On a recent Ricochet podcast, conversation centered around a commenter’s observation that America had become a fundamentally unserious country.  The specifics of the observation centered upon the current Presidential debates as compared to the content of the 1960 Presidential debate between candidates Nixon and Kennedy.  The essence of the 1960 debate is recalled to have centered upon an in-depth discussion by the candidates regarding America’s role in the world, her security, and whether a potential “missile gap” existed between the United States and the Soviet Union that threatened the uneasy peaceful existence created by the policy concept of mutually assured destruction.  In contrast, the recent presidential candidate debates have focused on  the perceived need for government to regulate fantasy football, whether one candidate considered the other “ugly,”  and what candidates “hated” most.  We are surrounded by burgeoning societal debts, immigrant crises, provocative totalitarian movements, genocides, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and crumbling of value structures without clear vetting of what is to take their place, and we are comfortable with our potential leaders defining each other as a “loser”, “dumb”, ‘ugly” or “lazy” in our search to find people who will have to address the world’s increasingly  complex problems.

Where does such unseriousness come from?  Being oblivious to growing problems is not a new phenomena per se. Each generation’s interpretation of the succeeding one had the patina of derision regarding their ‘seriousness’ in addressing life’s challenges.  The Lost Generation that propelled out of WWI was considered drifting and aimless. The Silent Generation between the wars was self absorbed and capable of superficial frivolity, yet bore what was eventually the Greatest Generation of WWII. Leave it to the greatest among us to have introduced to the world the Baby Boomer Generation  that redefined self absorption for all time. And so forth, through Generation X, the Millennials, and the current Generation Z.

There are many contributors for producing the current brand of unseriousness of the country given the problems faced, but a few rise to the occasion of this brief essay.  First and foremost is the death of civics and geography in the insight of those who would hazard opinions on the formidable problems we face.  The concept of citizenship seems a tired relic of the past, formed from the concept of the dreaded nation state.  A nation state had borders, a shared philosophy of citizen-hood, and a conviction to defend those ideals.  In the case of many of the nation states of the West, the border has become porous cheese, with the unvetted intake of individuals who are looking only to the economic benefits offered by the acceptor nation, with no intention of absorbing its principles of citizenship.  The nation state progressively demands little in the way of preparation of either its immigrants nor its citizens regarding the responsibilities of a citizen in acknowledging the country’s geographic reason for being or foundational principles.  Ask the average citizen the difference between the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and a blank stare emanates. Further emptiness in rationalizing concepts as to how and why the borders developed, why individual states exist, and how resources historically determined the facts on the ground.  What has replaced such concepts is a general globalist vagary that has the depth of a television commercial as to “shared” responsibilities for big ideas like equality of outcome, keeping the oceans and earth safe from humanity, and allowing the equality of all cultural concepts no matter how devastating they may be to the individuals who suffer under them.

Second is the profound self absorption that increasingly dominates public discourse in the form of victimhood.  Born out of legitimate attempts to understand the effects of crime, historical inequities, and the economic forces that determine outcome of opportunity, the discourse has deteriorated into infantile rants that remove all notions of self responsibility and with it the understanding that in a free society an individual can effect control over their own destiny.  The tools of individual improvement, most profoundly the strength of a classical education based on analytic thought, ability to digest and understand complex ideas, and obtaining the knowledge base necessary to eventually expand one’s knowledge has devolved into reducing measures of accountability,  providing education that revolves around victimization not actualization, and denigrating true achievement.

Third is the overwhelming influence of social media, that has reduced complex ideas to bulletin board remarks, dramatically reduced the digestion time on events to discern their deeper meanings and undertones, and elevated the tyranny of public scorn onto every dissenting thought. Take the Facebook promotion of the Hillary Clinton candidacy pictured above. What do we want? – We want a Woman Presidency, We Sure Do. Does it matter what her opinions might be on the issues of the day, her previous performance in leadership positions, her character for addressing the great responsibilities inherent in such a position?   Not So Much.  At a guttural level, social media weaves the superficial emotions that occur at the breathtaking speed of the internet to firm opinions without measured consideration or the value of dissenting opinion.  This has invaded the so called Fourth Estate – the traditional journalism that was structured in the world of freedom of the press and free speech itself to hold leaders accountable for their actions, investigate in depth their process of decision making, and root out those that would take extra-constitutional or dictatorial means for achieving their ends.  In a society that increasingly won’t read and reflect, the headline gains in stature, the edited video stands in for the historical record, and the depth of comment is quickly superseded by the next attention getting superficial event.

And thus so usually defines the collapse of civilizations.  The Roman citizen more interested in the gladiators battling in the Coliseum than the gladiators defending the empire’s borders.  The British King more interested in maintaining his colonies’ obedience than adjusting and modifying his approach to their grievances.  The West has had quite a run, but the mighty battleship hides a rusted infrastructure that is progressively at risk to catastrophic collapse from a well placed shell.  We best get more serious in our approach, or when the vaunted shell comes, we may find ourselves in the middle of a hostile ocean with no lifeboats to be found.  Now that, is down right #serious.