I attended the services for my older sister last week and during the course of that I saw and interacted with generations of the clan from children to teenage to millennial to geezers and all the points in between.
On the long flight back, I pondered the sharing of perspectives. My nephew, who is fifty but will always be thirteen in my mind, gave a eulogy to my sister, his mother that opened up a view I could grasp but never appreciated. He talked about being raised as the only child of a single mother, struggling with the economics and striving to better their condition. While I knew that, my view of my sister was always from the family we shared growing up, not her struggles as a young mother. I was continents away when that was going on and getting on with my own adulthood.
It moved me significantly. It expanded my view. It made me realize the complexity of ever knowing someone.
It made me ponder some and then I watched the WHCD and the rally in PA, along with the AntiFA clowns rioting on MayDay in Portland and elsewhere.
I believe we are losing any sense of common perspectives as a community. We do not share experiences, we do not even watch the same TV shows. In the fifties, even communists and capitalist could discuss I Love Lucy and the Honeymooners.
My nephew sent a link for the video below a while back. I watched it and theorized that seeing this would be a touchstone for how American’s perspectives are split. I am fond of it for many reasons, it evokes an America I want to believe is still there, but mostly because I used to play trumpet and when both arms worked to spec, could play this one as a kid. My older brother was better, he had a tone that I could never achieve.
I expect you would get a very mixed reaction these days to this video. I would hope that a little more than half would smile and feel a faint stirring, a feeling of belonging, but that may be optimistic.
It comes down to perspective.



Thank you.
I have heard it often. If you are a Marine, you hear the Marine Band often, and this is a common piece in their performance.
To your point about perspective, I believe you carry with you those things you learn early, but not necessarily at infancy. So if you grow up bilingual, you stay bilingual but lose the ability to learn another language. If, however, you learn a second language at somewhere between 4 and say 9, you retain the ability to learn languages and find over your life if you choose, you can pick up an amazing number of languages. I believe this is true in any number of things – sports, interests, hobbies. I learned to shoot when I was 7 and drive when I was 8; still my favorite activities.
If my premise is true, then what you think of things tends to be set relatively early in age. Yes, I know one is a liberal when young and a conservative when older, but for me that never was true. I was ALWAYS a conservative of sorts (now mostly a libertarian as I’ve learned more about that).
We have had a dedicated, fanatical almost, collection of social revolutionaries dating back to the late 1880’s. They’ve been labelled variously progressives, socialists, liberals, modernists – and the more accurate communists, fascists and I would add idiots. Still, they have steadily diluted our national identity, our national character, and in some ways our national will. We now no longer absolutely believe in capitalism. We no longer believe in Christianity, once the binding that held our nation together. We no longer believe in the future. We no longer believe in right and wrong.
Instead, now we have “social justice”, Black Lies Matter, welfare, government OWNING part of our efforts, hate speech. One of the most recent idiocies I have seen is a position paper by some dope that self defense is unconstitutional because it denies the miscreant his right to a trial.
None of this happened over night. It was insidiously inveigled into our society, with small doses of “right”, of “logic”, of shame. We may be at fault to some degree, but our parents are too – the “greatest generation” who fought a world war and lost one at home. If our kids are at all noticing the inconsistencies of where we have gotten it isn’t really obvious. They have come to appreciate that the deficeit is theirs not ours and it bothers them. But they have, as yet, no clue how to fix it, partly because they have no knowledge of how things were.
“You only find what you look for; you only look for what you know.”
As Devereaux notes, things have changed as the progressives have completed their long march through the institutions. They have infected almost every institution, partly because of Conquest’s 2nd Law: Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing. There’s still a diminishing core group that adheres to the principles of individual liberty, capitalism, right vs. wrong. Most people don’t seem to understand or care about about these principles.
The march of the progs seems unstoppable and yet the pendulum can swing back our way. The trouble is that it might have to swing so far in the socialist and statist direction, similar to what happened in Eastern Europe, before it swings back.
To TKC’s point, for many people the Sousa march is symbolic of jingoism, while for others it would stir patriotic feelings. I’m less optimistic than TKC about the “little more than half ” but I hope I’m wrong. Patriotism is held in low regard these days.
There are two different countries in the US. In one country, Trump is Hitler, our society is rife with injustice, climate change is an existential threat, and there’s no such thing as radical Islam. In the other country, things are looking up, radical Islam is a long-term threat to the West, and Trump is a breath of fresh air. Scott Adams expressed it as a two-movie reality:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/157149611381/good-example-of-our-two-movie-reality
It’s not clear how, or if, this internal contradiction will be resolved. My only hope is that reality will force a convergence. When the two views are as widely divergent as they are, the collapse is likely to be sudden and possibly violent, much as it was in the Eastern Bloc. Just because things have been going along smoothly for several decades doesn’t guarantee that they will continue.
Doc, you make many fine points.
I believe the US slides to progressivism from affluence. When comfort levels are high, people can worry about the silliest things.
We either need a serious war, plague or earth shattering asteroid strike ….
OR…
We get the economy rolling hot and the Millennials become to Trump as their counterparts did to Reagan in the late 80s. We explicitly forge the screwed millennials, the screwed working class of all races behind economic opportunity.
It will not be as effective as plague or asteroid strike, but it may have to do.