It has been a recurring theme for me that feminism has promised women for decades that if they adopt feminist positions and make them a reality, then the lives of women will magically get better. But they keep winning and yet women keep getting more and more miserable. The solution is never to step back and ask if feminism actually works, it is to insist that what we need is just more feminism. So they get more feminism, women become more miserable and the answer is always the same.
The Zman had a recent post that made me do some noodling. Titled The End Of The Road, he ponders the idea that the West has won and it is all easy street from here, a common school of thought following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The West won the Cold War, before that liberal democracy vanquished fascism and imperialism in World War II. What we thought were “our values” were ascendant and we were victorious. Today in 2019 that victory is starting to look a little hollow. Z says….
The West is noticeably less free today than it was thirty years ago. The ruling class is rushing to close off political debate and free expression. In the name of democracy elites are sending gangs of thugs to harass and assault people exercising their democratic rights. In the name of capitalism, a narrowing group of oligarchs are exercising control over large swaths of the economy. The surveillance state is reaching levels unimaginable thirty years ago.
In the shadow of this growing authoritarianism sits the political and cognitive elite, unable to come to terms with what is happening. What is remarkable about the current age is the public debate, the officially permitted one, at least, is irrelevant to what is actually happening in the world. Three years on and the American media is still talking about invisible gremlins supposedly hypnotizing voters in the 2016 elections. Meanwhile, millions of barbarians pour over the southern border and the public space collapses.
Who would have predicted that 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Evil Empire (and it was evil) that we would be seeing freedom evaporating everywhere we look and the people who made the world safe for democracy would be losing that democracy and actively being replaced? I mean, we won! Not only did we win but our victory made the world better for almost everyone. Global poverty is drastically reduced. Life expectancy is up. More people are free and have elections than ever before. This is the golden age of raw consumerism, you can buy anything under the sun and have it delivered to your door, usually for free and often within two days. We have endless entertainment.
Meanwhile people are depressed and killing themselves with alarming regularity.
My working theory is that most people in America are just aimlessly walking through life. They have no purpose, neither individually or collectively. The only people who seem to have a purpose are the Communists and they are trying to destroy America, not lead her back to greatness. There is no frontier to tame, no continent to settle. We did the moon landing and we are getting too stupid to go back, much less go to Mars. The Soviets are vanquished and in spite of desperately trying to find a new supervillain or fighting whichever next Most Dangerous Nation Ever™ that Israel tells us to, there simply isn’t a realistic enemy to fight.
What exactly is our purpose other than paying taxes and buying stuff? This is what “winning” feels like? We fought the World War and won the Cold War, making the world safe for democracy, so we can be scolded for our civilization and be forced to bow down before whatever sexual degenerates they decide to parade in front of us?
We are starting to wonder if winning is all it is cracked up to be.