Over the last several decades in this country we’ve been telling almost all and sundry that they are something special. Participation trophies for everyone.
We have coddled, protected, and kept from the realities of their own mediocrity millions of people who have taken our sugar-coated suggestion as to their own merit and run with it into inflated ideas of their own importance.
The schools, the petit bureaucracy, and minor centers of power everywhere are just brimming with imbeciles who have been conditioned to think they are a gift to humanity. Many times they have been falsely honored so because of their pigment or gender. That is, unless you’re a white male.
If you’re a member of that approximately 30 percent of America you’ve been told you’re toxic. Everybody else is a victim of horrible oppression. But not you boyo. You’re the oppressor. It doesn’t matter that you’ve built the nation into the most prosperous, advanced, and free country in the world. At least until the current lot took over.
Nah. That doesn’t count at all. You are a plague to be wiped out by the enlightened 70 percent remaining of America. Atlas Shrugged, anyone? It’s a non-comedic example of the “What have the Romans ever done for us?” mode of thinking.
The classic showcase of this is the “Believe Every Woman” school of thought come up with by people who have obviously never met a woman. From Anita Hill to Christine Blasey Ford, men have been lied about by blatant charlatans. The media and culture’s response? Blame the guy. Why? Because too many people, especially liberal women, have been taught they live on a higher moral plane than the rest of us. Thus they get a pass from realistic reviews of even their wildest buffoonery.
We have this epidemic of self-esteem because we are not taught to think critically anymore, particularly about the individual in the mirror. Memes and mantras express childish self-obsession as a matter of course. Gone is the gracious avoidance of over the top personal advertisement so prevalent in America’s past. Now, like Miles Gloriosis in Forum, we are our own ideal.
Never mind we are at an intellectual and cultural low ebb. Forget we elect men who hide in basements and we glory in confirmation bias. All that pales in comparison to the illumination produced by our collective visage.
But tear back the veil of our infantile narcissism and watch cable television for an evening, listen to words spoken daily from the podium of the White House press secretary, or peruse YouTube and you will be faced with the result of decades of pumping up the ego of idiots. It is not a pretty sight. However, it is one we have completely brought upon ourselves.