The great Victor Davis Hanson looks at where secularism has gotten us.... a place we've come to.....and gives us a chance to reconsider, to ask if this is really what we wish.
We live in an American 'Satyricon'.....
1. "...in the mid-first century A.D., ...Gaius Petronius, wrote a brilliant satirical novel about the gross and pretentious new Roman-imperial elite. The Satyricon is an often-cruel parody about how the Roman agrarian republic of old had degenerated into a wealth-obsessed, empty society of wannabe new elites, flush with money, and both obsessed with and bored with sex..... Petronius might as well have been describing our own 21st-century nomenklatura.
a. Think of someone like the feminist mayor of San Diego, Bob Filner, who once railed about the need to enforce sexual-harassment laws, now only to discover ever creepier ways to grope, pat, grab, squeeze, pinch, and slobber on 18 co-workers and veritable strangers, whether in their 20s or over 60. ... one of his would-be replacements is already under attack by his opponents on allegations that as a city councilman he was caught masturbating in the city-hall restroom between public meetings.
b. ...the narcissist Anthony Weiner sent pictures of his own genitalia to near-strangers, ... Was Eliot Spitzer any better? As the governor of New York, he preferred anonymous numbers Client #9 to false names, real to virtual sex, very young to mature women, and buying rather than romancing his partners.
2. Transvestitism and sexual ambiguity are likewise Petronian themes... The politically correct term transgendered trumps biology; and if you doubt that, you are a homophobe or worse.
3. As in the Roman Satyricon, our popular culture also displays a sick fascination with images of teen sex...the now-boring sexual shamelessness of Lady Gaga ...former Disney teenage star Miley Cyrus in a vinyl bikini, wearing some sort of huge foam finger on her hand to simulate lewd sex acts.
4. The orgies at Trimalchios cool Pompeii estate ... suggest that in imperial-Roman society Kardashian-style displays of wealth and Clintonian influence-peddling were matter-of-fact rather than shocking. Note that in our real version of the novels theme, Mayor Filner was not bothered by his exposure, and finally had to be nearly dragged out of office.
a. Bill Clinton, feminist champion, protector of female subordinate employees from workplace harassers, survived Monicagate. John Edwards might have saved his political career had the tabloid National Enquirer not caught him red-handed with his mistress during the 2008 campaign, while his wife was dying of cancer. To an unimpressed masseuse, Al Gore appeared as a crazed sex poodle. That sobriquet did no more damage to Gores green empire than Trimalchios randy escapades imperiled his latifundia.
5. ... [t]he wannabes equate influence and money with status and learning and so pontificate about current events, with made-up mythologies and half-educated references to history... learning has become as inane a commodity as food or sex, and only sort of half consumed, rather like the 2008 campaign of faux Greek columns and Vero possumus ('yes, we can') which were supposed to convey gravitas.
6. ... what does a $200,000 Ivy League education or a graduate degree really get you any more? In the sophisticated world of our political and highly credentialed elites, there are 57 states.... Corps-men serve in the military (as zombies?). Medgar Evans was a civil-rights icon, but you know whom we mean. President Roosevelt addressed the nation on television after the stock-market crash in 1929 well, he would have, had he been president then and if only Americans had had televisions in their homes. And how are we to know that what we read from celebrity authors is not just made up or plagiarized, whether a Maureen Dowd column or a Doris Kearns Goodwin book?
7. It is hard to guess on any given summer weekend which populist progressive family the Obamas, the Clintons, the Kerrys, the Gores will be ensconced on what particular Hamptons, Nantucket, or Marthas Vineyard beach, rubbing shoulders with just the sort of Silicon Valley or Wall Street new zillionaires who during work hours are supposed to be the evil 1 percent and fat cats who need to be forced to pay their fair share.
8. Al Gore, like Trimalchio, does not mutter a word without revealing his ignorance or hypocrisy. Over the last 15 years, the planet has not heated up, and the science of global warming is not established, which is why the nomenclature had to change from global warming to climate change...
9. [Gore] became a near-billionaire both hyping global warming and selling medieval-style indulgences as antidotes, now claims those who disagree with him are comparable to fascists and racists. All this comes from a wheeler-dealer who made big money damning fossil fuels only to sell a failing cable station to an anti-Semitic, anti-American fascistic enterprise, fueled by the millions garnered from the vast export of oil and gas from the Arabian peninsula. And to complete Gores Trimalchian man-of-the-people profile, he rushed the sale in hopes of beating the new, higher capital-gains taxes that he had been urging for lesser folk sort of like progressive John Kerry buying and berthing his grand new yacht in Rhode Island to avoid the high excise and sales taxes in his home state of Massachusetts.
10. Civil rights once meant an existential struggle between the oppressed and villains like Bull Connor with his dogs and fire hoses. Now Oprah is miffed over being treating rudely while eyeing a $38,000 purse in Switzerland; the NAACP wants sensitivity training for a rodeo clown with an Obama mask;...."
An American Satyricon | National Review Online
And yet the liars, fools, hypocrites get re-elected......
...and we get the government we deserve.
We live in an American 'Satyricon'.....
1. "...in the mid-first century A.D., ...Gaius Petronius, wrote a brilliant satirical novel about the gross and pretentious new Roman-imperial elite. The Satyricon is an often-cruel parody about how the Roman agrarian republic of old had degenerated into a wealth-obsessed, empty society of wannabe new elites, flush with money, and both obsessed with and bored with sex..... Petronius might as well have been describing our own 21st-century nomenklatura.
a. Think of someone like the feminist mayor of San Diego, Bob Filner, who once railed about the need to enforce sexual-harassment laws, now only to discover ever creepier ways to grope, pat, grab, squeeze, pinch, and slobber on 18 co-workers and veritable strangers, whether in their 20s or over 60. ... one of his would-be replacements is already under attack by his opponents on allegations that as a city councilman he was caught masturbating in the city-hall restroom between public meetings.
b. ...the narcissist Anthony Weiner sent pictures of his own genitalia to near-strangers, ... Was Eliot Spitzer any better? As the governor of New York, he preferred anonymous numbers Client #9 to false names, real to virtual sex, very young to mature women, and buying rather than romancing his partners.
2. Transvestitism and sexual ambiguity are likewise Petronian themes... The politically correct term transgendered trumps biology; and if you doubt that, you are a homophobe or worse.
3. As in the Roman Satyricon, our popular culture also displays a sick fascination with images of teen sex...the now-boring sexual shamelessness of Lady Gaga ...former Disney teenage star Miley Cyrus in a vinyl bikini, wearing some sort of huge foam finger on her hand to simulate lewd sex acts.
4. The orgies at Trimalchios cool Pompeii estate ... suggest that in imperial-Roman society Kardashian-style displays of wealth and Clintonian influence-peddling were matter-of-fact rather than shocking. Note that in our real version of the novels theme, Mayor Filner was not bothered by his exposure, and finally had to be nearly dragged out of office.
a. Bill Clinton, feminist champion, protector of female subordinate employees from workplace harassers, survived Monicagate. John Edwards might have saved his political career had the tabloid National Enquirer not caught him red-handed with his mistress during the 2008 campaign, while his wife was dying of cancer. To an unimpressed masseuse, Al Gore appeared as a crazed sex poodle. That sobriquet did no more damage to Gores green empire than Trimalchios randy escapades imperiled his latifundia.
5. ... [t]he wannabes equate influence and money with status and learning and so pontificate about current events, with made-up mythologies and half-educated references to history... learning has become as inane a commodity as food or sex, and only sort of half consumed, rather like the 2008 campaign of faux Greek columns and Vero possumus ('yes, we can') which were supposed to convey gravitas.
6. ... what does a $200,000 Ivy League education or a graduate degree really get you any more? In the sophisticated world of our political and highly credentialed elites, there are 57 states.... Corps-men serve in the military (as zombies?). Medgar Evans was a civil-rights icon, but you know whom we mean. President Roosevelt addressed the nation on television after the stock-market crash in 1929 well, he would have, had he been president then and if only Americans had had televisions in their homes. And how are we to know that what we read from celebrity authors is not just made up or plagiarized, whether a Maureen Dowd column or a Doris Kearns Goodwin book?
7. It is hard to guess on any given summer weekend which populist progressive family the Obamas, the Clintons, the Kerrys, the Gores will be ensconced on what particular Hamptons, Nantucket, or Marthas Vineyard beach, rubbing shoulders with just the sort of Silicon Valley or Wall Street new zillionaires who during work hours are supposed to be the evil 1 percent and fat cats who need to be forced to pay their fair share.
8. Al Gore, like Trimalchio, does not mutter a word without revealing his ignorance or hypocrisy. Over the last 15 years, the planet has not heated up, and the science of global warming is not established, which is why the nomenclature had to change from global warming to climate change...
9. [Gore] became a near-billionaire both hyping global warming and selling medieval-style indulgences as antidotes, now claims those who disagree with him are comparable to fascists and racists. All this comes from a wheeler-dealer who made big money damning fossil fuels only to sell a failing cable station to an anti-Semitic, anti-American fascistic enterprise, fueled by the millions garnered from the vast export of oil and gas from the Arabian peninsula. And to complete Gores Trimalchian man-of-the-people profile, he rushed the sale in hopes of beating the new, higher capital-gains taxes that he had been urging for lesser folk sort of like progressive John Kerry buying and berthing his grand new yacht in Rhode Island to avoid the high excise and sales taxes in his home state of Massachusetts.
10. Civil rights once meant an existential struggle between the oppressed and villains like Bull Connor with his dogs and fire hoses. Now Oprah is miffed over being treating rudely while eyeing a $38,000 purse in Switzerland; the NAACP wants sensitivity training for a rodeo clown with an Obama mask;...."
An American Satyricon | National Review Online
And yet the liars, fools, hypocrites get re-elected......
...and we get the government we deserve.
