The star-spangled monkey house — where toxicity is considered sweet

15 August 2017

Returning to the United States after three years in Germany has been jarring

Germany is sane. The United States is combatively not. Our star-spangled monkey house is burning itself down.

Peter van Buren's blogging departure explains

He wrote that:

I’m going to take a break with this blog.

[T]he Internet has become too boring and too toxic. It is no longer a matter of having a thick skin, it is a question of why bother.

The past election finally broke the idea of the informal interchange blogs thrive on, as it broke journalism. And as it apparently caused most of America to lose its mind.

I also see no real progress being made now that everyone is empowered to insult everyone else. It is not “resistance” to call me names for being straight and white.

The final straw for me is the attack on free speech from the left, the growing sense that the use of violence is an acceptable tool to silence offensive speech as long as you can say without irony your violence is the anti-fascist kind.

I’ll be over here in the corner with a water glass of tequila, watching as we tear ourselves apart, and wondering how long 300 million people can keep the lights on with a near-complete lack of civil discourse.

From the order and competence that characterizes Germany to an . . .

American culture seems to have lost regard for demonstrable fact and legitimate expertise. We have become a society in which imbecilic impulse runs wild. And with regard to this point, I am not talking about President Trump. It is huge swaths of the rest of us, who are the problem. Carl Sagan's 1990s concerned perspective appears apt.

The incivility that bothers Van Buren is largely generated by our curiously enthusiastic ability to ignore the facts which, in past times, somewhat more reliably served to keep people on topic and referencing arguably real "stuff".

Today, in making up whatever we want, we swing wildly. Hostile momentum comes from ever-drifting piles of phantasmagorical sand. Fact-avoidance and amnesia have become widely shared "art" forms.

American culture seems designed to benefit jousting nitwits, rather than reasonably inclined human beings.

The moral? — Inane America?

With Peter Van Buren, I am leaning toward thinking that talking to determined fools is a waste of life.

However, when rational brains depart the national forum, enhanced delusion rules. That can't be good, can it?

PeteFree.com

The star-spangled monkey house — where toxicity is considered sweet