We suffer from a glut of democracy. Almost everything has been presented to “the People” as contingent, up for debate, conditional, and “the People” have made a terrible mess of things. In reality, very few people actually vote, but the ones who do guide the destiny of our nation. John Adams wrote of democracy, “It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”.

How can the heat and raw, animal emotion of the present provide us with legislation and leaders capable of preserving us as a nation into the far future? But this is the essence of democracy, and while our Founders placed safeguards that dulled and tempered the emotional tempests unleashed at the polls, they didn’t go far enough. Presidential elections, you may have noticed, inflict deep social wounds across the country, as we all divide up into armed camps and saber rattle right up to Election Day. Electoral politics has become increasingly vicious and bloodthirsty. We grow to hate those who vote for the Other Guy, who don’t support Our Guy. We plaster signs all over our yards, bumper stickers on our cars, proclaiming our support for someone who will inevitably sell out, and go out with a corrupt Bang! as his term ends.

This is all deeply unhealthy, and unsustainable. Presidential politics is killing us. Rather, give us a sovereign, appointed for life, and chosen via a method slightly less crude than direct democracy.

We look around and silently ask, “where is my sovereign?” We may not even realize we’re asking it. An American monarchy might be a beautiful thing. An end to blood feud-style Presidential politics would be even more beautiful. This nation deserves someone bred for leadership, removed from a desire for wealth, someone who has never debased himself before the public, begging for votes. It’s revolting when you think about it.

Give us a sovereign. Let us vote for our city and state leaders, our school boards, our little local elections. But give us a sovereign, appointed for life, answerable to a Congress and the courts. Appointed for life, this leader would take a long-term view of his decisions, who would look decades into the future, not a mere four years.

Our American Presidents have never took the interests of this nation seriously, despite the ridiculous campaign rhetoric. A permanent end to Presidential politics would be one of the greatest changes in our history. We’d be forever freed of the nonsense, the meaningless slogans and rallies. Take the time to imagine such a world, your view of our political system may never be the same.

Over the past year, I’ve noticed several harbingers of a clear de-civilizing process that has been set in motion, silently. The most auspicious has been the rapid proliferation of LED streetlights, replacing the beautiful ambience of the sodium vapor bulb. Town after town has fallen to this ugly, evil (every evil development is ugly) glare, and the once-quaint dusk of almost every Oklahoma town has been brutally dispatched, and in its place a blinding ultra brightness has been established. This has been a significant victory for the cause of ugliness, and it has been achieved almost overnight, with zero resistance. City councils deemed the new artificial light to be more cost efficient, “environmentally sound”, and so, aesthetics and beauty be damned, they made their towns hideous to the spirit.

No town that I’ve encountered, in my nocturnal travels, has made the effort to even place a light-diffusing cover over these harsh bulbs, whereas the old lights were covered, and diffused their charming amber glow. We now drive under a series of pin-point welding arcs, and can’t see a damned thing. Vehicle headlights are now equipped with the LED plague, and meeting other cars on the road is a blinding experience.

I’m at a loss to explain the indifference towards beauty on the part of city leaders. Decisions seem to only take into account dollars and cents, and everyone appears to be in a mad rush to penny pinch their way to wealth, and in the process, utterly destroying what made their cities beautiful, and civilized.

I’ve also noticed the mushroom-like growth of the four-way stop, particularly in my hometown. Long streets with unbroken right-of-ways have now been segmented with ridiculously unnecessary four-ways. Stop signs are going up everywhere, hobbling the driving experience, and creating needless conflict as if by design. The four-way stop seems tailor-made to elevate blood pressure and incite road rage. Who has the right-of-way? Drivers race to the four-way to beat the other drivers also racing there. Some blow through the stop sign altogether, assuming that the other driver will also stop. Two-ways, with their clear demarcation of right-of-way, rarely had this problem. The four-way, I’m convinced, has its origins, just as the LED streetlights, in the deepest pit of Hell. Some spirit of prudish, hateful antipathy to civilization appears to have settled in the hearts of city planners, and is now running free.

Are we better off than we were three or four decades ago? The answer is a resounding no. Rampant, unhinged technological progress has resulted in the opposite of a Utopia. There’s a man who walks his dog every morning while hunched over his smartphone, posture permanently distorted. It’s a dismal sight.

Local businesses, having been open for decades, are now closing up shop, replaced with vaperies or weed shacks. All new business is of the chain variety, devoid of soul and charm. What explains this?

Small town America has always seemed to me to be the fountain of civilization. When they go down, so goes the world. The technological god is smothering whatever remains that is human there, and now generations raised on the screen will inherit their ruins. Who carries the memory of civilization anymore, who has time to? Cities are in a rush to bulldoze the past and pay fly-by-nighters to erect particle board horrors in their place. Are we becoming the flies of a summer, with no past, no future, and little hope?

If we are to live in a Dark Age, make it a real Dark Age of charm and imagination, because this current age has neither. We live surrounded by technological marvels, but are far less well-off than our predecessors, who were forced, by necessity, to use their minds to work things out. Through technology, our minds are dulled, emotions infantilized, bodies enervated, and yet we each are confined to our individual hamster wheels, that spin continually faster. We race to make ends meet, only occasionally noticing that 5 years, 10 years, two decades have passed, as our expenses increase steadily.

A very real cultural attitude of anxiety about the future has taken hold, but we don’t know who or what to blame. We feel under constant attack, but can see no enemy. Vaguely, we wonder if God will shake the biosphere, through everything into blessed chaos, freeing us from this stifling course.

Looks like the Dems, having spent a week entertaining the idea of recruiting another candidate and forcing Biden out, have pushed their doubts aside, and have reassembled behind President Dementia. Which means that they’ve got something up their sleeves as far as November voter turnout. Will we really experience multi-day voting as we await the millions of by-mail ballots to arrive?