I have an idea…
I have found the secret to a right and proper fugue state.
Two weeks ago I finished ‘Atlas Shrugged’ by Ayn Rand. It is a story that bears spooky resemblance to the events in the news today. There are details in this book, written in 1957, which predict almost exactly the predicament in which we find ourselves. There are speeches and concepts elucidated therein, spoken by characters set up as dunces and the root causes for the downfall of the then future society, you would swear our own ‘leaders’ penned them.
One week ago I finished ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Written in 1925, I thought while I read that it was naught but an entertainment, a diversion from the more important and foreboding work I had just finished. It is a story of wealth and idleness, and the demeaning influence of both.
Without thinking, I wandered back into dour territory by then reading ‘1984’ by George Orwell. We all read it, classic book. They still teach that book, don’t they? Heavens, it might be worse than I know.
Taken as a whole, this reading has reinforced the sense I have had for the last year that we are skittering off course in a way that is not unforeseen, and was in fact predicted decades ago. It is natural, and a logical extension of common sense.
We are living the exact consequence of people not taking responsibility for their actions.
It is depressing the way we went from a tough guy culture self-sufficient and motivated to a culture of people who think that they are owed something by virtue of the fact that they exist in the span of two generations.
Decisions of value are things of the past, and we have moved into a place that the founders of this country specifically wanted to avoid. Look at the machinations we had to allow and absorb to create the conditions to make Charlie Rangel possible.
Ach!
