I watch Fox News in the chow hall and the general paranoia and delusion about everything from the financial bail out to the mosque construction reinforces my contempt for the right.
But when I see how the left reacts so gleefully to the wikileaks scandal with disgusting moral relativism, I can only despise them for it.
I’m not really sure what I believe in or where I stand anymore. It seems to me that the great debates in this country were settled a long time ago, but like 5th century fanatics we squabble over slight variations of the generally accepted doctrine. Especially when one compares it to societies where there is an ideological struggle between elements of liberal democracy and those of theocracy or other authoritarian/totalitarian impulses the arguments in our own country seem so crude in comparison.
I’m an American patriot. But I don’t want to choose between hubris and self-loathing. As I read more and more history, I become more and more pessimistic. I used to believe in the “inevitable march of progress”-what a terrible delusion this was in retrospect! Of course there’s been material progress since the end of the Renaissance, but it’s not as if it was some sort of steady process since hominids were banging rocks together.
One only has to read The Republic or the Arthashastra to realize that individual morality hasn’t really changed or progress-human standards of right and wrong have been pretty stable over the millenia.
I’m probably being overly pessimistic, but two words I can’t get out of my mind are bleak and grim.
