Well, it took a while to get to, but it finally appeared: the required "equivalence disclosure" in every single one of these articles, whereas we are told solemnly that, yes, the Left has made mistakes, but the Right has made just as many. This apparently absolves these writers from putting the heat where it really belongs: the toxic, grotesque, embrace of the Woke agenda that has infected every one of our institutions. No, the Right is NOT equally responsible for this societal collapse--it is almost exclusively a result of suicidal Progressive politics.
All this helpless hand-wringing is just fiddling while Rome burns. The emerging alarm by Leftist moderates had better lead to a change in voting patterns, plans, alliances, etc--or else.
I don’t even know what to say. The comment RW left sums it up pretty well. I recently moved back to small town America and have definitely noticed a more love of God and country. The deplorable fly over states seem to have figured out that the federal government is a joke. I have learned of community, of gathering to actually talk and connect with neighbors and that all men are created equal. It doesn’t matter that we are different colors and backgrounds, we try to get along because it’s the right thing to do. I hope at some point that the rest of the country realizes that we are being pitted against each other and we finally come together to be better in spite of what the elites are telling us. Put down the phones America and get to know your neighbors, it’s been an awakening for me.
In past years, I too have wondered where the leadership was, and not necessarily in government but just about everywhere. Living in a northeast state and surrounded by 'blue elites', I have seen time and time again, situations where leaders of all kinds in industry and colleges and universities abdicate their responsibilities to inform the young and upcoming of eternal values, like 'honor, respect, and such a thing as hard work' and that so-called 'rights' are often earned. I have been in more gathering and meetings, where I have been told to keep my mouth shut, to let the young and 'becoming woke' to 'speak their truths' a la Oprah-style, and yet never supplying context to how those 'truths' play out in the greater society. I even had a college trustee put her fingers up to her mouth as if to 'shush' me, so that I would not challenge said 'truths'. I see failed leadership all around me and although I may like these people, I certainly do not admire them. These elites around us have failed on every level.
We are foundering because we don’t have truths anymore. We only have my truth or your truth. But there are absolutes, which is what the left is tearing down.
Thus we get a doddering old man who has never been right on anything blaming everybody else for his precipitous actions. And that’s truth. The media covers for him and helps disperse the blame when the truth is the generals, advisers and Biden are more than incompetent.
Having no border is a bad thing. Having illegals and drug cartels and sex and people trafficking is a bad thing. There is no morality or equivalence to this. It is bad. Period.
Biden is responsible for the inflation. Period. His actions in the last seven months have done everything to take a good if not great economy and create rampant inflation and rising prices.it’s the truth.
The left has dumbed down our schools to the extent Oregon really doesn’t want kids educated anymore, it’s the truth. CRT is a destroyer.
The left pits black against white, right against left, men against women. It’s the truth. Diversity inclusion and equity keeps blacks down and tries to put everyone at the level. It’s the truth.
Mental illness is celebrated not treated. Women and girls are terrorized by men taking over their spaces. California male inmates can ID as women and be placed in their prisons. Those who allow this and celebrate this are complicit in the mental illness. It’s the truth.
Where are the leaders? They are out there being dismissed and canceled and ridiculed by leftists and the media. Just as I have no doubt I will be by others here.
A great piece of writing by Peter Savodnik! I hope I have taught my children (now grown-up) well and given them a firm foundation. They all appear to be solid citizens with a good moral compass. My grandchildren are still a work in progress, and I will be trying to teach them until the day I die. Leaders are not born that way......they are taught to be that way. Our failings as a country have everything to do with our failings as parents. We became lazy, undisciplined with a lack of moral strength. Most importantly, we stopped teaching our children right and wrong. We were too busy working and playing. I was guilty of that, also, but knew from my upbringing that teaching my children had to be done. We MUST get back to the basics, stop trying to be friends with our children, and stop letting other people teach them or, worse, teach themselves. Each of us needs to make a promise to ourselves that we will positively influence the young and do our best to teach them the values we know will create a better country and world. Acting on that promise is the way to create the leaders of the future we so desperately need!
On the note of losing sight of what it means to lead: this semester, at a university that shall remain nameless but fits a certain paradigm, Spring '20 we were obligated to give A's to everyone -- even students who'd never bothered to withdraw from the class. At the same time, faculty had to bone up in a hurry on transferring to online teaching OR ELSE. This semester, we are to practice "trauma-informed teaching," which basically assumes that many students will be showing up this term mired in anxiety and other mental health issues related to the pandemic, therefore, we must not impose deadlines, and go easy on the grades...BUT, for a year faculty had twice the usual number of students in their classes because, you know, we all have to rally around to save the school...what is my point? There are different rules for adults and different rules for adults that are still considered children by some adults. And those adults still considered children by some adults will learn via "trauma-informed teaching" that they do not have to soldier on when the going gets tough. They are owed an A for staying at home in their pajamas, not turning on their cameras because they don't want to...this is infantilization on a mass scale and, frankly, anyone who thinks that the squad and these other powderpuffs running the show are bad --JUST WAIT TILL YOU SEE WHAT'S COMING UP THE PIKE.
“The identitarian right wonders aloud why America should absorb the Afghan interpreters who helped us prosecute a 20-year-war in their country.”
Excuse me?!
I am aware of no credible or authoritative source (right or left) advocating that we abandon interpreters and other Afghans who aided us or our NATO allies.
This is an effort to create moral equivalency out of thin air and it fails miserably.
"...we are governed by weaklings whose weakness has enabled all species of moral relativism." Or perhaps the moral relativism that has come to dominate the culture in recent generations has created weaklings. Thinking of C.S. Lewis and the first chapter of his book The Abolition of Man, "Men Without Chests." "We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings to be fruitful.”
Thank you. I'm awake at 3:00am because I am so worried about everything you just articulated. I know there are so many of us who feel helpless watching the shallowness of our country accelerate while trying to raise children of substance.
This is heartbreakingly beautifully written. I felt every word deeply. I wish I could be optimistic about my 18 & 22 yr old kids’ futures, but it’s really hard. We are no longer a serious people and I feel as though the fall of the nation is here.
The title to Peter Savodnik's article says it all. Readers of History know that many of our nation's leaders have been incompetent and self-interested - that's nothing new and yet somehow we've persevered as a nation. What's different this time is the accelerating degradation and politicization of our education system, coupled with the vitriol and echo-chamber tribalism of digital and even mainstream media. Perhaps I'm just old and cranky, but when I talk with Gen Z'ers about current events their lack of knowledge and ability to reason is surpassed only by their conviction and defensiveness. From educational outcomes (see our PISA scores vs. other countries) to corruption and ruling class hubris to even our military's ability to execute a coherent mission (thanks mostly to politician decisionmakers), the U.S. has all the hallmarks of a civilization in decline. RW's post echoes my own thoughts. It gives me no pleasure in saying this, and I feel a sense of guilt for the mess we are leaving future generations.
This moment carries an invitation for all Americans. To choose a different path, for ourselves and our nation. Leadership instead of punditry. Humility instead of cleverness. Integrity before rightness. Silent service over grandiose puffery.
The rub is that our culture, tech, and media is wired to celebrate and promote punditry, cleverness, rightness, and smack-downs. You don't get ahead (at least in the short term) through gritty gentleness and humble servant leadership.
So the invitation toward a better America hinges on a personal choice that we all make daily. Do I want what is easier and carries definite short-term rewards and built-in applause? Or will I choose the hard road of integrity, of doing good but allowing others to take the credit—of turning the other cheek for the betterment of the whole—of building things for the future instead of fortifying my own little empire?
Our national character is the sum of our individual characters. We can't live personally selfish, decedent, sloppy, and callous, and then expect our country to be otherwise.
It isn't easy.
--
Thank you, Bari, for the weekly wealth you send to my inbox. It is worth far more than I pay for it.
For the most part, keep doing what you've been doing. Work hard and with a purpose. Keep informed. Continue to teach your children and grandchildren that America is a special place; to be loved and cherished. Stay strong and fit. A tough people are hard to push around. Take a martial art. Learn weapons. Do not be cowed.
What else? Reject and mock those who deprecate our nation. Stand for our principles. Be ready to take to the streets. To demonstrate against this feckless and imbecilic Administration. Get in the faces of school boards, election boards, activists - anyone who looks to overturn our American values. Stay strong. Stay resolute. Stay with the course. God bless America.
Thank you for this piece. Since news broke of the events in Afghanistan, I had been overwhelmed by a sense of pessimism. This pessimism comes partly from sadness for those in Afghanistan who once believed in and supported American efforts. Part of the pessimism also comes from a deep sense of fear at the realization of the true lack of competency and foresight from the powers that be. My kids are the same age as Mr Savodnik’s. I want to remain hopeful, but I worry about their future.
To me, the author really nails it with this comment that I haven't seen anyone else mention in the many articles that I have read in the last week:
"We kept electing commanders-in-chief who had never served, who had credentials but had never built anything, whose success resided atop the more substantive success of more serious people."
How can we justify having a commander in chief who has never experienced combat? Why would you allow someone who has never experienced its horrors and its lessons to send someone else's child halfway across the world to a Godforsaken land to fight? I think that service in the armed forces should be a bona fide requirement to run for president.
However, I just can't agree that America is toast. I live in a fly over state that the elites sneer at, and I know amazing, wonderful people. I have the best friends. Don't let the mistakes by elected officials make you cynical. Raise your children to be different. Love your neighbor. Volunteer in your community.
After the Fall
Well, it took a while to get to, but it finally appeared: the required "equivalence disclosure" in every single one of these articles, whereas we are told solemnly that, yes, the Left has made mistakes, but the Right has made just as many. This apparently absolves these writers from putting the heat where it really belongs: the toxic, grotesque, embrace of the Woke agenda that has infected every one of our institutions. No, the Right is NOT equally responsible for this societal collapse--it is almost exclusively a result of suicidal Progressive politics.
All this helpless hand-wringing is just fiddling while Rome burns. The emerging alarm by Leftist moderates had better lead to a change in voting patterns, plans, alliances, etc--or else.
I don’t even know what to say. The comment RW left sums it up pretty well. I recently moved back to small town America and have definitely noticed a more love of God and country. The deplorable fly over states seem to have figured out that the federal government is a joke. I have learned of community, of gathering to actually talk and connect with neighbors and that all men are created equal. It doesn’t matter that we are different colors and backgrounds, we try to get along because it’s the right thing to do. I hope at some point that the rest of the country realizes that we are being pitted against each other and we finally come together to be better in spite of what the elites are telling us. Put down the phones America and get to know your neighbors, it’s been an awakening for me.
In past years, I too have wondered where the leadership was, and not necessarily in government but just about everywhere. Living in a northeast state and surrounded by 'blue elites', I have seen time and time again, situations where leaders of all kinds in industry and colleges and universities abdicate their responsibilities to inform the young and upcoming of eternal values, like 'honor, respect, and such a thing as hard work' and that so-called 'rights' are often earned. I have been in more gathering and meetings, where I have been told to keep my mouth shut, to let the young and 'becoming woke' to 'speak their truths' a la Oprah-style, and yet never supplying context to how those 'truths' play out in the greater society. I even had a college trustee put her fingers up to her mouth as if to 'shush' me, so that I would not challenge said 'truths'. I see failed leadership all around me and although I may like these people, I certainly do not admire them. These elites around us have failed on every level.
Such a powerful piece of writing. EVERY American should read this article.
"Then we discovered that almost everyone under 30 had no idea what we were talking about. This was when we knew we were in trouble."
We are foundering because we don’t have truths anymore. We only have my truth or your truth. But there are absolutes, which is what the left is tearing down.
Thus we get a doddering old man who has never been right on anything blaming everybody else for his precipitous actions. And that’s truth. The media covers for him and helps disperse the blame when the truth is the generals, advisers and Biden are more than incompetent.
Having no border is a bad thing. Having illegals and drug cartels and sex and people trafficking is a bad thing. There is no morality or equivalence to this. It is bad. Period.
Biden is responsible for the inflation. Period. His actions in the last seven months have done everything to take a good if not great economy and create rampant inflation and rising prices.it’s the truth.
The left has dumbed down our schools to the extent Oregon really doesn’t want kids educated anymore, it’s the truth. CRT is a destroyer.
The left pits black against white, right against left, men against women. It’s the truth. Diversity inclusion and equity keeps blacks down and tries to put everyone at the level. It’s the truth.
Mental illness is celebrated not treated. Women and girls are terrorized by men taking over their spaces. California male inmates can ID as women and be placed in their prisons. Those who allow this and celebrate this are complicit in the mental illness. It’s the truth.
Where are the leaders? They are out there being dismissed and canceled and ridiculed by leftists and the media. Just as I have no doubt I will be by others here.
A great piece of writing by Peter Savodnik! I hope I have taught my children (now grown-up) well and given them a firm foundation. They all appear to be solid citizens with a good moral compass. My grandchildren are still a work in progress, and I will be trying to teach them until the day I die. Leaders are not born that way......they are taught to be that way. Our failings as a country have everything to do with our failings as parents. We became lazy, undisciplined with a lack of moral strength. Most importantly, we stopped teaching our children right and wrong. We were too busy working and playing. I was guilty of that, also, but knew from my upbringing that teaching my children had to be done. We MUST get back to the basics, stop trying to be friends with our children, and stop letting other people teach them or, worse, teach themselves. Each of us needs to make a promise to ourselves that we will positively influence the young and do our best to teach them the values we know will create a better country and world. Acting on that promise is the way to create the leaders of the future we so desperately need!
On the note of losing sight of what it means to lead: this semester, at a university that shall remain nameless but fits a certain paradigm, Spring '20 we were obligated to give A's to everyone -- even students who'd never bothered to withdraw from the class. At the same time, faculty had to bone up in a hurry on transferring to online teaching OR ELSE. This semester, we are to practice "trauma-informed teaching," which basically assumes that many students will be showing up this term mired in anxiety and other mental health issues related to the pandemic, therefore, we must not impose deadlines, and go easy on the grades...BUT, for a year faculty had twice the usual number of students in their classes because, you know, we all have to rally around to save the school...what is my point? There are different rules for adults and different rules for adults that are still considered children by some adults. And those adults still considered children by some adults will learn via "trauma-informed teaching" that they do not have to soldier on when the going gets tough. They are owed an A for staying at home in their pajamas, not turning on their cameras because they don't want to...this is infantilization on a mass scale and, frankly, anyone who thinks that the squad and these other powderpuffs running the show are bad --JUST WAIT TILL YOU SEE WHAT'S COMING UP THE PIKE.
“The identitarian right wonders aloud why America should absorb the Afghan interpreters who helped us prosecute a 20-year-war in their country.”
Excuse me?!
I am aware of no credible or authoritative source (right or left) advocating that we abandon interpreters and other Afghans who aided us or our NATO allies.
This is an effort to create moral equivalency out of thin air and it fails miserably.
"...we are governed by weaklings whose weakness has enabled all species of moral relativism." Or perhaps the moral relativism that has come to dominate the culture in recent generations has created weaklings. Thinking of C.S. Lewis and the first chapter of his book The Abolition of Man, "Men Without Chests." "We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings to be fruitful.”
Thank you. I'm awake at 3:00am because I am so worried about everything you just articulated. I know there are so many of us who feel helpless watching the shallowness of our country accelerate while trying to raise children of substance.
This is heartbreakingly beautifully written. I felt every word deeply. I wish I could be optimistic about my 18 & 22 yr old kids’ futures, but it’s really hard. We are no longer a serious people and I feel as though the fall of the nation is here.
The title to Peter Savodnik's article says it all. Readers of History know that many of our nation's leaders have been incompetent and self-interested - that's nothing new and yet somehow we've persevered as a nation. What's different this time is the accelerating degradation and politicization of our education system, coupled with the vitriol and echo-chamber tribalism of digital and even mainstream media. Perhaps I'm just old and cranky, but when I talk with Gen Z'ers about current events their lack of knowledge and ability to reason is surpassed only by their conviction and defensiveness. From educational outcomes (see our PISA scores vs. other countries) to corruption and ruling class hubris to even our military's ability to execute a coherent mission (thanks mostly to politician decisionmakers), the U.S. has all the hallmarks of a civilization in decline. RW's post echoes my own thoughts. It gives me no pleasure in saying this, and I feel a sense of guilt for the mess we are leaving future generations.
Beautiful and eviscerating.
--
This moment carries an invitation for all Americans. To choose a different path, for ourselves and our nation. Leadership instead of punditry. Humility instead of cleverness. Integrity before rightness. Silent service over grandiose puffery.
The rub is that our culture, tech, and media is wired to celebrate and promote punditry, cleverness, rightness, and smack-downs. You don't get ahead (at least in the short term) through gritty gentleness and humble servant leadership.
So the invitation toward a better America hinges on a personal choice that we all make daily. Do I want what is easier and carries definite short-term rewards and built-in applause? Or will I choose the hard road of integrity, of doing good but allowing others to take the credit—of turning the other cheek for the betterment of the whole—of building things for the future instead of fortifying my own little empire?
Our national character is the sum of our individual characters. We can't live personally selfish, decedent, sloppy, and callous, and then expect our country to be otherwise.
It isn't easy.
--
Thank you, Bari, for the weekly wealth you send to my inbox. It is worth far more than I pay for it.
Beautifully written. But do not despair.
America and her people are strong.
For the most part, keep doing what you've been doing. Work hard and with a purpose. Keep informed. Continue to teach your children and grandchildren that America is a special place; to be loved and cherished. Stay strong and fit. A tough people are hard to push around. Take a martial art. Learn weapons. Do not be cowed.
What else? Reject and mock those who deprecate our nation. Stand for our principles. Be ready to take to the streets. To demonstrate against this feckless and imbecilic Administration. Get in the faces of school boards, election boards, activists - anyone who looks to overturn our American values. Stay strong. Stay resolute. Stay with the course. God bless America.
Thank you for this piece. Since news broke of the events in Afghanistan, I had been overwhelmed by a sense of pessimism. This pessimism comes partly from sadness for those in Afghanistan who once believed in and supported American efforts. Part of the pessimism also comes from a deep sense of fear at the realization of the true lack of competency and foresight from the powers that be. My kids are the same age as Mr Savodnik’s. I want to remain hopeful, but I worry about their future.
To me, the author really nails it with this comment that I haven't seen anyone else mention in the many articles that I have read in the last week:
"We kept electing commanders-in-chief who had never served, who had credentials but had never built anything, whose success resided atop the more substantive success of more serious people."
How can we justify having a commander in chief who has never experienced combat? Why would you allow someone who has never experienced its horrors and its lessons to send someone else's child halfway across the world to a Godforsaken land to fight? I think that service in the armed forces should be a bona fide requirement to run for president.
However, I just can't agree that America is toast. I live in a fly over state that the elites sneer at, and I know amazing, wonderful people. I have the best friends. Don't let the mistakes by elected officials make you cynical. Raise your children to be different. Love your neighbor. Volunteer in your community.