Can America be restored? How does a soul, whirling into nothingness,
stop the process of decay? How can a country, degenerating from within,
turn around? Is it possible?
It is far better and easier to raise a child well than to restore adults and a country that have become a spiritual and mental wasteland. Some human beings pass through severe trials and manage to turn their lives around. Consider, for example, some alcoholics, whose lives had become a restless voyage on “a sea of booze,” who by the grace of God and their utter cooperation with their “higher power” stopped drinking and learned to live soberly and with spiritual purpose. Victory is never gained once and for all, but one must engage in an unending journey out of the darkness of addiction and spiritual emptiness and onto the upward path of difficult and unending spiritual growth. Real life demands enormous mental and spiritual effort. Life is not for the spiritually lazy.
Spiritual turn-around and renewal are heart-wrenchingly difficult tasks for any human being. For a culture of death to become a culture of nourishing life may be well near impossible. More many-worded speeches by politicians whose main attribute is their ability to deceive the masses and the media elites will accomplish nearly nothing of any good, but in fact contribute to the decent into a spiritual wasteland. Promising so much, these politicians in truth deliver next to nothing of any true and lasting goodness. These politicians can rake in and redistribute enormous wealth under cover of the law, but they cannot help human beings out of the spiritual morass in which we live. The damage they do is in convincing people that they have solutions they do not have, and that they have healing powers they do not possess. These men are deceived deceivers, and in time their deceptions increase the cynicism and alienation visible in many Americans. These charlatan-leaders people all walks of life in our country, and the most deceptive among them usually rise to the top in their chosen profession. Why? Because they are more willing to deceive, to use fraud, to cheat, to lie, to use power to weaken enemies and to advance their “cause.” These maniacal leaders make ever-greater promises, and dupe ever-larger numbers of people. So rather than help cure spiritual and mental illnesses, they mask problems and keep us from setting about to the real and proper task of recovery.
It is far better and easier to raise a child well than to restore adults and a country that have become a spiritual and mental wasteland. Some human beings pass through severe trials and manage to turn their lives around. Consider, for example, some alcoholics, whose lives had become a restless voyage on “a sea of booze,” who by the grace of God and their utter cooperation with their “higher power” stopped drinking and learned to live soberly and with spiritual purpose. Victory is never gained once and for all, but one must engage in an unending journey out of the darkness of addiction and spiritual emptiness and onto the upward path of difficult and unending spiritual growth. Real life demands enormous mental and spiritual effort. Life is not for the spiritually lazy.
Spiritual turn-around and renewal are heart-wrenchingly difficult tasks for any human being. For a culture of death to become a culture of nourishing life may be well near impossible. More many-worded speeches by politicians whose main attribute is their ability to deceive the masses and the media elites will accomplish nearly nothing of any good, but in fact contribute to the decent into a spiritual wasteland. Promising so much, these politicians in truth deliver next to nothing of any true and lasting goodness. These politicians can rake in and redistribute enormous wealth under cover of the law, but they cannot help human beings out of the spiritual morass in which we live. The damage they do is in convincing people that they have solutions they do not have, and that they have healing powers they do not possess. These men are deceived deceivers, and in time their deceptions increase the cynicism and alienation visible in many Americans. These charlatan-leaders people all walks of life in our country, and the most deceptive among them usually rise to the top in their chosen profession. Why? Because they are more willing to deceive, to use fraud, to cheat, to lie, to use power to weaken enemies and to advance their “cause.” These maniacal leaders make ever-greater promises, and dupe ever-larger numbers of people. So rather than help cure spiritual and mental illnesses, they mask problems and keep us from setting about to the real and proper task of recovery.
Considering the unfolding of
life in America since the Second World War, if one looks honestly and
well, he will see a pattern: in all walks of life, in all of the
formative industries and pursuits, increasingly degenerate and
deceptive leaders have risen to the fore. Whether one considers
politics, media elites, the educational establishment, or mass
entertainment, one can see the same pattern: the men and women who
should set examples of noble character and guide our people to more
healthy, more life-enriching pursuits, are in fact often so full of
themselves, so full of self-seeking, self-preservation,
self-absorption, self-exaltation, and sheer power-and-wealth seeking
that they have been helping to liberate Americans from God and reality
and ground us further in the emptiness of our own self-inflated
delusions. Consider, for example, how popular television transitioned
from fairly harmless light entertainment in the 1950‘s into what has
been on public display for several decades: propaganda encouraging all
sorts of deviant and destructive “life-styles” (which are really various
ways of dealing death). Consider the array of self-important
politicians over the past fifty or more years, and wonder how can any
country survive, let alone thrive, under such mental dwarfs and
pretenders. It seems that the only way to get and to maintain
power--the primary goal of our politicians--is through deceptively
promising far more than they can or will deliver. And “we the people”
are duped, again and again. We the people are we the deceived.
Given this pattern of the rise of incompetent and self-deceived and deceiving “leaders” in various walks of life in America, how can there be a genuine cultural revival? If governments, educational establishments, religious institutions, mass media and entertainment industries, and so on, are more often the source of greater corruption than of genuine mental and spiritual growth, what can be done? If institutions such as government and churches which should enrich and renew actually mislead, deceive, and further destroy, how can there be spiritual renewal? Is our country in fact doomed to pass away, the victim of its own material successes and sheer spiritual emptiness?
Perhaps. No one knows the future--i.e., what will develop in time. It is possible that our country will be conquered by a more energetic, spiritually-focused society. It is possible that we will tear apart from forces of division within, and more or less dissolve as a people in history. It is possible that we drag along for decades as an enlarging cesspool of personal, moral, spiritual corruption, held together by power and manipulation. It is indeed possible and perhaps likely that more noble souls will opt out of social life, as they realize that active involvement does themselves and others virtually no good. It is possible that increasing doses of political power and psychologically manipulative force will be applied to a decultured, decadent civil society that will not control itself; and then America, “land of the free,” will become even more a land ruled by sick and self-seeking totalitarians. What increasingly looks and feels like an insane asylum will become a vast prison governed and peopled by destructive criminal types.
Perhaps. No one knows the future, but the course on which we are set looks dark and destructive, perhaps frightening to some. Yes, there are still to be found in our midst some better, self-giving, generous men and women. But these more healthy souls have increasingly little effect on the American way of life. Goodness is marginalized by socially predominant forms of evil: love of power, greed, violence, deception. The sicker types are prevailing and coming to the fore in the socially predominant walks of life. That is the reality that shows up, and can be seen by anyone who cares to look.
America, look and see what you are becoming: not “a shining city set on a hill” to give light to the world, but a spiritual wasteland mired in self-destructive forces.
As things stand now, my guess is that the United States of America is passing away, killed by its rejection of God and of reality, and immersion in its decadent and destructive self. As is said, “time will tell.”
Given this pattern of the rise of incompetent and self-deceived and deceiving “leaders” in various walks of life in America, how can there be a genuine cultural revival? If governments, educational establishments, religious institutions, mass media and entertainment industries, and so on, are more often the source of greater corruption than of genuine mental and spiritual growth, what can be done? If institutions such as government and churches which should enrich and renew actually mislead, deceive, and further destroy, how can there be spiritual renewal? Is our country in fact doomed to pass away, the victim of its own material successes and sheer spiritual emptiness?
Perhaps. No one knows the future--i.e., what will develop in time. It is possible that our country will be conquered by a more energetic, spiritually-focused society. It is possible that we will tear apart from forces of division within, and more or less dissolve as a people in history. It is possible that we drag along for decades as an enlarging cesspool of personal, moral, spiritual corruption, held together by power and manipulation. It is indeed possible and perhaps likely that more noble souls will opt out of social life, as they realize that active involvement does themselves and others virtually no good. It is possible that increasing doses of political power and psychologically manipulative force will be applied to a decultured, decadent civil society that will not control itself; and then America, “land of the free,” will become even more a land ruled by sick and self-seeking totalitarians. What increasingly looks and feels like an insane asylum will become a vast prison governed and peopled by destructive criminal types.
Perhaps. No one knows the future, but the course on which we are set looks dark and destructive, perhaps frightening to some. Yes, there are still to be found in our midst some better, self-giving, generous men and women. But these more healthy souls have increasingly little effect on the American way of life. Goodness is marginalized by socially predominant forms of evil: love of power, greed, violence, deception. The sicker types are prevailing and coming to the fore in the socially predominant walks of life. That is the reality that shows up, and can be seen by anyone who cares to look.
America, look and see what you are becoming: not “a shining city set on a hill” to give light to the world, but a spiritual wasteland mired in self-destructive forces.
As things stand now, my guess is that the United States of America is passing away, killed by its rejection of God and of reality, and immersion in its decadent and destructive self. As is said, “time will tell.”
