The World Keeps Not Ending

NRO ^ | 14 Oct 2018 | Kevin D Williamson

[Rummyfan]

The angry partisan cannot believe that life is good, because he must then ask himself: If life is good, then why am I not enjoying it?

We were not supposed to have made it this far.

George Orwell saw night descending on us in 1984. Orwell was, on paper, a radical, but in his heart he was an old-fashioned English liberal. He dreamed of socialism but feared socialists. He feared them because he knew them. I was in the sixth grade in 1984, but I remember the magazine covers and pundit panels, and the insistence that though we had not arrived at dystopia on Orwell’s schedule, that eternal jackboot was sure to find our face soon enough. Tom Wolfe joked that “the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe,” which wasn’t quite right: There’s Saudi Arabia, and China, and Burma . . .

But not here. And, increasingly, not there, either. As our friends at HumanProgress.Org remind us (to little thanks — nobody is less popular than an optimist) the world has in fact become more democratic and more liberal since 1984, rather than more autocratic and more illiberal. Orwell was the better writer and the more profound thinker, but Aldous Huxley was the better prophet.

[Rummyfan]

[Diana in Wisconsin]

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” ~ Robert Frost :)

With or without you! ;)

[dsc]

This guy is not very bright.

[ZinGirl]

God, not man, dictates

[Bigtigermike]

This guy is spot on! People (pessimists) are always screaming that it’s worst off than it’s ever been before and that they’ve been scaring people more so over pet political angst rather than anything truly going on wrong, like the libs saying how it’s all horrible and terrible because of trump and they must be uncivil and cause unrest when they’re just big babies not getting their way

[dsc]

People (pessimists) are always screaming that it’s worst off than it’s ever been before

How old are you? Do you remember the 1950s?

[Bigtigermike]

Read the essay. He’s talking about the doom and gloomy crowd crying havoc or certain doom is around the corner throughout the various generations up to now

[House Atreides]

“...But many of the people one encounters at such events (from Occupy Wall Street to the tea-party rallies) are categorically unhappy, bereft and adrift in a way that is only tangentially related to politics. They turn to politics to provide a sense of meaning that might once have been provided by family or religion, two anchors from which many of us enlightened moderns have cut ourselves away....”
*************************************
Sorry but this idiot NRO writer is TOTALLY WRONG regarding tea-party rally participants. And conflating them with Occupy Wall Streeters is idiotic. I guess that the National Review denizens will never be able to recognize the GOODNESS of Tea Party folk AND Trump.

[Theophilus]

Well it only has one shot at ending. Once it's over, it's over.

[foreverfree]

Bump

[dsc]

“Read the essay.”

I read the essay, puerile as it was.

“He’s talking about the doom and gloomy crowd crying havoc or certain doom is around the corner throughout the various generations up to now”

Sometimes things really do get worse. Nota bene the Weimar Republic, the Great Depression, the Irish potato famine, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Dismissing reasonable concerns on the ground that “every generation says that about the younger generation” appears reasonable, but when things really are worse, it’s just head-in-the-sand idiocy.

Things really are worse. They are poised to get much worse yet. This idiot is no better than Neville Chamberlain (speaking of things getting worse).

[sauropod]

bkmk

[hinckley buzzard]

Williamson? I think he’s the guy who decided that the white middle class deserves to die.

[Ken Regis]

knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” (2 Pet 3:3,4)

And More:

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. (2 Pet 3:8-10)

There's even more to learn about it. You should read it.

[HotHunt]

".... People (pessimists) are always screaming that it’s worst off than it’s ever been before and that they’ve been scaring people more so over pet political angst rather than anything truly going on wrong...."

Think climate change alarmists.

[BradyLS]

“I don’t understand. The world was supposed to end three or four times by now! Nukes, disease, glowbull warpigs, New Nice Age... one of those! I believed the hype! Why are we not beating back waves of zombies? Why am I getting fatter if I live in a food desert???”