Posted on 12/20/2019 3:17:15 PM PST by robowombat
“Us and Them”: The Main Task of the West is Not to Defeat “Them” But to Find Itself
DEC 20, 2019 8:00 AM BY ALEXANDER MAISTROVOY
“The Government of a nation itself is usually found to be but the reflex of the individuals composing it.…For the nation is only an aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of the personal improvement of the men, women, and children of whom society is composed,” the philosopher Samuel Smiles brilliantly wrote in the middle of the 19th century. In other words, the fate of a state or a whole civilization is determined not so much by its political system, but by the set of values and the attitude of its average citizen.
Now let’s look at the average young man of the West. The average millennial hates his/her own civilization’s values, and at same time naively believes in utopian theories. Leftist ideologies flourished in lush color. British Labour and American Democrats look like their predecessors in the same way the Turks of today look like the ancient Hellenes. Traditional spiritual and moral values are trampled into the dust; self-flagellation and ingratiation in the face of modern barbarians from the East turned into paranoia. Churches are turning into mosques. Christianity has given way to new fanatical quasi-religions: globalism, progressivism, the “fight against global warming” and the cult of sexual perversions. Islam, the rudimentary, archaic, patriarchal religion of the desert, has become the fetish of enlightened intellectuals.
The younger generation is completely disconnected from its national culture. Nearly half of 18-24-year-old Britons (45%) didn’t know that Nelson led the British to victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. Half of German teenagers do not know that Adolf Hitler was a dictator; only about half of the schoolchildren knew that West Germany was a democratic state.
83% of Americans polled failed a basic test on the American Revolution. According to the Belgian researchers Jan and Kurt Monten of the Catholic College of Limburg, “young people studying to become teachers know amazingly little about history. Many of them were unable to tell in which century the Second World War took place and confused Zionism with Fascism.”
History is replaced by vulgar phantasmagoria. We read about the British nobility of the 18th century which practiced cannibalism; Italian Jews who committed ritual murders; attempts by British intelligence to turn Hitler into a woman; King Solomon who was Pharaoh of Egypt, Jesus who was King of Edessa; and the Vikings who worshiped Allah.
Destructive nihilism, avant-garde and anti-rationalism in all spheres of human activity have transformed the West, according to Ulrich Beck’s accurate expression, into a society of “substantial emptiness.” The European culture, rooted in ancient philosophy, the cult of experience, logic and reason of Locke, Spinoza and Descartes, the moral and ethical ideal of the Biblical prophets, is equated with the culture of the Berbers, Indians of South America and African tribes. No more “French culture.” No more “Swedish culture.” Oriana Fallaci noted with bitterness that the Somali migrants urinating on masterpieces of Florentine masters were the symbol of the new time.
God was replaced by exhibitionism, as a form of gaining unlimited happiness. The new rulers of thoughts praised schizophrenic thinking, overthrew “suffocating” logic, and declared as irrelevant the concepts of “good” and “evil,” “morality” and “immorality,” “truth” and “lie.” There are no more “boys” and “girls.” There is “Swedish “it” (“hen”); “ze”, as laid down by Oxford University; and the “third gender,” according to the German Constitutional Court. There are “pregnant transgender people” and 15 types of sexes, according to a Canadian Federation of Primary School Teachers of Ontario manual. Barbie is no longer a girl — it is a “gender neutral doll.”
Coevals of those who landed in Normandy 75 years ago locked themselves into “safe spaces” with coloring books, unable to endure the anguish of the election of the “bad president.” Like mushrooms after a rain, infantile subcultures have sprung: Bronies and Furry fandoms, Harry Potter fandom, etc. Universities have become their own parody. One graduate student published the article “The conceptual penis as a social construct” as a joke. This “Study” was greeted with enthusiasm.
Witchcraft, astrology, belief in Lizard People, aliens and the Satanic Temple have become part of the mass consciousness of not-long-ago rational nations. Nearly four in 10 Britons believe in ghosts, 22% believe in astrology, and 15% believe in fortune telling or Tarot. In 1951, only 7% of people believed in such things.
Before the elections in 2013, the National Geographic Channel sponsored a survey to check Which Presidential Candidate [Barack Obama or Mitt Romney] Would You Trust During An Alien Invasion?. 65% of respondents said that Obama would cope better with this task. Supporters of the “flat earth” theory and even cannibalism have emerged to help prevent global warming.
Disney announced that the new “Little Mermaid” will be a black actress. In Spain, Little Red Riding Hood and other classic works are banned because of “hidden sexism.” In Sweden, Astrid Lindgren’s fairy tale about Pippi Longstocking was burned because of “racism.” In the USA, Columbus Day renamed Indigenous Peoples Day.
Foucault’s vision of “transgression” — “the hysterical woman, the masturbating child, the Malthusian couple, and the perverse adult” – became a reality. Classical art in galleries was replaced by paintings with ugly figurines with punctured eyes and buried noses; drawings on asphalt and on bodies; architectural complexes turned inside out with “interiors” made out of sewer pipes and “DJ music.”
This world, according to Solzhenitsyn, was “disassembled to the state of a cemetery, where there is no life, but every single thing or any idea emits smell of decay.” With no foothold, no anchor, lodestar, or safety belt in the form of religious and moral values, modern man drifts, becoming an easy prey for totalitarian ideologies, sects, and banal frauds.
It is not surprising that there is an epidemic of depression among young people in the USA. Every sixth EU citizen has mental health problems, with the majority being in Western Europe.
Curiously, the collapse of the Soviet Union was the beginning of the end of Western democracy. It’s not so surprising.
Whether we like it or not, human societies traditionally have identified themselves according to a simple principle: “Us and Them.”
The presence of a strong and dangerous enemy facilitates the unity of a society, the formation of its spiritual values and prosperity. It happened in Athens during the wars with Persia and in Rome during the confrontation with Carthage. The republican values of the Romans reached their highest peak — they disappeared when the external enemy was crushed, and Rome went on to larceny and ruthless conquests.
We’ve witnessed the same course of action in the USA and in the West in general. It’s only in the face of the “Red Scare” that the democratic ideals of American society and its cohesion were extremely strong. Differences in the approach of the Democrats and Republicans basically disappeared: John F. Kennedy was as resolute as Ronald Reagan in his willingness to confront the Soviets. And even Jimmy Carter — a “soft-bodied” hypocrite — was forced to respond to the Kremlin’s aggression in Afghanistan, rallying the nation.
But the great and bitter paradox of our time is that the deadly threat not only did not disappear, but has become much more real. A new threat, Islam, is much more dangerous and poisonous than Soviet power and the Red Army with its tank armada. Soviet Communism was a product of Western itself, a continuation of Utopian communism, but Islam is alien and absolutely incompatible with Western values. Its main and supreme task is to destroy the West and include it in future Caliphate. It’s not about Iran or ISIL – it’s about Islam as a political-theological system. Their leaders, political and spiritual, don’t conceal their aim at all. Hear them. Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the main preacher of the Muslim Brotherhood: “Constantinople was conquered in 1453 by a 23-year-old Ottoman named Muhammad ibn Murad, whom we call Muhammad the Conqueror. Now what remains is to conquer Rome.” Erdogan (a “big friend” of all American presidents) said that there is no Moderate Islam. Dr. Subhi Al-Yaziji, dean of Qur’anic studies at the Islamic University of Gaza, said that Muslims must “conquer Andalusia and the Vatican” after Palestine.
“The Qur’an is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, Jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal.” So said Mohamed Morsi, who was supported by Obama. Believe them, they don’t lie!
The principle “Us and Them” didn’t disappear. However, our main task is not to defeat “them,” but to find ourselves. If “we” were able to do this, “they” would have no chance. “They” would return to their desert: vicious, soulless, fruitless ghosts of the gloomy past. And vice-versa: the society of “substantial emptiness” will inevitably be subjugated by Caliphate.
Alexander Maistrovoy is the author of “Agony of Hercules or a Farewell to Democracy (Notes of a Stranger),” available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
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