Wimp Nation: Poised to Fall
By Fred Reed
An
example of pathological masculinity, male privilege, substance
abuse, and patriarchy with overtones of violence against women and
people of color, as well as probable homophobia. May drive a truck.
October 30, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - Come morning, I
receive emails from friends documenting the curious social
transformation coming over the US. These missives usually accompany
links to some new tragicomic antics. E.g.,
Harvard, once a university, lets students invent odd pronouns to
promote gender equity. “He” and “she” represent oppression and lack
of inclusion.
Recently a friend, a Harvard PhD, wrote and said,
“It’s not funny anymore.” I thought, and realized that, no, it
isn’t. Things that seemed the obsessions of the occasional
lugubrious neurotic are so common that they represent a change in
the national character. It is eerie. Something strange is
happening.
What now is the national character? What
sort of country is America today? A country of rugged individualism?
Land of the free and home of the brave? A nation of the independent
and self-reliant?
Let us start with Brave.
“Student wearing Halloween costume
prompts Pueblo County
school lockdown“
“Pueblo County High School was on lockdown for
more than an hour Wednesday after authorities say a student was
apprehended wearing a trench coat and gas mask.”
Or
Panic strikes school
after student says ‘gum’
“A student at Lehman High School reportedly
asked for some chewing gum, but another student thought the
student said “gun,” KCEN
reports.
“No gun was found and Hays County, Texas school district
spokesman Tim Savoy insists the school was never in “lock down,”
though school administrators did “hold students in their
extended class periods to investigate….”
Rugged? Not even close. Obesity is so common that
the Army has trouble finding recruits. Professors complain of the
emotional fragility of the young.
Colleg Sttudents
Call Police, Seek Counseling After Seeing Mouse”
Or
They cry if they don’t get A’s.
The new gender-neutral Navy. Don’t you feel
safer? I do. Not sure of the gender, though.
Psychologists note a surge of narcissism among the
young. Students in universities need “safe spaces” where they won’t
hear any word or idea that upsets them.
“In
College and Hiding from Scary Ideas”
Somebody might do a microaggression or commit a
racial slur, such as saying “watermelon.”
The United States has become a nation of weak,
pampered, easily frightened, helpless milquetoasts who have never
caught a fish, fired a gun, chopped a log, hitchhiked across the
country, or been in a schoolyard fight. If their cat dies, they call
a grief therapist. Everything frightens Americans.
Independent? No. America is a nation of employees,
afraid of the boss, trapped by the retirement system, worried that
if they lose the job they won’t get another one.
Farmers can be independent. So can mechanics with
their own tools, commercial fishermen with their own boats.
Employees sitting in a maze of cubicles like letters in some
gigantic crossword puzzle are not independent.
Self-reliant? Americans now depend on the hive for
almost everything. The faucet leaks? Call the plumber. The car makes
funny noises? Go to a mechanic. Someone is sneaking around your
house at night? Call a cop. A porch light stops working? Call the
electrician. You saw a mouse? Call a psychiatrist. Self-defense?
Dear God, no. Too macho.
Further, Americans cannot feed themselves. If any
catastrophe–revolution, war, epidemic–breaks the link between the
two percent who work on farms and the cities, within a week New
Yorkers will be eating each other.
Individualism? America is among the least
individualistic countries on the planet. The United States
discourages everything reflecting difference, whether architectural,
political, or cultural, often under heavy penalty. It is the land of
indistinguishable shopping malls, of burger chains and tract suburbs
of a hundred identical houses. Urban architecture means the office
block. Casper looks like Des Moines looks like everywhere else. When
a region like the South stubbornly tries to maintain its identity,
the hive forces it to conform. I am reminded of what I believe to be
a Japanese proverb: “The nail that stands up is beaten down.” We are
more a nation less of nails than of thumbtacks, though.
The ferocious American hostility to individualism
is most virulent in the form of political correctness, which
requires that all of us think the same things. The universities are
worst, and they are the future. Once, unpopular ideas were argued
and freedom of speech respected, however grudgingly. Today we have
the pack mind.
Beyond the insistence that everyone should be like
everyone else is the insistence that everyone already is
like everyone else. No differences exist between men and women, sex
being a social construct, and thus women should be in the Marines.
Differences of race do not exist, race being a social construct, so
if members of one non-existent race do not do as well at physics as
members of another nonexistent race, we must on racial grounds hire
them as physicists anyway under affirmative action, since
differences are social constructs.
Home of the free? America is controlled, watched,
and regulated to a degree unimaginable in 1960. Speakers on subways
admonish us to watch other passengers for suspicious behavior. We
dance barefoot in airports. Cameras read our license plates and mail
us tickets. Freedom of speech? Say anything interpretable as a
“racial slur” and you lose your job. Truth has nothing to do with
it. You are a reporter? Criticize Israel and you lose your job.
Offend the proliferating sexual curiosities and you lose your job.
Surveillance cameras are everywhere. Freedom of religion? Overt
Christianity is almost illegal.
“Ten
Commandments Removed from State Capitol per Oklahoma
Supreme Court”
You are not free to decide what your children are
taught in school. If you suggest that Sojourner Truth was not
perhaps as important to civilization as Aristotle, your children
will be horrified and, if they mention your heresy at school, you
will probably have a visit from Child Protective Services.
Democratic? As Stalin had show trials, America has
show elections. These serve to distract the public while keeping
them away from issues of importance. Who do you vote for if you want
to end the wars, halve the military budget, end affirmative action,
get the government out of family life, control criminal minorities
who burn cities, and slap down NSA?
Strong? America actually wants weaklings.
“Students
warned: Bulging
biceps, big guns advance unhealthy masculinity”
But in today’s America, any masculinity at all is
unhealthy.
Healthy masculinity. The new America.
The United States, in a historical first, has
turned the pyramid of civilization upside down. Universities,
instead of seeking the qualified, actually look for the unqualified.
This latter is needed to open the gates to the
“disadvantaged,” meaning the stupid. And it has worked marvelously:
Forbes: “America’s
Millennials Are Among the World’s Least Skilled”
Specifically, they are short on literacy,
numeracy, ability to follow simple orders, poor at solving problems.
Oh good.
This ménage of middle-school delicates is not the
country that fought World War II, or Vietnam. It is a jellyfish
threatening to collapse under any serious stress. Corrupt, seriously
divided racially, the middle-class sinking, ruled by fools and
kleptocrats, a house of pudding cannot stand. Scared, fat, weak,
fragile, narcissistic, herd-minded, prissy, censorious and,
increasingly, ignorant. Deliberately ignorant. This is wonderful
stuff.
It warms a curmudgeon’s heart.
Fred, a keyboard mercenary with a disorganized
past, has worked on staff for Army Times, The Washingtonian, Soldier
of Fortune, Federal Computer Week, and The Washington Times.
http://fredoneverything.org