Stephen Roney's Blog, page 86

Demonization

 

Andrew Coyne is upset at the growing tendency towards “demonizing opponents” in Canadian politics, and lays the blame on the Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre.

I used to admire Coyne immensely. Now the most charitable thought I can muster is that he has gone insane.

I remember on a visit to Toronto years ago, when I was still living in the Middle East, a vivid, professionally done mural in Kensington Market showing Rob Ford with fangs and bloodshot eyes—a literal demonization. I remember, longer than that ago, visiting a bookstore in Kamloops—hardly a radical hotbed—and seeing all the souvenirs claiming that men were boorish and oppressive. Har har. We are not even allowed to say that the Indian Residential Schools were not genocidal. Demonizing the Catholic Church is socially obligatory.

Justin Trudeau has loudly called the Freedom Convoy misogynists, racists, Nazis, Islamophobes homophobes, foreign agents, insurrectionists. He has said the same of anyone who would not get the vaccine, and asked whether we should allow them to “take up space.”

Yet the problem is Conservative rhetoric? That is, rhetoric from Pierre Poilievre and Conservative MPs? What exactly has Poilievre said that could compare with this? And if he had, isn’t turnabout fair play?

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Great American State Fair

 

It may seem trivial to many, but I am taken by Trump’s lately announced plan to hold a Great American State Fair in Iowa, and to inaugurate a Garden of American Heroes. I wish Canada would do something similar.

It is a great idea politically: a promised party for Iowa, where the first caucuses are held. Trump is brilliant to tie it in to Field of Dreams, itself a celebration of American culture, even though written by a Canadian. “If we build it, they will come.”

But it is also a great idea for America. America needs such a tonic, after the hard years of pandemic, lockdown, inflation, and ongoing social division. There is a time to hold a party, and this is a time that America needs a party. Such a party can be magnificent for overall morale, as Expo 67 was to Canada. It can give a permanent boost to the culture. Think of the Eiffel Tower, built for the Paris World Exposition of 1889.

Trump is wise too to make it purely American, not a world’s fair. There is not time enough to organize a world’s fair. And this suits Trump’s message: America First. Moreover, in this era of globalism and multiculturalism, American culture has been neglected. The culture of corn dogs and beer and baseball and marching bands that a state fair evokes. More globalism is not the present need.

The Garden of American Heroes, in turn, is an ideal antidote to the current mad fever of tearing down statues. Besides being a vast art installation in itself, such a statuary garden can be a permanent boost to the culture, like Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. Young Americans can aspire to one day be remembered her, alongside Babe Ruth, Marilyn Monroe, Stephen Foster, Tina Turner, and the like.

The danger is that selection will fall under the evil penumbra of wokism: that those selected will not be the genuine heroes, but selected for skin colour, sex, or some irrelevant trait over which they had no control. The best way to avoid this, it seems to me, is to have selection by popular vote. Which is, after all, most fitting in the world’s great democracy.

I want the same for Canada.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Uganda's Anti-Gay Law

 

Uganda has just made being openly homosexual illegal. Protests are pouring in that this is a violation of human rights.

It is not. 

Making public advocacy of homosexual sex illegal may be unkind, but it is not a violation of human rights. Any more than making public advocacy of sex outside marriage illegal, or banning pornography, would be. There is a human right to procreation, but not to recreational sex. Specific sexual acts can be prohibited. Rape is prohibited. Sex with a minor is prohibited. Incest is prohibited.

There may be a public interest in prohibiting homosexuality. For example, in a time of collapsing birth rates worldwide, a government might consider it important to impose such a measure to encourage heterosexuality and procreation. The dogma of the homosexual rights lobby is that homosexuals are “born this way,” and there is no possibility of social contagion. But this claim has never been proven, and seems improbable. A government might want to suppress homosexual propaganda, not only for the sake of population support, and for the benefit of unmarried women, but because an addiction to homosexual sex is unfortunate for the addict, just as becoming addicted to some drug would be. The vast majority of those a gay man is sexually attracted to will reject his advances. It cannot be easy to find a loving partner, or to experience constant unrequited love.

The Ugandan law seems especially concerned with the spread of disease, including AIDS. And this too is reasonable. It is simply true that homosexual sex is more likely to spread diseases than heterosexual sex. This might also justify a law against its promotion.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Pearls before Swine

 

Friend Xerxes has reinforced my view that most people cannot understand any message conveyed in parable or narrative form. He has recently weighed in on the meaning of several popular fairy tales.

He advises that Hansel and Gretel teaches us that “adding a new person to an existing group always creates tensions.”

He means the stepmother.

This is not a viable interpretation. To begin with, it ignores morality. Apparently, she meant no harm in leaving the children in the forest to be devoured by wild beasts. It was just some perfectly reasonable or else instinctive reaction to the tension of being new to the family. No doubt any of us would have done the same. 

Next, in the original version of the story, she is the childrens’ biological mother, not a stepmother. The Grimms introduced the “stepmother” concept, here and elsewhere, because they thought the story was otherwise too disturbing for their readership.  Being unfair to stepmothers everywhere. 

So stepmotherhood is hardly the main point of the story. She is not a new person added to the group.

Next, this ignores the culpability of the father, who agrees to the deed.

Next, it ignores the witch, who is the worse villain.

The real message of Hansel and Gretel is that children should not trust adults. Including their own parents. They should be alert to the dangers, and they should stick together in solidarity.

Next, Xerxes explains that Goldilocks and the Three Bears teaches us that the good is always found in the mean, the average between two extremes. Goldilocks discovers this by sampling the three bowls of porridge, sitting on the three chairs, and sleeping in the three beds. In each case, one is “just right.”

Yet it is not clear that Goldie’s preference is always for the mean. Of the three beds, she prefers not the one of average size, for example, but the smallest, and specifically on the basis of its size. It was neither too long at the head, nor too long at the foot. It is forced to see that as an average. Similarly, while she preferred one chair as neither too soft nor too hard, it was also the smallest, and the weakest—a point made most salient by the fact that she broke it. Again, it is arbitrary to read this as the average of the three chairs.

And it is hard to see how, had she chosen to prefer a different bowl of porridge, chair, or bed as her favourite, this would have had any impact on the major action of the story. She still would have been eaten by the bears—as the original story ends. Or have had to jump out the window and run away—as the common bowdlerized version has it. 

The real message of Goldilocks is that children should be respectful of others’ property, and not trespass or greedily grab things. The bit of business about trying each bowl of porridge, each bed, and each chair, is to show that Goldilocks has no concern for others, supposing everything is for her pleasure.

Lastly, our faithful lefty correspondent tackles Little Red Riding Hood. It is apparently about how we expect to be rescued from our troubles by some trusty woodsman. The issue is who that woodsman is: is it government, or private enterprise?

He prefers government

However, in the original story, there is no woodsman. Little Red Riding Hood just gets eaten by the wolf, as does her grandmother. The woodsman, like the stepmother in Hansel and Gretel, was introduced by modern reteller fearing the original story was too shocking for readers.

The point of the story of LRRH is the same as that of Hansel and Gretel—and of most fairy tales. Children should not trust adults. Not even their own grandmother. And they must therefore always be on their guard, keep their wits about them.

Why does Xerxes consistently get the point wrong? Aren’t the real messages obvious?

I think it is because he, and most of us, avoid moral interpretations and any reference to morals at all cost. Moral references or any suggestion of divine retribution make us feel frightened and guilty.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Sisters of Perpetual Hate

 

The current controversy over the LA Dodgers officially honouring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at their Pride Night illustrates the folly of the “turn the other cheek” approach for Christians, in most circumstances. This is probably the favorite Biblical passage among non-Christians: for to them, it means “Christians, shut up.”

It properly refers to a situation in which one is powerless; where resistance would be futile, or not worth the risk. Elsewhere, Jesus tells his disciples to buy knives. In such a situation, when one faces overwhelming force, the best strategy is to try to shame the aggressor. It worked for Gandhi, or O’Connell, or MLK.

It does not apply to transgender hate groups.

Keeping silent about transgenderism does no good. For the Catholic Church always has, and it makes no difference. The Catholic Catechism has no position on crossdressing. Crossdressing is firmly established in Filipino culture, and the Philippines is perhaps the most Catholic country on Earth. No, a man is not a woman. But that is not a moral issue: it is an issue of basic sanity.

Nevertheless, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, as their name implies, categorically hate the Catholic Church as their prime enemy, and want to attack it in any way possible. They mock Christ on the cross; they show up to protest any important Christian events. They claim it is because the Catholic Church shames or attacks them; yet it does not.

For that matter, the Catholic Church has never had a special problem with homosexuality. Yes, it is a sin. But so on the same grounds i heterosexual sex outside of marriage, masturbation, and use of artificial birth control. Since these apply to both homosexuals and heterosexuals, one cannot plausibly accuse the Church of being “homophobic.” A significant proportion of Catholic clergy are said to be homosexual in their sexual inclinations, and prominent homosexuals have often found their spiritual home in the Church: Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams, Evelyn Waugh, Andy Warhol, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W.H. Auden, Milo Yiannopolis. One must simply abstain from sex, just as the heteros, most often, must.

So refusing to condemn apparently does not staunch anti-Catholic hatred. And it obviously does nothing to reduce the incidence of homosexuality or cross-dressing, if that were the goal. It also transparently does nothing to make either homosexuals or cross-dressers feel better about themselves. Instead, the silence of the Catholic Church and of Catholics seems to encourage this anti-Catholicism—like not standing up to a bully. Compare the attitude of Islam, and note how many groups have formed to mock and protest Islam the way the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence mock and protest Catholicism.

The Sisters and their ilk hate Catholicism because they claim Catholicism makes them feel guilty. If they could simply stamp out Catholicism, they could be happy. But it will never work, because it is demonstrably not the Catholic Church, but their own conscience, that is causing these guilt feelings. So long as they refuse to accept the real source of these feelings, the feelings of guilt will get stronger and stronger. And so they will become more and more hostile to their scapegoat, Christians and Catholics, and perhaps more and more violent. If they could only, like the Tennessee school shooter, kill all the Christians…

The only way for the Church to counter this is to stand up and defend itself. It must not turn the other cheek in a case like this.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Nothing to See Here: Johnston

 

Sensible people do not believe in conspiracy theories. “Conspiracy theory” has become a decisive put-down in any argument.

Which ought to make us suspicious. If there were conspiracies afoot, this would be the ideal way to protect them, wouldn’t it? By ruling the possibility out of consideration. Perhaps we should suspect anyone who dismisses conspiracy theories.

I used to accept the logic that any widespread conspiracy was unlikely to succeed. The reasoning is that, if many people are involved, the odds of someone blowing the whistle go up exponentially. As the conspiracy continues over a longer period, the odds of someone blowing the whistle go up. And, I might add, the more nefarious the activity, the greater the likelihood that somebody’s conscience is going to become unbearable.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is probably the most famous discredited conspiracy theory. But the example is ambiguous. If the claim of an International Jewish Conspiracy was false, there was a conspiracy by some group to propagate this forgery. Nobody knows who was actually behind the Protocols—nobody talked. A successful and enduring conspiracy.

Conspiracy theories were also more common before Oliver Stone’s film JFK. Intentionally or not, Stone seems to have killed the whole notion of conspiracies by advocating a particularly improbable conspiracy in that film.

Yet more recently, the idea of a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy has begun to look more credible again. We see how the intelligence establishment colluded to subvert Trump—why not Kennedy? RFK Jr. reveals that his father assumed the death was the work of the CIA. And, as Attorney-General, RFK Sr. was in a position to know more than we.

We have seen a good many real conspiracies uncovered, too, in recent years: the conspiracy to suppress knowledge of Hunter Biden’s laptop; the conspiracy to tie Trump to Russian collusion; the conspiracy to suppress problems with the Covid vaccines; denial of the Wuhan lab leak and of gain-of-function research; Cardinal McCarrick’s gay mafia within the Catholic Church; Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita Island. We know the Chinese government has been trying to subvert Canadian elections, and American congressmen have been sleeping with Chinese spies. 

There has to be a flaw in the argument against conspiracy theories; and I now think I see it. Yes, a whistleblower is likely. But how likely is he to be believed? 

In Wiesel’s Night, Moishe the Beadle returns to their Transylvanian village near the end of the Second World War, within sight of the end of the Nazi regime, with news of mass executions of Jews, from which he himself barely escaped. And nobody believes it. In 1944, among European Jews, no one believes it.

“But people not only refused to believe his tales, they refused to listen. Some even insinuated that he only wanted their pity, that he was imagining things. Others flatly said that he had gone mad.”

We need to factor in the human instinct for denial. The more disturbing the news of the conspiracy, the less likely people are to believe it, so long as denial is possible, and perhaps beyond. Because thinking of it is disturbing.

Nobody will touch the topic of Epstein’s death; nobody is demanding the client list. Nobody gets to see the manifesto from the Nashville shooter. There were whistles blown on McCarrick; they were ignored. YouTube still censors any suggestion that the Covid vaccines were not safe and effective; and there is no pushback from the media. Eric Swalwell continued on the House Intelligence Committee, after his affair with sa Chinese spy was known. A paper from Thailand pointed out the almost certainly synthetic origin of the Covid virus only months after it appeared; it was discounted and scorned. It was fairly obvious to any alert reader from the beginning that the Trump Russian collusion hoax was a hoax, and that Hunter Biden’s laptop was real. But the media went along and did not challenge “the narrative.” Not, I think, because the entire media is part of some vast conspiracy, but from simple denial. You don’t want to believe the people in charge are baddies.

Which brings us to a few unanswered questions about current Canadian politics. 

Why did David Johnston agree to be Justin Trudeau’s “special rapporteur” on Chinese interference? In doing so, and in then not calling for a public inquiry, he is risking destroying what was a sterling public reputation, perhaps destroying his place in history. 

Everyone says he is a fine and upright person. Everyone also says he should never have agreed to take this job, due to apparent conflict of interest. Everyone also says that, having taken it, he had no choice but to call for a public enquiry.

So how to account for his actions? Why is he throwing away a lifetime’s work to protect Justin Trudeau?

People suggest it is because he is buddies with Trudeau. But the self-harm involved seems to go beyond what friendship could expect; indeed, if Trudeau were his friend, he would not ask him to do it.

His path in turn eerily parallels that of Judge Rouleau before him; and several other Trudeau-appointed ethics investigators; as if this is all predetermined.

Why is Jagmeet Singh supporting Trudeau and keeping him safely in power, in the face of successive scandals? It seems obviously destructive to his party’s fortunes, and to his own. He is lashing his fortunes to those of a party almost inevitably near the end of its tenure, and eliminating his party as an alternative; like a rat boarding a sinking ship. Indeed, why did he publicly sign on in the immediate wake of the Emergency Act, when Trudeau looked vulnerable, as if rallying to his side?

Wait; don’t leave out the Conservatives. Why, after seeming to show initial interest, and seeing a groundswell of support, did Pierre Poilievre, Jean Charest, Candice Bergen, and Rona Ambrose all back out of running for the leadership in 2020, within a couple of weeks of one another? Any of the three could probably have won against O’Toole or McKay. And no one can say neither Poilievre or Charest were interested in the job: they ran two years later.

The simplest explanation is that there is some conspiracy afoot. And I see how it could work.

Stanley Kubrick warned us of Hellfire Clubs among the rich and powerful in Eyes Wide Shut—before dying in post-production, like one character in the film who blew the whistle. Epstein and McCarrick have demonstrated that such Hellfire Clubs are indeed currently in operation in the US. Once a member has been brought in, through the attraction of free unorthodox sex or some other illegal activity, he can be blackmailed. So everyone is kept in line. 

Francis Dashwood, reputed founder of the original Hellfire Club

If, on the other hand, you will not buy in, the club will close ranks to do what it can to keep you out of power.

The tactic is obvious, and likely to be effective. 

David Johnston did not kill himself.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

A New Target

 

Target is now in the sights of the right, joining Bud Light. And the LA Dodgers, North Face, Miller Lite, and others every day now. Having realized their power, the anti-woke have woken up. Boycotts will spread.

Aside from any possible backlash from the normies, why did Target think it would be profitable to carry and devote a large amount of floor space to a line of trans clothes for children? How many trans people do you know? How many do you see walking down the streets? Surely the trans market is miniscule. How many of those items are they likely to sell? 

And yet, they are not prepared even now in the face of collapsing sales to pull the stock. They have only moved it, in some stores, to a less prominent position. 

How big is the trans market for light beer? Yet Budweiser seems prepared to lose billions rather than disavow Mulvaney.

And as for the LA Dodgers: Mulvaney made a thing in his Bud Light ad about trans people being totally uninterested in sports. So how mad is it for the Dodgers to insist, even in the face of popular backlash, on honouring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at centre field? How big is their trans fan base really?

I think that last example holds the key. It is not about the trans. The trans are just the visible symbols, the flagbearers. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are not being honoured because they are trans, but because they mock Christianity. People want to buy trans clothes at Target not because they are trans, or their babies trans, but to show defiance of Christian morality. That is the big market: those who want to reject morality. As a good many people always want to do. Morality means not getting to do what you want.

This is what “woke” means. People seem to have trouble defining the term, but it makes sense as a gnostic reference. To gnostics, morality is for the ignorant masses. They are as if asleep. Superior people, the awakened or enlightened, see beyond that, see that morality is just a way to keep the deplorables in check. As superior beings, they themselves are radically free to do whatever they want. And declaring their freedom from morality declares their superiority as well.

This gnostic concept has infected the great monotheisms from their beginning. Before that, it seems to have infected Classical paganism’s “mystery religions.” The same tendency exists in Hinduism and Buddhism as Tantra. In China, it is represented by Taoism, the undercurrent pulling against Confucian morality. It is also the fundamental concept behind fascism and Nazism. 

Put more simply, and accurately, it is Satanism. As Aleister Crowley put it, “"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."

Let us hope the good people are now rising up against it.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

See No Evil

 

Reports are that Vladimir Putin does not use the Internet. He relies entirely on printed reports.

An autocratic ruler, over time, is no longer told the truth by his advisers. He is in an information cocoon. It is safer to tell him what he wants to hear; and to assure him they have everything under control. 

This can lead to disastrous decisions.

With the rise of social media, a smart dictator has another option. They can monitor cyberspace for independent accounts of affairs on the ground. 

Putin, sources claim, has deliberately cut himself off from this. Why?

Anyone who has taken to themselves autocratic power is a narcissist. No non-narcissist would be so interested as to think this worthwhile.

Narcissists do not want to accept the existence of any external reality which they cannot control. 

They are therefore automatically delusional, and will demand that those around them support their delusions. 

They do not want the facts.

With luck, and some natural caution, they may still die in their beds, like Mao or Stalin. But collapse can also come suddenly, as with Saddam; or less suddenly, but as surely, as with Hitler.

The best way to tempt the latter fate is to start a war.

We are perhaps beginning to see how this war will end. A band of Russian partisans has invaded Russia from Ukraine. This is probably really a Ukrainian operation, just to draw reinforcements away from the site of the coming Ukrainian offensive. But it is also impressive how quickly and easily they made progress. It may be instructive to others: disaffected Chechens, the Wagner group, other independent armies Putin has unwisely allowed to organize.

Russian troops might u-turn from Kyiv or Bakhmut, and take the road to Moscow.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Field of Screams

 

W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe is magnificently written. It is a pity it is Fascist.

It shows the appeal of Fascism; which is worth understanding. After all, how did it attract so many in the early and middle years of the last century? It must have had something going for it. 

It seems to be especially appealing to artists. The artistic movement known as Futurism was in the Fascist vanguard. Ezra Pound was famously drawn in. Gabriel D’Annunzio, the original Fascist dictator, in Trieste, was  prominent poet. Hitler was a wannabe painter, Mussolini wrote short stories. Fascism made a strong appeal to the imagination. As does “Shoeless Joe.”

“If you build it, they will come.” If you just wish for a thing strongly enough, believe in it strongly enough, it will happen.

In other words, the triumph of the will.

Like Fascism’s elevation of the volk and the volkish, Shoeless Joe elevates traditional American folk culture to sacred status: Kid Scissons even, on the point of death, preaches a kind of Sermon on the Mound.

“I take the word of baseball and begin to talk it. I begin to speak it. I begin to live it. The word is baseball. Say it after me,” says Eddie Scissons, and raises his arms.

“The word is baseball,” we barely whisper.

“Say it out loud,” exhorts Eddie.

“The word is baseball,” we say louder, but still self-consciously. 

“The word is what?”

“Baseball …”

“Is what?”

“Baseball…”

“Is what?” As his voice rises, so do ours. “Baseball!”

He pauses dramatically. “Can you imagine? Can you imagine?” His voice is filled with evangelical fervor. “Can you imagine walking around with the very word of baseball enshrined inside you? Because the word of salvation is baseball. It gets inside you. Inside me. And the words that speak are spirit, and are baseball.”

At the same time, our narrator is scornful of conventional religion. 

The great advantage of seeing life as a game is that there is no morality involved. One only seeks to win.

There is an underlying conflict in the book: the narrator’s brother-in-law wants to buy his farm. He does not want to sell.

And, tellingly, morality is not involved. Ray, the narrator, attempt no moral case that his desire to stay on this farm is more important than brother-in-law Mark’s desire to incorporate the farm in a more profitable larger section. Rather the reverse: he has not kept up with his mortgage, his brother-in-law offers attractive terms, and his brother-in-law will be financially ruined if he refuses. Morality is clearly not the point. It is only a matter of winning the game, again, a triumph of personal desire, of the will.

To cap it off, Mark’s business partner, the true villain in the tale, is an accountant named Bluestein. A suspiciously semitic-sounding name. A foreign, cosmopolitan presence in an Iowa wheat field.

The core premise of the novel, the core premise of Fascism, is also the core premise of postmodernism, seen for example in current gender ideology: there is no objective reality, and we are free to construct and impose our own narratives.

It is pretty liberating. But Kinsella himself seems to as much as admit that The Voice speaking to the narrator throughout the novel is in fact the Devil.

Kinsella killed himself by assisted suicide in 2017.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Depopulation and Its Causes: A Thought for Victoria Day

 

I’ve been warning about population decline since the nineties. I remember a piece I wrote for the Western Standard in around 2002. It has taken an astonishing time for the media to notice what the demographic projections have been saying for generations.

Canada is delaying the reckoning through mass immigration; as are most European countries. This brings its own problems; but even so, soon, immigration from where? Numbers will be falling everywhere.

I think the cause i a general loss of meaning. In The Descent of Man, Darwin, writing back in the mid 19th century, observed the curious fact that, whenever Europeans encountered some remote tribe, of the sort we used to refer to as “primitive,” the latter’s numbers entered a steep decline. Not due to contagious diseases brought by the Europeans; die-offs from epidemics are part of a normal cycle in remote tribes. Because of low population density, these tribes cannot harbour natural immunity past a couple of generations. Every new disease decimates them.

Rather, women just stopped having babies. 

The encounter with another culture that was so much more advanced (politically incorrect to say this now, but obviously true) shattered all their notions about life and the universe. Life lost its meaning; “loss of soul,” some African tribesmen called it when speaking with Carl Jung. Compare the English term “dispirited.” On the individual level, this is what we call “depression.” We get a taste of it when our own cherished assumptions about the world, or about a close relationship, are shattered. The cosmic egg cracks. 

The whole world is now dispirited, depressed. Our world view no longer holds up. We do not see a direction to human development, a sense of mission, a point to human life other than, perhaps, gaining transitory pleasures and avoiding pains. We no longer have religious faith. The arts are moribund, and what we have from the past is being pulled down or censored. Making it meaningless to create art, in other ages a place where meaning can be generated and a life justified. Family relationships are breaking down. We are merely living for pleasure from day to day, and trying not to think about our death.

So why have children? It’ll just be the same damned thing all over again. A child’s birth is an expression of hope in the future.

The last time we had a strong shared sense of mission, was the time we now tend to scorn as the Victorian age. The days of the social gospel, prohibition, abolition, and the European civilizing mission: we imagined then our efforts were making the world a better place. Yeats captures it in Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen:

We too had many pretty toys when young:
A law indifferent to blame or praise,
To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong
Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays;
Public opinion ripening for so long
We thought it would outlive all future days.
O what fine thought we had because we thought
That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.
All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned,
And a great army but a showy thing;

 

The First World War killed that optimism. It revealed, said Yeats, 

We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
And planned to bring the world under a rule,
Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

The fight against Nazism, and then the fight against the Soviet Bloc, kept us duck-taped together for a time. It even brought back a wave of religious faith, in the US, in about the 1950s. And we had the baby boom. But things were coming unravelled spiritually and intellectually underneath the fine veneer—Nazism and Communism were themselves unravelling strands, tin idolatries. All the old verities were being replaced by scientism, materialism, existentialism, postmodernism, dadaism, all improvisations on the one theme of meaninglessness. None of them have been able to justify human existence. They were only blind guides wandering into walls.

In past ages, when a civilization became decadent, some new tribe, motivated by some new vision and robust from hardship, would charge out of the desert, sea, or steppes and take command. Ibn Khaldun analysed this grand historical process back in about the 14th century. But now there are no more unexamined seas or steppes or deserts from which they might come.

What is the escape from this collapse? Only God’s intervention. Only some infusion of the Spirit.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.