I don’t know how to amuse you into taking your future seriously

By David McElroy · October 6, 2021

My face is contorted in terror and my mouth is wide open. I’m ready to scream that you’re in danger. That you’re on a speeding train which is about to go off a cliff. But no words come out, because I know you won’t understand my warning.

Imagine you desperately needed and wanted to warn someone that something terrible was about to happen, but the two of you spoke different languages. That’s what this feels like.

My words of warning can coming pouring out of my mouth, but almost nobody will hear. Those who do hear will shrug. Even the ones who find my words interesting — or who might suspect I might be right — will go right about their business. The show must go on.

No matter what I do, the grand entertainment of modern American culture will roll right on without me. This dysfunctional culture has no time to listen to something which can’t be presented in the form of entertainment.

And I’ve discovered that I don’t know how to entertain you while I beg you to learn an intellectual and cultural context which is more terrifying than entertaining.

I tried. I really did. But it just doesn’t work.

When I was young, I wasn’t quite in the cultural and intellectual mainstream, but I wasn’t too far out of it. Or maybe I was and just didn’t realize it. I existed inside the context of a particular subculture which was personally conservative, very moral and highly educated. I didn’t realize there could be any other “right way” of thinking.

I just accepted that good people obeyed laws and went to church. They were clean and educated and cared deeply about living the American Dream. They paid their taxes and obeyed the police. They read newspapers every day and constantly read books. They talked about things that mattered. They voted and helped neighbors. They were optimistic about the future and were eager to help build it.

That was my cultural context. Even for those who didn’t actually live in that context, much of the country saw that picture as an ideal — like some stereotypical “good family” from television.

Intellectual growth has strongly changed the way I see the world. It’s reshaped my cultural context. Psychological and emotional growth have molded different parts of my thinking in new directions, too.

I encountered intellectual voices along the way which opened my eyes to flaws in my understanding of the culture and of history. Once my eyes were opened to flaws in the ways I which I was trained to see the world, I was excited to grow and change. What’s more, I foolishly assumed that others would be just as eager to understand the things I’d learned.

When I was young, words and reason still mattered, but entertainment was taking over more and more of culture. I learned the ways in which I had allowed cheap intellectual and cultural assumptions to poison my own thinking. But even though I turned away from that direction — and was eager to share these ideas with anyone who would listen — the entertainment culture fully took over. That culture sidelined reason and made a mockery of words as intellectual tools.

The reason and enlightenment which seemed so important to me have been pushed aside by a culture which now wants constant entertainment. And the things which I understand to be important are not valued by a culture which wants to constantly laugh and cry and rage — to do anything other than think seriously.

For months now, I have struggled to figure out how to create a video channel that would be entertaining enough to attract a good-sized audience but which I could use to talk about that looming crisis which is taking this train off a cliff.

I made 10 episodes. They were pretty decent as a start. I kept it light and tried to be entertaining. I made it fast-paced and colorful. I included just enough outrageous social trivia to keep the audience’s attention. I tried to be something I’m not.

But it didn’t work.

It felt just as reasonable as it might be to sincerely share the holiness and love of God by operating a house of prostitution, for example.

I speak a language that makes no sense to people who are fluent in the language which is native to this dysfunctional modern entertainment culture. You have no context to understand my language — and the things I need to say can’t be said effectively in the dumbed-down sound-bite language of outrage culture.

I want to beg you to read books that have changed me. I want to beg you to listen to the ways in which I’ve changed — and continue to change. But I can’t compete with the entertainment culture without turning into something which is completely incompatible with the warning I need to deliver.

I’m still stuck insofar as resolving my dilemma. I’m passionate about warning of what’s going to happen, but I don’t know how to deliver the warning without language which makes no sense to most of you. And the language which is normal and acceptable to you is capable of appealing to your emotions, but it can’t reorient you enough to face what’s coming. I can’t compete with entertainment.

There are people out there who do a pretty decent job of explaining about the economics of what’s coming. There are even people out there who do nicely at explaining the political philosophy underpinning the ugly cultural shift that’s happening. And there are a lot of people who are good at keeping you outraged.

I feel the need to go deeper than any of those sort of things. I want to explore why we’re here and what matters — and I want to show how evil ideas have highjacked an entire culture and put us on the path to ruin. But I don’t yet know how to do that in language which will make its way through to you — which will make you say, “Hey, maybe I need to disengage from modern culture and re-examine what I’m doing with my life.”

I’m struggling with my inadequacy to do this task right now. I care deeply about cultural, spiritual, emotional and intellectual change, but I feel like a very flawed vessel to achieve these ends.

I know your life is in danger. I can see what’s coming. I simply don’t know how to say it in words that will be heard. Not yet.

I hope to find a way to make contact with you — to warn you about the cliff you’re about to go over — but I know my words are still nonsense for most of you. And that breaks my heart.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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