March 20, 2024
Wednesday Open Comments
Martin Gurri is consistently quotable.
People unfortunate enough to live under tyranny must swallow bitter poison between every breath. That poison is fear. Fear strips away humanity and leaves behind a panicked animal, hoping only to survive. Fear demands obedience, conformity, sycophancy—the adulation of all that one hates most. Each moment is an anguish of doubt. Children know, or soon learn, that some topics of conversation will destroy their parents. One ill-chosen word and you will never find work again. One careless letter, written in frustration, and you end up in the gulag. One act of open defiance and you are dead.
This was his introduction to an essay reacting to Alexei Navalny’s murder. The point sets up a contrast with nervous lives in our free society:
We in the U.S. suffer from the opposite condition. Our lives are soft and easy, but we are lacking in courage. We move in great conformist herds, terrified that a single original thought might knock us out of step and reveal us to the world, in all our appalling helplessness, as individuals. We are told by tribal elders which words to use and which are taboo—these change constantly, since it’s a training regime in obedience. We are afraid of the Internet mob. We are afraid of getting cancelled and losing our jobs. The youngest adult Americans are afraid of sex and of each other and of life itself.
It is a shame that in our day and in our country that so little is understood about actual political repression. The complaining about oppression at home is as loud as it is unjustified. As Gurri says, it is mostly driven by conformist herds, not by a police state that can imprison you, take all your earthly possessions, and even sneak in to take your life.
High School Envirothon results: F and the Girls were 2nd, and the Tall Boys, featuring the eponymous Son E, were first!!!
Our arch-rivals from Davidson County Homeschool were shocked to be 3rd.
I think Martin Gurri is right, and yet ...
"Fear strips away humanity and leaves behind a panicked animal, hoping only to survive. Fear demands obedience, conformity, sycophancy ..."
This describes the atmosphere behind the scenes in my church right now. My friend the communications coordinator said that when Assistant Pastor walks into the office and closes the door, she just looks at her desk and mumbles, "Yes," or "You're right," until he wears himself out and leaves. There doesn't have to be a risk of death or injury or deportation or confiscation of goods for our viscera to react with the "freeze, flight, or fight" instinct, which mainly means "freeze" in the kinds of environments where a Southern lady experiences abuse.
Although I find the idea that either of our American political parties is a major threat of legal tyranny on the Russian model to be overblown, I think the urge is there. They want to be tyrants, they want to control everyone: they just don't have the mechanisms.