 2020. We now have drag queens making presentations to kindergartners and it has become forbidden to show straight white couples in television advertisements.
It would be easy to assign blame for this planned and coordinated destruction of the American social structure and its traditional Judeo-Christian values; but that would be as valuable as determining what is causing climate change. It is what it is.
Possibly, changes could be made in public schools to bring back a sense of pride in the next generation. It is too late for the twenty-somethings and the alienated mindless generation that is soon going to control this nation.
Truth, like reality, is plural. We make our own world and no one shares it.
The universe is waves of energy. When it gets out of balance, it corrects itself. Maybe not today. Maybe not in our lifetimes.
Oh well.
Truth is indeed plural, and depends on confirmation bias. You point out that Smith won the race; I point out that Jones finished second and Smith finished next to last. Neither of us bothers with the triviality of the act that it was a two-person race.
The Baby Boomers still hobbling around today are and have been since birth the beneficiaries of the greatest run of good luck since the Roman Empire (provided you were a Roman).
And we, us’ns Boomers, now have the sad but somehow satisfying opportunity to witness all of America’s prosperity and strength swirl irretrievably down the drain, that age-old device composed of equal parts: ignorance and evil.
And let’s just forget all about optimism. That works only when there are indicators that there is some possibility things worldwide will improve. The inverse is true.
p.s.
I’ve been working on my bid to demolish the Lincoln Memorial, as well as every five-cent penny in the land. Lincoln’s wife didn’t get pudgy eating her mama’s cooking, you know. It was the mammy’s cooking.
I hope to win the demo contract. Wish me luck. Little could be more satisfying than tearing down a bunch of gaudy, racist hunks of granite. Just ask BLM.