People can be tricked into accepting, in repeated small increments, massive changes that they would never have put up with all at once. This appears to be true of both individuals and entire populations. It’s a fact of human nature that I suppose is the darker side of our characteristic adaptability, and appears to have been instrumental in reaching the sad state I find us in. This phenomenon has been on my mind in recent years, perhaps because I’ve now lived long enough to witness the long arc of its consequences and see how much of our condition it appears to explain.

We in the USA are both blessed and perhaps cursed to be a remarkably accepting, easygoing culture. This assertion runs contrary to the oft-repeated slanders that we are cruel and intolerant, but it is demonstrably true. How else could we reach a point where we’ve allowed nearly every institution to be slowly but steadily turned against us, infiltrated by people bent on the systematic dismantling of our foundational values and the very essence of who we are? The trope of insufficient tolerance and kindness will continue to be leveled against us, precisely because our good nature abhors and recoils from such accusations, causing us to capitulate with muted objections, one small increment at a time. The trope is employed, because it is effective, because we are kind.

If there is a limiting factor to the cumulative damage such incrementalism can inflict, it may be impatience. Some can’t help but want to push this transformation faster, even when things are going their way in the long term, and in their moments of eager overreach they eventually push us too far all at once. The threshold of our easygoing nature is exceeded, and we become alerted to what is going on. We are living in a time of sustained impatient overreach that seems to have crossed the line of acceptability for many. My own personal line has certainly been crossed. I expect this to inject some salutary feedback into phenomena that have been trending badly for far too long, but it remains to be seen whether that will be enough.

I was raised by two loving parents, in a better time for which I am deeply grateful, to live with integrity and virtue in a world that no longer exists. The world that has supplanted it is decidedly done with me and those who share my values, and the feeling has become mutual. My parents’ passing in 2016 and 2020 feels like a key inflection point in that conclusion, taken together with the realization that my sons are now old enough that they will start to be impacted by the wounded state we’re in. I’ve been an easygoing guy all my life, but I can no longer accept and accommodate things that are toxic to my nature and threaten my children’s future. Now is the time to draw the line and stand for my convictions, against cultural tides that mean harm to all that I love, buoyed by the gift of the better world I have seen and know is possible, and deep gratitude for having known it. I’ll be walking with greater resolve toward the metaphorical battles that must be fought, to save the future I hold dear, and I expect to be thinking, writing, and publishing more here and in my other outlets in pursuit of that.