Americans in the Age of Parody

There has been a replacement of Christianity and other freely expressed religions by a secular faith that scourges the expression of faith as blasphemy. Demanding public expression of bowing to the "law" (see Mosaic)

"In Africa, a human being is more important than an animal. I don't know about the Western world." Jean Kapata, minister of tourism of Zambia.

"We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." George Orwell

Can there be any more damning commentary on who we are as a nation than a review of the some of the candidates who are seriously being considered as candidates for the presidency? Hillary Clinton,

I'm glad I'm not the editor of The Onion because it's becoming increasingly difficult to top each morning's headlines.

What motivates average Americans. Dinesh D'Souza's experience while serving time

You can't make Adam Sandler movies anymore. they would be considered documentaries" (House of Eratosthenes) Kyle Smith, New York Post, quoted in House of E.

A Navy Lt. Commander who exchanged fire with Islamic terrorist in 'Chattanooga charged with discharging fire arm on a federal facility.

Archibald Macleish quote "the only nation constituted on an idea..."

Who we are, who we were, who we've never been.

Let me start by noting who we've never been. We've never been "a nation of immigrants," really. From the founding of this nation we were, in AMcL's phrase, "The only nation constituted on an idea etc.... That is who we were in most of our history. We could be characterized through that history in many ways as we scandalized, intrigued, angered and puzzled the world. Who are we now? That, as Hamlet once noted, is the question. I certainly cannot give you an answer over today's lunch. From the perspective of 74 years, 35 of it spent as a journalist in Washington and the last 15 spent as an ordinary citizen in the small Western Pennsylvania town where I was born, I must confess that I am less hopeful than I once was about what I once believed was a deep and abiding store of common sense and common decency that would always come to the rescue of the American people. I can say that we are not as serious or mature as we once were. More frivolous, more sentimental, more like mists driven by the winds. I am fully aware that, speaking to this merry band of philosophers and thinkers, I can really say nothing o. But I can only report from the front lines, so to speak, that i find us so anesthetized by our freedoms and so dis-addressed from our politics that we barely notice or dully accept the growth of what Burnham called the "managerial class" and the steady infringement on our freedoms and our livelihood by these people who know better than us how we should live.

We always lived a life scripted (a hidden script) of shared rituals, experiences, even habits. "clothes to go to Sunday school in" We studied Hamlet and Macbeth. A sense, however dim of our chronology from the Revolution, through the Spanish-American war etc. We saw our founding fathers as heroes. We believed in our Constitution. We did not have to understand everything about it. We had a confidence, a shared belief in its protections.

We tacitly accepted and even enjoyed the script and at the same time we embraced and even celebrated the ad libs, the departures from it. (Hoarding brothers in NY) Burt's Bees, faintly crazy guy who built Mt. Rushmore, hometown homos, reading the Hardy Boys, understanding that making friends of our enemies did not mean subscribing to the ideology or belief that had once made them enemies (civil war reunion at gettysburg). Some how Memorial Day meant more, You may dismiss anecdotal evidence, but some of it is real. It burns through, it endures because it is genuine.

We counted on the cues in that script. We trusted them. They held organizations together. We were hurt by departures from them, dishonesty in a business dealing, failure to show up, small matters of honor etc. We had a Christian sense of righting wrongs, seeking and giving forgiveness

Somehow we've descended into immaturity, excessive sentimentality; when did it begin, when men began wearing cargo shorts to church? Look at old high school yearbooks from the 30s and 40s into the 50s. Look at the senior pictures and you see young men and women aspiring to be adults, instinctive mistrust, having to learn or re-learn what was once given. And yet, we have the truth and great truths at our fingertips -- literally -- but, as has often been observed we look at videos of cute cats and clever dogs and fight with people we do not know.

ways life today is a parody. unsecure borders and sanctuary cities, legalizing marijuana, a Democratic party so far left that the wife of a former president would have to renounce most of the positions of her husband (well, actually that's not a good example) a transexual on a magaziner cover, a rainbow lighting of the white house. military cutbacks Fordham head of theology department marries male partner, who would believe we would have Russia on the rise, Islamic Terrorism, Chinese hacking and would instead be pre-occupied with removal of the battleflag of a pseudo-nation defeated 150 years ago. would anyone believe we would be scratching our head over whether the Chattanooga shooter was a Muslim let alone that he was a terrorist? In Iowa a middle school "conference" on bullying turns out to be a seminar on homosexual practices, including showing girls how to sew plastic male testicles into their underwear so they can be a "male" for their lesbian partner. they were taught the joys of analingus and anal sex. In New York a woman EMT fails to pass the fire academy physical test twice but is given desk job making twice a firefighters starting pay and allowed a third crack at the academy. Denouncing POW-MIA flag as "racist."

A president can brag he ended the war in Iraq on tape, numerous times, and then deny that he said that. It's on tape! But he denies it happened.

We read the the University of New Hampshire now has a bias-free language Guide" which puts as undesirable such words as "American," "mothering," "fathering" homosexual (they should be called "same gender loving") "healthy" (the preferred term would be "non-disabled")

Remember hall monitors? Some of them eagerly embraced their duties to be come little tyrants. Now it seems those are the ones in charge.

Microaggression. I thought that was what My tiny airfix soldiers. Germans invading my living room.

Would anyone believe that there would be moves in Congress to remove such archaic "gendered terms" as "husband" and "wife" from all federal documents?

The age of parody can be summed up really in two words Hillary Clinton. This is not a serious person. This is blind ambition on (very thick) stilts (yes, that's a snarky reference to her legs).

From a small town perspective, I see things working barely. Cemeteries falling into disrepair. Fighting hard at the fire hall to keep volunteers. The decline of service clubs. Everyone looking for a "grant" or subsidy or government incentive for what they once did out of a sense of moral obligation or general altruism. Very few people with a real sense of where money comes from.

It used to be one could count on small town America, but in many small towns and cities there is a look of despair and disuse. Too many people seem to be just hanging around, doing nothing. There are towns around me in which the majority of people seem to be on some form of assistance. We slowly begin to accept as the norm a society less vigorous, more pleasure bent, more frivolous a society subsisting on its dwindling productive members, counting on their softness. the state abets their impositions. A cab driver tells me that he spends most of this time driving drug rehab people to various errands under the guise of going to rehab.