Modern Culture as Travesty

Lance Morrow, long-time essayist for Time, writes of the travesty that our culture has become. His column appears in City Journal. He is beyond bemused by current excesses.

Almost everyone, I think, shares the sense that we inhabit an age of travesties; everywhere, there is an atmosphere of travesty.

Leading universities have turned themselves into hybrids of Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood and Mao’s Red Guards. They have become madrassas of identity politics, given over to dogmatism, indoctrination, the coddling of grievance, and the encouragement and manipulation of neurotic youthful insecurities for the purpose of consolidating political power.

Travesty abhors compromise, scorns moderation, or careful thought; the travestied Left and travestied Right are twins, and converge in the neighborhood of coercion and certitude.

A society cannot go on compounding its travesties indefinitely. We are undoubtedly approaching a crisis in which our travesties—one way or another— will have to resolve themselves, either by committing suicide or burning down the house (which is what travesties and addicts often threaten to do), or by sobering up and going to meetings and learning to behave like serious grownups.

I don’t see a lot in Morrow’s essay with which to disagree. As to his last point, I see cultural suicide as substantially more likely than a revision to adult behavior. I take no joy in this view. Hat tip to Power Line for the link.