America United by a Growing Unease

I started to write a column about illegal immigration, which would have been a fairly easy task, considering the latest “up is down” remark, courtesy of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. He actually said people who thumbed their noses at the rule of law, even as they make a mockery of everyone who has emigrated to this country legally, have “earned the right to be citizens.” I was then going to point out how the Republicans are determined to double down on the insanity, emerging from their annual retreat in Cambridge, MD with “a one-page statement of immigration principles,” as if Americans are supposed to pretend every bit of what they propose isn’t already the unenforced aspects of the 1986 immigration law. Easy stuff, but my heart wasn’t in it.

A lot of people know what I do for living, which these days involves a lot more reporting than commentary. To do it right, that reporting requires a lot of research to make sure that what I present as facts actually are. The task is harder than it has ever been, because more and more media outlets have willingly corrupted themselves to promote an agenda. It’s truly remarkable how many times I find myself forced to examine relatively obscure, or extra-national sources, to ferret out the truth.

That task is made even more difficult in a nation where a substantial portion of Americans believe there is no truth at all, only relativity. Or to use the word that has become popular to describe that relativity, the “narrative.”

No group of Americans is more invested in the narrative than the American left.

The most recent example of that investment is Texas governor wannabe Wendy Davis, whose rise to iconic status was predicated on her filibuster of a bill prohibiting abortions after 20 weeks. Davis, we were told, single-handedly extricated herself from the trials and tribulations of poverty, single motherhood, and mobile home living, ending up at the hallowed halls of Harvard law school.

Except that she didn’t. She was raised in a middle class family. Her second husband not only paid her college tuition, but raised their two children, one of which was hers from a previous marriage. He raised them because Davis decided Harvard law school was more important than motherhood. She divorced her husband as soon as he finished paying off her school loans, and the court awarded him custody of the kids. That a court would award a mother’s biological child to the child’s step-father is telling, especially when a large part Davis’s campaign, as it is with most Democrats, is centered around her concern for the children of Texas.

Contrite? Repentant? "Mine is a story about a teenage single mother who struggled to keep her young family afloat,“ Davis contended in an open letter. "It’s a story about a young woman who was given a precious opportunity to work her way up in the world. It’s a story about resiliency, and sacrifice, and perseverance. And you’re da– right it’s a true story.”

If the voters in Texas are dumb enough to buy that narrative – from such a “humble” woman, no less – they deserve everything they get.

Yet the Davis narrative is small beans compared to what the nation as a whole is enduring. Or may soon be enduring. I’d be the last one to tell you that last week’s stock market rout is the beginning of the worldwide financial meltdown that many, myself included, see as inevitable. Without getting into the economic minutiae that bore Americans to tears (trust me, when I want to write a column that no one will read, economics tops the list) suffice it to say that a whole lot of people owe a whole lot of other people trillions upon trillion of dollars in unpaid debt. At some point, one of two things happens: either the debt gets paid off, or it gets repudiated, in one form or another.

Right now in what is referred to as “emerging markets,” there’s some repudiation going on in the form of currency devaluation, which is a polite way of saying that investors don’t believe your money is worth what you say it is, and we’re taking a hike before the bottom falls out. Seems that printing money out of thin air eventually catches up with the printers. The great irony here is that the so-called “safe haven” those burned investors are seeking is the biggest money printer in the history of the world, aka the Federal Reserve. The whole thing brings to mind the phrase, “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

In other words, when the entire world is hooked on Keynesian-inspired, financial gangsterism, safe haven is ostensibly found with the biggest gangster.

And why not? When there is no truth, the narrative that America can continue careening along without a care in the world is a comforting one, especially for the millions of Americans hooked on the biggest narrative of all, namely Hope And Change. Sure, a dose of reality intrudes every once in a while, like a few million cancelled health insurance policies, the lowest workforce participation rate for black Americans ever recorded, or the “tsunami” of store closings expected to hit retail this year. Sure younger Americans haven’t quite figured out that the waitressing or bar-tending job they currently consider a “stepping stone” to a better future is that better future. Somehow, no matter how deep one’s head remains buried in a universe as “big” and “all encompassing” as one’s personal communications device, everything is going to be just fine.

There are days when I try to remember if I were ever that ignorant or naive. Or whether the entire world was that ignorant or naive, seemingly all at the same moment in history.

A home run for writers is when you knowingly (or more often than not, unknowingly) tap into the “zeitgeist,” aka the dominant way of thinking that exemplifies and influences a culture at a particular moment in time. Unfortunately, I think the country is split right down the middle on that one. Half the nation embraces progressivism, which manifests itself on the extremes. On one end, you have the self-absorbed, me first, “whatever, dude” types, for whom the biggest news of the day is the legalization of pot in a couple of states. On the other end you have the one-percenters, who believe it is their calling to tell everyone else what to do, even as they remain completely immune to whatever catastrophic consequences arise from their “superior wisdom.”

The other half of America is wondering who hit the nation on the head with a two-by-four, kicking everything worth living for to the curb in the effort to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” They are simultaneously enraged and awed by something like the notion that illegal aliens have “earned” the right to live here, or that the congenital liar who occupies the White House remains completely immune to the innumerable number of scandals swirling about his administration – or that another congenital liar is poised to occupy the Oval Office in 2016. They feel like they’re getting the lifeblood squeezed out of them by the takers/looters/leeches who comprise the former group, and they wonder how much longer it can go on without some sort of major upheaval taking place.

Yet I can’t help believing that even as the nation remains polarized, there is one thing that does unite us. It is a growing unease, that something isn’t quite right, and that a nation which once believed its future was bright and limitless, will be forced to lower its expectations. It is a nation where we may argue about the size and scope of government, but fewer and fewer of us trust that government to be honorable or decent. And as night follows day, fewer and fewer of us trust each other to be honorable and decent.

As I said earlier, a lot of people know what I do for a living, and they like to ask me what’s going on. Lately my answer has been somewhat self-serving. “Trust me, you don’t want to know,” I tell them. Sadly, for the overwhelming majority of people, that answer is more than sufficient. Sadder still, sometimes I wish I were one of them.

The Patriot Post® · America United by a Growing Unease