In the United States, we have a population that is no longer recognizable as American in the same way that previous generations were still arguably American. Foreigners have always seen the United States as a place with a weak innate culture, even long before the waves of European and later international immigration began impacting its character.
Probably the largest change is the decline in strong Christian belief, even among those who profess to Christianity. Many of the core teachings of the Bible, especially those around gender, have been either downplayed or are actively denigrated. The same goes for the established churches, which have tended to follow along with the Protestants in innovating religious doctrine and general practice.
Furthermore, there is wide agreement, apart from in some parts of the conservative tradition, that the American founders were evil people and that their ideas were flawed, if not actively wicked. Whether or not the founders were good or bad, right or wrong, is less relevant than the general abandonment of the personality cults that characterized the American character. The maintenance of those history cults is now decidedly a niche pursuit — a lucrative niche, but not a defining one.
From this comes the search for new ‘identities’ to use to define the inchoate masses of American citizens. They can be categorized by colors, beliefs, or affinities for different kinds of popular culture, but it is hard to speak of a single tribal category to which they all belong. They are people with citizen papers, but they are not citizens of anything resembling a coherent nation. To the extent that a minority of people engages within the political process, it’s rarely out of a sense that that political process embodies anything sacrosanct — the branches of government are political utilities, rather than inviolable structures of a legal order.
Even most plumb-line New Deal supporters, like your grandparents probably were, would not recognize the youngest generation as American in the sense that they saw the term, without even considering matters of race. Apart from a small number of fast urban women from the 1920s, or members of the bottom-lower-class, it would be hard for them to recognize the life patterns of today’s youth as anything that would be acceptable to civilized opinion at the time.
Even for the baby boomers, the generation currently enjoying political authority, understanding how greatly the heirs to their revolution differ in their own ways of life, especially in the area of hang-ups around ‘relationships,’ is tough for them, because they at least experienced the tail end of the old order, to give them something tangible to react against.
Given that there is such a sharp disconnect in life patterns between these generations, we should expect that the political form of the state should change as sharply as the personal forms of life have, as it has already done over the last few decades.
Is it possible, given a people so profoundly disconnected from one another, even at the family level, to continue to run a coherent state?
The Soviet Union fell and broke into satellite states.There was a time when no-one thought that was possible. Why couldn’t this Union dissolve? Life will continue, just as Russia and its previous satellites continued. You can’t stop evolution.
America is not a nation anymore, it’s a giant bank lobby where people from all over the world come to get money from the ATM.
The people that come here are rootless–they’re here to get a piece of the pie. It was like that from the beginning, even with the first English coming over here (tempered by some folk coming here to establish their own religious ways). With the wild material success after the Civil War we just couldn’t resist the call of Big Mammon.
The Mammon worship enabled the Jews to come to the fore and rise to the top, and they function in an “agree and amplify” mode for a Mammon worshipping society, with bonus features like the multicult and anti-Christianity so they can take out their historical grudges against Europeans.
The eeevil white men built this country. Feminists didn’t. Patriarchal society flourished. This society we live in today is dying. True men are going Galt. I win rejoice when I see a feminist trying to fight off an Islamic beheader. We don’t have a stake in this catastrophe.
By 2030 there will be 57 states (heh) and they’ll have a lot more local control. Or, maybe, thre’ll be an insurrection and some indpendent city-states?
Anyway, “something that can’t go on forever, won’t.” That does sometimes take a lot longer than you’d think, but Gnon is Gnon is patient.
A lot of the older people can expect to collect on their social security pensions and medical care guarantees. Most are going to be disappointed sometime soon.
The younger people, who are much less cohesive than the older demographic slices, have less to gain by propping up the central state.
I’m amazed the welfare state has come as far as it has. That ordinary white men, the ones paying in to the system, as opposed to the non-whites and women who overwhelmingly take out from the system, put up with it. I suppose they’re buying peace, but the coming demographic winter will mean hitting them up even harder to pay for the next generation, or spreading a fixed welfare dollar thinner. Either way someone is about to be robbed of what they think is rightlfully theirs.
I can’t believe this country has continued on this course of unimaginable debt & social atomization. Every mainline conservative has been thinking this since the seventies. In 1994 I naively thought this had all been averted that America had regained its senses and that a general reaction against this stupidity had begun. The alienation and stupidity has only accelerated since then. In 1994 I had faith that America could vote its way out of insanity. Since then I’ve changed my mind.
” especially those around gender,”
Words have gender. People have sex.
I know, common usage has largely erased the distinction. But nevertheless it exists!
Easy to forget in English. Thanks for the correction.