I find restraint difficult in the context of current humanitarian crises linked to purposeful actions by American leaders. I have to comment.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Prussia (Germany) passed a series of laws designed to limit the influence of religion, specifically Catholicism. Bismarck’s government engaged people in a culture war that resulted in the expulsion of Jesuits and sundry religious organizations, including groups of nuns. Forced out of the country by an intolerant government, five Franciscan nuns boarded the SS Deutschland in 1875 and perished when the ship wrecked.
To paraphrase Gerard Manley Hopkins who wrote about that shipwreck in “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” I’ll say that on August 16, 2021, as it did on that December day in 1875, hope has grown gray hairs. In Afghanistan, a panicked crowd attempted to board an Air Force plane in an attempt to escape the sinking ship of the Afghani state in a different version of the Bismarck government’s anti-religious laws. This time it was a group of extreme fundamentalists that, in imposing a theocracy, forced the exile. This time the departing ship was not an ocean-going vessel, but an US Air Force troop transport plane. The world watched as Afghanis tried to board the enormous plane as it taxied on the tarmac, some clinging to its belly until they fell to their deaths as the massive plane climbed. They risked and lost their lives in anticipation of implacable dire consequences of remaining in Afghanistan with no American protection.
Does it bother you that the people “in charge” often acquire a sense of entitlement born from a retinue of “yes-men” and ideologues? Does it bother you that those in charge sometimes think they can impose a wishful reality on actual reality? Are Americans being led by a generation of gamers whose developmental reality was Tron in an affluent nanny society? Has a culture in which even many of the poor have more luxuries or conveniences than the rich had a century ago shaped a generation of dreamers out of touch with the harsh realities of a world outside an Xbox or PlayStation console? Take the current Administration’s comments for what they imply about its level of wisdom. Essentially, spokespersons for the Administration said they didn’t expect the fall would happen as fast as it did. What? “As fast as” implies that the Administration knew the fall was inevitable. If the Administration knew the Afghan government was likely to fall, why did it not evacuate those Afghan allies and NGOs from the country to avoid a Vietnam-style panic.
The disaster in Afghanistan comes upon us in the context of social engineering, a movement that dominated the airwaves for the last two or three years. And that disaster piggybacks the one on the American southern border, where over 1.2 million people, including unaccompanied minors and people sick with COVID, have crossed into the country since January 20, 2021.
The Kulturkampf of the current milieu is one between the forces of common sense and those of failed ideologies like socialism. The current American administration decided that it is important to fight a culture war against those who disagree with its “new morality” concerning social issues, such as the use of public restrooms, transgender women on women’s sports teams, use of gender-appropriate pronouns, and unrestricted abortions paid for by tax dollars. The Administration’s perceived enemies are those who would protect the country’s borders against the intrusions of drug and human traffickers. Under its supposed empathy for humanity, the current Administration has caused humanitarian crises at home and abroad. And, as in all culture wars, this Administration has the support of compliant and willing propagandists: In Bismarck’s day, the newspapers; today, the social, network, and cable media.
There will always be culture wars. Some of those wars, like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, result in persecution, reductions in human freedom, humanitarian crises, and even deaths. Are we now witnessing the modern analog of the wreck of the SS. Deutschland?
What will be the consequences of the current Kulturkampf at home and abroad? More innocents forced to flee and perish on ships doomed to wreck?
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Prussia (Germany) passed a series of laws designed to limit the influence of religion, specifically Catholicism. Bismarck’s government engaged people in a culture war that resulted in the expulsion of Jesuits and sundry religious organizations, including groups of nuns. Forced out of the country by an intolerant government, five Franciscan nuns boarded the SS Deutschland in 1875 and perished when the ship wrecked.
To paraphrase Gerard Manley Hopkins who wrote about that shipwreck in “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” I’ll say that on August 16, 2021, as it did on that December day in 1875, hope has grown gray hairs. In Afghanistan, a panicked crowd attempted to board an Air Force plane in an attempt to escape the sinking ship of the Afghani state in a different version of the Bismarck government’s anti-religious laws. This time it was a group of extreme fundamentalists that, in imposing a theocracy, forced the exile. This time the departing ship was not an ocean-going vessel, but an US Air Force troop transport plane. The world watched as Afghanis tried to board the enormous plane as it taxied on the tarmac, some clinging to its belly until they fell to their deaths as the massive plane climbed. They risked and lost their lives in anticipation of implacable dire consequences of remaining in Afghanistan with no American protection.
Does it bother you that the people “in charge” often acquire a sense of entitlement born from a retinue of “yes-men” and ideologues? Does it bother you that those in charge sometimes think they can impose a wishful reality on actual reality? Are Americans being led by a generation of gamers whose developmental reality was Tron in an affluent nanny society? Has a culture in which even many of the poor have more luxuries or conveniences than the rich had a century ago shaped a generation of dreamers out of touch with the harsh realities of a world outside an Xbox or PlayStation console? Take the current Administration’s comments for what they imply about its level of wisdom. Essentially, spokespersons for the Administration said they didn’t expect the fall would happen as fast as it did. What? “As fast as” implies that the Administration knew the fall was inevitable. If the Administration knew the Afghan government was likely to fall, why did it not evacuate those Afghan allies and NGOs from the country to avoid a Vietnam-style panic.
The disaster in Afghanistan comes upon us in the context of social engineering, a movement that dominated the airwaves for the last two or three years. And that disaster piggybacks the one on the American southern border, where over 1.2 million people, including unaccompanied minors and people sick with COVID, have crossed into the country since January 20, 2021.
The Kulturkampf of the current milieu is one between the forces of common sense and those of failed ideologies like socialism. The current American administration decided that it is important to fight a culture war against those who disagree with its “new morality” concerning social issues, such as the use of public restrooms, transgender women on women’s sports teams, use of gender-appropriate pronouns, and unrestricted abortions paid for by tax dollars. The Administration’s perceived enemies are those who would protect the country’s borders against the intrusions of drug and human traffickers. Under its supposed empathy for humanity, the current Administration has caused humanitarian crises at home and abroad. And, as in all culture wars, this Administration has the support of compliant and willing propagandists: In Bismarck’s day, the newspapers; today, the social, network, and cable media.
There will always be culture wars. Some of those wars, like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, result in persecution, reductions in human freedom, humanitarian crises, and even deaths. Are we now witnessing the modern analog of the wreck of the SS. Deutschland?
What will be the consequences of the current Kulturkampf at home and abroad? More innocents forced to flee and perish on ships doomed to wreck?
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