One of the reasons highly educated people tend to be so remarkably stupid and destructive is that they don’t know anyone who functions in the real world their ideas are intended to change. They have ideas about war without having ever seen war, and without knowing anyone who actually fought. They have ideas about crime without having committed crimes themselves or knowing hard-core criminals. They have ideas about justice without having been victimized, and without knowing cops. They have ideas about capitalism without having ever started a bricks and mortar business or knowing anyone who had. Its a giant tower of bullshit.
The fantasy world they live in is removed from human mess. Some of them are insulated by inherited wealth. Others are ambitious social climbers who are taught to reject their families of origin as bigots as the price of admission. They understand religion as primitive superstition and as a result have zero understanding of human life. They see themselves reflected in the shrinking mirrors of elite opinion and prestige institutions that tell them they are beautiful and righteous, even as those institutions themselves are rotting away.
We all know these people. We spend our lives being condescended to by them, while they destroy what it took others decades or centuries to create. Their record of unrelieved failure doesn’t seem to make any impact on what has become a closed culture which continues to congratulate itself on its genius while blaming the rest of society for its escalating failures.
Twenty years ago, there was still a widespread awareness that this was a bad situation — if only because the Democratic Party still thought that talking to the middle of the country was the only way to win elections. Bill Clinton was the model, however flawed, of how to reconcile the meritocrats and their chain-smoking slot-machine playing aunts. Plenty of Republicans followed that model. It involved a lot of fakery. But it created at least some common ground, which in turn offered a way out.
Now you have the moronic radicals on the left at war with the radicalized morons on the right. Together, they represent at most 30% of the American public. But the tools of coercion and division that they have at their fingertips are only growing more powerful.
The remaining 70% still wants to enjoy life and make new stuff. Thats where hope lies. But we need to build more, better, and faster — and to make new friends.
borders – all borders – represent eons of military conquest & diplomatic compromise. they are not ineffable truths of human existence handed down by the gods. strange hysterical people are so drunk on crayola international liberalism that they've lost sight of this truth.
@BornLik23266 Fair enough, it took me a few chapters to immerse myself. Either way, your melodic music fits very well with the story. Both have a bleak desperation with a sort of soft uplifting undertone.