Getting Gloomy

Rod Dreher, of Benedict Option fame, has taken up the task of describing the decline of Western society; he’s become an op-ed version of Edward Gibbons. Dreher does a great job, if you can handle the depression that follows reading one of his well-crafted columns, like this from The American Conservative.

In it he describes three families despairing of modern conditions and moving to what they hope are safer precincts. One intends to leave the “good” section of Washington, DC, but hasn’t decided where to go. Another, who learned Magyar as a child, has moved to Hungary. And a third was a med school prof who with his family, relocated to private practice in small town Wyoming. All seem happy with their decisions.

Apropos of this sentiment, join me for a rereading of parts of W.B. Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

And Yeats concludes apocalyptically :

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Yeats wasn’t optimistic, Dreher isn’t either. I’m only slightly optimistic in the short-to-medium run (a few years), beyond that all I see is societal dysfunction and decay.

When Louis XVI prophetically declaimed, “Apres moi le deluge,” his foresight wasn’t bad. Don’t you suppose President Trump has (or should have) those same feelings?