It came up in conversation

The text that follows has been hidden away on my off-line test-and-development blog, dated June 30, 2021. For some reason, I never posted the thing. But it came up in conversation, the Hopf quote did, so I'm posting it now.

Good writing makes good argument, but it doesn't make the argument true

Good writing makes good argument. But it doesn't make the argument true. Here, Alex Noonan quotes G. Michael Hopf from Those Who Remain:

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

That's damn good writing. But I quote it because it expresses a view that embraces the fall of civilization: We are strong. We are tougher than the tough times. We can do what needs to be done. We will survive.

Glorified ignorance. And that's the thing: We won't survive. Oh, some of us, or some of our offspring or their descendants will survive, certainly. But "we" -- our society -- will not survive. Life as we know it will not survive. And our better life, as it was before, gone for good.

But I get ahead of myself. I just spent too much time searching for that "hard times" quote in context. No luck. So I can't say what it meant to the guy that wrote it. Some of the sites I found took "strong men" and "weak men" as a description of military success or failure.

The change is happening already. The view that finds the Michael Hopf quote appealing is the view captured here by the historian Rostovtzeff, a view that supports the "shifting of values":

"What happened was a slow and gradual change, a shifting of values in the consciousness of men. What seemed to be all-important to a Greek of the classical or Hellenistic period, or to an educated Roman of the time of the Republic and of the Early Empire, was no longer regarded as vital by the majority of men who lived in the late Roman Empire and the Early Middle Ages. They had their own notion of what was important..."

How can we reject the covid vaccine? Only by thinking we are stronger than covid. How can we deal with what's been happening in politics and government? Only by thinking we are better than the politicians. Better people. 

"We" (really, they) have made a break with the past. What seemed important to "us" in the time of Nixon, say, is "no longer regarded as vital" by a large and growing share of the people. Government has failed "us", and "we" have moved on. 

But Rostovtzeff was talking about causes of the fall of Rome. Do we really want to toy with that? The big picture is not so simple. It's not "Make a break with the past, and we're done." That break with the past is like a small crack in a steel plate. The stress that created the crack makes the crack bigger, eventually weakening the plate until it fails.

That building in Florida that fell, the Surfside condo, fell after standing for 40 years.

The attitudes that made possible the insurrection of 6 January have been developing for 50 years, if we use Nixon as a benchmark. Near 60 years if we take the JFK assassination as a starting point. But 6 January was not the fall of anything. It was only the first crack in that steel plate.