Please Stop Being Yourself
17th June 2023
Peter the Great wrote daily letters to his wife (“my beloved heifer”) while on his grand tour of Europe. In one, he congratulated himself for not farting even once during a fancy state dinner. It is amusing to think of that giant hurricane of a man, the absolute ruler of a large sprawling nation still feeling compelled to conform to societal expectations and good manners.
The sneaky and relentless Gramscian revolution in the West has replaced the notion of manners (and the humanistic concepts and mutual respect that underpin them) with ideology. It is more acceptable to castigate a stranger for openly doubting the likelihood of imminent catastrophic global change, noting that young black men kill many times as many black people as do cops or, God help us, wearing a MAGA hat, than it would be to criticize an offensive, aggressive street dweller. Society as a whole can no longer bring itself to demand civilized behavior on subways and sidewalks nor require that organized demonstrations remain expressly non-violent and respectful of persons and property.