monk222 | The American Dark Age

The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.

And a nation that once prized education — that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children — is now cutting back. Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled; in Hawaii, the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs point to even more cuts ahead.

-- Paul Krugman for The New York Times

And so it goes! As America continues its inglorious descent from being the world’s hegemonic superpower to becoming a quasi-Third World country. Oh, we have our gilded communities, where the streets are paved with gold and the gates are cast in pearl, but that has nothing to do with me.

My blog used to be a sort of news reel, which was also how I maintained a fairly active profile. However, I have lost much of my interest in worldly affairs over the past couple of years. Indeed, before the last presidential contest, I was actually hoping that John McCain and Sarah Palin would win the election, not because I share their worldview and favor their policies, but because I figured that would effectively kill off the last of my obsession with following the news. Instead, we had this historic outcome, electing our first black president, and a liberal Democrat, to boot. That had to awaken me a little, but I was not shocked to see that our plutocratic world continued to spin on the same old axis.

In fact, this may help to explain my shift to Christian literature. I still have the same intellectual curiosity, such as it is, as modest as it may be, but since I no longer cared to follow the greasy give and take of the materialist world and its small-minded politics, I now prefer the sublime musings of the idealistic sacred world, preferring books that debate the mix of the human and the divine in the dual-nature of Christ. I would rather watch the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin, than read about the Middle East peace talks or follow the tired tug-of-war between Democrats and Republicans.

This may not be a healthy development, I suppose, as my grasp on hard reality seems to grow more tenuous by the year, almost slipping entirely from me, but I like the feel of that, the thrill of letting go. It is like dying without the death.