Post-Americans behaving badly

Untethering ourselves from that which made for our true well-being leads to layer upon layer of lethal nuttiness

Multiple layers can be added to the deluge of sludge laying waste to the cultural landscape in the space of a couple of weeks now.

We’ve had the shoot-up of the Nashville Christian school by a transgender person who was a former student of the school. On its first day back at work after appropriate time off in the afermath, the Tennessee legislature was subjected to hundreds of unruly protestors in the Capitol halls. Inside its chamber, three of its own, one wielding a bullhorn, disrupted proceedings, with the same end in mind as those outside: demanding that the lawmaking body drop its planned agenda for the day and - and what? Pass some kind of gun-control measure that will once and for all dispel the murderous rage that has permeated our society?

The legislature suspended the three. Given the current atmosphere, sanctions would have at least bought a little time. That the body decided to go with the strongest available measure inevitably stoked backlash.

An event called Trans Day of Vengeance that had been planned for Washington, D.C. was cancelled because of fear about the social climate in the country in the wake of these developments. The day had been organized by the Trans Radical Activist Network.

Exactly what societal transgression requires exacting revenge isn’t completely clear. Organizers point to an uptick in vitriol aimed at the gender-confused since the Covenant School massacre. This puts the TRAN people in a difficult position. Does it not kind of run counter to their notion of a “community” to take the position that one can’t blame the shoot-up on a sense of affinity? That would be stereotyping, no?

And, seriously, how strong is their case that they comprise any semblance of what has customarily been considered a community? We’re talking about five one-thousandths of one percent of the US population. That hasn’t stopped President Biden from weighing in with allusions to “bullying and discrimination.”

Hello? If one wishes to participate in the nation’s - or one’s community’s - civic life via the institutions that wield influence on any level, one must acquiesce to the fashion of the minute regarding pronouns, athletic teams and restrooms.

To return to the gun-control aspect of this, a shooting at a downtown Louisville bank - by an employee - that killed four and wounded at least nine, which occurred on the day this was written, is sure to spark another round of state capitols getting stormed by mobs of postmodern materialists who have no idea what is at the core of our present societal malady.

I understand that we all know good people personally. Many of us form our sense of community - real community, not the kind that people who want to have their crotches carved up and their natural combinations of hormones hopelessly distorted, claim as a way to put a militant face on their spiritual desperation - around those we personally know and with whom we have bonds of faith, work and passions.

But, while I’m not much of a collectivist, I think we can speak in some way about a national soul.

That’s always been fragile. Rancorous exchanges about just how to define it have occurred as long as we’ve had a nation.

But I’ll venture this observation about that: Our national soul is shrinking to the point of nothingness, much like the way an individual citizen’s soul dwindles when in the grips of unhealed addiction. You’ve seen the posters in law-enforcement agency lobbies. The headshots of people over the case of several years and arrests as their descent into their personal wastelands accelerated.

That’s us.

Anybody with ideas for how we might heed the megaphone alerting us to our remaining chance to reclaim our humanity would do our species a solid by stepping forward now.

But their ideas had better be able to move the needle.

At present, the bullhorn seems to have the more convincing message than the megaphone. We have fashioned ourselves as gods, substituting outrage for divinity. If our universe were indeed merely material, perhaps that would be sufficient.

But something inside of any of us who can still be reached knows that’s not what’s really going on. And a reckoning in some form is inevitable.