𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐃𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐭

This is a difficult thread to write.

I want to explore, just for a moment, my feelings about the impact of 9/11.

The title comes from a track by @Thrice, and sets the frame for what follows.

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For those of you who read my long-form articles at Medium and my emails for @aionmediaco, you will recall that I sign off with 𝘥𝘶𝘮 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘰 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘰.

"While I breathe, I hope."

I committed to this ethos after emerging from depression, and renew my vow to it daily.

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Eighteen years on from that horrific day, the debate rages about...well, everything.

Frankly, I don't give a damn anymore.

The outcomes remain - 3,000+ of my countrymen dead, thousands more wounded and killed in foreign lands.

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In the days following, Americans gripped by both fear and patriotic fervor surrendered more of their freedoms to an expanded surveillance state.

We mobilized the might of our military and marshalled the courage of some of our best men and women to launch the War on Terror.

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I am not making a value judgment.

Perhaps we did what was right.

Perhaps in killing over there, we have stopped further killing here.

Perhaps the cost in American blood was worth it.

Perhaps not.

But I cannot help feeling that we have lost ourselves along the way.

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In November 1991, the Berlin Wall had been torn down, marking the end of the Soviets' reign as America's peer/near-peer adversary.

The 90's ushered in an era of hope that perhaps, things might be better as we left the 20th century and all of its wars and fears behind.

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And a short 11 years later, that hope came crashing down as a new paradigm of conflict loudly announced itself - Fourth Generation Warfare.

A new age of shadow ideologies and privatized warmaking was upon us.

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America was not ready for 4GW.

So we responded as we always had - by rallying the troops, expanding the bureaucracy, and steamrolling the perceived enemies of our nation.

But we set the table for something far worse.

We lost moral legitimacy, at home and abroad.

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America, for so long and to so many, had been a beacon of belief that man could be free and prosperous.

Our greatest export was a culture of hope and plenty.

We stood opposite the brutal and stark will to power embodied by collectivist ideologies and nations.

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But as the years dragged on post-9/11, our efforts to combat the toxic ideology of radical Islamism "over there" begat a need to hold the center here at home.

The anti-war movement built a foundation of power that metastasized into a generally anti-American movement.

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In the 18 years since, we have seen the apparatus designed to push back politically against "Bush's wars" morph into the dominant cultural framework.

They now hold the numbers and the media.

War was always just the fuel, the wedge - the excuse.

Power is the goal.

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I do my best to avoid directly engaging in the political spats on Twitter, because at the end of the day, the parties simply represent a synthesis of power and people.

It is ideologies and memes that we fight in this Fourth Generation Warfare paradigm.

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Like all presidents, Bush and Obama and Trump became mostly avatars for the will of their specific constituencies - the voters, the moneymen, the bureaucratic power centers.

These are single men, flawed and compromised.

The real war is between Hope and Despair.

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It took 9/11 and the subsequent million bad decisions to reveal this hidden fracture within our national psyche.

The meteoric rise of Obama was a direct response to the war-weariness of a nation who'd endured years of war and loss.

It was Hope he explicitly offered.

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But as the racial, religious, sexual, and political fissures opened under Bush widened further under Obama, Despair set in for many.

The wars were not over. The tab climbed higher every day.

New villains emerged, some legitimate, some media-created to drive the narrative.

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The slow-burn (cold) civil war under late-stage Obama burst into the open as Trump ascended to the head of the Republican Party to challenge the the Democrats' nominee of Hillary Clinton.

Trump's promise to Make America Great Again was a thunderous rallying cry for Hope.

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Now we approach the 2020 election cycle, and I reflect today on the events set in motion 18 years ago by the incomporably-evil actions of madmen.

I no longer care who did it, or how, or why.

Many thousands have died in the aftermath, and we stand more divided than ever.

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The fourth turning is upon us again, but different than before.

We have no central ethos upon which to find equilibrium.

Once, that ethos was the spirit of liberty.

But too few people carry that flame in their hearts these days.

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A generation exhausted of war, manipulated by the media and politicians on both sides, just wants to sit down and let someone else make the decisions.

Let someone else fight the battles from now on.

2020 is going to be vicious.

The victor, for now, will be Despair.

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We are in the age of the Long Defeat.

It will not end easy, and likely not bloodlessly.

And I curse the weak men and women who have succumbed to the easy siren song of nihilism and collectivism.

They who have betrayed liberty, the most precious of gifts from the gods.

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Yet, while I breathe, I hope.

The end is just the beginning, as it always has been, and ever will be.

We will burn the fields of our civilization, because that is what humans are fated to do.

But a remnant will rise, because that too is what humans are fated to do.

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From the titular song:

"So keep holding on to hope without assurance
Holding on to a memory of light
But will the morning come?
For all I know we’ll never see the sun
But together we’ll fight the long defeat."

And so we shall, even if it's just a few foolhardy souls.

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𝘿𝙪𝙢 𝙨𝙥𝙞𝙧𝙤 𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙤.

While I breathe, I hope.

That is the legacy of 9/11.

I will not allow the politics and culture of Despair to infect my family, my friends, or my tribe.

It might be foolish, even insane.

But Hope is the cure to Despair.

So we hope, and act.

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