"People crave trust in others, because God is found there." โ Dom de Bailleul
© The Elephant
The rewards of civilization have come to seem rather trashy in these bleak days of late empire; so, why even bother pretending to be civilized? This appears to be the ethos driving our politics and culture now. But driving us where? Why,
to a spectacular sort of crack-up, and at warp speed, compared to the more leisurely breakdown of past societies that arrived at a similar inflection point where Murphy's Law replaced the rule of law.
The
US Military Academy at West point decided to "upgrade" its mission statement this week by
deleting the phrase Duty, Honor, Country that summarized its essential moral orientation. They replaced it with an oblique reference to "Army Values," without spelling out what these values are, exactly, which could range from "embrace the suck" to "charlie foxtrot" to "FUBAR" โ all neatly applicable to our country's current state of perplexity and dread.
Are you feeling more confident that the US military can competently defend our country? Probably more like the opposite, because
the manipulation of language is being used deliberately to turn our country inside-out and upside-down. At this point we probably could not successfully pacify a Caribbean island if we had to, and you've got to wonder what might happen if we have to contend with countless hostile subversive cadres who have slipped across the border with the estimated nine-million others ushered in by the government's welcome wagon.
Momentous events await. This Monday, the Supreme Court will entertain oral arguments on the case
Missouri, et al. v. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., et al. The integrity of the First Amendment hinges on the decision.
Do we have freedom of speech as set forth in the Constitution? Or is it conditional on how government officials feel about some set of circumstances? At issue specifically is the government's conduct in coercing social media companies to censor opinion in order to suppress so-called "vaccine hesitancy" and to manipulate public debate in the 2020 election. Government lawyers have argued that they were merely "communicating" with Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others about "public health disinformation and election conspiracies."
Comment: See also: