I’m not sure I’ve ever listened to a Bad Bunny song. I’ve never watched a sporting event the whole way through, either. But somehow, the faux-anger from social conservatives and liberals is inescapable.
It’s high time we acknowledge that social conservatives and progressive liberals — the type most aligned to the corporate anger machines — start from a place of collapsed personal character. It is a social catastrophe on par with ecological deforestation and polluted waterways.
When individuals have no sense of rootedness or purpose, they’re left with no requirement or restraints except those imposed by the government. There is no cultural requirement for most Americans today to work in their communities, or, even to stay in one place for most or all of their life. This transience is not good for the country. And it shows.
For most of modern history, liberals have sought freedom from personal constraints. Conservatives desire freedom from economic constraints. And through it all, both sides have failed to recognize the looming failures and risks posed by the government of corporations.
We’ve become a populace composed almost entirely of people who are needy, greedy, envious, angry, and alone.
Instead of recognizing that we’ve been seduced into this corporate desire for consumption and consumerism that led to this vapid loneliness, both sides now snipe at each other on flimsy absolutes that are indefensible.
I’m reminded that after Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago was published in 1958, Pasternak received the Nobel Peace Prize. The Soviet Government wasn’t happy about that, so they condemned it, banned the book, etc.
Thomas Merton wrote in Disputed Questions then:
Communism is not at home with nonpolitical categories, and it cannot deal with a phenomenon which is not in some way political. It is characteristic of the singular logic of Stalinist-Marxism that when it incorrectly diagnoses some phenomenon as “political”, it corrects the error by forcing the thing to become political.
Seems when people have their focus directed at something for a while they start to imbue the old logic of warfare. Corporate systems (algorithms, TV, media, etc.) forces people to think of others as their enemies and makes everything political, even when it has no reason to be.
We have become as adept as the Soviet Union at inventing a sexual, cultural, and mental politics that extends far beyond mere policy and ways and means. And we’ve forgotten that the basis of the First Amendment is that people’s thoughts and beliefs are of no legitimate interest to the government.
Our forefathers tried to limit this intrusion into our homes. Instead, everyone embraced it wholeheartedly, allowing all manner of superficial thought to stream directly into their minds.
I am in no favor of big government. But we’re beyond big government. We’ve moved into an era of unlimited government, where political forces extend into every aspect of our lives and souls and intertwine with corporations-as-government for total government control.
