Saturday, October 14, 2017

Perspective on the Scariness

An old friend asked the following on Facebook (in reply to this morning's scary posting):
I grew up in a country in which bigotry, racism and hatred were on the run. Equality, tolerance and acceptance were on the rise. What happened to that country? Why have we taken so many steps backwards??
Death throes. It's death throes.

The problem is that death throes and aftershocks can last a while, and be quite painful, even if, in retrospect, they're a negligible blip in the long march of history.

But look at these pathetic, incompetent idiots. Were the sad sacks at Charlottesville legitimately scary? Does Richard Spencer make you shake in your boots? For that matter, is Steve Bannon truly the diabolical mastermind he imagines himself to be? Or just a feces-throwing man-child?

75 years ago, someone like Bannon might have gotten real traction. Sean Hannity might have seemed like a bona fide gnarly superhero, and Sebastian Gorka a weighty visionary. But their time is past. We know it. We feel it. They're craptastic....not to say crap doesn't stink.

True, one of the Charlottesville mob killed someone. I'm not saying the situation is completely defanged, and I'm not saying things won't get worse before they get better (I've pointed out one possible avenue that might take). But this isn't the inky darkness of inevitable nihilism. This isn't all our hard-won gains collapsing. What this is is the impotent last stand of the assholes. It's their curtain call as they go out the door. They're entitled; they certainly had a long, long, long run!

Expect things to stink for a good while thanks to all the shit they'll be throwing. Hey, cleaning up is a dirty job. Did you really think it'd be easy?

My posting on Resilience included this relevant illustration:


See also The Un-Self-Aware Assholes’ Last Hurrah

No comments:

Post a Comment