[Image: ZigZag, 2013, JA Van Devender]
Isaiah 17:12 (NKJV)
12 Woe to the multitude of many people Who make a noise like the roar of the seas, And to the rushing of nations That make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters!
I'm reading "The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America", by George Packer. I am not far enough into it to give a recommendation one way or the other but his introduction to the work is intriguing.
"If you were born around 1960 or afterward, you have spent your adult life in the vertigo of (the unwinding of the coil that held Americans together). ... Alone on a landscape without solid structures, American have to improvise their own destines, plot their own stories of success and salvation. ... In the unwinding, everything changes and nothing lasts, except for the voices, American voices. ..... "
I will find out soon enough what Packer makes of this observation, but standing with one foot hooked on a wooden fence rail and pondering the road angling out of sight behind the tree line, I could sense the truth of his initial observation.
The world... our world.... our country... is in flux and I have the impression that it is barreling down a road, the end of which is not known. There is, on the one hand, in those who are driving with such reckless abandon, an apparent exhiliration in their freedom to do so. I can almost imagine a car-full of partying men and women, the top down on their convertible, laughing in the rush of cool air, with the music blaring and a bottle being passed around (with the driver taking a swing now and then), flying along the road raising a great cloud of dust in their wake. You know... you just know... that there is trouble ahead ... but neither you nor they can make it out. It's hidden out there beyond the trees. Perhaps a big pot-hole... or a fallen tree blocking the road.... or a large moose or deer which suddenly bounds into their path. They are reckless... suppressing their fear and their common sense in self-deluding preoccupation with the moment.
That's the trouble with the tearing down of institutions. You never know what's going to replace it, or even whether the rubble will just lie there forever.
What Packer notices is that in the past 50 years there has been a deliberate dismantling of those cultural structures which together constituted the unity and identity, both good and bad, of the American (here read - "United States") people. My preliminary opinion about what Packer says is that he fails to distinguish the "evolutionary" changes that transpired before this period and the deliberate, catastrophic nature of the recent past. There is no doubt that the American journey from 1776 (and even before) through 1950 was one of change through various phases, but with an emphasis on an underlying continuity. The rural independence of colonial times necessarily morphed as the forces of industrialization and urbanization moved into prominence. But up until about 1960 there was, even in the face of great internal differences, a common identity that was recognized even if not clearly defined. Americans were "Americans" and just accepted that "fact." Internal squabbles were just that... internal and it was expected, indeed demanded, that "we" together, work them out. No outside help was desired or tolerated.
This sense of uniqueness and identity is that which has been systematically dismantled in such a thorough going manner that it plays almost no role in the widest community of "citizens" today. This deconstruction of our identity has been fomented among our academic elite, embraced by the "young Turks" who swallowed (mostly without question) their ideas, and imposed on the community by politicians who used the tide to float their own boats.
"It's got to change" has been the cry long before it was undertaken as a political slogan in 2008. And there was much that needed changing, but there was also much that needed preserving. I am reminded of the French Revolution and their whole sale burning of the corrupt society that had inflicted so much harm on the population over the years. The blood lust that was let loose was anarchist to its core. That same sense of anarchy is motivating much of the tearing down of institutions today. There is a blind hope that down the road something better will be waiting... and so the car hurtles down that road at an ever increasing pace. But neither those driving the car or those sitting in it have anything more than a pipe-dream fantasy of what will be the outcome of their strategy.
Perhaps it is time for all sense of "nationalism" to be discarded. Perhaps it is time to put together a world society that is linked by bonds of commerce and mutual interest that minimize any distinctions of geography or ethnicity. Perhaps.... but that social order will not just "emerge." There are no evolutionary "forces" at work such that a better world is predetermined by our own social DNA. Destroying the fabric of one social order does not, in and of itself, guarantee that a better one will replace it.
The lust for power will always dominate politics. The lust for power is the internal motivation that seeks to cast aside the bonds of cultural unity, constitutional government, checks and balances in lawful administration. As institutions fall the awareness grows that "we can do anything we want!" This awareness is not tempered by the qualifying phrase - "in tearing things down." A man free of constraint can tear down a wall with only a sledgehammer in his hand. A man free of constraint cannot so readily build a better wall to replace it.
Right now we are surrounded by multitudes of people who are making noises like "the rushing of the sea" (Isa. passage above). A "rushing sea" is chaotic by definition. It crashes on the shore with great destructive power. If it is not regulated... brought under control... it will spend its force and only leave debris behind.
It's time for a dose of sanity. It's time for our politicans to step back and look at what's happening. It's time for our citizenry to say "enough change"... let's get our breath... let's see what needs to be patched and what needs to be built back up. That's what we need.... but that car is racing down the road and I am afraid that the occupants are too self-absorbed to hear or care to hear what a bystander, standing with his foot on the rail, has to say.
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