More than ever in my life, we approach Christmas and the new year with a sense of impending doom of some uncertain sort.
It’s hard to put one’s finger on it. It didn’t recall our shared traditions of Christmas so much as introduce us into some strange new world of wild drug-induced zaniness sans any of the rooted solemnity of spiritual joy associated with this holy time of year.
Actually, maybe that was the whole problem with the video. It wasn’t the talented dancers or even the costumes. It was its dismissive superficiality: Look at us in Washington having a blast while the rest of the country is being ground into the dust.
It also reminded me of the vast chasm that separates their lives versus ours. In the real world, these days are utterly packed with dread about some not yet seen crisis on the way. We know it, and dread it. We also know that the White House itself will be the source.
In all private circles today, this is a constant topic.
There are many choices:
• Bad weather lockdowns
• Climate lockdowns
• Terrorism lockdowns
• All major cities overrun with refugees
• Civil unrest from rampaging migrants, followed by lockdowns
• A full takedown of the internet
• Turnkey imposition of central bank digital currencies
• Forced verification of all social media posts
• Forced installation of transportation off switches
• The cancellation of elections and imposition of martial law
• Hyperinflation followed by empty stores
• Grounding of all planes but chartered flights
• Another disease panic stemming from a lab leak
• Nuclear war
Please don’t call all of these unfounded conspiracy theories. They’re merely predictions about what could happen, and each one has some basis in existing fact, extrapolated with a pessimistic presumption concerning how elites will respond.
It’s instructive that people are talking this way at all. I’ve always known folks who had a dark outlook on the future: the financial doomsayers and preppers and so on. Then there have always been the religious apocalyptics who believe the Second Coming is right around the corner. That’s all fine, but thinking the unthinkable has never been so mainstream and common, even if it’s mostly restricted to private conversation for fear of cancellation.
And that’s just the near-term predictions for 2024. Long term, I’ve heard very smart people talk of the complete breakup of the United States, catastrophic depopulation, and a global surveillance state that would keep the planet permanently locked down.
What I’m not hearing is much in the way of optimism or even hope. Even those who think Joe Biden or Donald Trump should be president don’t believe that much in the way of good will come of either presidency. They’re only hoping to use the power of the presidency to prevent the other side from oppressing them or otherwise punish people on the opposing team. We no longer talk about morning in America or building the city on the hill. All that language is left behind, the legacy of much better times.
It’s been rather obvious to me for nearly four years that something is fundamentally broken in the civilized world. The state has experimented with the population in ways that were completely unthinkable, say, 10 years ago.
Think about this. Would you ever have imagined that the federal government would use all its powers to prevail upon state and local officials to close your church, school, and business? To prevent you from traveling to foreign countries? To force you into a mask and then use every possible mechanism to inject you with an untested and unworkable experimental gene-altering technology?
This was the great breaking. It shattered our sense of life stability and the predictability of our routines. The civic liturgy embedded in our habits—going to work, dropping off the kids, visiting grandmother in the nursing home, attending the wedding or funeral of our friend—was all shattered. We were all forced to adapt. They kept promising that the pain would come to an end if only we complied. We complied but the pain kept getting worse.
Gradually, these days passed but never the enormous psychological carnage. They also drained all trust people had in the system under which we live. The experts were lying the whole time. The agencies were just making things up. The scientists were blinding us with baloney. Countless interest groups were clearly seizing on the chaos of the moment to make a financial killing. The media was never telling the truth.
There has been and will never be real accountability.
We see all this now. The loss of trust in what was has been replaced by a deep cynicism and pessimism. The younger me might have looked forward to a time when the public lost trust in authority, but now that the older me has seen it happen, the results are nothing like what I might have predicted.
The biggest worry is that the loss of trust isn’t just in the government, media, tech, academics, and science. It also impacts the very notion of freedom itself. I cannot explain it, but somehow, that seems to have gone by the wayside, too. This is on the left, for sure, but it’s also on the right. Public figures counseling a simple restoration of freedom seem not to get a hearing at all.
We no longer believe in what was, and there’s a pervasive dread in the air about what it is to be. Making it worse, there’s also a growing sense that there’s nothing we can do about it either way. Sure, we can vote, but it’s no longer clear if that matters. Otherwise, there are few, if any, mechanisms in place to take matters into our own hands and right this ship we once called civilization.
In so many ways, for my generation in particular, we didn’t know just how good we had it in those precious few years between the last days of the Cold War and the beginning of the 21st century. I think I speak for a generation in believing that this was a new order of things and would never be taken away. This is what makes the current moment so difficult for us. It was never supposed to be this way.
In this way, my generation finds an analogy with those who came of age in the late 19th century, surrounded by rising wealth, fabulous technologies, new fruits of peace and prosperity everywhere in evidence. This gentile period was utterly shattered by the Great War, which served as a reminder that this world will always be the “valley of tears” spoken about in the old prayers.
I’ve gone on too much about our dark night of the soul, which, by the way, is a meditative poem about the relationship of God and man as written by St. John of the Cross. His core point, if I may dare to sum it up, is as follows. The darkness is our opportunity to learn, discover, find our way out, and emerge on the other side with more strength, conviction, and awareness of our purpose and the meaning of life.
May this also be true for us as individuals and as a nation.
Why should Christmas be a time of joy? It depends on what we mean by that word. Mary and Joseph were forced to be in Bethlehem by an edict of tax collectors. After the baby was born, the realm was engulfed by a murderous edict that, had they complied, would have destroyed the child. What followed was immense suffering in this world, ending in death the savior but also the promise of eternal life.
By all means, let us celebrate peace and prosperity, but what happens when they aren’t part of our experience? Why, then, should Christmas be joyful? Tap dancers and candy canes and legends of reindeers and chimneys are all delightful. But that isn’t the source of the true happiness this season brings. The promise of true spiritual salvation is the driving force, not material decadence but rather faith in the unseen and yet to be achieved.
All of this is to say that despair achieves nothing, whereas hope motivates us to find and realize true meaning in our lives. Despite whatever the White House is pushing on us today, we can still find joy in truth, even in times that are hard and getting harder.
