Gimme That Old Time Globalism

“These are the times that try men's....” well, not “souls” exactly, because those have been under siege for a couple of generations at least. How about “reasoning power”, or the ability to think logically and in a linear fashion? That may actually be a handicap in these times, given the preponderance of fake news, news about fake news, fake news about fake news, ad infinitum. The notion – popularized in “The Realist” of fond memory – that “the truth is silly putty” may be the most rational position to adopt at this point. Certainly the meltdown of the mainstream media over the Trump phenomenon has caused many to question how long since said media have even been in their right minds. Or – were they ever in their right minds? Have they always been feeding us propaganda on behalf of the Regime? And has world news ever been any more dependable than the bogus and instantly contradictory news flashes in “1984”? Are we to go back to a more primitive time when we could only trust what is before our eyes, or under our noses – and even be skeptical of much of that? Are we, in short, mere pods in The Matrix, whose life energy is continually siphoned off in order to serve as the power source for the Regime?

Regardless of one's answers to the above questions, it has to be striking that President Trump enjoyed what amounts to a hero's welcome at the annual love fest of the ruling class at Davos. He marched into the belly of the New World Order, and of globalism, and more or less took over the room for as long as he was there. And these are the people who erupted in outrage way back when he announced his candidacy, and have been working non-stop to defeat him ever since – in concert with their allies on the domestic front, of course. During the campaign, he preached anti-globalism, and was thus accused of being – gasp! -- a “nationalist”, but also a “nativist”, and, in short order, a “fascist”. (And this is from people who have plenty of experience with both nationalism and fascism, so they ought to know.) The globalists quaked in their boots until they remembered that, number one, they were still in charge (and continue to be), and number two, had plenty of ways and means of keeping him from winning the election (against Hillary Clinton, an ultra-globalist if ever there was one), and, in the wildly unlikely event that he won anyway (they obviously grossly underestimated the percentage of “deplorables” among the American electorate), from ever succeeding in enacting even the tiniest piece of his agenda -- the latter effort which continues in full force, and which includes most of the executive branch, of which Trump is the titular head.

But now he rides into their midst, knocking over buffet tables piled high with caviar and foie gras, and everyone is all smiles. Or are they? What I really suspect is that those – you should pardon the expression – shit-eating grins are not unlike the ones that greeted Obama or Hillary Clinton every time they descended on Wall Street. They are not expressions of love, or admiration, or support, but of fear. And it's not as if politicians are all that powerful, ultimately – but they can be annoying, especially when they manage to translate their pet peeves into laws which then have to be, somehow, dealt with. The Regime will go to great lengths not to be inconvenienced, in other words; efficiency is key.

There are times when pretended friendship is preferable to open hostility and opposition, and this was, undoubtedly, one of those times. After all – or so they reason – America is still in their back pocket, politically and economically, so do we really have to worry about this... anomalous figure who somehow managed to occupy the White House, for who knows how long? Isn't it better to just “grip and grin” and wait it out? Because, after all, globalism is the wave of the future (as it has been as least as far back as Trotsky), and no power on earth, or above or below the earth, is going to stop it. So why get all riled up? Like some dangerous guest at a cocktail party, it's better to just flatter him and keep his glass full until he gets bored and leaves. Otherwise he might run amok and start breaking things and hurting people's feelings.

Or have they had a change of heart? Well – Trump has certainly tossed his opposition to perpetual and non-winnable war onto the ash heap of political history, and that would certainly cause the globalists much relief. We haven't heard a whole lot about free trade lately; Trump's approach to business is more along the lines of the tax bill, which promises what amounts to one-time amnesty for corporations “repatriating” their overseas profits. (But if the Democrats take over Congress next year, watch them de-patriate those profits so fast it will make your head spin.) I imagine the Regime can take that hit if free trade survives intact, which it seems it will. And on the domestic side – well, the Regime doesn't worry about domestic politics in America; it's “noise level” as long as the programs they care about are fully funded, which it appears they will be.

So it is just possible that Trump has crossed some magic line that divides the enemies of globalism from its friends – not that he's a full-fledged friend, but at least they can expect no serious opposition. (One might say that he wandered onto the reservation.) But if that's the case, why haven't they called off their minions and shock troops in the American media, entertainment, the Democratic Party, academics... and now the psychiatry profession? Because those elements are still fighting the war as if the war is still raging, the way Andrew Jackson fought the Battle of New Orleans after the peace treaty had been signed. Or – maybe they haven't gotten the memo yet. Or – maybe the Regime wants them to continue to exert pressure, just in case Trump gets any funny ideas about wandering back off the reservation. But eventually it's going to dawn on someone that getting rid of Trump is no longer Job One – and that will leave a lot of members of the Resistance without gainful employment.

See, the thing about the Regime is that they care only about enhancing their power, influence, and wealth – and those priorities don't necessarily make them pro-American or anti-American... or pro-Democratic or pro-Republican... or pro-”deplorables” or pro-”snowflakes”. All we are -- and this is true right up to the “highest levels” (which is another word for the presidency) -- are tools, and resources, and capital. As long as we “perform” (the way investments are said to “perform”) we are kept alive, fed, housed, and treated to a perpetual stream of brainwashing and propaganda as to how delightful it all is. But if we should fail to perform, then there are options – one of which is simple extermination, but that seems too crude and ham-handed for our enlightened times. Another option is sucking the life out of a movement through repeated assaults – political, economic, and physical. (It worked just fine for the Black Panthers and the “black power” movement, for example.) Another is letting it run its course while insuring that success is impossible – as witness the Bernie Sanders movement, which was undercut and sabotaged by his “friends” at the DNC. And another is making them think they have won, while fatally co-opting their leaders – and examples of this are many, among them the civil rights movement.

In our time the twin populist movements, “Occupy” and the “Tea Party”, have both been allowed to run their course. “Occupy” morphed into Feel the Bern, which then morphed into the Resistance, or at least a segment thereof. The Tea Party bifurcated into pro-Trumpers and anti-Trumpers, both of which are still actively pursuing their agendas. But the point is that they have been compartmentalized – which is a much better strategy than overt, outright oppression. After all, think of all the revolutionaries who got their start in prisons. Prisons are no place to put politically dangerous people! For one thing, it gives them too much free time; “Mein Kampf” was written in prison, lest we forget. It's much better to just let them do their thing, gather a group of followers, fail to ignite anything of significance, and than fade into pathetic irrelevance. (I note that the Soviets had the habit of liquidating political enemies, whereas Chairman Mao would occasionally send them off for “rehabilitation”. His was the more subtle approach – and guess which of the two regimes survives to this day.)

So, to sum up – globalism is intact and, basically, invincible. It's not the wave of the future; it's the present, and we live there. Trump made a bunch of new friends in Davos, and they will see to it that his path to enlightenment continues – at least until they can replace him with a someone who is more amenable to manipulation. And the best news (for them) is that globalism is now the mainstream position in the U.S., at least among those who have any real say in the matter. The stubbornly pro-Trump segment are scratching their heads more every day – is this what we voted for? They're starting to get that “bait and switch” feeling. And many are falling away. They realize, on some level, that the war they thought Trump was going to fight for them was already lost on Election Day, and in fact had been lost for decades; it only took the election of Trump to confirm that fact. But one could also consider this one less thing to worry about: We are the world, and the world is us. We are living in the dream of the “Dreamers”. There are no borders, and no nations. And we all love Big Brother, whoever he or she is, and wherever he or she resides.

The Year to Come in Review

Well, the Peasants' Revolt will be a year old on Saturday – although it could also be dated from Election Day 2016, but we were by no means assured, at that point, that the will of the people was not to be thwarted by the forces arrayed against Trump, including, but not limited to, Obama, Hillary, the “Deep State” (i.e. the bureaucracy), the intel community, Hillary, the Democrats, progressives/liberals of all stripes, anti-Trump Republicans, Hillary, the mainstream media, the entertainment industry... and some other categories I'm probably forgetting to mention. (Throw in the E.U. if you like.) (And Hillary! Wow, almost forgot... ) And by the way, his election gave American Jews a splitting headache, because he is much more pro-Israel than his predecessor was, and yet when they look at him all they see is Hitler, and all they hear is the strains of the Horst Wessel Song and the sound of jackboots tromping on cobblestones. The cognitive dissonance is deafening! But they haven't fallen for the Resistance propaganda any harder than anyone else, particularly if we're talking about the “snowflakes” who infest pretty much every college and university (except, perhaps, those with a serious religious foundation).

(The “snowflakes”, BTW, are a good example of karma, or chickens coming home to roost, since many of them are the grandchildren of my generation, i.e. the restless pre-boomers and boomers, who tirelessly campaigned to make the world safe for neo-Stalinism and Maoism. So for all their efforts on the barricades, in picket lines and protest marches, my generation now has to survey the spectacle of their grandchildren turning into fragile, delicate flowers who are threatened, offended, and “triggered” by everything and nothing. We may regret having raised “sensitivity” up as the highest human value.) (Although now it turns out that many iconic liberal “sensitive men” are every bit as lecherous as anyone else. So perhaps the reports of the demise of testosterone have been greatly exaggerated.)

So what can be said at this point? Trump finally managed to get a major piece of legislation passed and signed, namely tax reform, just in time for the holiday he persists in referring to as “Christmas”, much to the offense and chagrin of the Resistance. And it will be interesting to see if said reform survives the 2018 election, and, if it does, the 2020 election. Anything that Congress can do, it can also undo; that's how it works. Today's “law of the land” can wind up on the trash heap tomorrow. But it will be interesting to see if the Democrats' tactics come back to haunt them in the following way: They knew that if they managed to get Obamacare passed and signed into law, it would create an instant entitlement for millions of people, and that would make it virtually impossible to repeal, reverse, or modify in any significant way. All Trump has been able to do is work around the margins by attacking some of the regulations that were not required by the law but that were ginned up in order to amplify its impact and further expand the bureaucracy. So a lot of the minor annoyances have been dealt with, either partially or in their entirety, but the core of Obamacare remains in place, and is alive and well (if that is the word) despite Trump's protestations to the contrary.

But now the tables have turned, and just wait until the Democrats, if they take back both houses of Congress later this year, try to repeal, reverse, or modify in any significant way the tax reform bill, when it has already (hopefully) demonstrated that it has great benefits not just for the “rich” but for the middle class, who constitute the majority of voters, after all. You want to play the entitlement game? Fine – how about the radical notion that people are entitled to keep more of their own money? How much of a reception are the Democrats going to get this fall when they start telling people, as Bill Clinton did, that they don't trust people to do the right thing with their money? It ought to be great fun to watch.

Frankly, though, there are so many intractable problems facing Trump, and anyone else in a position of political power, that it's hard to be optimistic. If Obamacare was an example of the “ratchet effect” whereby nearly every action taken by the three branches of government only serves to increase the size and scope of the bureaucracy, and said actions are rarely reversed because they include built-in non-reversibility features (being habit-forming for both the beneficiaries and the administrators)... what about the “dreamers”? Now there's the ratchet effect with a vengeance! Take a few million illegal immigrants, including minors who, through no fault of their own, are smuggled across the border by their parents or by people acting in loco parentis, let them grow up here, go to school here, work here, and then try telling them they have to go back to wherever they were born and start over. Impossible! Even if we had had the political will to guard our border more diligently in the first place, it takes a lot more political will to punish the innocent for our negligence. So one way or the other they will be allowed to stay, and, yes, they will pretty much all vote Democratic because, after all, the Democrats are their friends, and the Republicans are the party of hate, racism, etc. etc.

If you adopt a broad historical perspective on the whole immigration issue, you realize that this sort of thing (large-scale migration) has been going on all throughout human history, and probably long before “history” became a scholarly pursuit. What's different in this case is that immigrants no longer wash up on our shores with only the clothes on their backs, and have to work their way up from nothing. No, they are presented with a stunning package of entitlements – said entitlements having been originally intended for U.S. citizens of course, but the courts in their infinite wisdom have decided that that is grossly unfair – let's call it “citizenism”, which will put it in the same category as all of the other bad “isms” floating around – and that a person, simply by virtue of having both feet on U.S. soil, has all, if not more, of the same rights as anyone who was born on said soil. It is already clear that there are many laws that the newcomers are not expected to obey – and the list grows on a daily basis. This is, truly, something new under the sun – and I imagine the long-term effect will be to accelerate trends that are already well underway, by which I mean economic leveling (AKA the gradual merging of the middle and lower classes into one great lower middle, or upper lower, class), cultural dilution and diffusion (referring to the end of what, at one time, could at least be claimed to be the American cultural mainstream, including shared values, a shared sense of history, etc.), and of course the triumph of “diversity”, which, as I've said, is really gray uniformity and, ultimately, slavery disguised as something totally groovy and worthy of “celebration”. (I might also have added, “bankrupting the government”, but that's already the case. Heaven help us if the termites ever stop holding hands... )

Oh, and by the way, how are we supposed to maintain our status as the world's policeman under these conditions? How many of these newcomers are going to be interested in joining the armed forces, for example – with a good chance that they'll be sent back to their countries of origin, this time in uniform and heavily armed, to fight for those people's “freedom”? And heaven forbid the government is reduced to having to reinstate the draft; I can smell the Molotov cocktails and tear gas from here...

Moving right along, we have the Perpetual Warfare State, which Trump seems committed to maintaining, and preferably expanding. His first broken campaign promise – or campaign talking point at least – had to do with getting us out of unnecessary, pointless, and winless wars. Well, he obviously got “the talk” on that issue some time between taking the oath of office and showing up at the first inaugural ball. All that a certain someone had to do was to say “Fuhgeddaboutit!” and Trump, being a New Yorker and knowing full well all that that phrase implies, was quick to snap to. Unfortunate, but for what it's worth Hillary would have done the exact same thing. (Don't you think she dreamed of being the first female war president? Don't you think she still dreams of that?) There are powers as high above the presidency as the presidency is above the wage slave who trudges off to the polls every four years in order to show fealty to his masters. (Who was it who said that any political office that depends on the whims of the voters has no real power?)

And speaking of intractability, how about “climate change”, formerly known as “global warming”, and before that “global cooling”? This is intractable whether we “believe in it” or not. If we do, then we're faced with the fact that, thanks in great measure to our technologies and economic/business concepts which have been spread around the globe, the former “Third World” is now in the throes of building up their economies and their middle class, transportation systems, quality of life, etc., all of which depend to a great extent on, guess what, fossil fuels! See what happens when we set an example? Somehow we expected that the rest of the world could ease gently into the 21^st Century while holding on to a 19^th Century “carbon footprint”. Once again, “fuhgeddaboutit!”

And for whose who don't “believe in” climate change, the intractability comes in the form of a never-ending battle with those who do... and they aren't about to give up the fight, any more than the Resistance is about to give up the War on Trump. In both cases, the battle lines have hardened, and each side is showing the ability to endure, persist, and hold out. And both battles will continue to rage up to, and beyond, the 2018 election, and up to, and beyond, the 2020 election, if Trump should (1) manage to stay in office up to that point; (2) be nominated for a second term; and (3) win a second term. But even if Trump should, at some point, be kidnapped by aliens and whisked off to some other planet, it would only reduce the panoply of issues by one. Trump is, at present, a convenient symbol and scapegoat for everything that is wrong with... well, pretty much everything. If some “snowflake” stubs his toe while stepping into the shower, he blames it on Trump. Imagine the dismay if Trump should vanish but all the problems now attributed to his baleful influence turn out to be still with us.

And how about the ongoing, and accelerating, cyber wars, when any halfway intelligent high school kid in Russia, Romania, Israel, or Kazakhstan can hack into the Pentagon computer system (not to mention the DNC)?

And you can add to the Basket of Intractables things like pollution of the seas (against which the world community appears to be, basically, helpless), storage of nuclear waste (no, it hasn't gone away, and it's not going to), abortion, the predatory behavior of the international banking/financial cartel, food waste, the American diet, homelessness, obesity, the cost of medical care (which Obamacare seems to have done, basically, nothing to remedy and much to aggravate), racial strife (which, again, Obama seems only to have aggravated), and... well, fill in your favorite hopeless issue here. (And if you're the nostalgic type, you can always bring back that old chestnut, “If we can put a man on the Moon, why can't we... (fix the problem of your choice)?”)

And yet, as insurmountable as these problems are, we still cling to the fanciful notion that there is, indeed, one individual who has the power to fix it all, if only he would stop Tweeting and do something about it. Yes, he is the all-wise, the all-powerful, the omnipotent, the reigning deity of the secular world, namely The President of the United States. He is the one the world looks to to bail them out of any and all predicaments (mostly of their own making). He is the creator of employment, of jobs, of health, of prosperity, and especially of tolerance, understanding, niceness, and consideration for others. He will end war, disease, racism, hate, homophobia, sexism, transphobia... and if we're really lucky, he will end phobiphobia – i.e., fear of phobias.

OK – I admit it, I'm not talking about Donald Trump there (except for the Tweeting part). I'm talking about Barack Obama, and I think you could find, somewhere in his campaign speeches or in the adoring words of the lackeys in his administration and the media, references to pretty much all of the above qualities. His awesome powers were nowhere better demonstrated than his having been granted the Nobel Peace Prize on his first day in office. And what's even more amazing, his “legacy” is constantly touted as being the Best Ever, even with ample and growing evidence of apathy, mediocrity, incompetence, and corruption. Not to mention elitism! A radio talk show host recently commented that Obama considered the presidency beneath him; so true!

And yet, this set of expectations is pretty much standard fare when we're talking about the president, whoever he (or, in theory, she) might be – and it's always a grave disappointment when the holder of that office turns out to be, after all, simply another member of homo sapiens and has nowhere near the powers that people anticipated or that they feel ought, by rights, to come with the office. So we have moved on from the Obama Era, when a demigod inhabited the White House along with his demi-demigod wife and demi-demi-demigod children, to a situation where, according to the daily talking points of the Resistance, the Oval Office has been taken over and occupied by a fraud and usurper, who lied, cheated, and stole his way to the presidency with the help of a mere handful of ignoramuses in flyover country who would have voted for a yellow dog rather than for Hillary (and they would have been perfectly correct in making that choice).

You see, the problem with a democracy is that we still long for a king – and the problem with a secular society is that we still long for a deity. So we project these deep longings onto the president, no matter how hapless an individual that turns out to be. So the president becomes the sin eater for the rest of society, and, in fact, for the world. And he is, as a result, expected to spend most of his waking hours apologizing to the world for the great and many sins and offenses of America (past, present, and future) – and, in fact, this was the part of the job description that both Bill Clinton and Obama spent most of their time performing – and probably enjoyed more than any other duty, aside from bombing innocent civilians overseas.

Oh sure, a president may get credit, on occasion, for some real or alleged achievement, but his real value is as a scapegoat. What would the Great Depression be without Herbert Hoover to blame? It would just seem like a random event – a blind catastrophe. But thinking of it as, basically, the work of one man brings things into focus – it fulfills, again, a deep longing. The war in Vietnam was all the fault of Lyndon Johnson if you're a Republican, and of Richard Nixon if you're a Democrat. Once again, clarity and simplicity.

So, again, it must be a sure sign of insanity to even want to be president. The office doesn't drive men mad, it just takes the madness that is already there and amplifies it. And how many of them turn down the opportunity to run for a second term? (LBJ, to his credit, was one of the few who bailed.) So... the Resistance is right, in the sense that we have a madman in the White House. But we always have a madman in the White House; it just goes with the territory. It's how we've allowed things to evolve, morph, and mutate over the years. The longing for a “strongman” is hard-wired into the human race in the aggregate. The French killed their king and wound up with an emperor. The Russians killed the czar and wound up with a parade of dictators. And so on. Show me a society without a strongman and I'll show you a society of people who are truly capable of self-government and whom their neighbors are, at least for the time being, content to leave alone; examples of this are rare indeed. (We were an example up until the Civil War, at least.) 

I guess a sign of the merits of the Constitution is that it is still, at least nominally, in effect after all this time. But that could also be taken as a sign of its weakness and ambiguity – that it's capable of being stretched, interpreted, and massaged to an extreme degree without having to be actually replaced. Or, as someone put it, the minute you start calling the Constitution a “living document” you've killed it. This may be; we may be running on pure inertia at this point, and yet things continue to tilt in the direction of bigger, more powerful, all-consuming government. It is a gravitational force like that coming from a death star, and is augmented by the percentage of the electorate who have, basically, given up on the American Experiment, and who now long for a return to a more ancient model. Call it political masochism if you like – and that was, without a doubt, a big part of Hillary's appeal.

The Trump Era may be seen by future historians as a temporary setback to this process along the same lines as the Reagan administration. Or – Trump may not even be able to stay in office long enough to constitute an “era”; we may be talking more about a Trump Episode, or a Trump Minute. This might actually be a collective nightmare, from which we will awaken to find Hillary comfortably ensconced in the Oval Office while Bill hangs around the White House swimming pool channeling the ghost of Hugh Hefner. This is certainly what the Resistance is hoping for. In fact, they are grievously offended that Trump has managed to hold on this long. But regardless of duration, this administration does represent something significant in our political history – possibly the last gesture of defiance by those who were “silent no more” before we are finally drawn into the black hole of totalitarianism.

A Meditation on the Benedict Option and Community

My attention was recently called to an article* in the New Yorker (of all places, since they are the foremost promoters of the terminally hip urban lifestyle, which seems incompatible with serious spirituality) on Rod Dreher and his book “The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation”. The term is defined in the article, not unfairly, as including the following ideas:

• “... places where faith, family, and community form an integrated whole”

• “(Dreher) urges Christians... to remove themselves from the currents of modernity. They should turn inward, toward a kind of modern monasticism.”

• (quoting Dreher) “I believe that politics in the Benedict Option should be localist.” (Catholic social teaching refers to this as “subsidiarity")

• “Christians should consider living in tight-knit, faith-centered communities, in the manner of Modern Orthodox Jews.” (to which I would add, the Amish and certain Mormon offshoots)

• “Surviving this new age of darkness might call for the construction of local forms of community, where a realist approach to morality lives on.”

The same idea can be found in some of the writings of the late John Senior, Catholic educator extraordinare:

• “Now we have come to another bitter time of discontent; and the age of Saint Benedict has returned.” (from “Hidden Grace”)**

• “In times of great crisis, in the spiritual life of persons and of nations and the Church, anything but flight is folly.” (in a discussion of Newman in the same essay)

The New Yorker article, while biographical to a great extent, and anthropological as well (since the author seems highly bemused by the whole concept as well as the various versions of its implementation), does outline the numerous issues and dilemmas surrounding the Benedict Option, and I do recommend it as at least an introduction to the issue.

I was familiar with Dreher because of his work on The American Conservative, which is, BTW, one of the few truly conservative media outlets. (Most of the ones self-styled “conservative” are actually neoconservative, the critical difference being that the neocons advocate a “muscular” foreign policy, which is another way of saying we are the world's policeman – and we see how well that has worked out.)

As to The Benedict Option, I had heard the term before, and I always enjoy thinking about my older son, who has elected the Benedict Option in the literal sense by becoming a Benedictine monk. And the first thing that I think of in that regard, from the social, political, and economic points of view, is the self-sufficiency of the Benedictine monastery. It is not total – i.e. they are still “on the grid” to some extent – electricity, phone service (but virtually no cell phone service and very little Internet activity). But they are moving (it's still a fairly new place) toward ever-increasing self-sufficiency when it comes to food, drink, and various maintenance issues. (Once a given part of the monastery is built – it's happening in stages – the maintenance falls to the monks. They have no live-in, on-site secular employees.)

I guess one could think of that as one “extreme”, on the end of the continuum, although in times past the monastic life was considered quite normal and not at all freakish. Of course, self-sufficiency in general was pretty much the rule in the old days; even my home town was a far more self-sufficient place when I was a kid than it is now. And most of the people who worked there lived there, and vice versa (except for the guys who drove in to work in the “plants” on the outskirts of Buffalo). But it was a true community in that people knew each other, and you could go a long time without ever seeing a “stranger”. (By contrast, I see people I've never seen before every day right on my street. And no, it's not Alzheimer's where you meet new people every day.)

But to call my home town a “community” is not to imply some sort of uniformity. There was religious diversity within the Protestant mold... a large Catholic contingent (anchored by Poles and Germans, with some Italians in the mix)... two Jewish families... and, I'm sure, plenty of skeptics, unbelievers, and the otherwise “unchurched”. Politically, it was a Republican town in the sense that the dominant middle class were pretty much all Republican – although I suspect that some of the blue-collar folks had Democratic leanings (especially the union members).

The other major vector when talking about the Benedict Option, besides community per se, is what some refer to as the “culture wars”. The premise – or one premise -- behind the Benedict Option is that the culture wars have been lost, so rather than keep fighting in vain it's time to retreat, get off the battlefield, and get back to basics – spiritual as well as material. Of course this motive was behind all of the countless Utopian communities that sprang up, particularly in upstate New York, in the 1800s. Already at that early date there was a feeling that some sort of purification was in order, and the way to accomplish that was to get off what at that time passed for “the grid”. But speaking of purification, let's not forget that the Pilgrims and Puritans (hence the name) had the same motive; for them the way to renewal was to get out of Europe and settle in the New World, where it was just them, God, and nature. And, oh yeah, a few Indians.

So you have this motive that recurs so many times in history that it almost seems like part of human nature. It's certainly part of human nature in the collective – but it's also always a minority opinion. Most people are content with things as they are – or if not content then at least willing to put up with it. In the modern era you had the hippies, who rebelled against materialism (as well as war and what Wilhelm Reich called character armoring) – first on campuses and in the cities, and then in the form of communes which sprang up everywhere, but especially in California. And they too had given up – at least for a while – on the mainstream (AKA “square”) culture. Some of the communes survive to this day – usually because they came up with some marketable goods and services. Others pretty much evaporated. But the same is true of the Utopian religious communities.

But this raises the interesting question of religious vs. secular communities. So many of the dynamics and motives, and trajectories, are similar, and yet there is this one significant difference – that the older communities were, pretty much without exception, motivated by religious or at least spiritual ideals, whereas the communes were more about getting away from the establishment juggernaut and finding peace and tranquility (and a place to get high without getting hassled -- “Tune in, turn on, drop out” being the mantra). And yet for the latter there was a “spiritual” -- if I can stretch the definition a bit – element. Many of those involved had become interested in Buddhism, for example – and that has a long monastic tradition as well. Others were more into the general, somewhat catch-all and at times nebulous, New Age “thing” -- which persists to this day, of course, becoming more mainstream all the time. (Next time you walk past a GNC store or pass the large yogurt section in the supermarket, thank a hippie.) And even that didn't start with the hippies; there were communities of the old school that dabbled in what we would call holistic health, alternative medicine, esoteric sexual practices, and Spiritualism (and many kindred pursuits).

It would be tempting to say that the old timers paved the way for the hippies... and that the Old World monasteries paved the way for the old timers. Again, if you want to talk about human nature in the collective, there are many parallels. But the European monasteries were all Catholic, whereas the New World Utopian communities were, as far as I know, all either Protestant or somehow spiritual and humanistic, but definitely not Catholic. And the hippie communes don't seem to have gotten the idea from the Utopian communities, although I recall there was a certain degree of interest there – especially in the Shakers, which is ironic since the Shakers were celibate whereas the hippies were anything but.

What I'm saying is that any continuity that appears in a historical survey is based more on human nature than on the direct descent of ideas. Like so many other social or political movements or ideas, there is a kind of cyclic phenomenon whereby a given idea first becomes widespread and implemented in a variety of ways, then the initial energy wanes a bit and we have a period of stability, after which things tend to kind of fade and the whole idea goes underground again (except for a few isolated proponents) until the next “wave”. There are very few phenomena, whether one is talking about politics, religion, or culture in general, that are not subject to this cyclic pattern – which leads one to imagine that there is a kind of long-term drive toward homeostasis in human history. We talk a lot about “pendulum swings”, and I think that refers to something quite real and quite embedded in the human psyche. Things go too far in one direction, and then there is a correction, and then things head off in the opposite direction. (I also imagine that the Hegelian concept of the dialectic, or thesis/antithesis/synthesis, is another way of expressing the same idea.)

The Benedict Option clearly refers back to St. Benedict himself and the establishment of the monasteries – although as metaphor, it could certainly describe any movement away from the “business” (busy-ness) of the world and toward a simpler form of existence. And I'm not claiming that it's always motivated by a feeling of giving up, or despair, vis-a-vis the world at large. It could boil down simply to choosing something better. However, if someone who is traditionally-minded and who is also religious in a traditional sense were to keep a scorecard with wins and losses in the culture wars, it would definitely seem that the floodwaters are rising and that it's time to flee to the hills (figuratively at least). The current political war is certainly a case in point, although not a clear one. For one thing, Donald Trump is not a conservative in the strict sense, although he does seem to have traditionalist leanings. But his opposition, AKA the Resistance, is definitely that which Dreher seems to be advocating we avoid. For they have won the culture wars on pretty much every front – and this is not to say that they have won all “hearts and minds” -- far from it. What they have managed to do is take over the culture – and there is nothing sudden or overnight about this; the campaign has been waged for many decades – lifetimes, even. And they have not taken over everything; there is still a remnant – a few voices of opposition left. (They don't seem to have had much of an impact on NASCAR yet, for example. But the NFL counts as the most recent casualty.) What is shrinking more than the number of people who believe in “values” is their opportunities to make their convictions known, and their status in society in general – and I don't see the Trump Event as more than a temporary slowing down of the overall trend. The “forgotten Americans” stood up and voted Trump into office, but they and their values are no less under siege now than they were prior to the 2016 election. Congress is helpless to do anything about it, and the Supreme Court can't be totally relied on even with a “conservative” majority.

Now, it has to be said that for many people this is all good news. They are 100% on the side of “progress” and “social change” and all the rest of it, and the events of the past few decades, despite the occasional setback, can hardly be anything but an occasion for rejoicing. Catch a Hillary supporter fleeing to the hills! Why should they? The mainstream culture is going their way, and getting better every day. They are happy as pigs in stuff, as the saying goes.

No, clearly the Benedict Option is for the “bloodied but unbowed” veterans of the culture wars who have grown old and weary of fighting, and convinced that much more can be accomplished on the local level, and in a community of like-minded people, and with family, home and hearth at the center. I believe this myself, of course – and try to live it out as best I can given my particular circumstances. One can always do the right thing. Even someone in prison, in solitary confinement, can practice righteousness.

I should insert something here on the issue of planning, as in “planned”, vs. “organic”, communities. Organic communities just sort of happen – they grow up – there is a history there, having to do with agriculture, or industry, mining, transportation, whatever... but the community as community is not the result of a blueprint (other than the ones used by the real estate developers). It winds up being a collection of people that appears quite random at times; even if the original settlers were of one mind, relatively speaking, can that be said of their descendants? Not unless there was a serious, well-established and overt cultural groundwork. And yet, “random” communities do, in fact, survive and may even prosper, whereas many “planned” communities fold up for some reason, often because that original vision was lost or proved to be either delusional or insufficient in some other way. Another thing that happens is that the planned community gives way to a less-planned community, which gives way to a non-planned community, even if there is some claim to history or to tradition referring back to the founders. Show me any of the planned communities of old that are still operating on as strict, uniform, and coherent basis as they did when founded – I daresay there are few if any left (monasteries being an exception, of course).

Now, what does this imply? That planned communities are always a mistake? Or sometimes a mistake? Or worth a try, but don't be surprised if things don't work out in the long run? One can point to plenty of the old-time Utopian communities that did much good for their members, and which continue to represent a certain set of values; the fact that the original uniformity is lost should not count against the original idea or against what has evolved.

We should also – if we're studying this issue – take a look at the original basis for any given community. Was it an idea, or a movement (religious or otherwise)? Or was it, perhaps, a single, charismatic leader who, once deceased, was succeeded by people with less firm convictions, or simply less social dominance? The communities that have both succeeded and persisted seem, in fact, to be characterized be a combination of original factors – yes, there was a strong and charismatic leader, but he or she also had coherent ideas – an ideational system, even. And those ideas were sufficiently appealing to be passed down – and at the same time the original leader didn't leave a vacuum but developed the next generation.

Another factor, as the article implies, is that – human nature again – there are people who are willing and able to live in a community of like-minded people. They are, by nature, cooperative and willing to blend in – AND (important point) abide by whatever hierarchical authority structure the community might have. They aren't rebels, in other words – and not chronic malcontents, gripers, or complainers. But there are also those who may be willing, but are not able – they just can't “hack it” in that sort of setting, so wind up leaving, regretfully. So any discussion of the Benedict Option has to take this very natural continuum into account – not only human nature in the aggregate but human nature on an individual basis. Just as there is a spectrum of human nature, so there should be a spectrum of available options within the larger Benedict Option idea – and there should be no arbitrary attempts to rank or assign levels of merit based on which option is chosen.

This, in turn, brings up the sub-option of what I will call the Benedict Option “in place” -- i.e. not requiring an actual physical retreat (heading for the hills) and also not requiring entering an organized community. If the family is, in a sense, a “little church”, then it should also be fully capable of embracing, and implementing, many if not all possible elements of the Benedict Option within the four walls of the home. And family life should be valued not just as the way things are, and the best way to bring up children, but also as a perfectly respectable way of retreating from the world (that “retreat” occurring on a daily basis, or as often as need be, when dealings with the wider world are done). I know families that have, perhaps implicitly, adopted this strategy. Admittedly, most of them live in rural areas or small towns, and some live near monasteries, from which they gain spiritual strength and which generate like-minded families with which at least a loose community can form. And the beauty of all of this is that it's happening “below radar”, i.e. without attracting the notice of the Regime, or of the media (except on rare occasions), and yet this remnant may serve as the seed for future generations as they attempt to reverse the overwhelming tide of secularism and materialism.

Can this even be done in urban contexts? Or – unlikely as it seems – in the suburbs? Well, we know that there is a significant Mormon presence in many suburban areas in the U.S. -- and even many of the Hassidic Jews live in what is, for all intents and purposes, a suburban area in Rockland County, New York – having migrated there over the years from densely-populated Brooklyn. So yes, it can happen anywhere, and where one finds oneself is no excuse for not at least trying to walk a different path from the one that popular culture seems to require. (I note that even the hippies of the 1960s bifurcated – from their start in college towns and large cities, some stayed in urban areas and others wound up in the countryside. Each environment presented challenges, of course; the idea is not to insist on a certain place, but on a certain set of principles that will be followed regardless of place.)

To sum up, a lingering question might be – isn't all of this the same as giving up... as despair? Well, there are wars that eventually result in victory for one side and defeat for the other, and conceding defeat is not shameful if one has fought the good fight. And as to despair, that would be if one capitulated but then failed to come up with an alternative – a Plan B – and the Benedict Option is clearly the Plan B of our time. It's difficult for individuals or families to assemble the resources to live an alternative lifestyle, but it can be done in community, as it has been countless times over the millennia. The skeptic will always come up with quibbles – what's wrong with the world the way it is? It won't work! It's too much trouble! Et cetera. Well, it's that attitude that keeps them in place and keeps them subject to the whims of their rulers. I'd rather be open to alternatives, even if I can't take advantage of all of them. It's good just knowing they're there, and that there are people out there who are trying to.... not create a new world (that's a “progressive” project) but take one small portion of the existing world and make it into something that is nourishing and uplifting rather than toxic and oppressive.

*Article reference: The Seeker, by Joshua Rothman. The New Yorker, May 1, 2017, pp. 46-55.

** This essay can be found in “The Remnants: The Final Essays of John Senior”. The Remnant Press, 2013.