Invisible Elephants and George Will

In the previous century when California still elected Republican governors like Reagan, Deukmejian, and Wilson, I penned an editorial for the San Diego Tribune that began with this counterintuitive observation by Alfred North Whitehead: “Sometimes we see an elephant, and sometimes we do not.  The result is that an elephant, when present, is noticed.”  Though I subsequently explained Whitehead’s meaning, the young editor at the soon to be defunct paper still did not grasp the philosopher’s point, namely, that what constantly surrounds us is hard or impossible to notice.  Consequently, the philosopher’s statement was altered to fit the editor’s cognitive parameters: “. . . an elephant, when present, is not always noticed.” A more prosaic but still apt comment by Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind might have passed editorial muster: “It may be that a society’s greatest madness seems normal to itself.”

Either of these observations could explain the blindness of never-Trumpers like George Will who seem oblivious to America’s cultural wasteland.  When national radio host Dennis Prager recently interviewed Will about his book The Conservative Sensibility, the columnist spoke confidently about the strength of America’s institutions, presumably its economic, legal, and political institutions.  Not a second thought was given to the corruption of political agencies like the IRS, DOJ, FBI, and State Department under President Obama—corruptions designed to stifle conservative political activism and to defeat and later unseat a lawfully elected president. 

Even that unprecedented level of institutional corruption, however, pales in comparison with the tsunami of decadence emanating from the powerful speech- and thought-suppressing institutions of the culture:  big tech, mainstream journalism, education at all levels, pop-entertainment, and large swaths of advertising.  Indeed, freedom of speech and religious liberty have been under attack by these cultural despots for decades, and the attacks are getting more brazen and far-reaching every day.  Even non-conforming bakeries and flower shops are now targets for destruction, alongside corporate entities like (“homophobic”) Chick-fil-A and (“misogynistic”) Hobby Lobby for the high crimes of opposing same-sex marriage and, in the latter case, resisting a federal mandate that compelled the business to cover abortifacient methods of birth control.  It should also be noted that the Chick-fil-A calumny arose purely from the owner’s support of traditional marriage, not from any discrimination experienced by customers.      

Perhaps Will’s anti-Trump posture has spared him from the fascist tactics typically employed to silence the likes of Ann Coulter and Ben Shapiro.  Shapiro, however, long ago made clear his displeasure with the President, but Shapiro, unlike Will, is profoundly conscious of the depths of America’s institutional depravity, an awareness doubtless amplified by his traditional Jewish faith.  In short, Will seems nose-blind to the ongoing secular effluvia in which he is professionally ensconced.  Thus, he appears relatively unperturbed when viewing the “transformational” shift in America’s mores and customs over the last half century:  forty percent fatherlessness, profound confusion about male-female distinctions, plummeting birth rates among non-immigrant Americans, mass legal and illegal immigration, and a tidal wave of cultural crudity. 

Anyone contemplating contemporary America from the perspective of 1960 would see marauding elephants devastating the country by stoking racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual animus—a leftist political tactic that is ubiquitous but virtually impossible to detect via a generalized Google search.  Our sixties voyeur would also be amazed at the frenzy for drug legalization in a nation currently drowning in opioid hopelessness and urban homelessness.  He would be further astonished at the sordid mixture of pornography and political propaganda regularly dispensed by today’s comedians, actors, artists, journalists, and even politicians.  Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, for example, did not shrink from employing an F-bomb in front of a packed arena audience that included hundreds of kids, plus thousands watching on TV, when he celebrated the city’s hockey championship in 2014.  Yet even that degree of decadence would appear tame when compared with the “celebration” of abortion, and even after-birth abortion in New York.   

The proximate origins of this cultural cesspool can be located in the triumph of the electronic media when moral misfits in Hollywood, Madison Avenue, Manhattan, and academia took the place of parents, ministers, and traditional teachers as the primary molders of culture.  (See the concluding chapter, “What Went Wrong” in Moral Illiteracy. . . .)  These corrupting forces surround us all the time.  Consequently, Seinfeld decadence seems non-existent when compared to Jerry Springer, Two and a Half Men, or most rap lyrics.  In addition, appealing commercial slogans designed to promote “fun” and eliminate difficult or unpleasant tasks (like grammar or working one’s way through school) have replaced temperance, courage, wisdom, and virtue as life’s primary goals.  Moreover, these ephemeral aspirations are supposedly achievable via political nostrums that rival “Make a wish upon a star” in audacity.  “Anything your heart desires will come your way”—free medical care, free college, legalized drugs without negative consequences, free abortions, the gender of your choice, energy without fossil fuels, et cetera.

As Allan Bloom commented thirty years ago, “Parents can no longer control the atmosphere of the home and have even lost the will to do so.”  In their stead stand “the purveyors of junk food for the soul,” among them various entertainments that have “all the moral dignity of drug trafficking.”  No rehashing of Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind will alter these entrenched and corrosive realities that have brought us to the brink of cultural and political collapse.  As John Adams correctly observed, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  Mr. Will doesn’t appear to be aware of the fact (or to care very much) that these categories no longer apply to those who control America’s most powerful cultural institutions.  The destructive elephants that have been running amok for the last half century are, for the eloquent secular pundit, invisible.  

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle