Through more than fifty years of seeing slander perpetrated against anyone who disagreed with the establishment, particularly when the establishment was the result of the long march, I thought — like an idiot — that of course they would attack our taste, our intelligence, our writing. I never thought they’d go political. Much less that they’d accuse us of motives that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Which of course they did, in the international press. (And btw US slander laws suck.)
And then it all became political. And the shock — and honestly a shock that broke something in me, because you don’t expect that. You just don’t — was that people who knew me, people I’d considered friends, people I’d have trusted, people who weren’t political, believed the slander. I lost friends over it. But more importantly, I lost trust in humanity as a whole.
I don't think I've ever had a moment like that. Because unlike Sarah, I didn't start out thinking people were good. People are, as stated by Dr. Cox on the show Scrubs, "Bastard coated Bastards with Bastard filling". And that's on a good day.
Mankind is fallen. They have been ever since Eve and Adam ate the apple. Our whole existence is one big attempt to raise ourselves up from that fallen state, and that's the story of mankind from then to now, to forever. Mankind is not naturally "good". That has to be taught. And America is teaching that less and less these days.
I don't trust humanity. I have absolutely no reason to trust humanity. I have seen what humanity does to itself over and over and over, and it doesn't shock me when one group kills another group, or burns down their section of the city (other than the basic shock of seeing humans act worse than dogs, who instinctively know not to shit in their den). Civilization is a thin veneer of plaster trying to keep a house together in an earthquake, and it will fail at some point. It's not if, it's a matter of when.
My mom always told me that if you want to see what people are truly like, watch them playing sports and driving. That's when the mask comes off, because no one is watching, or so they think. Take a drive through any major urban area these days, and tell me what you see. Flip on any sports event on TV, and tell me what you see.
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck.”
Robert Heinlein's quote is true, and everyone recognizes it's truth, because humans don't start out "good", and they don't magically become "good". That has to be taught, either through the luck of having good parents, or through harsh lessons from reality.
Hard times make hard men. Hard men make good times. Good times make soft men. Soft men make hard times.
Take a glance at the Gen-Xers, the Millennials, and tell me how many hard men you see there. Hell, the entire Democrat Party Platform is made to appeal to soft men. Soft men, and those who enjoy the destruction of civilization as we know it.
Buy more ammo.
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