From the Moon to Woodstock

Everyone thinks the end is near. But are they right?

Victor Davis Hanson is one of our more astute social/political critics. Usually, because of his long view from Greek times, he is one of the more reliable commentators in not buying into the “sky is falling” narrative.

Not today. In "The Last Days of the Republic", Hanson’s piece in the Daily Signal today, he argues

“Americans are now entering uncharted, revolutionary territory. They may witness things over the next five months that once would have seemed unimaginable.”

True. No one can doubt, as he insists, that “The traditional bedrocks of the American system—a stable economy, energy independence, vast surpluses of food, hallowed universities, a professional judiciary, law enforcement, and a credible criminal justice system—are dissolving.” Hanson is building on a column from three days earlier, "Imagine the Unimaginable". There he noted that the American people have ejected “the calamitous policies of 2021-2022. Yet the radical cadres surrounding a cognitively inert Biden still push them through by executive orders, bureaucratic directives and deliberate Cabinet nonperformance.” Also true.

Julius Ruechel, at the Brownstone Institute, has asked "Can we find our way back to freedom?" Echoing Hanson, observes

“Some might even speculate that some of our leaders, fully aware of the lack of philosophical anchors at this stage of the long social cycle, may even be actively working to break society’s connection to its philosophical roots while deliberately stoking crises with the goal of “nudging” society towards their ideological vision of society. Build Back Better. The self-inflicted wounds caused by Covid mismanagement, the energy crisis, the inflation crisis, fertilizer shortages, the Ukraine war, etc, all come to mind.” 

Also true, that is, that there is no question a number of bad actors, from Klaus Schwab to Dr. Fallacy to Justin Trudeau saw in the China Virus a great opportunity to impose quasi-totalitarian controls and remake the world in their own image. The problem is, they ain’t the Fourth Turning—-the title of a book by William Strauss and Neil Howe about massive generational upheavals in which old structures are discarded and new ones imposed after a time of chaos. The point being, no one is control of the chaos. They just think they are. It’s Vesuvius.

Ruechel is exactly right when he points to a major symptom of such an upheaval, namely the “abysmal failure of our judges, politicians, doctors, academics, and policemen to speak out in defense of the principles embedded in our constitutions — and the lack of pushback from the public at large — reveals the momentous society-wide cultural shift that happened” long before the China Virus.

By the way, did you notice something? I never refer to Covid but always call it the “China Virus.” Because it is. It came from China. I firmly believe that had we resisted those who demand we change the original name to a scientific non-penetrable gobbledygook term, and insisted on calling it the China Virus, it would have disappeared much quicker if only because the pansybottom media whores hated calling it that. But I digress . . .

How many times did you scream at judges you couldn’t see, cops you saw on television, politicians you read on Twitter, or even ministers who admonished you in church to DO SOMETHING! SAY SOMETHING!? A handful of heroes did. Some are still in jail. One such hero, Louisiana Rev. Tony Spell refused to close his church, defying Governor John Bel Edwards’ restrictions as most pastors nationwide meekly complied. How many refused to mask? How many police and firemen resigned rather than take the vax? But that was an easy call. The tougher question was “how many resigned in the summer of 2020 when blue-city DemoKKKrat mayors utterly refused allow law enforcement to shut down rioters?”

Or take the “fine people” at the FBI: did a single whistleblower stand up for the utterly lawless and entirely political persecution of Donald Trump by the Agency in 2017-19? Certainly not this toadstool:

No. Not one.

Again, Ruechel points out that the “grand post-WWII narrative and its central principles have ceased to inspire society, leaving culture disconnected from its roots.”
It’s interesting to think back to the last time a national act by the United States, not associated with a moment of military victory such as knocking out Saddam’s army in 1991 or killing Osama Bin Laden in 2011, inspired any Americans. You might make a case for the “Miracle on Ice” team beating the Soviets in the 1980 Winter Olympics, but even that had Cold War overtones.

No, you have to go back further. I think I can provide the moment: it was not our celebration of the Bicentennial in 1976, but the landing on the moon in 1969.

Despite left wing historians’ attempts to turn this into some sort of Cold War spectacle, it was rightly recognized as an astounding achievement of dedicated scientists and engineers, incredibly courageous astronauts, and, yes, a visionary President John Kennedy who committed the nation to the impossible less than a decade earlier. It represented self-denial, courage, patience, cooperation, and yet individual dedication at the highest level.

And you know what also stands out about that year? Less than a month later, a celebration of the polar opposite of everything embodied in the moon landing took place at Woodstock, a three day drug-induced “celebration” of music, but also of indulgence, slovenliness, uncontrolled lust, and the worst elements of independence.

Hey, I’m a drummer from way back. We thought Woodstock was neat, knew all the songs, idolized some of the musicians. But that was from safe suburbs two thousand miles away. By then most of us had already recognized that whackjabber drugs like LSD could permanently damage you; that addictive narcotics like cocaine and heroine came with a massive price, and that as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Keith Moon died in quick order and Sly Stone became a walking corpse, it was not a path many wanted to follow.

Woodstock generated the largest pile of garbage in human history and ended with a “truly apocalyptic” vision of a “battlefield [with] zombies crawling over a field littered with paper cups, plastic wrappers, and half-eaten food, gnawing on corn husks, slobbering over ketchup- and mustard-smeared half-eaten hot dog rolls sprinkled with ants.” It was likely the first time in human history drugs were used for mass crowd control.

Try as they might to disassociate themselves from it, the Woodstock Generation was intricately tied to Charles Manson and his murderous clown cabal that had slaughtered five people just a week before in California. It was just another side of the Woodstock coin.

If the moon landing was our last wholesome national celebration of those foundational traits every culture should aspire to, it wasn’t obvious to everyone that society had started swirling the drain quite so immediately. As with all things, the surrenders came in increments: homosexual marriage, an explosion of the national security state with the War on Terror (which the great Rush Limbaugh warned us about), and above all the willingness to permit political cheats and low-level demagogues to get away with their evil crap.

The most insidious shift in culture involved not the leftward shift across the board, which both Hanson and Reuchel point out included virtually every institution in America from the church to the corporate boardroom, but rather the notion that criticism and resistance to this became impermissible.

Apparently not a single Hollywood studio head said to the Pink Mafia, “No, we will not let you dictate scripts and story lines.” This drip-drip-drip of stifling criticism proceeded to make comedy entirely unfunny; movies and television formulaic; and above all made professionals of all stripes—-especially doctors—-into cowards. How many resigned from the NIH or CDC over the entirely hoaxified China Virus protocols? What lawmakers demanded that CEOs and medical personnel who supported injecting millions of people with utterly untested drugs face consequences? Even now, a year after many (most?) people know the truth of this horrific scam, only a handful of renegades like Robert Kennedy, Jr. have stood.

So where does that leave us? Are Hanson and Reuchel both correct in their appraisals of the hopelessness of our time? Well, this is why one should never rely too heavily on a Greek historian for advice on modern America, for while there are similarities in previous “turnings” and civilizations, we are, ultimately fully capable of not only turning the tide but becoming victorious.

I constantly urge my readers to not be McClellans. You know, the Civil War Union general who constantly dawdled, delayed, and lost valuable time and position because in his own eyes he was outnumbered (when, in fact, he outnumbered his enemy). Perhaps a more apt example are the twelve sent out by Moses to spy out the Promised Land. Ten came back with McClellanist reports, saying of the inhabitants, “we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” Notice they were not grasshoppers, but that was how they saw themselves. Only two, Caleb and Joshua, said otherwise: Caleb said “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.”

To defeat the dark, surrendering narrative of even solid people such as Victor Davis Hanson we need to absolutely reject the naysayers, who greet every good polling report with a “But-they’ll-just-steal-it-anyway,” or every election integrity advance with a “they’ll-just-find-a-way-to-close-the-country-down-again.” Keep in mind that of the twelve, only Caleb and Joshua actually lived to go into the Promised Land. But in they went! The rest?

They died of cowardice.

Larry Schweikart

Rock drummer

Film maker

NYTimes #1 bestselling author

Political pundit

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Woodstock days . . .

and today . . .