Ties That Unwind

Leftist Cultural Rot is Tearing Americans Apart

By Sam Stone

Americans are more isolated, lonely, and less connected to our communities and each other than we have ever been. That’s the takeaway from a recent Wall Street Journal-NORC poll. But numbers can’t tell the real story of this tragedy nearly as well as this story of a childhood friend mourning the loss of his buddy does. Our culture, our country, is coming apart and the consequences are real and deadly. For the first time in recorded history, average life expectancy in the U.S. is in decline, with drug overdoses – essentially deaths of despair – leading the way.

The ties that once bound Americans together are coming apart at a blistering pace. Years ago, I read The Great Degeneration by Niall Ferguson which posited that America was entering a period of decline that might become endemic as the family, local, and community ties that created our national ethos were slowly fraying. Americans once were deeply vested in their local communities through membership in numerous organizations like the Elks, Masons, and Rotary. But those organizations are dwindling. Civic participation is crumbling, and the values that undergirded two hundred years of American exceptionalism are waning.

We are in a moment that will decide the direction of the United States, and likely the world, for decades to come. The last time a worldwide cultural and geopolitical shift of this magnitude occurred it was in the wake of World War II with the enjoined rise of Western capitalism and Soviet socialism replacing what had largely been governing systems built around religious feudalism. A lesser cultural quake occurred in the early 90s when the Eastern Block fell and Western capitalist culture and economies won what many of us thought would be a permanent victory over the forces of socialism and groupthink.

The mid-late 90’s may turn out to be the high point in U.S. history, the before a long decline that appears to be taking us downhill faster than anyone would expect. The cause is plain to see, at least if you don’t work for the corporate media: the left has lost their collective minds, and are insistent on dragging everyone else down with their madness. Sure there are problems with our economy, and Republicans haven’t done themselves or the country any favors by ignoring those problems at the behest of big-money donors, but the biggest drivers of disunity and chaos – militant transgender ideology, socialism, incoherent eco-warfare, propaganda and disinformation, activist judges, explicit racism, and cancel culture - are largely hallmarks of the left.

Each of these leftist pathologies are ideologies of personal entitlement and selfishness. Sure, the left tries to mask their self-absorption by pretending that everything they’re doing is to benefit others, but look behind the door and what you’ll find are mostly solitary, miserable leftists desperate to foist their mental illness on others. Wokeness is their camouflage, a way to excuse the darkness in their souls by publicly foisting their sins on to someone else.

So how do we stop these purveyors of lonely strife? First, don’t be a sin-eater. Reject their false debasements of America and Americans entirely, and refuse to carry that garbage in your own space. Second, build and strengthen the connections you already have. Call that family member or friend you haven’t talked to in years. Take the time to rebuild your relationships. Third, join something, anything other than a leftist org. Ideally, join something non-political. In reading the two pieces linked above, I decided today to join my local Elks club. Apparently, they do a weekly steak night that’s killer. USDA Prime and everything.

Sam Stone is the co-host of Breaking Battlegrounds