The loss or absence of meaning or purpose or the sense of such is directly proportional to a pervading sense that we are without anything truly resembling moral certitude. We came out of the Second World War, as a nation, flying high on victory in a struggle over what many believed was a battle between good and evil. We did assign a moral imperative to our actions in the world with a clear “by any means necessary approach.” This included unleashing the diabolical force of the atom in Japan. It included firebombing and carpet bombing entire cities in Germany. We applied force and power that in any other hands would be considered Satanic.

But we had done so in the service of freedom, so our troops came home to a country on a collective high. We were intoxicated with our sense of moral superiority. This despite any and all injustices at home. The post-war prosperity, of course, wasn’t shared by everyone and the new mass media boom exposed that and made it all the more evident that the American Dream was never planned as inclusive. There was grotesque racial and gender inequality. The industrial boom expanded the ghettoization of cities and concentrated poverty and hardship in greater numbers in smaller spaces. Economic colonization grew by leaps and bounds as we built upon our interests overseas and our exploitation of underdeveloped nations. Hence the euphoria didn’t last as more and more people found it impossible to reconcile words with actions. The dream for some was a nightmare for many.

Still, many hung onto it, and as the we walloped into the civil rights riots and the Viet Nam war the cognitive dissonance created a rift that to this day was never mended. The rift though wasn’t just one of political philosophy. It was very, very real for millions of people here and abroad.

We’ve never, in any significant numbers, found that moral certitude we had after returning victorious in 1945. Despite that, a good half the nation doubled down on the idea of the American Dream and the myth of America as the great liberator. The faithful still stand by all this with a religious fervor, and I don’t use religious metaphorically. Like the idea of the Biblical God, they accept the Dream Mythology with all evidence to the contrary. Politics was imbued with an absolutist moral imperative and a fascist methodology to enforcement. The social welfare platforms that had been instituted by more liberal thinkers are attacked constantly as immoral. Believers that it is our duty to lift up the less fortunate are gaslighted and accused of schemes to enslave racial and ethnic minorities and keep them down. Anyone who opposes this new Right, either domestically or abroad is assailed both rhetorically and physically as those who would undermine America’s righteous mission to bring freedom and democracy to the world.

Again, with all of the evidence to the contrary. This brings me back, to a degree, to the blue pill, and the willful mission to see other than reality when truth is right under their noses. The problem remains that truth is right in front of everyone’s eyes and it requires a manic effort to maintain the belief, and that often manifests in anger and violence. It requires a full frontal assault on reality and those who would try to institute any meaningful change or move towards truth and equality. So, the rift widens. And it’s no longer enough for some time now to simply position the differences as political. It’s a Right Wing jihad to preserve an obvious falsehood. And where they can’t bring themselves to unsee truth, they redefine what constitutes right and wrong. They build absurd conspiracy theories, i.e. that the Democrats are amoral globalists on a quest to enslave people, run child porn rings, and pilfer world treasuries… and moreover to persecute people who believe in God & Country. Any resistance to the American Dream Mythology is enough to incur the wrath of the Right.

A tangent on Donald Trump and Trumpism — so many Democrat pundits and politicians are still wringing their hands and clutching their pearls and coming out with these ridiculous assertions that Trump supporters would change if only they could see the facts. The only fact is that the Religious Right knows fully what a scumbag Trump is but he is also a reflection of what they see in the mirror and won’t admit. The evidence that justice within our system is perverted and false is as plain to them as anyone, but they can no longer reconcile what they once might have believed as fact with facts. They are terrified to admit that they are actually the monster, so they knowingly elected a Frankenstein in a last ditch attempt at validation of their moral certitude… the certitude they have been trying to regain since it fell apart decades ago. It’s a collective tantrum. I’m right, you’re wrong, and we’re not going to argue it.

Change and reparation would be an admission of everything they are too ashamed to admit, so they’re going to run with it and nobody will stop them. Until of course they are stopped, either by opposing forces, or their true lack of sense, logic and stubbornness. They are committed fully to shit ideas that even they know are simply horrible ideas. They are infants.

Granted, the largest opposition isn’t much of an opposition at all. They are people that stand to lose much of the same security and wealth if meaningful change was made. They have been trying desperately for decades to put bandaids on bullet wounds and it’s been mostly ineffective. They too, are coming apart at the seams. They too, are terrified to admit that they have no real moral highground. That they have failed as human beings. That they are part of the problem.

The problem is a profound sense of a loss of purpose, meaning, and innocence among those who were never really, truly innocent. Together, both sides constitute the Blue Pill Nation. My assertion is that both sides chose the Blue Pill, but the Blue Pill is no longer enough to hold up the illusion in the face of reality, for either of the major schools of political and moral thought in the West. We are headed for the novel, cataclysmic event in whichever form it comes, that is always necessary to spur change and progress. Right now, in America, it’s really only manifested as a philosophical Civil War but shit might get amped up (will probably get amped up at some point). Both sides are claiming the highground as the position they’re leading the charge from. Both sides are essentially wrong, despite that I maintain that one side is a lot more wrong than the other. How can any side claim righteousness when they’ve already decided that there is an acceptable loss of human life, or even quality of life as the cost? A justifiable crime against some definition of “other.”

I will also continue to assert that this is why so many of us, despite having so much of what we thought we wanted, as individuals, continue to suffer from this melancholia. We long to be part of some greater meaning, or some universal truth or good, but that thing we want doesn’t really exist or can’t really exist until we come to full acceptance of what really exists in the here and now. We won’t have what we crave until we strip it down and start from a foundation. Until then our sense of ourselves will continue to collapse.

(I’ve fallen somewhat short of explaining myself in any coherent fashion here and I’ll explore some of this as I move along, but I’m sticking with this for now.)