Richard Fernandez’s column from yesterday afternoon accomplishes two things: it gives one a clear-headed assessment of what the future seems to hold and it sends shivers up the spine that threaten to become chronic.
This is the key part [although I do recommend you take the time to read the whole column]:
War, Famine and Pestilence all obey the laws of physics. The media, government and the academy have heretofore cared about the laws of political correctness and the tyranny of appearances. Now we get to see who wins. In recent years it has become fashionable to claim the Narrative trumps reality. Yet you can’t bribe viruses, can’t “hide” infectious victims, can’t appease dictators and you can’t print money. As I’ve written many times before, nobody beats arithmetic.
Not even Saudi Arabia. If the Saudis don’t act rationally then the Haj can become one giant virus distribution system, their K street lobby notwithstanding. If Obama doesn’t close the border, if something can come along, something will come along . Something like Ebola, which if unchecked will teach the Boko Haram and ISIS that chopping off people’s heads and having sex with hundreds of kidnapped African schoolgirls isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
The narrative of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is often given a mystical interpretation. But it can be viewed as a straightforward secular warning against folly. According to Billy Graham, the First Horseman is the great liar, the false prophet, the anti-Christ. But even if you’re not a Billy Graham fan, and even if you hate him, it’s easy to see how a venal government, a debased culture, a system of self-deception can lead to famine, pestilence and war.
Corrupting the information store will get you every time.
It may be happening already. As I noted elsewhere, for the first time since the Second World War, globalization is contracting. Air routes are being trimmed to detour around the threat of surface to air missiles posed by the Islamic world and on the Russian border. Diseases know the difference between real and paper countries. Liberia has announced the closure of its borders, and disease knows it has no borders.
ASKY and Arik, Emirates Airlines and British Airways have halted flights to West Africa. And unless the situation is physically reversed, more and more destinations will be declared off limits. The map of Africa may slowly become blank again. Unless the trend is reversed the global elites will eventually reach the point the Chinese called ‘losing the Mandate of Heaven’.
That’s the point when people impeach their leaders not on the basis of party affiliation but on the basis of whether they want to physically survive an epidemic or not; when competence finally matters. Perhaps we’re already there. Charles Krauthammer observed that things have reached the point when ’no one cares what Obama says’, adding he’s “almost animatronic”, like those plastic dinosaurs in a theme park, acting out his theme park presidency.
We often forget that the sacred texts of mankind began as practical documents. They were checklists. And we may well rediscover this fact before the end. One can imagine the last two postmoderns crawling towards each other in the ruins of a once great city to die, and while waiting to expire engage in conversation to pass the time.
“Waldo,” the first said, “do you remember that tablet displayed in front of the Texas Statehouse. You know, back when there was a Texas?”
“Yeah, didn’t it have a whole bunch of stuff scrawled on it? Tell me again what it said,” replied the other.
“Waldo, it said, ‘thou shalt not kill.’ And ‘thou shalt not lie’.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes it also said, ‘thou shalt not steal’. Plus somewhere in the middle said, ‘thou shalt not have sex with people you weren’t married to.’”
“Yeah, I remember it now,” the second post-modern said. “What a bunch of hooey. It’s a right wing, nutjob, racist document called the Ten Commandments. It’s a religious document.”
“No Waldo,” the first replied. “That’s where you’re wrong. It ain’t no religious document. I just figured out it was a survival manual.”
Since Ideology [especially of the Leftist variety] began it’s long, but triumphal march throughout the World in the 18th Century, we have seen an ever increasing retreat of people from Reality.
With each victory for Ideological Thinking, there has been a coinciding slow, self-imposed closing of all senses to the Truth Of Life.
This is not surprising because Ideologies are systems of ideas dreamed up in the sterile laboratories of the mind, far away from the Real World. They are fragile fictions that are based on a denial of the Truths of Human Nature. This explains why all Ideologues end up seeking to force Human Beings to be re-educated, to have their individual ‘false consciousness’ destroyed ['You must love Big Brother'], rather than tailoring their proposals to the varying rhythms of Human Nature.
As Mr. Fernandez demonstrates, the ingrained denial of Reality, the belief in a false set of commandments, can have dire and deadly consequences.
For over two hundred years, the World has been soaking in the waters of Denial River and it seems it may be catching a fatal disease – both figuratively and literally – from that stagnant waterway.
Whenever I feel afraid
I hold my head erect
And whistle a happy tune
So no one will suspect I’m afraid
While shivering in my shoes
I strike a careless pose
And whistle a happy tune
And no one ever knows I’m afraid
The result of this deception
Is very strange to tell
For when I fool the people
I fear I fool myself as well
