The signs are everywhere that the United States as both a country and culture has a serious problem with the legitimacy of its governing structure and habits and values if its citizens.
THE PERVERSION OF LANGUAGE
In many countries, assets are publicly owned which generally means that anything large scale, like a hospital or road or bridge or even a cell network, is both funded and owned by the government. The government IS the people collectively and so they do things as a group. Group dynamics, however, are not uniform around the world and so a piece of public infrastructure build under the Soviets and a piece of infrastructure built by the Norwegians might be very different.
In the United States, we have had a long tradition of private ownership and responsibility for most building projects except the highways which includes the bridges. And so, a hospital is the responsibility of the hospital corporation, even of that corporation is a church, but the bridge you cross on the way to the hospital is the responsibility of some level of government. The larger the obstacle the bridge crosses, the larger the bridge needed and therefore, the larger the governmental agency responsible. WE do this because we want crossing the bridge to be free to all.
No obstacles in North American are more significant that the mighty Mississippi River, and so the bridges that cross it are a federal responsibility. There are only 130 or so of these bridges along the 2300 mile river, and they are all big, complex, heavy and expensive, but also critical to carrying on American life. They are a quintessential piece of public infrastructure and so one might think their care, maintenance, and financing would be sacrosanct.
But under the broken and illegitimate American political system, we can’t agree on what constitutes infrastructure and so financing and maintaining critical infrastructure is falling by the wayside even as the forces of gravity and nature wear on these critical bridges. The bridges are cracked, decayed, and in danger of failing.
The term ‘infrastructure’ the current American President says, has to ‘evolve’ to cover new things, like broadband and daycare and this gets to a critical problem in governance which is vocabulary. If we can’t agree on the basic meaning of words, or worse, we are abusing the meaning of words to hide the political outcome we are seeking, then politics is impossible, and only brute force remains.
Perverting the term ‘infrastructure’ is only the latest attack on language. We’ve evolved language to the point that there is precious little common ground on meaning. Abortion is now defined as ‘choice’. ‘Family’ is now defined as any group of people who regardless of how temporary, are grouped together. ‘Marriage’ is any two people who care to link for whatever reason and regardless of how short a time period. ‘Children’ are 24 year olds who get health insurance from their parents. ‘Immigrants’ are anyone who can physically get inside the border regardless of intent. ‘Person of color’ has no definable characteristics. A ‘right’ often means getting things for free. Justice means ‘social justice’ which is a political outcome unrelated to guilt or innocence. ‘Sexual assault’ can be done without even in being present. Words are equated with ‘violence.’ ‘Equity’ means getting a part of something that wasn’t earned.
It just goes on and on, the never-ending redefining of things to achieve an illegitimate political outcome.
But ‘infrastructure’ is not daycare, it’s roads and bridges and we all know it, and when a bridge falls and kills everyone on it, or must be closed, the consequences stop being political and start being very real world indeed. Nature isn’t political, and neither is physics, and you are able to cross the river or not. I would define the attacks on language as ‘abuse’ but we can’t agree on what that means either.
DESTRUCTION OF CURENCY AND STORE OF VALUE
The government printing presses are churning out dollars and devaluing the dollar’s ability to be a stable store of value and in response, everything else is going up in value. This is inflation and it is particularly harmful to the young and the poor.
The reason for all the new money is, in theory, the pandemic but it was the costly lockdowns that created the harm to the economy and the efficacy of the lockdowns is its own legitimacy crisis. Regardless, it is a horrible attack on the legitimacy of the dollar that is bringing ruin to both the irresponsible and the responsible together. Illegitimate countries manipulate their currency for strategic advantage but truly malign countries screw their own citizens by devaluing the currency through non-stop printing. The US is now doing both.
DEVALUING OF CITIZENSHIP
Our border is like our printing presses; every new person dilutes the value of citizenship for the people that are already here. A country is not a physical location; it’s a collection of people. The United States is a place and a nation of citizens who have certain rights and privileges that come with citizenship.
But our federal government is simply allowing people to vote themselves in to the citizenry but not securing the southern border; people who cross the Rio Grande activity seek out the law enforcement agency that is meant to close the border to any traffic that isn’t authorized and the authorized traffic should be serving the needs of the current citizens.
But, of course, that is not what’s happening. Illegal entrants are welcomed, housed, and then as far as anyone can tell, released in to the country. Legitimate citizenship, which is what I have via being born here, is being denigrated with each new illegal entrant.
We are housing illegal immigrants in hotels right down the street from homeless encampments made up of legal residents. Is there anything more profane?
DECLINE OF WORK
People will not work because they can get by without work. That lives were harder in the past is clear enough, and an advancing society may well become more comfortable, but we’ve reached the state where government gives away so much stuff for free that a person can get food, clothing, and shelter without work.
This is a broadside on the legitimacy of working. In the meantime, the government has promulgated the idea that everyone SHOULD GO TO COLLEGE and college has made people think success is doing a job indoors and sitting down. These ideas have delegitimized what was bedrock American culture captured in the cowboy ethos; tough, strong, resourceful, and outdoors.
Legitimate citizens work and a legitimate government encourages it and regulates the labor markets to make them profitable and safe. Our government does neither and the citizens have responded in kind.
DECLINE OF PROCREATION AND FAMILY
Finally, even procreation itself is failing under the assaults on the idea of motherhood and the abdication of responsibility men have towards their own kids. These trends, combined with the bizarre and unscientific notion of changing gender, is resulting in multitudes of childless demi-adults.
That it takes a biological male and female to make a human baby is clear enough and while humans can get around some of the barriers to procreation with science, it’s certainly quicker and easier to follow the natural guidelines to making babies and it by design, pleasurable and deeply meaningful to make children and then nurture them to adulthood.
We defined marriage as love and family as anyone who lives under the same roof, but that’s not how it works. If marriage is part of a continuum (we’re dating, we’re having sex, we’re engaged, we’re married, we’re fighting, we’re divorcing, we’re divorced) and kids are just complications in this mix, then the kids are hostages to the shifting sands of relationships. This is not a legitimate way to approach male/female relationships but it’s the norm. Legitimizing any combination has resulted in the decline and fall of fertility and child bearing. The result of all of this is the full extinction of civilizations.
No kids = no future, full stop.
OUT-MIGRATION
All of these pathologies stem from the same set of causes, and yet the clear signs of decline have produced from the political entities that run the country an impulse to double down on dysfunction. The American population grows more feeble and childlike by the day. The world is not all like this, and there are cultures fighting back and demanding adult behavior from their adult citizens. The United States used to be one of those countries but today it is not.
Americans who want to live in a functioning democratic republic have options, and they are exercising them; that was captured in the last census. People are leaving the progressive dysfunctional states and going to the states with the more open and freedom loving cultures. But the rot is at the federal level and there may be nowhere to flee to in the coming years.
And so there are three options: the country will recover its dignity, or the country will break up, or many citizens will find another country to invest their hopes and dreams. My forbearers came to this country from Germany before there was a nation of Germany and before there was a nation of the United States and they did so because of the warring and instability. I want what they wanted; legitimate government and ambitious fellow citizens who are building and growing peaceably together. They found it and so will I but it doesn’t have to be here. I have no desire to live in an illegitimate failed state inhabited by the suicide cult of the woke elite who have no shame in attacking every part of our common heritage.
tomroushonline.com 