The Cold Civil War: Now In Multimedia Form!
Back in the summer of 2010, I did one of my rather more involved Silicon Graffiti videos on the topic of the “Cold Civil War.” In retrospect, I wish I had done this video as a two-parter, given the number of elements I was juggling, including the Tea Party, Palestinian “Pallywood” video productions, and flip-cam gotcha clips. But the overall theme is that modern wars are fought in two places, on the physical battlefield, and inside the TV screen and computer monitor:
I certainly don’t claim any credit to the title. As I mentioned in the video, author William Gibson wrote the phrase the “Cold Civil War” for one of his science fiction novels in 2007. That led blogger April Gavaza, also known as the “Hyacinth Girl,” to pick up on the concept a year later. Mark Steyn would then put the phrase into wide dissemination via the Corner and his own Website. In the comments to my video, a reader pointed out that Ayn Rand used the phrase in the headline of a 1962 L.A. Times column.
Today, Michael Walsh runs with the topic at NRO, via his left-wing “David Kahane” alter-ego:
Dedicated as we are to striking, destroying, poisoning, and destabilizing, we naturally flocked to a party with a long criminal history such as the “progressive” Democrats had, and their admirably “flexible” and “nuanced” approach to such arcane notions as law and truth and morality and standards of right and wrong. It was like a permanent “get out of jail free” card, a form of atheist indulgence buying, but instead of sinning no more, we went out and sinned our tushes off.
Up was suddenly Down. Black was suddenly White. In was suddenly Out. How wonderful it all was. We never thought of the consequences, because consequences are for later and we are for the here and now. It’s no accident that one of our standard rejoinders when you lot objects to one or another of our social experiments that we’ve just implemented, usually by judicial fiat, is: “Well, the sky didn’t fall, did it?’
Only one thing stood, and continues to stand, in our way: you.
And by you I mean principally the other half of the Baby Boomer cohort, the ones who didn’t, like Satan, rebel. Some of them, a few, were like the angel Abdiel, who flirted with joining the insurgents but quickly repented and returned to the Enemy camp. But most of them just got up in the morning and went to work, dealing with reality as if it were, you know, reality, instead of the elaborate artificial academic construct we had fashioned. Unlike us, the constant kvetches, they never complained. They worked for ten cents on our dollar, their backs worth less than the penny for our thoughts, and still the fools were under the impression they were living the American Dream. Try as we might, and we did, to convince them otherwise, they believed in this country, believed in American exceptionalism, believed that their children would have a better life, believed — even when, like Abdiel, they slipped and fell — in the power of redemption. And even though we laughed at them, they persisted, which is one virtue we certainly know how to respect.
So the Cold Civil War continues, unto the generations, which would be mine. Because unless you finish us, we are most certainly going to finish you.
Read the whole thing, particularly since Occupy Wall Street is very much a rehash of the blue-on-blue late ’60s, with the radical far left “Occupiers” battling earnest liberal businessmen — and they’ll all go into the polling booth with the hopes of reelecting President Obama next year.
The reason why those of the Kahane ilk (though Kahane himself is “fictional”) are not going to be able to keep whatever “prize” they think they are going to be able to win is the same reason that enabled them to challenge the system in the first place–”The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.” Between the future and the past is today, and the Progressives having discredited the past, forget they themselves are the past of a future that has not yet happened. They, you, me–all of us–are already someone’s ancestors–its just that the future hasn’t happened yet. We build that future every day, with every decision we make.
And those of that future are not going to be focused on sins of the past we find abhorrent but that have since been corrected, but on the sins of their *own* present that stand uncorrected–sins we bequeath them. They will not care if Thomas Jefferson did this or Reagan did that, because if the Kahanes win then those things will have no power, and thus will be neglected in the mass. What they of the future will care about is that which prevents them from living the life happy–the world the Kahanes give them. If the notion of American Exceptionalism is killed once and for all in the present day, the fact of American Under-exceptionalism will still nevertheless be readily apparent to the future, because they will have to live it–and there will be those who have to go and fix it. And I doubt they will not call upon for advice those who most recently caused the problem.
Therefore, the “rebels” still don’t have a chance, never had a chance, never *will* have a chance, for that which cannot work simply will not work. But something, in every time, has to actually work, and if it does then some people, somewhere, will eventually adopt it. Its called evolution. Thus, American Exceptionalism is the Undead–it simply cannot be killed, because once upon a time having been proven to work, it will eventually (and always) be returned to. By somebody. Somewhere. It might not be *American* Exceptionalism the next time around, but it will be somebody’s Exceptionalism, because the idea isn’t dying, because it’s the one that works the best. And it will only take a cycle or two of rising prosperity, too much soul-searching, and resulting disaster to happen for the idea to stick permanently. It took Athens to show how pure democracy can be a bad thing. If it takes the West to show the dangers of what happens to Republics that become prosperous, well–at least someone should benefit. Eventually.
Should be “I doubt they will call on advice on those that caused the problem.” Woops again.
Unfortunately, reality, like nature, cannot be fooled. The “social democracies” of Europe are on the edge of collapse. They’ve built an unworkable system, a constantly expanding welfare state funded by a currency no country can print (and thus inflate) while retarding the economic growth that could’ve bailed it out. It’s going to implode, the EU pols are just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic but they are doing nothing to stop the rising water.
At the other end of the world, crony-capitalist China is taking on water. Unlike 2008, it will not be able to save the global economy from the abyss. The leadership will not be able to save itself. All those Tom Friedman columns, down the drain.
The US may end up the winner because it is the LEAST badly off. But not across the board, as capital flees imploding states like California, New York and Illinois for greener pastures.
New battle lines will need to be drawn. The old war will be called off without a victor because a more pressing one will begin.