Our Current Malaise

Our Current Malaise

Clearly there is a malaise afflicting our country.  Though perhaps exacerbated by the corona virus and attendant economic upheavals of 2020, this malaise runs deeper than just these disturbances.  It is endemic to our modern way of life, and has been growing and festering for the past 50 years.

Essentially, many Americans lack the moral and spiritual fiber and “muscle” that their forefathers, as in the “greatest generation”, had. Many modern Americans are self-centered and narcissistic.  They are part of a “gimmee” culture that says “I deserve amenities and luxuries because I was born, and I exist, and I am here”.  The thought of the efficacy of working for these things and earning them has not been taught, or not been absorbed, and hence is of little consequence.

There is no spiritual underpinning to serve as an ethical and moral guideline.  Religion mostly has been rejected as old fashioned or archaic, and not pertaining to “modern” life, and particularly not to the “woke”.  Established traditions and being Caucasian also fall prey to the same sort of rejection or “cancellation” thought process, and elicit guilt, not pride in who “we” are, particularly after learning in our schools and in most of our mainstream media, and believing, that we are a despicable, racist country, rather than a proud American country.

So, a good number of Americans, both black and white, are ripe fodder and “easy pickings” for established and monetized groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa, whose founders and leaders are admitted Marxist operatives.  These groups say that they are against “systemic racism”, but their dialectic equates racism with capitalism, so in fact, they are anti-capitalist Marxist/socialist/communist groups, that are well funded by George Soros and other leftists to destroy our history, culture and heritage, in other words, to destroy our country.

And they are proceeding to do just that.  First by removing the symbols of our culture, like statues, trademarks, iconic names.  At the same time, the “cancel culture” undertakes “thought control”, - seeking out opposing opinions, whether current or 20 years old, and ostracizing the thinkers, authors and teachers, and “doxxing” them or having them fired.  Book burning will probably come next, particularly if Biden is elected and acquiesces in his senility.

Some will say that all of this started when we took God out of our schools and out of our lives, and began to emulate the secular societies of the USSR, China and Europe.  Whatever the cause, we lost our moral compass, and we forgot that the same Marxist philosophy being foisted upon us in our streets and schools, and being accepted by many, is the same one that changed Venezuela, once the wealthiest country in South America, into the broken, dysfunctional, dystopia, that it now is. – And also, this is the same Marxist/Leninist totalitarianism that resulted in the deaths of over 100 million people in the 20th century.  

We need a leader.  A charismatic leader, like Lincoln, or Reagan, and yes, even FDR, to inspire the country and get it out of this morass.  We need city leaders like Rudy Giuliani or Teddy Roosevelt to get our cities back on track.  What we have to be careful of, is that the charismatic leader is not a Lenin, or a Hitler.

Ray Gruszecki

July 15, 2020