I’m glad to be able to start getting back to normal operations here.
I haven’t really written much since the election. At first it was because I was, quite frankly, just too dispirited: the nasty shoulder injury I’d had back in the summer had made it difficult to type, and the forced discontinuation of my normal exercise routine had had a depressing influence on my state of mind in general. I had surgery for the shoulder in September, but the recovery was slow and painful, and the meds made it tiresome to concentrate. Meanwhile, it seemed that things were going to hell in the outside world in pretty much exactly the way I’d been most worried they might, and so my own specialty in these pages, which had been diagnosis and prediction, seemed suddenly rather beside the point.
By February or so I’d begun getting back to normal, physically and mentally, but then my wife and I decided it was time, after nearly 40 years of living in the same house, to put it up for sale. The process, which seemed at first to be going smoothly and simply, suddenly encountered some unexpected problems and setbacks (a story I might tell some other time), and we lost what had been the perfect buyers. Because we live in one of the bluest, Wokest neighborhoods in the nation, and given my own unfashionable opinions and the persecutorial tone of the times, I decided that it would be prudent, just for the time it might take to get the place sold, to keep a low online profile so as not to scare anyone off. (While it would be hard for me to imagine not buying a property I wanted merely because I might disagree with the owner’s thoughtful interpretation of history and current events, I realized that we are, at the moment, deeply in the grip of a mass religious hysteria, and that in such times anything is possible.) I figured the world could do without my depressing commentary for a little while — especially as the time for diagnosis is now mostly behind us, and things are, I think, going to roll forward from here with a heedless momentum of their own.
I look forward to beginning to write again this week. I’m afraid, though, that I’m a bit rusty. I’m afraid, also, that I am going to have to work hard not to sound rather badly blackpilled; the situation in the West has deteriorated very sharply in these last months.
I may also divert a little from what had become my primary focus over the last few years. These months of relative seclusion have been for me a bit of a study in getting older, in “keeping one’s head when all about you are losing theirs”, and a few other things that might be worth talking about.
Back soon.
8 Comments
Welcome back!
Glad to hear your health is on an uptrend.
Don’t worry about sounding too blackpilled.
Through circumstances I find myself on a long-term contract with a project that is so screwed up that I’ve been doing the Ferris Bueller thing the entire summer.
I can do this because I am the most critical person on this project. I know this because I was brought back because the entire thing ground to a halt without me.
The normies on this project keep talking about how things will come back, and how we’ll be back overseas in no time flat.
My only comment to them has been, “Hey man, I’m not making any long-term plans. I’m just here trying to enjoy the time I have left.”
Good to see you again mate.
It has been a very dispiriting time! Personal and societal upheaval in tandem, and then selling your 40 year home and moving !?
Are you settled into a new place then? We too live in a place we’ve owned for 32 years, in the bluest of wokest enclaves on the left coast. We have pretty much ruled out relocating unless God prepares a great fish or tells me to start building an ark in the backyard.
I can well understand why you have kept the site off line during this time. The pill analogy: Black pill is a better, though bitter, medicine than red, but the red is a good one-a-day until one’s balance is established. After that the symptoms of the ideological tend to return, in spite of the warmer hue. But as the elder vikings cartoon reminds us, pillage just ain’t the same anymore as we get older. And black pills aren’t going to get us much further.
I read in your last paragraph a description and prescription for the clear pill.
I’m really glad you’re posting again, your shoulder is better, (mine is too, with periodic residuals) and your new prospects for keeping your head. These months of seclusion have been good for that, at least, and it’s no small thing to come to terms with and share.
Good essay from quilette that I think accurately depicts the impasse we’re in: https://quillette.com/2021/08/09/watching-americas-crack-up/. Needless to say, most here will disagree with his depiction of Biden and Rightist movements, but I find the pox-on-both-houses approach to be largely correct.
Perhaps with your increased funds Malcolm you can be inspired by Dreher and Carlson and find a lovely locale in Hungary, the Visegrad 4 generally, or its environs in Central Europe!
Excuse me about the last statement Malcolm, which may have come off as a bit flippant. I simply make the reference to Hungary because Carlson’s trip there reveals an interesting debate as to the merits of what could be described as a mildly authoritarian country with liberal elements: should that be our future? Do we have to pick our poison between what Dreher calls soft totalitarianism and Orbanism (with the latter’s attendant corruption and certain infringements on speech)?
Jason, “mildly authoritarian country with liberal elements: should that be our future?”
It seems that is our present.
Thanks, all.
Jason, if I were to move abroad, at this point I’d probably go to Austria, where I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years.
But I’m really not planning to go anywhere. I feel, perhaps foolishly, that I should do what I can over here.
Welcome back!
I’m still very much interested in diagnosis. I have a strong sense that I’m riding in the back of a clown car, but I can’t see who’s driving. Are the elites really in control, or are they mostly being swept along by an army of useful idiots engaged in a virtue signaling arms race? How much control do the elites really have?
And who are the elites? The plutocracy? Red China? The Deep State? My impression is that Jack Dorsey is someone’s puppet, but I can’t see whose hand is up his ass.