The ways in which it's never been worse

Before, we've always at least had people in charge who cared that the country survive in recognizable form

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I’ve been thinking about the latest post here. In a world awash with feelz, I want to make sure my stance on anything is informed by present facts as well as the foundations of the principles I embrace.

That said, you can look through the archive and quickly determine that this is not a site that deals solely in objective analysis and consideration of possible outcomes devoid of conclusions about whether the present moment or those possible outcomes are good or bad.

Again, I don’t characterize what I do here as “calling balls and strikes.”

That approach to punditry is predicated on the idea that what’s happening, and what has been happening for much of the present century so far, falls within the range of normal proceedings.

Yes, this country has been through a civil war, rapid industrialization and urbanization that overwhelmed and confused many who’d begun life in a much simpler environment, a depression and a haphazardly conceived and ill-advised set of attempted remedies to deal with it (that unprecedentedly expanded the scope of government), two world wars, a multi-front Cold War, the tumultuous year 1968 and its ongoing ramifications, and a post-Cold War array of threats on the world stage.

But we’ve never had such a succession of flaming narcissists in the Oval Office as Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. (You’ll notice who is not included in this characterization.) And then there’s the fact that two of the three - Clinton and Trump - have had the sexual morality of feral tomcats, on display in an unprecedentedly public manner.

The coarsening of our discourse, our urgent need for distraction, and the losing all sight of the transcendent on the part of most of us all get worse by the year, month and day.

Is the post-American Left as committed to snuffing out human liberty as it’s ever been? You bet. From immigration to health care to education, progressivism is determined to expand the scope of the state so totally that individual human souls wither.

But this conservative honestly can’t make progressivism’s machinations the top priority right now.

Trumpism is the most malignant force affecting post-America.

And one of its most insidious ploys is to convince its drool-besotted foot soldiers that progressivism is still the main problem. You see it daily at such sites as Townhall, The Federalist and American Greatness. I’ve written about this before - as recently as May of this year - but, as I say above, the momentum of it all roars on.

Trumpism has to take disingenuousness to a ridiculous degree in order to keep the zombie-eyed minions fixed on the shiny object that is the Left.

No president has ever sat in an Oval Office he’d redecorated with the most vulgar display of gold flourishes imaginable and answered a question about federal workers being furloughed by a shutdown with “It depends on who we’re talking about. There’s some people that don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way.”

No president has ever had his administration unilaterally take a percentage of ownership in private businesses until now.

No president has ever responded to a federal court ruling that went against him by saying “I wasn’t served well by the people who pick judges. I appointed the judge and it goes like that.”

No president has ever spoken to a major gathering of US Navy personnel and said “we have to take care of this little gnat that’s on our shoulder called the Democrats,” and repeated the boldface lie that an election in which he clearly lost was rigged.

No president has ever summoned 400 generals and admirals from their posts around the world to Quantico, Virginia to tell them that US cities can be a training ground in terms of refining war-fighting efficiency to later be employed overseas.

No president has ever hawked meme coins, Bibles, guitars (that are made in China), or calendars that depict him as a titan of mythic proportions. Or planned a ballroom on White House grounds that will dwarf the White House itself.

Maybe some can process the sum total of this rot and avoid the feelz.

I can’t. It takes every fiber of my being and prayer that makes sweat form on my forehead to not hate him and his movement.

I will not give into that impulse, though, because it merely gives the throne-sniffers another arrow in their quiver.

That, and my Lord forbids it.

But this is a grim juncture and I remain unconvinced by any argument I’ve heard that this country has been through worse.