[Avoiding_Sulla]

Someday they will grow up and take a principled stand against BOTH crime syndicates and demand a return to the Constitution.

But it may not be this generation.

Semper,
Not the next generation either should we fail to reach our own.

Though I may not feel your precise frustration, I feel a share of it. You see corruption and power glomming clearly enough. But do you see to what purpose?

Those whom you wish to reach seem beyond reach don't they? One man foresaw this predicament in 1943.

"In a sort of ghastly simplicity we* remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our mist."
-- C.S.Lewis, The Abolition of Man

The men you wish to reach have been lessened. In being denied the lessons which teach us to blend thought and feeling, they are no longer men seeking out the civilizing influences. In its stead they are nurtured in cold logic and visceral instinct and told to let it lead them wherever it takes them. Leave the blending to the professionals. Trust in the professionals.

Without expanding the quotes further, let me add the following.
From my understanding of Lewis, I think he says to you "somehow your conditioning to willingly accept contemporary mores didn't take, and now you feel isolated."

Even though your concerns are legitimate, you meet indifference. Lewis foresaw that circumstance too. He said it was inevitable. The majority have been conditioned to an "open mind," and, in so doing, have had their allegiance turned from our most important traditions, and their minds closed to the sacrifices and understanding from which the traditions were rendered. For those traditions you are grateful. To those traditions you still feel obligated. (As does first_salute, hence his inclusion above).

It's my observation that we've largely been conditioned by cynics (media and adversarial legal system) to, in the least, be skeptical about most everything, and particularly distrustful of our fellows. And if we recall DeTocqueville, "The despot rather cares less that you love him than that you are distrustful of your fellows," you've gotta ask the question why are we being misled so? Why is the accumulation of so much power so important for a few people?

So again, I ask you to consider in depth "To what end this power seeking?"

Lewis also answered that in part. However, he lacked the experience of his predictions. We've witnessed those experiences and so I think we can see the answer more clearly. As you know, my reading of what is that intended end is as grim as it gets.

--------------
* I think the "we" Lewis refers directly to is the educational establishment of which he was a part. However, he most certainly would mean to implicate society at large.