The Great Reckoning in America Begins
270: If You Don't "Get It" By Now, You Never Will
I grew up in a military family, traveling, living on base, and being surrounded by like minded and valued families and individuals. I’m not that old, but in the 1990’s the US still had some semblance of patriotism and nationalism forged by post Cold War tailwinds and a rapidly expanding economy.
I had a nice upbringing for a young boy — I had siblings, played outside a lot, fell out of trees, spent long days in the woods or outside, caught and got bit by lizards, snakes, and other animals, played sports, read extensively about history and war, fished and shot, and learned the meaning of true hard work through my athletic career in high school/college, and through various jobs I worked to stash away cash for things I enjoyed doing.
Growing up my dad taught me a lot about the world — when it came to force and fighting, he taught me what I imagine all good fathers do at some point — don’t be the one to start a fight, but if you find yourself in one, hit and hit hard to end it. If you could avoid a conflict all together through deterrence — all the better — it paid to be fit, strong, and when appropriate, aggressive.
Growing up I came to learn and understand what it felt like to get punched in the face by a bully, I learned cause and effect and the circle of life on the farm, I learned what it felt like to get hit by a 340 pound Samoan headed to UCLA on a full ride when I didn’t keep my head on a swivel, I learned the gravity of gun safety and the value of family in society.
It was a very grounded upbringing.
In college I studied history, political science, terrorism, and international relations. I read the likes of Mearsheimer, Hobbes, Walt, Rosseau, and Machiavelli. The liberal bias in college didn’t hide from for long. It was the first time I was introduced to the more academic side of war and global history and it became immediately apparent to me that the realism school of thought was an accurate diagnosis of why the world was the way it was. I found it hard to believe that people actually opted to view the world through more rose colored lenses.
Sure that was nice and comforting to do — but was it true?
Mearsheimer a political scientist and international relations scholar known for his work on offensive realism and the theory of offensive neorealism, often recounts his childhood in and Brooklyn, New York, famously saying: “The aim of states is to be the biggest and baddest dude on the block because if you're the biggest and baddest dude on the block, then it is highly unlikely that any other state will challenge you simply because you're so powerful” likening this analogy to the bullies in his neighborhood.
Violence is inherent to nature.
Conflict among nation states, ethnic groups, and different cultures is inevitable.
Bad actors exist on the international stage.
Enemies of ours are happy to leverage violence to achieve their ends and goals.
Certain cultures and ideologies are not compatible for what the US used to stand for.
Without these themes and concepts understood and taken to heart — you will inevitably fail to anticipate which direction our nation and the world is headed in at great detriment to your own personal gain. It’s impossible to fully understand the gravity of where we are without them. It’s incredibly difficult to succeed in life without understanding the true nature of the world and of people.0
The denial of power, or violence, or force as the instrumental factor why groups, individuals, organizations, and nations act the way they do, has spread rapidly in the past 25-30 years as liberalism and the new left have grabbed a permanent foothold in Washington and the US.
Micro agressions, the war on masculinity, woke culture, social justice movements, border policy, compromised courts and officials, and other social movements have softened US society significantly and recently we’ve seen breakouts of select episodes of violence and unrest driven by segments of society on the ideological fringes. In the corporate world these themes emerge with communist bureaucracies or hyper woke social standards everyone is mandated to operate by.
As the toll of this softness and insulation from the real world plays out — you can sense an awakening. It’s tough to be tolerant when criminals are stabbing and killing people on major city subways every week. It’s tough to back colleges when they’re run by far left lunatics who are siding with sympathizers of Hamas.
It’s difficult to not look at the situation on the Southern Border and think what’s going on is anything but intentional. And of course — it seems that our “leaders” are dead set on dragging us into yet another large conflict or war while draining every last possible resource from our own country to keep the party going, power consolidating, and money flowing.
Now more than ever, is the time to take stock of what you believe in or if you even do believe in the US. People need to be cognizant of where we are trending given the decisions our leaders continue to make at home and on the world stage.
It will have severe ramifications for all of us if it does not change.
If you’re struggling to understand why it seems like everything is breaking down, getting worse, or looking grim today’s post will help explain why. Things that should be straightforward and simple are not — the problem is things have been made to appear complicated. The reality is we’ve strayed far from the logic, pragmatism, and values that founded this great nation.
However, everything is cyclic and we are approaching the part in the cycle where the cracks in idealism begin to show and be felt physically by people who were fooled into thinking the world is a happy snow globe.
There’s no avoiding what is coming — but we can work through what to expect given the great challenges we face on the horizon.
“Great powers of all persuasions care deeply about their survival, and there is always the danger in a bipolar or multipolar system that they will be attacked by another great power. In these circumstances, liberal great powers regularly dress up their hard-nosed behavior with liberal rhetoric. They talk like liberals and act like realists. Should they adopt liberal policies that are at odds with realist logic, they invariably come to regret it.”
― John J. Mearsheimer, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities