Monday, June 29, 2020

Vox Popoli: A skinsuit cannot survive


The fact that a Christian American country survived unrest in the past says nothing whatsoever about the ability of a post-Christian, post-American state to do so now:
America has survived unrest before, but that was a different country. It had a white, Christian super-majority and a shared history. It had at least a theoretical chance of working out a modus vivendi with its black minority. The language was English and, most of the time, we played by a set of rules to which everyone—liberal conservative, Democrat or Republican—agreed. Elections were not winner-take-all apocalyptic events. Nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court did not occasion brutal, partisan, ideological war. No longer.

If we bank solely on electoral politics, we will lose, especially as the demographic ring closes. The winners will show no quarter.

Political life as we knew it in America is over. Again, the America we grew up in and loved is dead.

The irony here is that the author quotes Sun Tzu about the importance of knowing one's enemy, but never once dares to utter the name of that enemy. Which tends to underline why Americans lost their country and why other European nations are now at risk of losing theirs; as long even the most die-hard right-wing conservatives still give lip service to "judeo-christianity" and "civic nationalism", there is no chance of ever winning any battle.

For Sun Tzu also says: “If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

That being said, while we can, and should, mourn the civilized society that was lost, we should not be surprised that it did not last. It could not last. For as another Chinese sage observed: “The empire, long united, must divide.”