Jericho

Walls Fall

After posting the remaining chapters of my novel eleven days ago I sat back and waited for the comments and criticisms to roll in. It seemed a good time to step away from the keys for a bit and to observe the world without trying to push it around.

There hasn’t been an onslaught of comments regarding About Violence—not praise or criticism or observations—and that doesn’t surprise me, because life is big and busy for all of us. I’ve already moved on and am planning my next novel. I’m currently torn between sticking with Frank Pope and friends through another adventure or tacking off in another direction, maybe attempting something big that addresses the issues I’ll speak of here.

But the news didn’t stop because I wasn’t posting, and I have some observations and thoughts to share.

Watching events unfold in Canada and the US I find myself considering Big Things—the totalitarian temptation that resides in us all, dragging us always toward moralistic fanaticism; the spiritual and cultural rejection (destruction, really) of everything (nihilism) that became fashionable and is now, increasingly, obligatory; youth and a class of preening pseudo-intellectuals pining for, of all things, communism—with a sort of somber awe. It is incredible to watch, in the true meaning of the word. Difficult to believe.

There is evil in the world, great and small, and it seems to me that throughout history great thinkers, writers, theologians and storytellers have all sought to put their finger on the root, the common quality, the unifying characteristic that binds the small evil to the enormous, that connects say, the petty shoplifter to the genocidal despot. My suspicion is that were I to drill down deep enough the cause would, always, be a self-serving lie of one variety or another. Like Frodo with the Ring of Power: I want it. I deserve it. Why shouldn’t it be mine?

Of course, this always begins with lies—lies told to the world, lies told to other people, and lies told to ourselves. How else, I wonder, to explain a preening and pampered buffoon like Justin Trudeau somberly, like a child reading a book report, slandering a group of rugged and hardworking Canadians as Nazis? I watched that performance (and it was a performance) and I was struck by how small and mean-spirited he seemed. Can he hear himself? Does he even know what he is saying? I imagine a child who has been filled with false pride, participation trophies and self-esteem, bloated with self-regard that far outstrips anything he has ever done or ever will do, thinking, “Don’t they know who I am?”

Yes, Justin, I think they know exactly who you are. Better than you know yourself. But you are hardly alone. The world is full of leaders, bureaucrats, and apparatchiks all as lost in their own navels as you are. From Kim Jong-un laying waste to preserve the lie that he is some sort of demi-god to the mounted cop in Ottawa telling himself he is just doing his job while he thinks about his mortgage and his benefits package, it is all delusion. All self-serving lies.

One thing is clear: the left is done with the lie “Workers of the World Unite”. That lie has expired and is no longer useful. We now know how the muddle-headed, nihilistic left reacts to workers uniting. They don’t like it at all. Not one bit.

And, seemingly around the world, the hoi polloi are increasingly willing to throw the bullshit flag and face the music. No, we are beginning to hear, men do not become actual women because they wish to. No, we will not wear masks without any scientific evidence, because we are told to by people who refuse to wear them themselves. Gee...maybe Joe Biden actually is infirm. Hey, you don’t think the Chinese would lie to us, do you? Critical theory looks a lot like straight up racism. Maybe all lives DO matter. Hmmm...we could use a few more cops actually policing. Defunding the police might have been a Bad Plan.

I hear it. You hear it. The rumbles have started.

In business there is a corrupting tendency for the people who count the money to quickly imagine that they are the people responsible for making it. I’ve seen this again and again. Someone with a rudimentary understanding of Quickbooks suddenly assumes they know better than the guy who drives the truck, or lays the tile, or makes the sale because they are the person who counts and dispenses the money made. The gallery owner is better qualified than the artist. The A&R guy is better at music than the musicians.

This is where we are. If the truck drivers go Gault and stay home will Justin get the toilet paper to the stores? If parents take their kids out of the public schools, will the teacher’s unions and administrators settle for home schooling their own kids?

Lies are lies. If we tell them to ourselves or we tell them to each other. They never hold up, because reality does not conform to deceit. The wheels come off.

Humanity may never figure this out for good and all. Maybe we will be forever building castles of egoist playing cards that rise and fall. But we are seeing the very beginning, now, of the collapse of an enormous edifice of bullshit that has been being built for many decades. Like the Israelites shouting at the walls of Jericho, it will be glorious to watch as they fall.

What a great time to be alive!