Crisis of West THREAD
“The crisis of the West consists in the West’s having become uncertain of its purpose. The West was once certain of its purpose—of a purpose in which all men could be united, and hence it had a clear vision of its future as the future of mankind.
We do no longer have that certainty and that clarity. Some among us even despair of the future, and this despair explains many forms of contemporary Western degradation."

—Leo Strauss, 1963 (Introduction, The City and Man)
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the UN.
Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite...

Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end?”

—Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, 1978 (Harvard Commencement Address)
“This national feeling is good, but it won’t count for much, and it won’t last unless it’s grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge.

An informed patriotism is what we want.
And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American.
And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions...[but] things have changed...Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized it...
I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.”

—Ronald Reagan, 1989 (Farewell Address)
And here we are, hurtling on.

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More from @docMJP

16 May
The obstacle to correcting & preventing gross injustices like what Apple just did to @antoniogm=there’s currently no corrective force—no penalty or punishment—that rises to the level companies like Apple have to really care about.

We will change that.

newfounding.com
It will take time. But such incidents need to make these companies bleed out a little more in public opinion with at least half nation and give high octane fuel for partial but real replacements products and services to gain as part of a concerted alternative parallel economy.
Like this should be a national guerrilla ad campaign tied to CTA for specific alternative products and markets:
Read 4 tweets
12 May
When all this happened in the 1970s, even mainstream entertainers flirted with patriotism and dissent over and against the incompetent malaise-Borg. The divide has sharpened, yes, and we are in deeper ways worse off now. But make no mistake—real resistance is rising.
It’s not just that if you are concerned you are not alone—you are NOT alone—but it’s that they can’t keep dissent bottled up forever no matter how many fingers of control they try to plug the holes in the dike with. It’s going to start flowing out into the mainstream.
The right is feckless, yes, in the face of the rolling cultural revolution spurred by woke zealots and encouraged by our shameless oligarchs—but people also resent gross incompetence. Trump ain’t President and the 2 Minutes Hate for the Bad Orange Man ain’t gonna cut it no more.
Read 5 tweets
11 May
After decades of hearing about “choice” and “stunning & brave” odes to abortion, etc. the sick irony is that women with kids (too many!, too young!) are the ones who take all the slights in our culture from all our major institutions. The real intolerance is clear enough.
And so much inner peace, happiness, & fulfillment on display surrounding all these women w/o kids—affirming the ability & choices of other women to have kids, of course. After all, U.S is in midst of historically low birth rates + older than ever which will cause massive problems
So we should be happy for those able and willing to choose life, no? Instead of believing laughable but convenient lie of a PSYOP about how low birth rates are good, acktually?
Read 4 tweets
11 May
We need new models of local community that support families and family formation, remote & local work, & physically encourage actual local/regional political self-government—that old notion is a distant memory. We need new/better as in beautiful but still functional architecture.
What this will take practically is higher political powers/leaders prioritizing the creation of such space/slipstreams here and there instead of going with the flow and doing the usual garbage. Experimentation with new models arising from acknowledgement of the problem.
Will also take communities forming or becoming more intentional by actively congregating and demanding solutions. Doesn’t have to get weird. But will require far more engagement than usual & exercise of more leadership/action that is the norm. Often based around existing networks
Read 6 tweets
10 May
Thread. A lot of people out there are "just trying to live life" after being proverbially blown apart at some earlier point in their lives with a shotgun like Arnold does the T-1000. You might not even realize you are one of those people. Or that you pulled the trigger. Or both.
1 of central themes of The Odyssey is a kind of civilizational PTSD as Greek society tries to live again in aftermath of Trojan War. There's much weeping & wrestling w/guilt & grief on the part of all the decent people, heroes mostly. Idea of *long-suffering* permeates the work.
"Long-suffering"=resolving &/or just bearing non-physical burdens over long periods of time, i.e., human life. Our vain & rather primitive silly materialism doesn't help us here. We don't get it.
Read 7 tweets
4 May
Haunting thread.

Future historians, not current ones, will retrieve and dig up the layers of the last century.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ne_me_qui…
Listen to it...

Then listen to the best female version:

Read 4 tweets

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