Commentary: The Boredom Machine

Ruins of the Capitol
from the video game Fallout 3

It's been several hours since some semblance of a historical event transpired here in America: Kevin McCarthy was ousted from being Speaker of the House in the House of Representatives.  It's the first time that's ever happened.  McCarthy is now third place in being shortest term of office for a speaker.

I've taken a peak at some of the more prominent online news and politics forums.  And this has obviously been an event arousing considerable discussion, anger, and triumph.

But the best I've been able muster up is an indifferent shrug. 

Once upon a time, I would be following the ouster of Kevin McCarthy with intense interest.  It IS the very first time in American history that a House speaker has been tossed out of the position, after all.  In days past my eyes and ears would be absorbing every scrap of information about what is now happening, collating it all in my brain as fast as it could possibly be done.

But I'm older now.  Presumably wiser.  And definitely more world-weary than three decades ago.  I've seen "leaders" and their parties swept into and out of power for so long, with very little lasting good for the nation, that I'm just plain bored with it all.

Heh.  "I'm so bored with it all."  Those were the final words of Winston Churchill, you might be enlightened to know.

It's much worse now.  The utter mundanity of modern politics.  Especially modern American politics.

I think Donald Trump was the first really brilliant flash of invigoration since Ronald Reagan.  But Trump ultimately failed to counter and rein in the overly-burdensome entrenched institutionalized wickedness that our government has become.  He accomplished some good - the border wall is, or would be anyway, one example - but he surrounded himself with people whose allegiances were with "the machine".  They were not loyal to the American people and their republic.

And now we see "the machine" bearing down on Trump, doing its damndest to squash any possibility of his re-election and retribution.  Take heed, friends and neighbors!  This is what "the machine" can do and will do to any and all challengers to its power and influence.  It will quash its dissidents like vermin... because that's all that we are to them.  Trump?  He's just the biggest person to make an example of.  I can tick off many others who have been besieged and destroyed by the machine for their insolence.

Don't think I'm a Trump uberfan.  You'll never catch me dead in a "Make America Great Again" cap.  I don't have political idols to follow.  But I damn well know what an all-out war to destroy an individual in almost every conceivable way looks like.  If it can happen to one person, it can happen to anyone at all.

This is what modern American politics is not just becoming, it already is.  It has turned into the very thing that our fathers and grandfathers for over two hundred years have fought to keep our country from becoming.

We all know it, even if we refuse to admit it.

This country has wound up with a lifelong chronic liar and a political prostitute in its two highest offices.  And we are supposed to applaud that?

There is now much more spying on regular citizens than the Stasi ever were capable of.  The propaganda of "the machine" has powers that Goebbels never imagined.  Silencing dissent has become a science to the priests of power.

The Internet?  I would tell you to search Google for evidence that its algorithms are biased against all but leftist people and policies, but it's algorithms don't allow for that.  Only a token few results are let slip by.  The machine controls the search engines.  Right now only Twitter is an isle of freedom of ideas and information... but God only knows how long that will last.  Social media?  The day will soon come when I and multitudes of others won't be allowed to post these things.  We'll probably have our accounts deleted.  Made unpersons.  As if we never existed on the Internet at all.  I genuinely wonder if the blog I've maintained for almost twenty years will one day be deleted.  Just one reason why I keep regular backups of it.

Entertainment?  Let's just say I am not a Disney+ subscriber.  I doubt I ever will be.  And I genuinely hate to say that.

All of this and more... much, much more... have turned America into a dreary landscape of tedium and turmoil, populated with spineless thralls.  There is no more vigor on display in this land.  Only the machine and its attendants and the ashen waste they continue to make of our nation.

McCarthy?  His ouster is just one minor episode in the scheme of things.  Nothing substantial will change.  Nothing will be allowed to change.  Not with the machine in control of very nearly everything.

I'm bored with the machine and everything about it.

You want vigor again?  You want real excitement?  You want serious change?

Be of good cheer then.  It is coming, sooner or later.  It is inevitable.  The machine can not survive forever.  It will eventually run out of willing slaves.

And then the blood will flow.  As high as the horses' bridles.

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Look! New article on American Thinker! Word you've never heard before within! Free toy inside!

Okay so truth be told, I lied about the free toy.  Maybe I was driven to madness by the bowl of Lucky Charms that I am currently enjoying.  Along with the orange juice and banana, everything that a growing boy... errrr, grown man(??) needs.  Anyhoo...

I am very grateful and honored that American Thinker, a commentary site that I have long admired and respected, has published the third article that I have written and submitted for their consideration.  "The Inthinkables" (I looked for that word on Google and couldn't find it already, honest) is about how too much of our society has yielded over its capacity for rational and critical thought and in its place has chosen an almost visceral and hair-trigger instinct toward reacting on the basis of "feelings" unfounded in logic and knowledge.

In short: too many aren't using the minds they were born with.  The rest of us are surrendering too much to them.  The real thinkers are being harassed from public venues and good people like John Schnatter are being driven from the very businesses they founded and nurtured through their own effort and initiative.

Excerpt!

Critical and rational thought is being vanquished.  In its place is a Randian horror of mental surrender.  Orwell described Eastasia's dominant philosophy as "death worship," better translated as "obliteration of the self."  I can conceive of no more fitting phrase.  The academic world and the realms of entertainment and media have nurtured and encouraged too many to offer their minds as sacrifice to convenience and their souls to mass approval.  Most have happily complied if they have been cognizant of having a choice at all. 

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so it is that the obligation for reason is abdicated for the intoxication of emotion.  At last, there is no logic whatsoever.  There is only an instinctive response to sounds and sights that seduce or offend.  For some, the condition may be irreversible. 

So kindly allow me to introduce a new word into the English lexicon: "inthinkable."

If you're on the fence about clicking on over to read it, the op-ed invokes Blazing Saddles and Pat Sajak.  Among other things.  But you'll just have to find out yourself.

"The Inthinkables", only at American Thinker.  Load your copy today!

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