The “kultur kampf” in Amerika is coming to an end, or is it? Is the long Gramscian march through the Academy over? Is there anything left to salvage?
Do we really have any choices any more? Is our culture (in America) really that attractive any more? I heard George Lopez opening monologue the other night and frankly it made me sick. Even the audience was shocked at how frankly stupid and vulgar it was.
How much worse does the Left have to be to destroy their credibility? Marc Ambinder rationalizing away Obama and Napolitano’s credulous imbecilities?
Wretchard, I think you are dead right that the poor in the Third World will pay the steepest price for the political imbecility of America. It is often said that al Qaeda is the externalization of a civil war inside of Saudi Arabia.
I also think that a lot of the turmoil in the financial and political arenas outside the First World countries are a result of a political civil war between the Left and the Right in America.
The absence of logic, the greed, the obscene grotesqueness that have manifested themselves over the past 50 years are consequences of the churning of American politics.
1) the outright ban on DDT condemned millions in Africa, India,Sri Lanka and elsewhere to death.
2) the unwillingness to recognize the root cause of AIDS-HIV infection and the manner in which it has been spread. I remember reading in the ’80′s about “Patient Zero”, who was an infected airline (male) steward who couldn’t be bothered to contain his active homosexual lifestyle, who should have been quarantined; it was estimated at the time that he alone infected over 300 other men. Ah, political correctness. It’s killed millions.
3) And there’s always AGW, which is a menacing intellectual force potentially preventing people in the Third World from climbing up from the muck. Sorry, no cheap electrical power for you, bucko.
4) Finally Joan Rivers as a guest host on the “Tonight Show” in the 90′s. It made us all a lot stupider.
You could balance that with men like Norman Borlaug, one of the truly great men of the 20th century, who made it possible for millions to have enough to eat. But it shouldn’t be a balancing act. Logic, truth, fairness and justice should win more than lose, no?
Salafist Islam will sprout in every broken place in the world, an ideological wildfire that will be out of control. And as you so aptly notice, the Left in this country and the rest of the “West” is handing them matches and gasoline.
I guess we will need more lawyers than Marine Gunnys, huh?
