A Midnight Repost: Farewell to America
I wrote the essay below the day before the November 2024 election, when it remained very uncertain whether it would be Donald Trump or Kamala Harris as our next president.
The essay itself did not get picked up at very many news aggregates. Nor did it garner as much traffic as would be expected, based on the aggregates that did pick it up. I believe the reason was the depressing title.
No matter, the point I made then still holds. The fundamental American culture — based on freedom, family, and the Judeo-Christian values of Western Civilization — that made this the most prosperous place ever created by humankind in its entire history no longer exists.
What will come remains unknown. We might see a resurgence of that culture, especially based on the public’s response following the murder of Charlie Kirk. Then again, we might not. As I said in the very first line of my history, Leaving Earth, societies change.
I repost this essay now, during Thanksgiving week, because I strongly believe it essential that we understand exactly where we stand, in order to make it possible for us to move forward, in the right direction. The essay is also another example of my never-ending and too often successful effort to look farther into the future than others. I think a year later this essay stands up quite well in this sense.
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Farewell to America
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang
Despite my headline, this essay is not intended to be entirely pessimistic. Instead it is my effort to accept a reality that I think few people, including myself, have generally been able to process: The country we shall see after tomorrow’s election will not be the America as founded in 1776 and continued to prosper for the next quarter millennium.
The country can certainly be made great again. Elon Musk’s SpaceX proves it, time after time. The talent and creativity of free Americans is truly endless, and if Donald Trump wins it is very likely that energy will be unleashed again, in ways that no one can predict.
The country can certainly become free again. There is no law that prevents the elimination of bureaucracy and regulation, no matter how immortal government agencies appear to be. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 proves this. Though Russia has sadly retreated back to its top-down government-ruling ways, the country did wipe out almost all its bureaucracy in 1991, resulting in an exuberant restart that even today is nowhere near as oppressive as Soviet rule.
Should Donald Trump win, we should have every expectation that he will do the largest house-cleaning of the federal government ever. The benefits will be immeasurable, and magnificent.
What however will not change, even if Donald Trump wins resoundingly tomorrow, is the modern culture and political ethics that now exist. That modern culture is fundamentally different than the America that existed during the country’ s first 200 years, and it guarantees that America can never be the country it once was.
The kind of people Americans once all aspired to be
Emotions
First there is the emotional nature of modern culture. The America of the past was remarkable cool-headed and rational. Anyone who spends any time reading the writings of the past can see it. Anyone who watches any television or movies from before 1960 can see it as well. Americans all wished to be Perry Mason or Sherlock Holmes or Thomas Jefferson, thoughtful, intelligent, educated, rational, and entirely in favor of the rule of law and truth, no matter where it led.
Today we are a nation of children, often allowing emotions and outrage to determine our decision-making process instead of knowledge and considered rational thought. Few read books anymore. Instead, they scroll endlessly on their smart phones, watching short X clips that might provide some information but mostly act to simply massage one’s emotions.
You can garner this reality by one simple fact: We use the word “feel” in place of “thought” almost all the time. People almost never ask others “What do you think?” Instead, we ask each other “What do you feel?” And the answer always is, “I feel this,” or “I feel that.” It is feelings always.
Donald Trump himself epitomizes this change. He is unquestionably intelligent and thoughtful in his actions, but his approach to campaigning has always been emotional and aimed for the gut. His use of insulting nicknames against his opponents shows this. And the enthusiasm in which his supporters latch on reinforces the point.
Nor is Trump of course alone in this. The absurd accusation by the Democrats that Trump is Hitler and his supporters are fascists is equally demagogic and emotional and empty-headed. It is all feelings, with no substance.
Now, you can have a successful country based on feelings, but such a nation will not be as sophisticated or as reasoned. Nor will it have much to do with the very essence of the Enlightenment and the entire founding principles that created Western Civilization.
The first Thanksgiving by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris
Religion and Family
Second, there is the disappearance in American society of religion and family. The America I grew up in the post-WWII era was the same America from the Pilgrim days. Men and women got married in order to raise children. Children were the centerpiece of everything everyone did. Divorce was so rare that in my youth I literally never knew any kid raised in a broken home.
Once again, this reality is very evident to anyone who spends any time reading or watching the literature or visual media of the past. It is amazing how often family and raising kids is central to the stories of movies and television. Men and women dated for the purpose of creating a family, not simply to have sex. Marriage existed to create a firm and solid environment for the children to come. And the adult view was to the future, not for themselves but for the children couples were bringing into the world.
Not so much today. In movies today men and women date to find a great and perfect partner, but the subject of marriage and children is rarely considered. In fact, it is sometimes intentionally left out, as if the word “marriage” is a curse word no one wants to hear.
Religion is also gone as a central part of much of American life. This was already changing in the 1950s, but before World War II almost all Americans made some form of the Judeo-Christian religion a part of their life, whether it be Judaism or Protestantism or Catholicism or any one of many Christian denominations. People went to church. They read the Bible. They considered the moral component very deeply in anything they did.
Once again, this fact becomes very evident if you watch movies from prior to 1950. The portrayal of religion is pervasive, and almost always positive. Religion was not considered perfect, but it was recognized as an important and essential tool for incorporating morality in every decision. Right and wrong mattered.
Today it is considered “weird” to be religious. And if you are secular you are supposed to consider religious people inferior, barbaric, and close-minded fools.
I am secular and don’t think any of those things, but I have also been part of the secular community my whole life, and have seen other secular people say these things routinely. And if I ever dare speak positive things about religion, I find myself condemned and ostracized as a weirdo, very quickly.
Blind politics in all things
Finally, there is the warping of our culture by politics. Once, politics was rarely introduced in everyday life. People ran their businesses, their families, their schools, and their day-to-day activities thinking only of the very basics of their own lives.
Today, politics enters into every single one of those tasks. You can’t do anything without considering the politics. Often you have to do things differently than you would have wanted, in order to address the politics of the situation.
Combined this obsessive focus on politics with the increased emotional nature of our culture, the result is a country where people are so consumed by politics that almost half the country strongly hates the other half — for political reasons — with little desire on either part to cross the bridge to defuse the situation.
I want to note that this hatred is not evenly distributed. My experience as a secular Jew working first in the film business, then as a college teacher, and finally as a science journalist — all communities that are largely dominated by those on the left — I have learned unequivocally that it is the left that hates the most and is the most close-minded. This one clip below from last week illustrates this fact most bluntly. Most commentators focused on the decision of Hugh Hewitt to walk off the broadcast and quit the Washington Post. My focus is different.
Hugh Hewitt goes full BEASTMODE on the Washington Post, which continues its epic partisan spiral. pic.twitter.com/os20z2IJly
— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) November 1, 2024
When Hewitt notes the basic facts, that Bucks County had broken the law and was rightfully sued and the court ruled that “Trump was right,” Jonathan Capehart, associate editor of the Washington Post, has no interest in these facts. Instead he responds with indignation, “I don’t appreciate being lectured about reporting.” Yet everything he and Ruth Marcus, another associate editor at the Washinton Post, said about the actions of Trump and the Republican Party in Bucks county at the start of the clip was fundamentally wrong. They both bluntly claimed that Trump was using lawfare to interfere with the election in Pennsylvania, when the truth was the exact opposite.
In other words, these are propagandists, not journalists. But more to my point, they are also close-minded and filled with such hatred of Trump and Republicans that they no longer are interested in the truth. All that matters is that their side win, come hell or high water.
And Capehart represents one half of our nation today. American can never return to the free and open society of my youth and most of its history until these people change, and in my entire life, I have never seen any indication they have any interest in doing so. If anything, the close-mindedness and hatred has only increased with time.
And in this clip Capehart proves this fact, most embarrassingly.
Thus, even if Trump wins tomorrow his effort to reduce the administrative state and bring freedom back to America will surely be stymied by the half of our population represented by people like Capehart. They will have no interest in the truth or the best policy. All that will move them is their hatred of Trump.
And should Kamala Harris win? Not only will none of the positive changes I outlined above occur, but we can surely expect the close-minded left to aggressively move to cement its power. The nation will then surely descend further on the path to becoming a bankrupt and starving Venezuela, since leadership that is close-minded and focused on hate can never make good choices.
So farewell to America. What the future brings is hard to predict, but without question it will not be the good and grand nation I was born and raised in. It might become great again, but it will do so with a poison within it that will be dragging it down.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
This country has always been a pendulum.
While Kelly only recently beclowned himself having been snuckered into a scheme to have folks in the military not following orders–Doug Jones political capital seems to be rising:
https://www.newsweek.com/democrat-doug-jones-chances-comeback-alabama-governor-11074055
I just knew this would happen. Jones more or less kept his head down, and the more Trump cuts, the more Jones’s stock will rise. As governor, he could appoint a Senator if Tubby falters–with Finebaum a Rockefeller Republican slipping in.
Related: There will be change.
WHY DEMOCRAT LEADERSHIP AND ISLAM ARE SO LIKE-MINDED
“Why is it that the Democrat party which is ever more and more Leftist and Socialist oriented in America, and Islam, why do they so easily find themselves working at cross purposes to the foundation of America, the Constitution and the interests of freedom for the individual?”
An Imam comments: Who really makes the rules? https://youtube.com/shorts/PjZttCsf2Io?si=TpuB18RBzckhj14b
Read the rest: https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/why-democrat-leadership-and-islam-are-such-fast-friends
Nature arbores a vacuum and the international Leftists, Marxists, Communists, radicals and anarchists, you know the Democrat party leadership in America have for so many years endeavored to create this hollowed out vacuum of discontent within the hearts of the young in America. How do you fight America? From the inside out, not the outside in.
You know, those who have grown up in the bosom of the safety and comfort provided to them by the Constitution, society, their parents and others who have sacrificed for them and their freedom to challenge the same that has provided them their freedom. It sounds counter intuitive, but it makes sense.
And now they are going to “Improve” what was provided to them because they are now so well educated and more “moral” than those in the past who have sacrificed for them and provided them with the freedom to challenge it all.
This is our American reality as the culture of dependency, the welfare state, the LBJ white guilt “reparations” to the oppressed and those ideologues who became “highly educated”, superior and more moral than all others and radical comes full circle.
This IMO is a good starting point to counter the trend of the arch of history: https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1992621427951067278?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1992621427951067278%7Ctwgr%5Eacde880dc172a80cb074dd8aa10da9a16a66b131%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Ft%2Fassets%2Fhtml%2Ftweet-5.html1992621427951067278
And step by step this battle will be fought. To exactly what end? Stay tuned on that.
America and what it offers, freedom and prosperity, warts and all, lots of warts, is a social and cultural infection and as the generations are exposed to and processed through the American cultural blender the infection in theory becomes stronger than any ideology or religion.
Why do people risk their lives to somehow get to America in the millions? Not IMO to really recreate what they are fleeing from.
The biggest risk right now IMO in America and the world and the process is social media and the rise of AI which makes real reality undiscernible from the fabricated reality that appears to be controlled by those who seek the destruction of America and its Constitution which provides the freedom and prosperity.
“May you live in interesting times”, and these are today the most interesting times.
Timing is everything in life:
I just came across this video that illustrates my point about America, social media and AI, being attacked from the inside from without.
https://youtu.be/ftfed6D-Cr8?si=CKdp-gV4ySl9Kw0L
More, of the Liberal, Leftist Democrat party, now radical and RINO gift to you and your American family:
https://youtube.com/shorts/472B-j7U5rU?si=8pocA47GZtNHdQNU
What a legacy!
Wow. Being a small monthly contributor for a number of years, somehow I missed this superb article!
As you understand, Robert, “politics” is downstream from morality and culture. When individual human beings determine right from wrong, good from bad, and justice from injustice, they will attempt to consecrate these moral value judgements (ideals) into whatever their society through whatever the rule of law.
Just as do so many others, you equate “American” political ideals with Judeo-Christian philosophy and its ideals. It is my belief while this is contextually somewhat true, it is misleading. Misleading to the point it has become a tragic error. What briefly follows is why I believe this is the case.
When Thomas Aquinas translated Aristotle from Greek to Latin during the 13th century, “introducing” the Catholic Church to (subsequently, “posterity” as well!) Aristotle’s “Reason,” it set into motion a chain or seemingly unrelated events that ultimately led to the founding ideals of America’s intellectual revolution. It is no accident that Luther’s posting and Gutenberg’s Press quickly followed.
Continuing on the preceding theme, most of mankind in 1500AD lived lives little differently than those lived in 1500BC. Then, in the geological “blink of an eye,” Gutenberg created his Press and knowledge and information that had been the province of royalty and clergy became “available” to the average mind.
Meanwhile, the “new world” was being discovered, the nascent concept of “rights” continued to gain moral traction, and the scientific and industrial revolutions astonishingly unfolded. Quite suddenly, what you and I and billions of others now take for granted became – as if by “magic,” well, able to be taken for granted!
I would argue, as I know would you, it did not occur by magic but by Reason! The Reason that enables so many stunning improvements suddenly brought about be “western civilizations,” when compared to thousands of years of cultural fears, superstitions, and concomitant brutality, carnage, and injustice. Is because when compared to other philosophies, Judeo-Christian theology is RELATIVELY less hostile to reason! It is the dominant philosophy of western civilization.
I would suggest its significance is more corollary but “causal.” I contend it is causal in relatively insignificant measure. Of far greater “causality” is the moral-political ideal – led by America, largely embraced by western civilization, manifesting in the separation of Church and State!
Yes, one cannot fail to recognize Judeo-Christian theology’s claims with regard to its arguments on behalf of “humanity.” Evidence of Christianity’s embrace of Reason value of benevolence certainly supports Christianity as being supportive of Reason’s logical consequences. Ultimately, however, it is only less hostile.
Again, your article is a superb contribution to your site. It has prompted, at least from me, a one-time contribution in excess of what I have donated over the years. I wish it could be more. I have just placed the check into the mail.
Thank you for what you do! I choose to post this on BEB and a copy will be included with the check,
Dave Walden
Dave Walden: Thank you for the kind words, and the support over the years.
I like your analysis. As you note, the Old Testament fundamentally demands each individual make his own choices. It outlines what it considers the morally correct path, but requires you to decide for yourself what you will do. That basic idea, very Jewish, is also basic to Christianity. Both demand rational thought from everyone.
It is also this idea that eventually lead to the Enlightenment and the revolution in science and industry that followed.
Robert writes: “[T]he point I made then still holds. The fundamental American culture — based on freedom, family, and the Judeo-Christian values of Western Civilization — that made this the most prosperous place ever created by humankind in its entire history no longer exists.”
I would posit that a significant part of this culture does still exist in red states and districts, but it has been challenged by the radical left in what is essentially a *cultural civil war*. Moreover, if you aren’t looking at our recent history in term of an ongoing civil war, you are missing the essence of the struggle that we are in, and you will have no idea of how we are faring in it. The radical left, on the other hand, is under no illusion that they aren’t in an actual war for the future of America, and the prize that they seek is a radically changed country and culture that comports with their Marxist interpretation of reality.
Likewise, if you think of the struggle with the Axis Powers in World War II — and, indeed, why we went to war with them as opposed to believing that their cultures were “just as good” as ours and it would be fine to be enslaved by them — you will have a pretty good idea of what kind of challenge we are facing. Today, however, the enemy is *inside our gates*, and they have the same objective as Hitler’s Germany and the Japanese warlords had in 1941. (Similarly, the Soviet Union in the Cold War.) Thus far, thankfully, this has been a largely bloodless *cultural* war, but the radical left — now cornered and increasingly desperate — has no qualms about “doing what needs to be done” in order to secure the victory that they believe that history has promised them.
Along these lines, here is some trenchant commentary on this and a useful and succinct “score card” in terms of how we are faring in this war: https://dianelgruber.substack.com/p/do-democrats-want-a-second-civil
In this case, the election of 2024 can be seen as a tremendous victory and perhaps even a decisive *battle* (Like Yorktown) to save our traditional American way of life, but, as Robert points out, it is far from the end of this war. And, as the next post suggests, we are at a critical juncture in terms of what the radical left may choose to do next. https://afnn.us/2025/11/21/the-nine-step-model-toward-civil-war-no-7-is-just-beginning/
Wake up, folks. We are still in a *war for our survival* as a country, culture, and civilization, and the radical left has not given up. And neither should we.
Hello Robert — Please fix the typo in the first line of the second paragraph, thanks!
Milt: I think I fixed it.
I don’t want the country to be what it once was. I want it to be what it could be.
It could be a lot better without this kind of news:
https://www.wsj.com/business/campbells-fires-executive-behind-recording-that-disparaged-its-food
It was important to many Americans, before our Civil War, for the Union to remain intact, because We the People were trying to prove to the world that We are able to govern ourselves without royalty, without a permanent ruling class that believes itself superior at the job of governance. Americans believed that our young country was a nation of laws, meaning all men are created equal, that no man is superior, no one is entitled to rule, no one is above others in the eyes of the law. The police would investigate crimes and find the men who committed them. These are not so true, these days.
Not only did we show the world that we could govern ourselves, but we showed our government of the people, for the people, and by the people could survive a civil war. More important, as a self-governing people we were strong enough to save the world from tyranny during a worldwide war. Twice. The self-governing people were better at governance than the royalty of Europe, which had spent the 19th century at war with each other.
The rest of the world realized that civilians are capable of governing themselves, which is why democracies formed throughout Europe and several other places after WWI, a century ago. The once-popular monarchy form of government lost its popularity.
A century ago, the world changed. Many countries chose democracy through constitutional republics, and others chose marxism, which turns out to be another form of governance by ruling classes. Marxist countries are nations of men, where the laws do not apply equally but apply depending upon who you are. The police investigate men and find crimes to convict them of. “Show me the man and I will show you the crime.” One form of monarchy was replaced by a slightly different form, where dictators rule until they die or are overthrown by their fellow ruling class.
What went wrong between our Civil War and now — from the time we proved that We the People can govern ourselves and now, the time we aren’t able to define what a woman is?
1) Outside forces infiltrated the U.S., just as had been suspected in the 1950s, slowly making changes to our society and culture, from the hippies in the 1960s, who brought in emotion and instant gratification, to the schools in the 1970s and 1980s, which insisted upon self esteem over correcting errors, to our bedrooms in the 1990s and 2000s, when alternate sexual orientations became all-important, to our bathrooms and locker-rooms in the 2010s and 2020s, now it is politically incorrect to know what a woman is, and we can be one whenever we desire and can be a fuzzy at any time, too.
2) Few people are willing to shout, “The emperor is wearing no clothes,” because the feared persecution happens to those who shout the truth rather than speak the politically correct fantasy. We now suffer from cancel culture for failing to live up to political correctness.
3) We allowed a new form of ruling-class to take over American politics. The Founding Fathers had not intended for permanent politicians. They preferred for civilians to run for political office for short periods of time, then to return to their own private lives. Instead, we have a long list of geriatric politicians who have never worked for a living. Too few of our elected official have ever in their lives had to make payroll.
4) We now live in a nation in which the police investigate men and find or fabricate crimes to convict them of. We have seen this in the past decade as police, prosecutors, and politicians investigated and persecuted Donald Trump, his friends, his family, and several men who worked for him. This is not the United States of our childhoods, and it isn’t even the United States of twenty years ago.
Now we are challenged with the cultural civil war that Milt wrote about, above. Can we survive this civil war and return to a country in which We the People successfully govern ourselves again? Can we return to reality and accept that we are who we are rather than who we pretend we are? Will we ever again be able to define a woman? Can we restore freedom and liberty? Will we ever again have the freedom to speak our minds without being cancelled or arrested?
American culture is still superior to others, which is why so many countries attempted to emulate ours, all of which failed in that emulation, because they don’t understand freedom or liberty. The lack of understanding is why several of those countries, proud of their freedom of speech, will arrest people who say negative things about the people who are destroying those countries’ cultures and laws.
Our superior culture is why we are strong enough that the world asks us to rescue the world or to rescue individual countries. Our culture is why Trump is able to envision and execute peace treaties around the world. Ours is a culture that continues to find improvements, but to continue those improvements we must first recover from the corruption and deterioration that we have been suffering under for the past two-thirds of a century or so.
American exceptionalism exists, but not because Americans are exceptional. We are not better than the people of the other nations of the world. We come from the people of all the nations of the world. We are the rest of the people of the world. American exceptionalism is the freedoms and liberties that we live under, allowing us to do and say things that the other people of the world don’t dare to do or wouldn’t even think to do.