Reflections on Current Non-Events
The Olympic Games are in Paris this summer, where men routinely urinate on the streets, so much so that the Macron government tried several years ago to reduce the grotesque effects of this Parisian crudity — the new language of love, I suppose — by installing “discreet” pee buckets disguised as planters throughout the city. Thus, people with the bladders of seven-year-olds and the manners of seven-day-olds could answer the call of their ill nature while pretending to stop and smell the roses. Of course, you cannot solve a problem of essential incivility by putting up colorful, decorative signs saying, “Be gross here, please.” That’s a parable for our time. What’s the next step in this accomodation to ugliness? Offering romantic gondola rides for tourists along la rivière d’urine? (The French translation doesn’t smooth this one out much, does it?)
And while we’re on the subject of peeing in gay Paris, I suppose those Macron planters could be re-purposed as doping sample dumpsters for all those Olympic medallists whose national federations have done the requisite advanced preparation (pay-offs and threats) to evade disqualifications.
This seems like as good a place as any to mention Kamala Harris, who is now, apparently without any opposition, the Democratic presidential candidate, upon Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the campaign. As though to provide consolation to those despondent Americans who have been feeling for some time that things couldn’t possibly get any worse, the Democratic Party has found a (peculiarly dubious) way to shout “Sure they could!,” by elevating to its highest level, without any sort of process of public deliberation or popular choice, a person who makes even the senile Joe Biden seem informed and reasonable by comparison. Remember when Obama vs. Romney seemed like a pathetic statement about the deterioration of American politics in the age of the uniparty? Gosh, remember when Trump vs. Hillary Clinton looked at least nominally like a clash of recognizable types, if not recognizable humans? Now what are you reduced to? A limp retread of the populist fraud Trump against…against kind of nothing.
Of course, what I have just said fits the new definition of racism, to wit: Any negative comment about any aspect of any person who is in any way identifiable as a member of any historically oppressed racial group, aka anyone identifiable as non-white (whites never having been oppressed anywhere by anyone, ever), regardless of whether said comment has anything to do with the person’s racial identity or not — and if not, then it may be safely encompassed under the infinitely wide umbrella of the new racism by describing the non-race-oriented comment as “containing dog whistles.” (Addendum: The very act of questioning the legitimacy of this unfalsifiable application of the racism accusation against anyone who says anything in any way negative about any non-white person in any context, may itself be properly branded a racist act, on a variation of the dog whistle provision noted above. [Explanation and example: If you do not accept that Kamala Harris is a brilliant and competent politician who deserves to be president of the United States, and indeed if you dare to suggest that there might be policy or principle reasons not to vote for her in an election, then you are already a self-accused racist worthy of public vilification and re-education.])
Why do people still care about the Olympics by the way? National pride? Who has anything to be proud of? A celebration of global youth? Are today’s mollycoddled, sensitivity-addled, activism-indoctrinated youth a crowd worth celebrating? Sifting for a few salvageable gems amid the wreckage, yes. Searching thoroughly for rare evidence of spiritual self-preservation and decency, yes. Sincerely trying to help the lost onto a more rational and less destructive and nihilistic path, yes. But celebrated? Perhaps it is about time for the old folks to quit aggrandizing our youngest generations, such as they now are, and start holding them to some standards, while trying to revivify the sense of awe and humility before life’s mysteries, the sense of deficiency in the face of greatness, and the sense of desperate need to learn from the best men and women of the past, which senses ought to animate young people, but which several generations of progressive schooling, moral corruption, and mindless diversion have killed. And — if one thinks through the implications of that last sentence — perhaps it is also time for the old folks to stop smugly pontificating about the deteriorated condition of today’s youth, since they didn’t do this to themselves. We designed the vacuum that has sucked out their souls. The least we could do, then, is stop feeling superior about their plight, and start taking responsibility and doing something about it — beginning, at a minimum, with a refusal to continue smiling and clapping along with their sub-Dionysian dance toward the abyss. That is, the least we could do is start acting like grown-ups ourselves.