UPDATE: HOPE AGAINST WOKE
AFTER THE NOVEMBER 2020 ELECTION I felt like I was thrown back into political culture shock similar to what I had gone through in the mid-80s after spending a month in Communist China. It was a 'study' tour, and, man O man, did I get an education. After returning to the US before Thanksgiving, I kept eerily silent to family and friends about much of what I had experienced. Too much stimulation on every level had brought me sensory overload and I needed time to get back to quietly thinking about it. A friend told me after she returned from several weeks in India the year before, all she wanted to do was eat mashed potatoes and sweep the kitchen floor. I could relate totally.
So after the last presidential election, the events and stimulation leading up to it, the unfathomable results which I absolutely question even now, I grew silent and morose. Not only did I not want to talk, watch or read much of anything or write about it on Webutante, I didn't want to hear any of my well-meaning Christian friends tell me, 'Don't worry, God is in control and everything will be OK.' Yes, all that was true, but for better or worse, I needed to give myself full permission to be seriously worried about our country and the slippery slope it is on. Seriously worried. What are we leaving our children and grandchildren?
Today as the days grow longer and nature unfolds everywhere, I am a small bit more sanguine, enough to read and be open to various opinions and how those of us who are classic conservatives might go forward: Younger voices like J.D. Vance, Clay Travis, Tal Bachman and Greg Gutfeld are welcome now. Looking at the part I've played in this national disaster of censorship, wokeism and critical race theory---the cancerous new state religion---is painful even in small doses.
Still, after all is said and done, I have to somewhat agree with Rod Dreher's take on things though he strikes me as more pessimistic than I normally am.. He writes this week in 'What's Happening to America?
I went to a garden party tonight over in the Buda hills. I met there a journalist who writes about national security and defense for a Hungarian magazine. He said to me, “It really upsets us to see what’s happening to America. It’s not the America we knew. I was at Georgetown not long ago, and met this student from the Midwest who wanted to go into the foreign service. I asked him what he wanted to do with his career. He said, ‘Destroy white supremacy.’ He is as white as I am! These are the people who will be running America one of these days. Your country is tearing itself apart, and this is hard for us to see. We loved America. We looked up to it.”
The man seemed genuinely sad, and uncomprehending. What could I say?
I fell into a conversation with two men, one a journalist, the other a retired diplomat. They spoke with awe about the speed of the collapse of our civilization. They agreed that what’s happening to America is going to happen to Hungary sooner or later. Neither of them could account for the rapidity of the collapse through rational explanation. They agreed that there is something supernatural going on here. Hungary is a very secular country, so I assumed they were speaking metaphorically. They weren’t.
Someone said to me that American culture is still immensely powerful. “Nobody cares about Germany. They make great cars, okay. But what else? Nothing. America is still cool.” We may be decadent as hell, but our culture still matters to these people.
I shared a taxi back to the Pest side with an American graduate student studying here. He’s a Christian who reads this blog. He said he saw the Blue’s Clues segment with the drag queen singing about the Pride parade including the beaver family with the trans member sporting mastectomy scars. “That show meant a lot to me as a kid,” he said. “It started the year I was born. It was a big part of my childhood. Now … .” His voice faded off.
“It’s
like Sohrab Ahmari says: ‘Look around you,'” said the student. “Look
around you, and you can’t believe the depravity. You want to ask God,
‘How long?
”Something dark and depraved is coming. It’s already here, and it’s going to get much worse. Prepare, prepare, prepare. These people who have lived through totalitarianism know what they’re seeing.
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