A New Hope

 

I am the eternal optimist. I keep expecting the pendulum to swing back to sense, as the world goes mad. As governments seem to act against the interests of their own people. As the churches empty, and we cannot even trust the Vatican anymore. As all the arts are moribund. As we can no longer trust the professions or to act honourably, or the media to tell the truth. As AI threatens to make us obsolete. As no one wants to have children or to raise them anymore. As our education system no longer passes on the culture. As civil society and the social contract, even our collective commitment to logic and reality break down. 

And yet… 

I do see growing signs of hope. The more so since the forces of disorder seem to have pushed matters too far. Camels’ backs cannot bear infinite weight.

The refusal of three university heads, of Harvard, MIT, and UPenn, a few days ago, to condemn calls for genocide, looks to me like an inflection point. First, this is a clear shift of the moral high ground away from academia and the left. They’re the Nazis, this makes plain, not the people they have been calling Nazis. Second, I see a demoralizing of the evil elite at the backlash; the presidents sounded rather condescending, looking down from their ivory tower. Now they will be hearing footsteps on the stairs. The UPenn president, at least, has no resigned. This in turn is a revelation to many on the sidelines that they have the collective power to resist. 

I think October 6, the barbarity of Hamas’s attack on Israel, and the loud support for it among Arab expatriate populations across the West, was an earlier inflection point. When Trump reminded us all that Arabs in New York celebrated on 9-11, people insisted he was lying. Now we see it again, and in numbers impossible to deny. There are differences between cultures beyond what they offer in their ethnic restaurants; there are deep-seated animosities and intolerances. Some cultural differences are important, and irreconcilable. This is a blow, in turn, for the leftist doctrine of multiculturalism.

Back in the 2019 election, I attended an all-candidates meeting in which the PPC candidate noted that one cause of the housing crisis was excessively high rates of immigration. And loud shouts demanded she be silenced and removed from the stage. But now, this observation is mainstream.

I remember when any non-left-wing views were simply never heard. We had only the mainstream media. Anyone who dissented thought they were alone. Then Rush Limbaugh appeared, and talk radio. Then Fox News. Now we have any number of sources on the Internet. Sure, big tech and government are trying to silence them, but they are fighting a growing deluge. We are now at the point of linking up into a distinct and well-rounded counterculture.

X in particular, has emerged under Musk as a pretty free speech platform. Breaking the illusion of any opposition being an “extremist minority.” Alex Jones has just been reinstated.

I expect X to suck all oxygen out of alternatives. Precisely because it allows more viewpoints, it will become the necessary forum for public discourse, the place everyone has to be. The media monopoly will be gone.

And the counterculture is broadening and deepening. Angel Studios and Daily Wire are constructing an alternative entertainment industry, and are getting traction.

The Bud Light boycott, another recent inflection point, is spreading to other traditional brands, now that the dissidents have realized their power. Corporations that get woke go broke. Every week now we seem to hear of another woke corporation taking an earnings hit. This will inevitably drain resources from the left over time.

There are also signs of religious revival: Pentecostal outbursts in Tennessee, proliferating eucharistic miracles. We have heard little from the “New Atheists” of late. Monotheism is in the intellectual ascendant; every week we seem to hear from another intellectual who has crossed the floor to faith. It no longer looks so cool to pseudo-intellectuals to be atheist. 

And, of course, some major woke governments have fallen, or are falling in the polls. Trudeau, Biden. A friend from New Zealand reports that their new government is well to the right. Argentina just went from Peronist to Libertarian. Italy elected “far right” Meloni, and Netherlands gave a plurality to “far right” Wilders. 

Someone recently suggested we are at an 1848 moment. 

I think it’s much bigger than that. Driven by technology, we are moving into a new phase of civilization. If things look calamitous for now, these may be birth pangs. No major chance comes easily, or without desperate resistance.