Joy in Dark Times

It's not often I talk about political stuff here, but I want to make a tangential exception today. The touchstone of this is the Heller decision from last week. If you're reading this, you almost certainly know what it is - if not, it's the little blip from the news last week whereby the Supreme Court said that the Second Amendment really did mean what it said, and that DC couldn't disarm the people there.

The first response to come to mind when I heard the news that morning?

"Oh good... that means Civil War II has been put off a few more years."

For all the flippancy I said it with... the core sentiment was absolutely serious. I do fully expect another Civil War in this country within the next three generations - and that's a fairly conservative estimate I think. Depending on how things play out over the next few election cycles, it could be as early as 2010 or as late as generations down the line.

Whenever it happens though, I've never been able to shake the feeling that we're about due for another internal rumpus, probably along the lines of the old Irish Troubles. It could have happened in the 90's, but ironically I think Oklahoma City served as enough of an "oh my God... this is for real and people die in this kind of thing" to stave it off - so I think McVeigh served to forestall exactly what he hoped to trigger.

Thank God.

That said, I believe he only forestalled the inevitable. Most of the fuel for the fire has already been laid and has been drying in the sun for decades now - there's been too many promises both public and private that have been made to the boomer generation to be realistically kept, and absent an act of God or brilliant innovation of man, there's going to be an awful lot of hungry angry disappointed people over the next twenty years.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul won't be enough - the Pauls will be angry they aren't getting what they were promised and were counting on, and the Peters will protest at the crushing burden of the taxes that will be required to pay even that fraction Paul will see. So that's the fuel for the fire.

Add to that a culture increasingly fragmented from any sense of common national identity. Forget who's president at any given time - how many people these days in this country have "American" as a fundamental part of their identity? More to the point, you can now get all your news and most of your social contact from such an isolated and self-referential clique all perspective of the greater whole is lost. Think about that for a moment... you can find people who get their news from Daily Kos walking the street alongside those who look to (for instance) Michael Savage - and both would consider themselves and their beliefs "mainstream," the other a radical outlier in American politics. Whatever bias our national media had, I do believe its fading stranglehold on public information has had a fairly significant effect.

For a few years after 9/11 I thought that vengeful split in our identity was at least on the way to being healed... naive me. Now a significant portion of our population actually believes the whole affair was engineered at home for private gain, and the split is as bad as ever - perhaps worse.

So then.. the spark. All this tension building, until at some point, sometime - something will set it off. It could be an election, and resistance to one side or the other claiming dominance - as the federal government gets more powerful, the stakes do get higher. It could be a tax protest, or a Social Security or other social payment "Bonus March." Personally though, I still think the spark that turns arguing into killing is going to be arms confiscation - a "Concord Green" all over again.

When gun rights activists say "Molon Labe" (or the somewhat older "Cold Dead Hands" speech) - they mean it. That's a fact I think a goodly portion of those in Washington simply doesn't truly believe. Nor do they appreciate how truly prolific fighting rifles have become amongst the citizenry. AR-15 pattern rifles aren't the province of a few toothless homeschoolers on compounds here and there across flyover country - ownership grew increasingly common through (and since) the 90's, and these days you'd be hard pressed to find a recreational range without at least a couple of 'em in use at any given time. Cheaper imports of foreign (mostly old Warsaw Pact) patterns are even more common.

Let me put that in more simple terms - most of those are just people having fun. Hobbyists. But at the same time... hundreds of thousands of people every year in this country are to a greater or lesser degree subconsciously preparing for war.

That's not a good sign.

Nor is it something easily stopped - trying to stop it through force will only serve to spur it on - Concord Green is a lasting testament to that.

So here we are.

At least two fundamentally different views of what our country is and should become exist in our culture, and as they both grasp for the federal reins they become increasingly incompatible.

So.. that's why I to this day think we're on a dreadful road, that will lead us to some mighty dark places in the coming decades.



And yet, I remember discussing this very thing with the daughter of a friend once upon a time. "Gosh, you're depressing Jenny" she said.... but later "so why are you always so happy?"

The answer to that one's based in something deeper I think, and is the core of what I meant to write about before getting all distracted with exposition.


Sic Transit Gloria Mundi goes the saying... "so passes the glory of the world."

Nothing human is forever - not our bodies, not our families, not our homes, not our times, not our neighborhoods, and not our nation. It took losing my brother to finally learn that lesson... that to place one's happiness and peace in the mortal realm alone is to court disappointment and sorrow - the best we can thus hope for is to die before all we love decays, dies, or changes unrecognizably before our eyes.

I do hope that my nation survives the coming fires, and maybe even learn anew the purpose of many our forgotten traditions. Perhaps even rise again better than before. I'd like to see that - an American Renaissance would indeed be a delight for us and a great beacon to the world at large.

But if that's not to be, and the light goes out again for a time - well... thus passes the world. The hope and comfort of my life remains in the Divine - that whatever happens here, we are ultimately all in His embrace.

So... give your loved ones an extra hug, admire the sunshine and flowers in the lane, maybe have an ice cream cone. Treasure these times. You never know when they'll end.

Peace and joy be with you all.