Drugs and gambling eat people. And we keep making them more accessible and powerful. Meantime, "ethical non-monogamy" is just another way to spell "key party." It's 1972 all over, with stronger drugs.
A civilization in collapse. And I will say it loudly: Any culture that demands the death of babies as a cost of political support is not a culture that is worth saving. Repent or let’s just get on with it.
From 30,000 feet, it resembles the fall of the Roman Empire. Even though Christ had come to save them and all humans only a few centuries earlier. But they rejected Christ as the majority of souls do today. He is the Answer. The left has worked hard to eliminate Christ’s teaching. This is a key strategy of the Communist manifesto.
Repentance, a gift of The Spirit, is our only hope. The evil is almost certainly greater than Sodom and hearts are harder than diamond. While I have great hope for the ultimate future, I think getting there is going to be very ugly.
Also, once one realized what one has done, the sorrow, guilt, and/or suffering never goes away.
How do I know?
I’ve been on the listening end of several mothers’ sorrowing sobs, three men’s lifelong shame and regret for their failures to “step up” to help their girlfriends and protect their babies.
Three former abortionists spoke to me about how appalled they were by their one-time involvement in the abortion business. All three ( one is now deceased: I went to his funeral) joined the pro-life fight.
One doctor altered his Ob/Gyn practice completely to help and support pregnant mothers so that they would and could have their (initially unwanted) babies.
An observation on just one of your observations: "turns every blizzard or heat wave into a harbinger of the apocalypse. "
I blame this on the collapse of the news media, particularly local TV news. Every forecast of a flake of snow sends marauding hordes to the supermarket, so that the bread aisle looks like video from Soviet era Moscow.
My dad recently observed that the Boston-area TV stations' evening news reports have THREE weather segments in a 30-minute broadcast.
I offer this: It's b/c the local TV stations don't have enough money to send reporters to report actual news, and the weather is free. That is, all the maps, charts, graphics, and satellite photos are provided by the National Weather Service. Taxpayers pay for these data; the local news stations only need to gather the info, and stand the "weather gal" in front of a map (which is most likely a "blue screen") and gesture toward low pressure systems and cold fronts and the projected rain/snow line.
The weather is hyped. The public falls victim to it.
Me? I use the weather app on my phone. I'm impervious to the hype.
maybe you are unaware your taxes and utilities fees are funding a multi-TRILLION dollar steal?
Warren Buffett
"For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit."
One comment. Let’s stop the blaming of “the news media”. We must take the responsibility ourselves and create / support a new news media. Let’s totally defund bad media. NEW: I think it’s a collection of “sources”. And there are now GOOD combinations of people on Substack. And also more than Substack.
My new news media are various Substack writers. The Free Press. Matt Taibbi. Glenn Greenwald. The Dark Horse podcast. Tucker Carlson. Ben Shapiro. Steven Crowder (who's off the wall, but does the BEST Trump imitation). Timcast IRL. The Podcast of the Lotuseaters. PBD podcast.
I think this is a pretty good cross-section and I feel better informed than when I watched cable news.
I worked in local tv over 20 years ago. They've always been nutty about weather stories. The biggest reason is because it's an easy story to cover - it's right in front of them. They don't have to go chasing down anyone for an interview or hang out at weird hours to get the right video. As for the extra weather segments in Boston - sounds like the producer got creative in filling time. Nothing more.
I just talked to someone still in the business. They can't hire hardly anyone anymore because now there is nothing glamorous about working in the business... so youngsters aren't showing up for the terrible pay and lousy hours. I asked after seeing a job posting for a reporter in Baltimore only get 9 applications after one week. I expect much more home video to be shown, unfortunately.
I really wonder where things are in 10, 20 years or so. My older teen sons would never dream of turning on local news or picking up a paper. They don't even watch cable tv news. And no one in their circle is doing it. There will be no audience at some point.
While leading a teen ministry a few years ago, we asked them where they got their news. All of them
said SnapChat or Instagram ( this was about a year before the mind numbing TicTok really took off). Most of them had no idea what was happening in the world and these were good kids/ students. It’s frightening.
It gets worse. Some people ignore legitimate weather warnings and go out and challenge the elements then expect 911 to rescue your butt from your idiocy.
Robin Williams quipped in the 30’s on the plains, when a tornado was sited people ran to the root cellar. Now it’s more likely they grab the iPhone to film it then post it.
These days weather reporting is fear porn at its finest. Polar vortex, atmospheric river on and on. The media are nothing but charlatans not worthy of my attention or anybody else. A western world full of buffoons and morons.
I lived in southeastern FL for 31 years and left for the Midwest after 3 hurricanes in 20 years. You're correct on TV weather. As soon as a low left the coast of Africa they were warning people. Then the rush to the grocery store, Home Depot and THE GAS STATION. Long lines to gas up your car for days. Which begs the question, where are you going to go? Unless you gas up and start driving north, all you have is a car full of gas waiting out the hurricane at home.
The Midwest is no better. Regular programming is interrupted for hours when thunderstorms rumble through. Crazy
I've always wondered about people rushing to Home Depot, and buying all that plywood to board-up their windows. What happened to the plywood from the LAST hurricane?
You are correct, Christians have done "bad things", but not because they were Christians, because they were and are humans. Humans are inherently flawed and sinful. Morality comes from God, and when He is rejected, morality becomes whatever a flawed human decides it is. If everyone would get up everyday and try and be more like Jesus the world would be a better place. It unfortunately will never happen.
We all do terrible things. That is why we need God. When we no longer recognize that we are sinners in need of savior and we live for ourselves and we continue deny God, we become a terrible civilization. That is where we are sadly.
Having been someone who did almost every drug there was between 1968-1979 with the exception of shooting heroin, I haven't touched a drug since the summer of 79, and stopped in one day. The same with going from two packs of cigarettes to none in one day. It's all about making a decision and sticking with it. You decide, no one decides for you. You hit a point where you say to yourself enough is enough. Unfortunately today drugs are laced with fentanyl, so a percoset isn't a percoset, it's death disguised.
It's bad enough having to take prescription drugs as you get older, but putting unnecessary drugs in your system is just plain ignorance, especially knowing you may be playing Russian roulette. As for Alex's comment about having sex outside your marriage, for any reason, is pure bs. Having been married 38 years and both of us never cheated, if you can't stay trustworthy to your spouse, get out of your marriage, but don't cheat on them. That lowers your credibility to that of the lowest of animals. Trust and accountability is all you have in the end.
Agree 100% with your almost identical addiction history and opinion of the sacrament of marriage. My addiction was alcohol (20 years and quit in one day...along with cigarettes and coffee!). Marriage is hard, it can be very hard. But what worth having isn't. We've had our fair share of battles, but adultery never entered either of our minds (we've been together 31 years). It's all about character and integrity - in all aspects of life!
They keep saying that every election is the most important ever, but I believe truly that was the most important election in my lifetime and republicans lost bc of the war. Obama changed the culture overnight. And no one has stopped that change. Not even Trump.
thats a good point but the one response that I cant deny is that the changes he brought were popular and people do not want to give them up. Like a bad habit.
take a look at any blue state and the hellscape aour cities have become. the policies have been implemented the results cannot be more clear and the politicians who did the implementing are returned to office every year.
Case in point. what happened to the ruling class that presided over the George Floyd disaster in MSP? They are either all still there or got promoted.
I would like to agree with you but i have two names for you to ponder.
1. Lori Light foot - now at Harvard
2. Brandon Johnson - the guy they replaced her with after "buyers remorse"
Im old enough to point out I saw this before in the 1960-70's and we turned it around. but I have less hope than I did in my generation....who did turn it around.
Keep eyes and ears open. Murmurings that Michelle Obama will replace Biden later in the year as the Democratic candidate. That would mean B. Obama will continue to wield power only more openly. Some think he has been directing some of Biden's policies behind the scenes throughout Biden's tenure. Consider him the Divider in Chief. A true nightmare should it happen.
I think the people who suspect Obama is running things are fooling themselves; they want to believe elections matter and the elected politicians have some say in what happens.
I think the lesson of Trump and Biden is that they are figureheads. When Trump acted like he actually had power, the whole executive branch united against him. Biden clearly isn't making any decisions, and any democrat voting for Biden/Harris is voting to keep the administrative state going as is, not for Biden or Harris to have any actual power.
I've heard that too. I find it hard to believe she would give up her grand life to go back to the WH. She hated every moment she was there. No doubt Obama is directing this administration. Biden can't remember how to exit the stage.
Actually we aren't. The US government is in debt to the tune of $34 trillion with unfunded liabilities of at least another $200 trillion. US consumer debt is over $17 trillion. We're not wealthy. We're broke.
We're the brokest society in history. We have debt that we have no prospect of ever paying off and we have no plans to even try to reduce the rate at which debt is increasing. We're like the children of lottery winners who never tried to preserve their wealth. They just bought more and more stuff for their mansion. We have massive amounts of stuff, all of which was bequeathed to us or which we acquired by borrowing. We don't value it; we don't take care of it; we don't try to maintain it.
Time and cash are running out.
This may seem irrelevant to the topic except that what people need today is resilience. When you're existing at a subsistence level, there is no resilience. Millions of people are experiencing that today. Millions more will experience it tomorrow.
Meanwhile, we have poorly educated, unskilled people coming over the border by the thousands every day, claiming they have a right to what's left. Maybe they do have as much of a claim as our own citizens who have consumed all their lives, but produced nothing, created nothing, and accomplished nothing.
Why is the federal government so deeply in debt - and who does it owe the money to - and why, since 2000, has our national debt spiked at the rate it has?
Once you shift out of that first gear, you'll see there's a lot more. The debt doesn't matter. The control goes so much deeper.
This column is such a gut punch. I feel like I am watching all of this happen starting slow and then moving very fast. In the morning, I will talk to a colleague who is on her 3rd antidepressant but doesn't seem to think that the pot she smokes each night has any relevance at all to her depression issues. At lunchtime I will walk past a person in maybe his late 20s who looks like he is in a zombie movie and possibly about to kill me- ravaged from hard core drugs. In the evening, I will watch the news and listen to the perky financial anchor talk about how mushrooms are the next big money maker after seeing television ad about a new drug for Tardive Dyskinesia. Then I might see an old man with dementia on the TV who is apparently the leader of the free world. I fully believe that mind altering substances are hastening the end of this empire.
These are wildly important observations Alex. You never fail to deliver. My big worry here is our current world’s stumbling rush into--hell, it’s active encouragement of--immediate gratification. There is no time at all for reflection. We are becoming completely untethered from any semblance of a moral base.
I hadn’t paid too much attention but can’t ignore it now. Gambling and sports. The gambling and betting scene seems to have gone nuclear where there is betting everywhere. There are shows and tutorials on how to bet.
When I watch sports I just want to see the game. Betting is the last thing on my mind. But there are more and more ways being devised to pry money from people by getting them addicted.
Alex, all (most?) of the things you describe result in the person involved lacking capacity to continue making a rational decision since they all involve addiction. Once you are addicted there is no way to opt out without intensive intervention. It is just better to avoid the addition in the first place, but it suits the left to have an addicted, helpless class beholden to government handouts for survival.
Exactly...it's an incentive for Government to have people in NEED and to ask those who are not addicted to fund (tax monies) the rising helpless. Its the DEM way to more and more Government agencies
As a teenager in the 70s, my world was all sex, drugs & rock n roll. Date raped dozens of times, high on anything, everyday. Thought I left it all behind to settle down, become a stockbroker & start a family... The 80s flew by, full of just being responsible, but wow... Meth showed up in the 90s... This good Momma loved the energy.. Some kind of divine intervention snuck in & I walked away after 5 years of that crap.. Finally gave up pot & cigs & settling in to wine before bed. When those crutches become a way of life, they become imbedded our cells & souls.. The despair never really goes away.
Thank you... I’m still amazed, 15 years later, but I strongly believe in the power of making a decision, & just doing it. Healing comes along later.. ❤️🙏
In my experience the causation is the other way around. People resort to drugs and gambling when their souls have already been crushed. The cure for such problems is to restore usefulness and meaning to lives.
Part of the cure is cultural, which is probably unfixable. Part is economic, which can be fixed. Reshoring manufacturing would make a BIG difference. When every city had several factories, ordinary men could MAKE THINGS and see the results at the end of the day. They felt pride in what they MADE.
It is so hard, nearly impossible, to get people to take his seriously. Fentanyl, heroin, coke sure. But grass? No way. Despite today’s “product” being, what, 10 times, 50 times more powerful than that of the 60s and 70s. And gambling. This is an absolutely predatory form of regressive taxation pursued with absolutely no scruples by who? Progressives. We have a particularly sanctimonious sports talk figure here in Chicago who is self-righteously supportive of every supposed progressive social fad who thinks nothing of being an on-air pitchman for the sports gambling racketeers. Ours is a society in a nosedive that cannot or will not see itself honestly. Thanks for taking this issue on Alex.
I have rewritten my comment a dozen times because I have so many thoughts on this, but in the end, I just want to cry.
I try to remain hopeful for our country, but truth be told, I am full of despair. For so many reasons, but this one hit hard. This is a human issue. We are killing ourselves off and marring what's left, all with the promise of a more "open, authentic" view of what it is to be alive. We've all done our experimentation, but this goes well beyond that - there are so many factors pushing people to devolve and feel no remorse, no regret, no responsibility.
What can we do? I hold my kids tightly and pledge to bring them up right - to train them to seek the truth from the source, rather than through this distorted filter. I'll offer up two humans to continue in the vein of perpetuating life rather than snuffing it out.
Maybe this is just a phase though...maybe our cultural degradation will hit a low, people will mourn the loss, wake up and we'll be in a new period of conservatism. A period of values and morality. I don't know. I'm young, and maybe I just haven't seen the cycles turn enough to feel steadfast.
A civilization in collapse. And I will say it loudly: Any culture that demands the death of babies as a cost of political support is not a culture that is worth saving. Repent or let’s just get on with it.
From 30,000 feet, it resembles the fall of the Roman Empire. Even though Christ had come to save them and all humans only a few centuries earlier. But they rejected Christ as the majority of souls do today. He is the Answer. The left has worked hard to eliminate Christ’s teaching. This is a key strategy of the Communist manifesto.
Repentance, a gift of The Spirit, is our only hope. The evil is almost certainly greater than Sodom and hearts are harder than diamond. While I have great hope for the ultimate future, I think getting there is going to be very ugly.
Agree completely.
Also, once one realized what one has done, the sorrow, guilt, and/or suffering never goes away.
How do I know?
I’ve been on the listening end of several mothers’ sorrowing sobs, three men’s lifelong shame and regret for their failures to “step up” to help their girlfriends and protect their babies.
Three former abortionists spoke to me about how appalled they were by their one-time involvement in the abortion business. All three ( one is now deceased: I went to his funeral) joined the pro-life fight.
One doctor altered his Ob/Gyn practice completely to help and support pregnant mothers so that they would and could have their (initially unwanted) babies.
That’s it!
An observation on just one of your observations: "turns every blizzard or heat wave into a harbinger of the apocalypse. "
I blame this on the collapse of the news media, particularly local TV news. Every forecast of a flake of snow sends marauding hordes to the supermarket, so that the bread aisle looks like video from Soviet era Moscow.
My dad recently observed that the Boston-area TV stations' evening news reports have THREE weather segments in a 30-minute broadcast.
I offer this: It's b/c the local TV stations don't have enough money to send reporters to report actual news, and the weather is free. That is, all the maps, charts, graphics, and satellite photos are provided by the National Weather Service. Taxpayers pay for these data; the local news stations only need to gather the info, and stand the "weather gal" in front of a map (which is most likely a "blue screen") and gesture toward low pressure systems and cold fronts and the projected rain/snow line.
The weather is hyped. The public falls victim to it.
Me? I use the weather app on my phone. I'm impervious to the hype.
maybe you are unaware your taxes and utilities fees are funding a multi-TRILLION dollar steal?
Warren Buffett
"For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit."
The FLEECING is just perpetual isn't it regardless of who is in office.
One comment. Let’s stop the blaming of “the news media”. We must take the responsibility ourselves and create / support a new news media. Let’s totally defund bad media. NEW: I think it’s a collection of “sources”. And there are now GOOD combinations of people on Substack. And also more than Substack.
My new news media are various Substack writers. The Free Press. Matt Taibbi. Glenn Greenwald. The Dark Horse podcast. Tucker Carlson. Ben Shapiro. Steven Crowder (who's off the wall, but does the BEST Trump imitation). Timcast IRL. The Podcast of the Lotuseaters. PBD podcast.
I think this is a pretty good cross-section and I feel better informed than when I watched cable news.
Don’t forget Daniel Horowitz conservative review podcast.
Greenwald I like. Technically, not on Substack (except sometimes).
UnHerd I like (British).
Jonathan Turley (lawyer) has his own blog.
Andrew C. McCarthy is on National Review and X.
Tucker Carlson is up and down for me. Video mostly, on X.
Brownstone Institute. They also have a substack.
I worked in local tv over 20 years ago. They've always been nutty about weather stories. The biggest reason is because it's an easy story to cover - it's right in front of them. They don't have to go chasing down anyone for an interview or hang out at weird hours to get the right video. As for the extra weather segments in Boston - sounds like the producer got creative in filling time. Nothing more.
Additionally, the TV stations are using video (a fire, a car accident, dog-running-on-icy-pond) that's contributed by a viewer with an iPhone.
The only time I see TV news is at my Dad's house. I pulled the plug on cable almost a year ago.
I just talked to someone still in the business. They can't hire hardly anyone anymore because now there is nothing glamorous about working in the business... so youngsters aren't showing up for the terrible pay and lousy hours. I asked after seeing a job posting for a reporter in Baltimore only get 9 applications after one week. I expect much more home video to be shown, unfortunately.
TV, especially local TV, is right where newspapers were 15 years ago: advertising in drying up and the "glamor" of Being on TV is just about gone.
I retired from the newspaper biz 10 years ago. The quality of the reporters was atrocious--commensurate with the feeble pay.
I really wonder where things are in 10, 20 years or so. My older teen sons would never dream of turning on local news or picking up a paper. They don't even watch cable tv news. And no one in their circle is doing it. There will be no audience at some point.
They're watching TikTok.
Frightening, huh?
Here's an example of the "quality" of the last reporters who worked for me.
Fresh out of college, this numbskull came for an interview. Among other questions, I asked him, "Who's your congressman?"
He answered, "Sonya Sotomayor?"
While leading a teen ministry a few years ago, we asked them where they got their news. All of them
said SnapChat or Instagram ( this was about a year before the mind numbing TicTok really took off). Most of them had no idea what was happening in the world and these were good kids/ students. It’s frightening.
I’m right with you RioRosie. 👍🏻
It gets worse. Some people ignore legitimate weather warnings and go out and challenge the elements then expect 911 to rescue your butt from your idiocy.
Robin Williams quipped in the 30’s on the plains, when a tornado was sited people ran to the root cellar. Now it’s more likely they grab the iPhone to film it then post it.
And don’t forget the people filming an assault in the city without even bothering to help the victim. Unreal times we live in.
Post it on their YouTube channel....and get PAID for being an idiot.
Dead ON! The sensationalism of EVERYthing breaks peoples minds IF they allow it too
These days weather reporting is fear porn at its finest. Polar vortex, atmospheric river on and on. The media are nothing but charlatans not worthy of my attention or anybody else. A western world full of buffoons and morons.
Yep weather forecasts of hurricanes and snow storms are fear porn just like covid "death totals" and overflowing hospitals.
I lived in southeastern FL for 31 years and left for the Midwest after 3 hurricanes in 20 years. You're correct on TV weather. As soon as a low left the coast of Africa they were warning people. Then the rush to the grocery store, Home Depot and THE GAS STATION. Long lines to gas up your car for days. Which begs the question, where are you going to go? Unless you gas up and start driving north, all you have is a car full of gas waiting out the hurricane at home.
The Midwest is no better. Regular programming is interrupted for hours when thunderstorms rumble through. Crazy
I've always wondered about people rushing to Home Depot, and buying all that plywood to board-up their windows. What happened to the plywood from the LAST hurricane?
This is what happens when you have a Godless society. We live in a post-Christian era. Buckle up bc it's going to continue to get bumpy.
you might want to look at history....christians have done lots of bad things as well.
What our problem is, it is a Lawless Fascists Society! Those in power no longer care about laws...they don't apply.
We rescue the richest when they fail now....2007 is a major nail in the coffin of the USA and the west
do you know how much the Average America owe in Federal Debt?
Federal Debt per
$550,000 Child
$121,000 American
$300,000 Household
You are correct, Christians have done "bad things", but not because they were Christians, because they were and are humans. Humans are inherently flawed and sinful. Morality comes from God, and when He is rejected, morality becomes whatever a flawed human decides it is. If everyone would get up everyday and try and be more like Jesus the world would be a better place. It unfortunately will never happen.
We all do terrible things. That is why we need God. When we no longer recognize that we are sinners in need of savior and we live for ourselves and we continue deny God, we become a terrible civilization. That is where we are sadly.
Succinctly stated!
Having been someone who did almost every drug there was between 1968-1979 with the exception of shooting heroin, I haven't touched a drug since the summer of 79, and stopped in one day. The same with going from two packs of cigarettes to none in one day. It's all about making a decision and sticking with it. You decide, no one decides for you. You hit a point where you say to yourself enough is enough. Unfortunately today drugs are laced with fentanyl, so a percoset isn't a percoset, it's death disguised.
It's bad enough having to take prescription drugs as you get older, but putting unnecessary drugs in your system is just plain ignorance, especially knowing you may be playing Russian roulette. As for Alex's comment about having sex outside your marriage, for any reason, is pure bs. Having been married 38 years and both of us never cheated, if you can't stay trustworthy to your spouse, get out of your marriage, but don't cheat on them. That lowers your credibility to that of the lowest of animals. Trust and accountability is all you have in the end.
Agree 100% with your almost identical addiction history and opinion of the sacrament of marriage. My addiction was alcohol (20 years and quit in one day...along with cigarettes and coffee!). Marriage is hard, it can be very hard. But what worth having isn't. We've had our fair share of battles, but adultery never entered either of our minds (we've been together 31 years). It's all about character and integrity - in all aspects of life!
You quit in one day, every day.
You have to know that in order to succeed imo.
in 2008 when Obama was elected there were 50,000 deaths from Suicide and Drugs
That number is now 200,000. Democrats are pushing drugs, insanity and hatred to drive these numbers up!
They keep saying that every election is the most important ever, but I believe truly that was the most important election in my lifetime and republicans lost bc of the war. Obama changed the culture overnight. And no one has stopped that change. Not even Trump.
thats a good point but the one response that I cant deny is that the changes he brought were popular and people do not want to give them up. Like a bad habit.
What change besides Obamacare was popular? (Not with anyone I know)
take a look at any blue state and the hellscape aour cities have become. the policies have been implemented the results cannot be more clear and the politicians who did the implementing are returned to office every year.
Case in point. what happened to the ruling class that presided over the George Floyd disaster in MSP? They are either all still there or got promoted.
I think many in blue cities are having "buyer's" remorse now. Life has become untenable.
I would like to agree with you but i have two names for you to ponder.
1. Lori Light foot - now at Harvard
2. Brandon Johnson - the guy they replaced her with after "buyers remorse"
Im old enough to point out I saw this before in the 1960-70's and we turned it around. but I have less hope than I did in my generation....who did turn it around.
Keep eyes and ears open. Murmurings that Michelle Obama will replace Biden later in the year as the Democratic candidate. That would mean B. Obama will continue to wield power only more openly. Some think he has been directing some of Biden's policies behind the scenes throughout Biden's tenure. Consider him the Divider in Chief. A true nightmare should it happen.
I think the people who suspect Obama is running things are fooling themselves; they want to believe elections matter and the elected politicians have some say in what happens.
I think the lesson of Trump and Biden is that they are figureheads. When Trump acted like he actually had power, the whole executive branch united against him. Biden clearly isn't making any decisions, and any democrat voting for Biden/Harris is voting to keep the administrative state going as is, not for Biden or Harris to have any actual power.
I've heard that too. I find it hard to believe she would give up her grand life to go back to the WH. She hated every moment she was there. No doubt Obama is directing this administration. Biden can't remember how to exit the stage.
"We are the wealthiest society in human history."
Actually we aren't. The US government is in debt to the tune of $34 trillion with unfunded liabilities of at least another $200 trillion. US consumer debt is over $17 trillion. We're not wealthy. We're broke.
We're the brokest society in history. We have debt that we have no prospect of ever paying off and we have no plans to even try to reduce the rate at which debt is increasing. We're like the children of lottery winners who never tried to preserve their wealth. They just bought more and more stuff for their mansion. We have massive amounts of stuff, all of which was bequeathed to us or which we acquired by borrowing. We don't value it; we don't take care of it; we don't try to maintain it.
Time and cash are running out.
This may seem irrelevant to the topic except that what people need today is resilience. When you're existing at a subsistence level, there is no resilience. Millions of people are experiencing that today. Millions more will experience it tomorrow.
Meanwhile, we have poorly educated, unskilled people coming over the border by the thousands every day, claiming they have a right to what's left. Maybe they do have as much of a claim as our own citizens who have consumed all their lives, but produced nothing, created nothing, and accomplished nothing.
You have to ask the why.
Why is the federal government so deeply in debt - and who does it owe the money to - and why, since 2000, has our national debt spiked at the rate it has?
Once you shift out of that first gear, you'll see there's a lot more. The debt doesn't matter. The control goes so much deeper.
Unlike AL Gore's movie- this is a really needed inconvenient truth. Thanks for taking the hits and publishing anyway.
This column is such a gut punch. I feel like I am watching all of this happen starting slow and then moving very fast. In the morning, I will talk to a colleague who is on her 3rd antidepressant but doesn't seem to think that the pot she smokes each night has any relevance at all to her depression issues. At lunchtime I will walk past a person in maybe his late 20s who looks like he is in a zombie movie and possibly about to kill me- ravaged from hard core drugs. In the evening, I will watch the news and listen to the perky financial anchor talk about how mushrooms are the next big money maker after seeing television ad about a new drug for Tardive Dyskinesia. Then I might see an old man with dementia on the TV who is apparently the leader of the free world. I fully believe that mind altering substances are hastening the end of this empire.
These are wildly important observations Alex. You never fail to deliver. My big worry here is our current world’s stumbling rush into--hell, it’s active encouragement of--immediate gratification. There is no time at all for reflection. We are becoming completely untethered from any semblance of a moral base.
I hadn’t paid too much attention but can’t ignore it now. Gambling and sports. The gambling and betting scene seems to have gone nuclear where there is betting everywhere. There are shows and tutorials on how to bet.
When I watch sports I just want to see the game. Betting is the last thing on my mind. But there are more and more ways being devised to pry money from people by getting them addicted.
Agree.
That and the state-run lotteries that turn every convenience store into a casino.
The people who buy the tickets seem to be the ones who can least afford it.
Alex, all (most?) of the things you describe result in the person involved lacking capacity to continue making a rational decision since they all involve addiction. Once you are addicted there is no way to opt out without intensive intervention. It is just better to avoid the addition in the first place, but it suits the left to have an addicted, helpless class beholden to government handouts for survival.
Exactly...it's an incentive for Government to have people in NEED and to ask those who are not addicted to fund (tax monies) the rising helpless. Its the DEM way to more and more Government agencies
As a teenager in the 70s, my world was all sex, drugs & rock n roll. Date raped dozens of times, high on anything, everyday. Thought I left it all behind to settle down, become a stockbroker & start a family... The 80s flew by, full of just being responsible, but wow... Meth showed up in the 90s... This good Momma loved the energy.. Some kind of divine intervention snuck in & I walked away after 5 years of that crap.. Finally gave up pot & cigs & settling in to wine before bed. When those crutches become a way of life, they become imbedded our cells & souls.. The despair never really goes away.
Proud of you! It’s not easy to “walk away.” Your testimony is valuable - maybe someone who needs to hear will listen.
Thank you... I’m still amazed, 15 years later, but I strongly believe in the power of making a decision, & just doing it. Healing comes along later.. ❤️🙏
Sad world we are living in!
In my experience the causation is the other way around. People resort to drugs and gambling when their souls have already been crushed. The cure for such problems is to restore usefulness and meaning to lives.
Part of the cure is cultural, which is probably unfixable. Part is economic, which can be fixed. Reshoring manufacturing would make a BIG difference. When every city had several factories, ordinary men could MAKE THINGS and see the results at the end of the day. They felt pride in what they MADE.
It is so hard, nearly impossible, to get people to take his seriously. Fentanyl, heroin, coke sure. But grass? No way. Despite today’s “product” being, what, 10 times, 50 times more powerful than that of the 60s and 70s. And gambling. This is an absolutely predatory form of regressive taxation pursued with absolutely no scruples by who? Progressives. We have a particularly sanctimonious sports talk figure here in Chicago who is self-righteously supportive of every supposed progressive social fad who thinks nothing of being an on-air pitchman for the sports gambling racketeers. Ours is a society in a nosedive that cannot or will not see itself honestly. Thanks for taking this issue on Alex.
I have rewritten my comment a dozen times because I have so many thoughts on this, but in the end, I just want to cry.
I try to remain hopeful for our country, but truth be told, I am full of despair. For so many reasons, but this one hit hard. This is a human issue. We are killing ourselves off and marring what's left, all with the promise of a more "open, authentic" view of what it is to be alive. We've all done our experimentation, but this goes well beyond that - there are so many factors pushing people to devolve and feel no remorse, no regret, no responsibility.
What can we do? I hold my kids tightly and pledge to bring them up right - to train them to seek the truth from the source, rather than through this distorted filter. I'll offer up two humans to continue in the vein of perpetuating life rather than snuffing it out.
Maybe this is just a phase though...maybe our cultural degradation will hit a low, people will mourn the loss, wake up and we'll be in a new period of conservatism. A period of values and morality. I don't know. I'm young, and maybe I just haven't seen the cycles turn enough to feel steadfast.