New Year, Old Crises

It has been a while.
     I had taken a break from this weblog, in part because I thought I was repeating myself and in part because I thought no one was reading.  I also believed that I had not lived up to the title, tone, and purpose I had set in the mission statement of the first post.  It turns out I was (unusually) wrong, or at least exaggerating, on all counts.  I am not much for New Year's resolutions, but there is no time like the present to start writing again.  I have no idea how much more time any of us have, because, as I have been pointing out (and as others have been pointing out better than I), western civilization is in deep trouble.
     Twenty-one days into the new year, the Endarkenment--that is the anti-reason counterrevolution on its way to subverting all of the achievements (intellectual and technological) of the Enlightenment--inexorably rages, as it would have to because the intellectual and political climate is not changing, regardless of the results of last November's elections.  Indeed: the present behavior of the latest class of Republicans in congress indicates that they will be even worse than the last (their fearless leader is already promising to soften budget cuts, and neither government spending nor the powerful public employee unions is being significantly challenged).  Some report that the US dollar, long ago removed from the gold standard and now at the mercy of the whims and caprices of the Federal Reserve board, is on the verge of collapse.  The once-great state of California--my birth state and the only one in which I've ever felt close to "at home"--continues its descent into the morass of its budget and public employee union woes.  Another madman recently committed another horrifying atrocity, and many respond with calls for more of the "gun control" that not only did not stop the madman but may have precluded others from stopping him.  And little, if anything, is changing for the better, because the wrong ideas are driving the culture (that is why it is the Endarkenment), and most individuals, victims of mind-stultifying progressive education and modern media, are not even fully aware that there is a serious problem, much less what it is or what to do about it.  (Many of those who do vaguely sense that something is seriously wrong are running to religious fundamentalism and other forms of mysticism, which is also part of the problem.)
     The horrors are unrelenting, and sometimes it's difficult to say anything about any of them, or to do anything at all but drink up and watch civilization crumble into smoldering ruins.
     But I have things to say, and I will try to say them, even if I am the only one with the sense to pay attention.