print money at the rate we do. We're headed for economic oblivion, and those with a room temperature IQ in Washington understand this.
Beyond this, all the other markers:
- Plummeting fertility rates among native-born Americans and the refusal of more and more younger Americans to marry.
- Appalling ignorance and abysmal educational performance. The nations of the future, starting with China, have left us in their wake and, frankly, laugh at what we produce from our schools. Even countries that are not hostile to the United States. They find new ways to sort out and aid the gifted while we're busy eliminating F's in schools. We are a sad joke.
- Our increasingly feudalistic cities. I am not among the conservatives who dismiss the "income inequality" issue, even though I hate that term. Cursory examination of human history demonstrates it to be a powder keg and it will always catch up with any society headed along that road.
- As a sort of corollary to that, the tolerance of crime and other anti-social behaviors in our cities. This gets to lack of pride. We tolerate defecating on the sidewalk, needles on the sidewalk as addicts shoot up, vandalism, and then we tolerate shoplifting, and then we make excuses, as AOC did this weekend, for burglaries.
- The rapid disappearance from Judeo-Christianity from a culture that once embraced it. Erase one religion, and others will take its place, and most probably will dislike the new ones more than the previous one.
- The loss of direction among young men. Throngs of men who choose not to work and who have no reason to because they do not have families to support and many have parental enablers.
- For lack of a better term, the loss of stoicism as a value for men. Had we stoic men still in charge, we would not see the dismantling of meritocracy, the rise of "Wokeism," gender mania, and the drive to supplant logic and tradition with feelings to direct public policy and personal/family life. Men have failed to step up, and just like with religion, that void will always be replaced, and usually with something less than what had been. We had a sterling example during COVID. Feelings and irrational fears dominated, which necessitated repeating things like "Follow the science" to mask, no pun intended, what was actually occurring. The best moment of Trump's presidency was when he emerged from infection and simply stated that he got through it and so can you. If only we had proceeded through the pandemic with that stoic attitude and not hysteria, which gave way to colossally bad decisions, like lockdowns and remote schooling. Life is hard. Actually, let me get the quote exactly, from a guest I once heard on a radio talk show: "Life is hard and nobody owes you anything." Print it. Live it.
- The well-documented rise in hopelessness, loneliness, and addiction. Fraternal organizations and civic clubs are all but dead and people don't know their neighbors. It's hard to take pride in where you live and in your fellow people if you don't know them and don't care about them. Similarly, and connected to ignorance and lack of education/knowledge, if you don't know anything about the place you live and your country, you can't take pride in it and value it. And don't even get me started on those who love other places more, yet know nothing about those other places and peoples, either.
- The shrinking pool of young men willing to enlist in the armed forces. It's very simple: when people widely love their country, there is no shortage of young men willing to serve. The infiltration of political ideology into education has been extremely effective.
- The celebration of the profane, the deviant, the malevolent in popular culture. This, of course, connects to the hopelessness in our culture, which connects to the disappearance of religion and the regression of men.
- The decline of physical health. We are fatter, more sickly, and lazier than ever. We are mocked by most of the rest of the world on this count and, again, it's hard to take pride in one's self when in this state.