The Day America’s “Music” Died. (Revised edits)
America’s “New Music” Is Filled With Hate, Rage, Ignorance and Violence
David Barnhizer
Don McLean’s haunting ballad The Day the Music Died: American Pie, still evokes happy memories long after its poignant first performances in 1971. The first verse offers an eerie chill for those of us who lived the events coded within its lament. Several elements do touch me “deep inside”. I relived those moments yesterday as I played Don McLean’s singing on an Internet site.
I can still remember how that music
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
Then McLean—and his audiences wherever he was performing—shifted into the chorus of “Bye, Bye Miss American Pie …” and at this moment there were tears on some faces as many people relived sad but poignant memories of another era. The song and the period itself evoked the numerous tragedies—including the killings of JFK, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King’s assassination. They witnessed the horrors of Viet Nam where my brother Bret spent much of two tours as a medic in the jungle, the almost accidental killing of students at Kent State by untrained National Guardsmen, violent and deadly urban riots, as well as the glorious expansion of the Civil Rights movement of which I was a part as a Legal Services, a civil rights lawyer and justice-oriented clinical law teacher of social justice in Colorado, Massachusetts and Ohio. But even more than McLean’s song brings to the surface we are at a point in 2025 where the “music” of America is dying—or is at least on life support and fading fast.
My point is that values of the kind we are considering as core Ideals are not something that can be delivered on a fixed template. Such belief systems are the “Music of America” that has been constructed from an unpredictable diversity of experiences and communications contained within the culture itself. America’s “song” is not reproducible at will, nor fully achievable through formal educational processes. That complexity makes it essential that we nurture, retain and improve our ability to communicate and share rather than intimidate, ignore, threaten and even murder. I remember the frequent proclamations in the 1980s and 1990s emphasizing the fundamental need for those in American society to understand the “differences” among its people and to respect and accept “diversity”. I have always agreed with those assertions. Charlie Kirk was “different” and he was “diverse” and he was murdered for his Differences and his Diversity. Too many people who supposedly shared those values are rejoicing in that fact and that fact is obscene and disgusting.
A “Devolving” Society With Dying Ideals
John Rawls, author of A Theory of Justice (Belknap Press 1971), sought to develop the idea of political community, one Rawls termed “social unity” based on “general acceptance by the population of a certain conception of justice.” John Locke did much the same through his insistence that the integrity of the Rule of Law has held the system together. Faithfulness to the spirit and procedures of the Rule of Law created a situation in which people with conflicting views still accepted the legitimacy of official decisions that were achieved through a painstaking set of procedures and decisions that were demonstrably fair and reasonable, even if those who sought or preferred another outcome opposed them. Rather than rebelling when decisions about policy did not go their way, belief in the legitimacy of the process caused those who did not obtain their desired outcome to work through the accepted systemic processes to seek an alternative outcome. Neither “Silence” nor “Violence” ruled the society. That Ideal is on its “death bed”.
All deep belief systems deny freedom to those not of their group and as they intensify and grow they become secular religions with all the effects we have seen develop in evangelical and ideological systems. The US has fragmented into competing tribes, identity groups, and secular quasi-religious sects who lack respect for the nation as a community and see anyone not of their belief system as an enemy. We are close to being a “devolving” society rather than an evolving political organism seeking to move “toward the light”.
I have long taken the Johannes Hisrchberger’s following point to be accurate because it addresses the reality of “True Believers” who see their individualized laments as being of far greater importance to a complex society than any other consideration. Hirschberger wrote: “Liberalism … immediately denied freedom to those who disagreed with it.” Johannes Hirschberger, A Short History of Western Philosophy 128 (1977).
“Crossing the Rubicon”: A Society Filled With Hate and “Haters”
People are being converted to “things” as if they are just images in a video game—except they don’t come back to life. Kirsten Fleming offers the vital warning about how we are becoming desensitized to others’ humanity by the Internet and social media. She writes:
“[B]oy, does it feel like America has crossed the Rubicon into a very dark place. So much of it began to fester with the twisted battle cry of the 2020 BLM riots that decimated cities and killed people: Words were violence, but actual violence was simply justice. Charlie Kirk became one of the most powerful figures in politics because he did something extraordinary in today’s world. He went to college campuses and conversed with young people. Kirk debated folks who vehemently disagreed with him. The devout Christian publicly had good-humored exchanges with a dude dressed in a satanist costume and a number of trans-identifying young adults. He fearlessly welcomed any and all speakers to the microphone.” Kirsten Fleming , Sep. 12, 2025, “Desensitized, detached, disposable — the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death shows how living in our own algorithms is a recipe for dystopia”.
Batya Ungar-Sargon, distinguishes fascism and honest debate.
A culture on the left, opposed to honest, spirited debate, has demonized the views of the other side as “hateful,” as fascism, as Nazism. When you call your political opponents Hitler enough times, you’ve signed their death warrant. Who wouldn’t kill Hitler if given the chance? The vast majority of the political violence in this country is coming from their side And they are unwilling to take an ounce of responsibility for it. They can’t — because there’s nothing in their philosophy to explain why the cold-blooded murder of Charlie Kirk is wrong. … They view the world not through the Judeo-Christian lens of right versus wrong, but through the lens of power. …. Moreover, they claim language is violence, and believing things counter to leftist orthodoxy is a form of violence, too. And they believe that when victims, as they see themselves, are threatened by such “violence,” physical violence is a righteous response. It’s doubly ironic that the left’s own language these days is replete with fighting words. “Our only chance to save our democracy is to fight fire with fire,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said earlier this week. “We’re in a war right now to save this country, so you have to be willing to do whatever is necessary to save the country.” Batya Ungar-Sargon, 9/11/2025. “Even as they condemn it, the left gaslights us about Charlie Kirk’s death”.
Charlie Kirk Was Not Dracula, But He will Live Again
The murder of Charlie Kirk has put a “stake through the heart” of America. Just as with Don McLean’s deeply moving and prophetic ballad, there are moments when we need to close our eyes, pray to whatever or whomever we believe in, and shout “OH MY GOD! WHY?” The act of a vile murder itself was heinous and evil. From the perspective of my caring for the soul and integrity of America, however, I find an absolute and startling evil in the number of supposedly educated, compassionate people who would profess their tolerance but are claiming Kirk’s death was legitimate because he led a movement with which they didn’t agree, said words that challenged their “narrative”, and posed a growing threat to their power. I believe that psychologically they are offering such justifications in order to preserve their self-directed opinion of their own “virtue” and needed to rationalize that Kirk’s “removal” was justified. What a sick, sick bunch of people.
Why do I say such a thing? Charlie Kirk was just one person. I never met him, did not have any particular sense of his message other than the idea it was aimed at energizing America’s younger generation, and saw snippets of maybe two brief interviews on TV about which I have no real memory. He was a person who spoke his mind about what he saw as issues and actions that in his mind and of many others, were seen as destroying the spirit and soul of the nation he loved.
Progressives are Creating a Hobbesian “State of Nature” Through Violence and Malice
“Wait a minute” said the Leftist Progressive to a Conservative opponent who was aiming a gun at him. “You are the one who said the “bad stuff” about me and my people. All we did was say you are horrid and rotten people and that someone “ought” to do something about you “nazis”. Why are you threatening me? Can’t we discuss our problems? I’m sure you will see I’m not really a bad guy.” The gun-wielding Conservative responded: “I guess they never taught you about Hobbes’ State of Nature in school, eh?” He/She then explained it was “Nasty, brutish and short” and abruptly terminated the interaction to the dismay of his opponent.”
We are heading toward a new and dark “State of Nature”. We do not want to continue on that path. The “state of nature” for Hobbes was a state of lawlessness and chaos. Without any government to provide security and other support, humans must compete for the things they need to survive, such as food and shelter. While good and evil are relative to Hobbes, the greatest evil is one for everyone: the fear of violent death.
“For Hobbes, the state of nature is characterized by the “war of every man against every man,” a constant and violent condition of competition in which each individual has a natural right to everything, regardless of the interests of others. Existence in the state of nature is, as Hobbes famously states, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The only laws that exist in the state of nature (the laws of nature) are not covenants forged between people but principles based on self-preservation.” Brittanica.
“Silence Is Violence” Has Been Flipped to “Violence Is Silence” (If you know what’s good for you!)
Those offering some version of “It is fair and appropriate to kill Charlie Kirk” have “flipped” the chant from the “Summer of George Floyd” asserting that “Silence is Violence” into one of “Violence is Silence”. The idea behind the first expression is that if you do not speak up in support important issues, your silence encourages violence against those who are being attacked or marginalized.
The reversal into “Violence is Silence” represents the reality of what so many who called Kirk a Fascist or some kind of demonic individual actually are doing. Their physical actions and attacks on Kirk are aimed at silencing those who refuse to believe the Progressive and Radical Left’s rhetoric and social agendas and challenge its claims. As we have seen with Charlie Kirk, and Donald Trump who only avoided Kirk’s fate due to a last second twitch of his head, the Progressive Left is saying “If you aren’t silent we will come after you”. Of course, that intimidation and suppression has been occurring for years in many universities and schools to the point that honest communication on viewpoints has been stifled. “Violence Creates Silence” is a core tactic on the Progressive Left used against their perceived “enemies” who they see as threatening their power.
“Charlie Kirk lived out the mission that our universities betrayed”,
Much of what is happening to American society is being triggered by our educational systems, including at what are considered the highest levels such as Yale, Harvard, Penn, Cornell, Columbia, Stanford and other “elite” institutions. Rich Lowry writes eloquently about how Charlie Kirk challenged universities to be closer to what they have been pretending to be for decades versus the indoctrination and propaganda instrumentalities they have become.
Rich Lowry, 9/14/25.
“Charlie Kirk was a one-man answer to campus illiberalism. He rose to prominence at a time when university administrators and progressive students were working in league to make campuses no-go zones for conservatives. They effectively banned them from faculties. They didn’t invite them on campus, or if they did, they were liable to disinvite and cancel them. They banned so-called hate speech. They shouted down speakers they didn’t like. They created “safe spaces.” In short, they did everything they could to render the opposing point of view illegitimate and indefensible. ….
Gathering on a hill to hear people speak and argue, like what we saw at Utah Valley University prior to the shot ringing out, is as old as the Pynx in ancient Athens. The university as a battleground of ideas, with clashing worldviews vying for influence, goes back to the Middle Ages. The University of Paris, founded in 1231, quickly became “a forum where great questions of theology, society and government were analyzed and answered,” writes historian Dan Jones. More fundamentally, language and abstract reasoning make us distinctly human. Violence, the tool of brutes, does not.” “Charlie Kirk lived out the mission that our universities betrayed”, Rich Lowry, 9/14/25. https://nypost.com/2025/09/14/opinion/charlie-kirk-lived-out-the-mission-our-universities-betrayed/.
I read the following report less than two days after Charlie Kirk’s murder, indicating that conservative students at Boston University are afraid at what “Liberal” students might do.
BU College Republicans Vice President Philip Wohltorf, … told Fox News Digital that Kirk’s death has left conservative students shaken.
"Universities are supposed to be marketplaces of ideas. If speakers or conservatives now have to worry about being shot or facing violence, then this marketplace closes," Wohltorf said. "At BU, conservative students have long been marginalized, silenced by fear of social intimidation, academic penalty or hostility," the students wrote. "Rather than fostering intellectual diversity, the university has allowed a single ideological perspective to dominate, leaving students of differing opinions isolated.” Wohltorf said he was dismayed to see comments from some students on social media forums like Reddit and Yik Yak celebrating Kirk’s death, calling the posts “disgusting." "We may disagree with one another, but at the end of the day, we should talk rather than shooting people or committing violent acts," he said. “Boston University College Republicans call for security, accountability after Charlie Kirk assassination: Student leaders urge stronger protections, citing hostile online comments celebrating Kirk’s murder.” Kristine Parks, 9/12/25.
The Foulness of “He deserved it” and “It Served Him Right”
“School resource officer removed after 'unacceptable' posts about Charlie Kirk assassination. Westchester County Police Department has reassigned officer to administrative duties pending an investigation.” Fox News, 9/14/25.
A school resource officer (SRO) in an affluent suburban New York school district was pulled from her post over inappropriate social media comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, local law enforcement confirmed … on Sunday. Screenshots of several social media posts from SRO Tanisha Blanche — employed by the Westchester County Police Department and assigned to Somers Intermediate School in Westchester County — began circulating online this week. In the posts, Blanche appeared to mock the death of the conservative leader and Turning Point USA founder, who was fatally shot on Wednesday while speaking at an event on the campus of Utah Valley University. One of Blanche's alleged social media posts, along with a video of Kirk, read, "Well that white sniper was over qualified when he put that hole in your neck hunni bunni.”
“Teacher allegedly showed Charlie Kirk assassination video to 10 and 11-year-olds, told students he deserved to be killed”, Anthony Blair, 9/14/25. “https://nypost.com/2025/09/14/us-news/teacher-allegedly-showed-charlie-kirk-assassination-video-to-young-students/.
“A public school teacher has been suspended after allegedly showing a video of Charlie Kirk’s assassination to students as young as 10 in his class, authorities in Canada said. The teacher also suggested that Kirk deserved to be killed, and gave the young students a speech about anti-fascism and transgender issues, according to a report. “Several students from his class went home and complained to their parents, traumatized at witnessing the on-camera death, which they were forced to witness numerous times over,” a source told the Toronto Sun after the shocking incident at a school in Toronto on Thursday. …. The source added: “While playing this video repeatedly, he gave a speech to his students regarding anti-fascism, anti-trans, and how Charlie Kirk deserved for this to occur.”
“Top university administrator calls Charlie Kirk assassination 'fair' due to stance on guns: 'No prayers’”, Andrew Mark Miller, 9/12/25. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/top-university-administrator-calls-charlie-kirk-assassination-fair-stance-on-guns-no-prayers.
“An assistant campus director at George Washington University took to social media shortly after the assassination of Charlie Kirk and said it is "fair" that Kirk was gunned down due to his support of gun ownership and the Second Amendment. "If nothing else, it is fair, in a nation where children get massacred by gun violence on the regular, the people who advocate for continued gun ownership at the expense of those children are not immune from the consequences of their advocacy," Anthony Pohorilak, Assistant Director of Academic Initiatives at George Washington University’s Mount Vernon Campus, posted on his personal Facebook after Kirk was killed. "No thoughts no prayers," the GWU employee added. “Top university administrator calls Charlie Kirk assassination 'fair' due to stance on guns: 'No prayers’”, Andrew Mark Miller, 9/12/25. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/top-university-administrator-calls-charlie-kirk-assassination-fair-stance-on-guns-no-prayers.
A Nation on the Edge
Robert Skidelsky of the UK’s Warwick University provides insight into the kinds of challenges we are dealing with. He explains:
“The last time this [despair over a sense of a disintegrating world] seemed to be happening was the era of the two world wars, 1914 to 1945. The sense then of a “crumbling” world was captured by WB Yeats’s 1919 poem The Second Coming: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/are full of passionate intensity. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”
What Yeats wrote in The Second Coming is much too close to what we are experiencing. America is a nation built on a vision of community, of becoming the best we are capable of achieving as individuals, of advancing social justice, and of challenging ourselves as individuals and members of a vibrant community committed to creating what many have referred to as “the shining city on the hill”.
Many Americans fought and sacrificed their lives trying to advance and sustain those goals, even while understanding the fact that, like all human systems, we often failed in our efforts to live up to our fundamental ideals. No one ever fully succeeds in that regard, but our duty is to strive as individuals and community as hard as we are possible to achieve and sustain the ideals. The essence of America has been that most of us do aspire to overcome our numerous flaws, and cope with the effects of our failures.
Albert Schweitzer argued decades ago:
“The past has, no doubt, seen the struggle of the free-thinking individual against the fettered spirit of a whole society, but the problem has never presented itself on the scale on which it does to-day, because the fettering of the collective spirit … by modern organizations, [by] modern unreflectiveness, and [by] modern popular passions, is a phenomenon without precedent in history.”
The situation has degraded since Schweitzer spoke half a century ago. In part the decline is due to the emergence of the Internet and related communications technologies. Although they offer incredible tools for the management and dissemination of knowledge, they have bestowed power on fanatics and ideologues. This has opened an electronic “Pandora’s Box” full of hate, vitriol and ignorance. In Man Against Mass Society Gabriel Marcel warned of the improbability of having effective discourse in a politically polarized environment, adding:
“The … fanatic never sees himself as a fanatic; it is only the non-fanatic who can recognize him as a fanatic; so that when this judgment, or this accusation, is made the fanatic can always say that he is misunderstood and slandered.”
America’s “New Music” Is Filled With Rage
To be a nation, a system must have a shared creedal belief system that accepts a set of overarching beliefs that limits certain kinds of behaviors while encouraging others. Whether we call this mindset of responsibility and accountability “creedal” or “civic virtue” the open-textured national communities to which we are referring must possess a set of creeds that create and sustain the “connective tissue” that allows a healthy community to exist.
Instead of building on compassion, coherence and collaboration we have become a nation filled with rage and hate, afflicted with deep division, ignorance, lies, and institutional collapse. In fact we face a challenge even greater than that posed by a $39 Trillion national debt that has bankrupted us. That greater challenge is that we are bankrupt in our hearts, our souls, our faith in ourselves, in others, and in our inability to understand that we must have the ability and willingness to speak with each other.
We must be able to share caring across lines of disruption and disagreement, create solutions that transcend our deep divisions, and understand that while we will not all have the same beliefs and agendas, we must be committed to mutual respect, tolerance, compassion and love for those who are not precisely like us as separate individuals and groups. If we cannot do that then America’s “music” is truly dead and our future will be one of discord, violence and tragedy.
The Human Need For Meaning, Belonging, and Power
Rollo May argues this lack of a sense of meaningfulness has produced a compartmentalization of human nature and personality, concluding: "the person, in 'pieces' within as well as without, does not know which way to go." Rollo May, Man’s Search for Himself 46 (1953). The themes of alienation, fragmentation, and reintegration of the full human perspective and essence run throughout modem literature. The idea of alienation-from ourselves, from others, and from the essences of the physical and spiritual world-is a theme of increasing intensity. See, e.g., Eric & Mary Josephson eds. Man Alone: Alienation in Modern Society (1962).
Many in the “identity tribes” feel strongly that they deserve a larger share of social goods. Some love the feeling of power their new-found identity affiliation supplies. There is a seductive subconscious need to be part of a social or political movement that provides identity and a sense of purpose in an otherwise meaningless or seemingly powerless existence. Many of the members of such cliques are true believers who feel passionately they have been wronged, cheated of opportunity, and disrespected. In my very diverse experience, a large portion are simply seeking some kind of meaning in a world where they feel faceless. Power is their pathway and those who appear to be challengers are enemies.
Whether we call it Neo-Liberalism, Progressivism, being a “Social Justice Warrior” or committed to the idea of “Make America Great Again”, the fact is that many of us feel the need to believe in something higher and better than ourselves. In doing so we become immersed in a “Movement” from which we derive an identity that not only empowers us but distorts how we are able to see the world. It also skews how we are able to judge others who are not like us or share our views.
In what is still a relatively small development, there appears to be an emerging manifestation of a rebirth of faith in some locations, Colm Flynn, a correspondent of a Catholic News Service writes of what he experienced in the UK among younger European Gen Z residents who he describes as having a “hunger for meaning” and equating Charlie Kirk’s courage and death as parallel to that of St. Thomas More’s 1535 execution as King Henry VIII as head of the Church.
“[Thomas] More was beheaded on Tower Hill in London in 1535 for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII as Supreme Head of the Church — executed for speaking the truth. Now Kirk has become a civil martyr, targeted not for who he was, but for what he stood for. But what is it about Kirk’s message that caused his execution, and made it spark exultations?”
“We live in a time of uncertainty and change, as AI technology raises existential questions about jobs and humanity, wars rage across the globe, and even matters of basic biology spark fierce debate. Amid this chaos, confusion reigns, and our youth crave clarity, stability and above all, meaning. It’s led to a fascinating trend: a resurgence of young people turning to the Catholic Church. Here in the UK, recent surveys reveal a “quiet revival” of faith, with the proportion of 18-to 24-year-olds attending church at least monthly surging from just 4% in 2018 to 16% in 2024. Among Britain’s Gen Z, Catholics now outnumber Anglicans. But it’s also happening in countries like France, which has seen a staggering 45% year-on-year increase in adult baptisms, with 42% of new catechumens aged 18 to 25. It was seen in the Catholic Church’s Jubilee of Youth, which I covered this summer, when over one million young pilgrims from around the world gathered in Rome to celebrate Mass with Pope Leo and pray in silent adoration before the Blessed Sacrament.
Yes, Charlie Kirk was a towering figure in US politics, his razor-sharp social media takedowns making him a conservative icon. But his call to live a Christian life echoed far beyond borders, touching millions of young hearts — and his Christian witness cut deeper than his fiery political rhetoric. His unapologetic defense of faith, his example as a devoted father and family man, and his proud upholding of Christian values empowered young men, in particular, to speak openly about aspiring to families and virtuous lives — ideals sidelined in a culture obsessed with fame, fortune and followers. Kirk championed what so many young people hunger for today: something good, fulfilling, and everlasting. … Yet this message is unpopular, even hated by some. Why?” “In Europe, too, Charlie Kirk’s message of faith fed Gen Z’s hunger for meaning”, Colm Flynn, 9/13/25, https://nypost.com/2025/09/13/opinion/charlie-kirks-message-of-faith-fed-gen-zs-hunger-for-meaning/.
Concluding Food for Thought
The challenge to be overcome is very, very deep. I hope we are up to it but with the hate that is coming out on a regular basis it is obvious that things will not get better as long as propaganda of the most vile and hate-filled kind is treated as it deserves.
Take a “Deep Breath” and Confront the Progressive Left’s True Nature
Refusal to “take a deep breath” and deal with the rapid fragmentation of society into aggressive actors and outraged cults has produced a social and political balkanization dominated by single-interest groups intent on achieving their own agendas. These groups and political activists operate without any willingness to consider how their interests fit within the dimensions of an overall community in which balance is necessary, one where compromise is not weakness but the “glue” that holds us together.
If we do not come to grips with a full understanding of the reality of what is taking place, America will soon bear scant relationship to the society most Americans grew up respecting and admiring. If we fail, the social civil war that began in the 1990s and has grown rapidly through the weaponization of the Internet and social media cannot and will not be “fixed”. The warring centers of power have become too diverse, the actors too focused on their own singular concerns, and the underlying set of social beliefs, principles and creeds so corrupted we are approaching the point where there is little possibility of compromise.
The fundamental problem we now face is that too many of the “leaders” of the quasi-religious “identity sects” are possessed of ideological belief systems of an intensity found only with true fanatics. Many are seeking to undermine and transform America into a Socialist or Neo-Socialist state and are committed to achieving that goal “By Any Means Necessary” as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an avowed and impassioned Socialist, has proclaimed.
“Charlie Kirk’s death must remind us, and those with despicable responses to it, that life is not a computer game”, Douglas Murray, 9/11/25.
Charlie Kirk knew … there is no point in two people simply screaming at each other. That Americans should instead bring their best arguments to the table and have them out in a civilized manner, respecting the other person as a citizen and as an American. Of course many people turn out not just to dislike that idea but have an active desire to kill it. They do so while claiming that words — like the words Charlie Kirk used — are “violence.” That speech they don’t agree with is “hate-speech.” That people who speak “hate speech” have to be “shut down.” And that if that doesn’t happen then the people exercising their right to free speech are “literally killing people.” There is one other age-old truth which needs to be inserted into this mix. Which is the truth that many people on the conservative side have noted for many years: that we live in a political culture but one in which there is a key difference between the two sides. For while the right tends to believe that the left is simply wrong, large portions of the left in this country believe that their opponents are not just “wrong” but “evil.” … When he said that there are only two biological sexes, his opponents accused him not of having a different view from themselves but of trying to eradicate an entire community. When he defended the traditional Christian idea of marriage they said that he was engaging in “hate” against all gay people. “Charlie Kirk’s death must remind us, and those with despicable responses to it, that life is not a computer game”, Douglas Murray, 9/11/25.
“Charlie Kirk’s Killing and Our Poisonous Internet”, By Nathan Taylor Pemberton, 9/14/25. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/opinion/charlie-kirk-shooting-internet.html.
The Internet has played a major role in enabling and building our growing social insanity and paranoia because it has provided the “revolutionaries” an unparalleled weapon never before available. As a weapon, the Internet and its many AI applications that are designed to manipulate and propagandize rather than inform allow unequaled networking, communications, focused propaganda, deceit, and intimidation that can be used against anyone who challenges their strategy for control.
Nathan Pemberton, writing in the New York Times on September 14, explains how cancerous the Internet has become.
“Today’s internet for most Americans, but especially for those like Mr. Robinson, who came of age on social and streaming platforms, is an immeasurably potent vibes machine. One powered by a complex fuel of negative emotions — hatred, rage, hopelessness, nihilism, grievance, cynicism, paranoia, discontent and addiction. It’s a machine more than capable of constructing false realities and corroding our lived experiences. Intent, meaning and sincerity are near-valueless concepts in this realm, while things like knowledge, understanding and good faith — critical elements to any healthy public sphere — have been gradually distorted beyond the point of recognition, or abandoned completely.
To exist in this machine is to exist in a realm dominated by what the writer Anton Jäger termed “hyperpolitics,” for the “low-cost, low-entry” politics with little ties to political institutions or clear political outcomes. To be a young person on large areas of the internet, in other words, is to exist in a state of perpetual conflict, where every action, every event, is coded with political significance, couched in irony or presented in a combative posture, starting from the moment one goes online.
It’s rapidly driving a generation mad. (And the rest of us, as well.) Governor Cox made a blunt declaration at Friday’s press conference. “Social media is a cancer on our society,” he said…. The beliefs flourishing in these online political spaces are fringe ideas — from conspiratorial thinking about the 2020 election, paranoia about white replacement, the glorification of political violence and moral panics built on stereotypes about minority groups. And they are fed to people on an algorithmically driven conveyor belt in the form of grotesque memes, viral streams, images of death and destruction, ironic posturing and trolling.”
Without a shared set of principles we respect and accept as valid criteria for key decisions, the willingness to follow decisions we disagree with, and to respect the integrity of the institution responsible for the decision, becomes weakened. Rather than a community, we become increasingly more like the inhabitants of a Hobbesian state of nature in which everyone is seeking advantage over everyone else. Ruthlessness, intolerance, and selfishness prevail. Hobbes described individual lives in such a system to be “cruel, brutal, and short.”
I regard what America was created to be and has been in many ways as an exceptional historical experiment. I also have come to see this nation as one that is decaying with increasing rapidity, even to the point that it is transforming into a sick society filled with hate, vitriol and malice. If the George Floyd-inspired “Summer of Love” debacle in which numerous people were murdered, $2 Billion in various destructive riots, many other criminal “mostly peaceful” activities occurred, businesses were ransacked by mobs of thieves and thugs to the point that many went bankrupt, and even the larger merchants left the cities and are continuing to evacuate their businesses from large urban areas. In too many ways we are regressing into a modern version of a “State of Nature”.
The following excerpt offers insights into the dark and malicious intent of so many in positions of power and influence.
“Pro-Palestinian conference panelist calls US ‘evil,’ urges ‘destroying the idea of America’: Speaker at Tlaib-linked event declares, 'We live in an evil country’”, Peter Pinedom, 8/29/25. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pro-palestinian-conference-panelist-calls-us-evil-urges-destroying-idea-america.
“A panelist speaking at the "People's Conference for Palestine" in Detroit on Friday called the United States "an evil country" and expressed a need to "destroy the idea of America in Americans’ heads.” Speaking on a panel titled "No Weapons for Genocide: The People Demand an Arms Embargo," Sachin Peddada, a Ph.D. student in economics and research coordinator at Progressive International, repeatedly ripped on the United States as an "empire" motivated by greed. In response to a question about how Americans can get more involved, Peddada paraphrased a quote by deceased Palestinian author Bassel al-Araj, saying, "The average American will never understand the plight of the Palestinian person because the state of Israel is a carbon copy of the United States. "And, therefore, the thing to do is to destroy the idea of America in Americans’ heads so that they can see the humanity of everybody outside the warping of American exceptionalism and imperialism and all these evil things." As Peddada said these words, the crowd broke into applause.”
Where Did My Own Understanding of America’s “Music” Come From?
It may sound strange in this cynical age, but I can identify a set of stories, statements, codes of belief and action, and so forth that shaped my value system to the point I can neither escape them or want to. The list includes the Pledge of Allegiance, the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. It contains the stories of Horatio at the Bridge, the Three Hundred Spartans, the Chanson de Roland and the bravery, sacrifice and betrayal of Joan of Arc. It includes the Boy Scout Oath and the stories of Abraham Lincoln walking miles as a boy to return an overpayment to a storekeeper and George Washington telling the truth about chopping down the cherry tree. Nor can I leave out the wonderful afternoons in the summer and after school listening on the radio to the exploits of Superman, Batman and Robin, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans along with others such as Robin Hood who “stole from the rich and gave to the poor” in the face of tyranny. In a pre-TV age you used your mind and used your imagination to create pictures of what was taking place.
To this, I admit somewhat hesitantly in this current “modern” culture, can be added a little boy’s understanding of the medieval Code of Chivalry as the proper way a woman should be treated by a gentleman (I apologize to my feminist friends for the rampant chauvinism of my youth), and the Athenian creed of “a perfect mind in a perfect body” (neither of which I have managed to achieve). Of course, there was much more and the lessons often involved subconscious and implicit messages. Nathan Hale’s statement when he was to be hanged that “I regret I have only one life to give to my country,” along with Vermont’s motto, “Don’t Tread on Me” are parts of the experience. From all these sources I took almost intuitive lessons involving the values of truth, integrity, loyalty, duty, racial and gender equality, love of country and much more.
For me, even though I did not join the church at 14 because the ministers could not adequately explain the Protestant doctrines of predestination and predetermination I still have a belief in a higher Creator that as imprecise as that can be has been a strong support in numerous ways. I guess I subscribe to the Medieval concept of the “Cloud of Unknowing” since there are so many things I will never understand and I am fully aware of that fact so I have a significant degree of acceptance of what the 14th Century anonymous writer referred to as “uncertainty” don’t “freak out” about it.
Ultimately, I did find the meaning contained within The Ten Commandments about the tenets of how members of a community should behave to maintain integrity.To this I add the powerful message reflected in the Golden Rule about how we should treat others and tone treated by others to be compelling. It is not surprising that the behavioral concept the Golden Rule urges shows up in cultures throughout the world in some form.