“Civilization
is like a thin layer of ice
upon a deep ocean of chaos
and darkness.”
~Werner Herzog
It stings our faces like driven snow these days. It’s not a new phenomenon, it’s been getting stormier every year since the 1960s.
We are pelted by skewed propaganda by our media in each day’s news, in films, tv and music. Our politicians long ago succumbed to the stormy climate. They can’t see beyond the next fund-raiser, side-stepping their own inability to change things by throwing icy slush at the other guy.
It’s as if America has become suicidal. Political Correctness is its poison pill. I’m sure you are no less aware of this daily barrage of psychosis than am I. Corruption over goodness. Our culture has become inured to the slush of life. Chaos grows in our land, and spreads like disease. Typhoid Mary is in the domed Capitol. Instead of inspiring our nation with clarity and right, our leaders fuel the flames of chaos with their well-practiced winks, lies and corruption.
Unlike for those who came before us, life in modern America has become too easy. To governments and corporations, vast sums of money seem to have no meaning beyond massive numbers on screens. Millions. Billions. Now trillions are tossed about with only vague accountability. There are not enough printing presses in the world to print a quadrillion actual paper dollars, and rumor has it that Fort Knox is empty. Our system operates on promises and an endless fountain of fools’ funds.
When nations are not working hard, sweating, struggling toward some lofty goal, they and their leaders tend to become fat, lazy, and eventually self-loathing.
How does it happen that the leaders of a nation in which personal wealth for some is now measured in tens of billions go to sleep at night purposely leaving the nations borders unlocked? C’mon in, wolves, they say; the sheep are asleep. Enter, Lord Chaos, you are welcome here. The forerunners of our own civilization, the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans would surely warn us this is how they each fell. Not so much by the sword as the sordid.
So many of our own are boiling inside and secretly want to punish our culture for its lack of goodness, for the corruption. Why do you think movies and books about apocalypse sell so well, and the New Testament pages of St. John’s “Revelation” are so well worn?
It’s no secret that many in the wealthy Hollywood world, rich politicians, lofty educators, judges and journalists are virulently anti-traditional America. They tell us we are racist, homophobic, misogynists, knowing full well they are describing the traits of our enemies. They seem to harbor deep feelings of guilt for their own success – for the success of this nation in general, and they want to make us pay the price of their own guilt.
Yet, knowing all this, we seem so powerless to reverse any of it. As if history and destiny are pushing us toward some inevitable tipping point. The levees separating chaos from harmony are collapsing. Will the next generation reign over chaos, unable to straighten out the mess we have left, just going through the motions, endlessly recycling the divisive cliches of the past, sticking its well-manicured, decorated, plump fingers into holes in the dike? Or will they pretend everything is wonderful because they can’t make it better... wearing blinders and putting bandages on the wounds by nervous cheering at ball games, rodeos and estate sales, whistling past the graveyard while our nation collapses from a thousand cuts?
Every election period is an opportunity to change. To wipe the slate clean. To disavow the devils who profit from chaos. Politicians, media people, everyone – ask yourself; are you on the side of goodness, selfless good sense and harmony? Or have you knowingly joined the forces of evil who, either psychologically or financially, benefit from chaos? For too many, the answer is not a good one.
