Degeneracy
I spend endless hours wondering what is going on, why have things deteriorated so much, and what are we doing to each other.
I casually ask friends ‘How are things in your world’? All while the rest of the world seems to be always lurching from cold war to hotspot, interregnum to crisis, nobility to ignominy.
These are not the days of absolution, and I suppose we should not expect any direct revelation on these answers. We must build with the calloused hands that we have and pursue the right as we are given to see it ourselves.
But as Bob Dylan wrote “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”.
An echo is now redounding back onto us. It has become all too deafening not to hear its murmurs. Screaming for us to wake up and yelling at our iniquities.
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That is the truth:
our descent towards degeneracy is now becoming rapid.
The sinews of our common livelihoods are fraying at the seams. A spirit that is made careworn by austerity and reflexively callous by life’s unfulfilled promises. We turn away from the common elements of our humanity, and sink to the base passions of the moment.
An illness now weighs heavily upon the soul of a nation, that words fail to adequately capture the turning point we now face. Yet though this alarm may prove the storm before the storm, the moment is not historically unique.
To recall history is to remember that others have borne the same headwinds and wrestled (or danced) with the times they were given. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. For nothing under the sun is truly new.
Doris Kearns Goodwin tells the classic American story of Abraham Lincoln, who both belonged to his times and rose beyond them. A one-volume life allows us to see, in hindsight, the many storms before the storm, and the many off-ramps that the country struggled to take. One seminal event we would do well to learn from is the Caning of Charles Sumner. An act of extraordinary violence on the hallowed floor of the U.S. Senate, that was entwined with slavery, states’ rights, and fallible human bravado. Preston Brooks bludgeoned Charles Sumner nearly to death — both seeing blood-red.
Its long fuse for disunion was the near-total polarization between North and South. From the South came blunt canes, etched with ‘Hit Him Again’; from the North, righteous anger forged the new political force of the Republican Party. When the same objective horror is seen but refracted through a subjective prism, it tolls the death knell of reasoned discourse.
In no uncertain terms, the political assassination of Charlie Kirk marks an equal disjuncture in our own modern maelstrom. The country stands off-balance and must recover its footing. If it is to remain worthy of preservation — to nobly remain the last best hope of Earth — then it must re-purify itself.
The tragedy, among tragedies, is the reports that Charlie Kirk’s wife and children were in the audience. I cannot imagine the horror for them. All thoughts and prayers are with them — and on that, we must ALL AGREE.
