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“τὸ κακὸν δοκεῖν ποτ᾽ ἐσθλὸν τῷδ᾽ ἔμμεν‘ ὅτῳ φρένας θεὸς ἄγειπρὸς ἄταν”
Your classical Greek a little rusty? Mine too. Remember Dr. Fauci? Me neither.
“Evil appears as good in the minds of those whom god leads to destruction.”
From Sophocles’ play Antigone:
Often written, those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad. This is the play where the grieving sister wishes to bury her brother but is forbidden to do so by the King. She does so anyway to a terrible reckoning. That’s why they call it, “Tragedy.”
You can tell a lot about Greek myths and plays by knowing what the names of the players mean. Antigone’s name means “worthy of one’s parents” or “in place of one’s parents”. She stands in as the adult in the room. After a period of breast beating – she’ll do the right thing despite the consequences. Her brother, Polyneikēs’ name means Much Strife. When an adult confronts much strife, an insoluble problem will be resolved despite the ugly, permanent consequences.
Last week’s debauch from every bloody street corner saw gangs of masked infants engaged in a national tantrum. A St. Vitus Dance of Virtue signaling, murder and cunning violence.
All for the dead guy killed by imbecilic, callous cops. His totally preventable death was merely an excuse for the after-Party of primitive release.
Alas, no adults appeared out of the smoke to lead the children back to their romper rooms where they can do no harm. Today there’s a slight pause in the mayhem as the children are tired from their urban cavorting, requiring nappy time, cookies, and a juice box. Figure after a well-earned day of thumb-sucking, chances are a good bit of play time will resume, despite the inevitable stories of “massive peaceful protesters” blaring from every screen and phone.
That means more terror in any city where revolving door arrests let the rioters back on the street. But is there anything left to burn? We’ll find out.
In any case New York City is not coming back for a generation, if ever. Paladin knows at least two families planning to flee. Figure many, many more. In a city of millions, anyone who can depart, will – hundreds of thousands will leave and never return. Adding to the hundreds of thousands that already have. The death of civilization can be seen in the numbers:
We have lived to witness the sack of Rome. Eventually quiet will return and before long the city’s charming, nostalgic ruin will be admired by artists, tolerated by those who remain behind, or enjoyed by tourists who visit the Game Park to feed or hunt the wild native species.
Woefully for all of us (the part where we’re in it “together”), the brutal strategy/tragedy of our children’s Tantrum Style is that this behavior, this “style” is not a harmless fashion statement like man dresses, shaved heads for BLM supporting women, and nose rings for their boyfriends, but the acting out of an ongoing death wish.
And the consequences terminal and permanent.
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Yes it has been an exhibition of the self-indulgent behaviour one sees in toddlers. In the past every parent was expected to engage in toddler-taming as a primary necessity so their brat[s] become fit for entry into broader society and develop some self-control and respect for others. However that has been less and less the fashion over the last few decades so that the behaviour of brats, not to mention The Brat, has come to be seen as an expression of precocious individuality and ‘self-expression’. Adults are meant to be in charge, but many of the the so-called adults have abandoned their duty during this crisis, especially opportunistic leftist politicians who may be hoping for some political advantage against Trump, but, I suspect, their lack of spine will be held against them by sensible voters.
“but, I suspect, their lack of spine will be held against them by sensible voters”. And by the Brats themselves. See Frey’s grovel perp walk yesterday. Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment.
An interesting take but I do not dismiss the “brats” out of hand. Far more destructive has been the infiltration of almost every aspect of our lives and civilization by the radical left, a process that has spanned decades.From the media to the boy scouts, from academia to sports, the left dominates, a spreading malignant cancer. The thuggish movements, antifa and BLM, now represent the growing tendency for the disease infecting our civil polity to take a more violent turn. What is worse is as you pointed out, the lack of leadership to stop them, a result of the democrat party being taken over by radicals and the lethargy of the GOP. The choices left to those conservative Americans who wish to preserve the rule of law, the Constitution, and the free enterprise/liberty paradigm, are do we go out with Bang, a whimper, or get off of our apathetic posteriors and shut the left down. Rome went through many periods when it seemed the end was near (e.g., the period of the four emperors, the war on two fronts and a plague with Marcus Aurelius, Diocletian). Somehow they lived to fight for more centuries of life. In fact the Eastern Roman empire continued until 1453 when the Europeans abandoned it to fight alone against the Turks.
The civilizational Stockholm Syndrome and Thanatos-urge on display would be bad enough if these people could merely restrain themselves to carry out their self-destructive desires alone. They can’t. They won’t.
They want to die–but they want us to die, too. Suicide isn’t enough for them, not even as a melodramatic grand gesture. They’ve got to take us to Hell with them too. I wonder if any of them thinks of himself, in his heart of hearts, as a tragic hero, Samson pulling down the Temple of Ba’al on himself and the Philistines.
I’m over fifty and these people have been throwing this tantrum since before I was born. I am tired of people making excuses for Orcs who want to smash civilization and loot the ruins–and want me to have to live in the ruins afterward, if I survive the initial assault. I have tantrum fatigue. I have Orc fatigue.
These people have been psyching themselves up to start another Civil War in this country since the 1960s. A part of me wishes they’d get on with it while I’m still young enough to enjoy CQB.
Indeed, dangerous brats, more like wounded, or hydrophobic, or diseased rodents. The rodents are sick, and the fleas are worse.
But the American way of life still has a lot of power and resilience to it. But NY, CA, IL and other places are going to go through a very rough patch for a while.
How dare you display your privilege OR QUESTION OUR MORAL AUTHORITY–because Reasons.
It seems each conservative moving out of a liberal city is Antigone—in that he must bury all expectations of his brother’s ability to think.
Whoa! What an insight.
It would be O.K. if the fleeing urbanites were not nutty progs with no actual life skills. The realtors here in Vermont have been busy, busy, busy of late and it looks like we sensible Vermonters are going to have to put up with another rush of city people who have no idea how to deal with an iffy water supply, balky septic tanks, and stores that close at 6 or 7 pm and don’t sell arugula anyway. These are the people who ask the rest of our villagers who to hire to wash their homes’ windows, as if we on the farm sub that out to someone. Wash your own darn windows . . . and mow your lawn, and rake your leaves and do all the other things the rest of us do as part of life. And learn to grow your own arugula.
Home grown arugula is THE BEST!!! And we have the same prob here, but we’re a lot closer to the city.
Donna’s take on the fleeing urbanites is spot on. I don’t mind that they want to hire someone to do their chores–they support lots of handy folks–but I do mind that they bring their ridiculous liberal ideas here while fleeing the destruction those same ideas caused. Stay in the cesspool you created and leave our little quiet home towns alone!
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