Entertainers — actors, singers, dancers, sports figures — traditionally offer leisure-time enjoyment. We may long remember a particular song or a last-minute game changing touchdown, but these don’t mean we need care about a celebrity’s political opinions.
In today’s world we situate media ”talkers” within the entertainment category because most of them have replaced journalists as disseminators of cultural/political ”news” and put their personal opinions in place of objective fact-oriented reportage.
We also can add corporate billionaires to the entertainment circuit because they publicly opine on every topic except their professional acuity.
Next, whose voices do multitudes of Americans hearken to for information to update their ”knowledge” about societal/national/international affairs and America’s well-being along with their own?
Unfortunately, it’s the aforementioned ”players” who have their ear; players pretending to be others, or exercising physical expertise in sportive games, or praising/criticizing countries they’ve never visited, or surrounding their homes with security walls while promoting non-stop migration of who-knows-who from who-knows-where.
Worse, the majority of these celebrities have swallowed the poison pill of political correctness and regurgitate the same.
Why are they listened to? Not because of knowledge beyond their narrow entertainment arenas but simply because of visibility and face/name recognition. Familiarity breeds … zwodder-like complacency.
It’s significant to note that the highest paid moneymakers in America are entertainment-sports-media-news figures and corporate CEOs.
These ultracrepidarians are not famous for enlightened knowledge or original ideas, and most of those who spout warmed-over PC propaganda are decidedly self-inflated, usually inflammatory, and socially destructive individuals.
Add to the ”stars” in the now-expanded entertainment industry the D.C.-elite snollygosters who for sake of their own power lust not only fail to contribute to or protect a value-stimulated culture but also would rob us of our freedom loving heritage and shackle us with chains of collectivism.
In stark contrast to the influential but deleterious rich and famous celebrities in America today, other advanced-for-their-time historical periods — ancient Greece, Imperial Rome, the Italian Renaissance, the European Enlightenment, America’s founding — produced culturally persuasive professionals who did impart true knowledge and life-serving values, thus gaining legitimate admiration and attention.
Their subjects? Philosophy, republicanism, art, science, logic, individualism, and a world-altering document to protect the sovereign rights of every individual in an unprecedented manner.
Even during the Dark Age of Europe’s decline there were advances; for example, young men traveled all over the continent to learn under the tutelage of ”star” philosopher-teachers of high level like Thomas Aquinas.
Compare that educational climate to today’s social-race-sex indoctrinating teachers on all levels preaching life-defeating ideas that not only fail to nourish young people with accurate knowledge and critical thinking abilities but manipulate malleable minds with quackery so outrageous as to permanently inhibit maturity.
What to make of all this?
It’s clear that rational parents, teachers, and factual idea-based communicators are basically the only people alive to pass on true life-serving values — reasoned ideas consonant with reality.
It should also be clear that (most) sports/entertainment/media/corporate ultracrepidarians and power-driven snollygosters are life-destroying threats to our freedom-loving society and should be publicly disparaged by citizens stuck in zwodder who need to reject ”woke” and wake up to reality.
Why is publicly disparaging those who vilify the best of American values important?
If we look honestly at significant but differing aspects of American life — education, art/entertainment, science, health, leisure, everything constituting our country’s core identity — we must conclude that America has become shallow in spirit and bereft of rational life-serving values such as reason, accurate information, objective judgment and government responsibility.
If this conclusion is valid, then rational parents, teachers, and fact-adhering communicators who pass on life-serving values to others must become vociferously vocal and vigorously active in order to combat the paucity of even commonsensical values flagrantly devalued by anyone and everyone in America, from the snooty ultracrepidarians and snollygosters right down to friends and neighbors stuck in a swodder.
And more, it is not enough in this precarious cultural environment for good and rational value-oriented parents, teachers, and fact-conscious communicators to pass on life-serving values only to those with whom they come in direct contact.
As our Founding Fathers took public action, a physical revolution, to release colonies from the yoke of England, so must we now take public action by speaking out and boldly challenging those who would censor or dictate our words and behavior and release ourselves from influence by every private poseur and the yoke of an oppressive government that is aggressively attempting to establish a political tyranny and is dangerously close to succeeding.
Concerned and rational individuals must now become audible, visible, and courageous enough to combat the forces that would destroy this country and the liberty that defines it.
If we do not restore America to its founding principles — independence and individualism— the country will perish just like our human bodies; therefore, political correctness propaganda and political collectivism (socialism-fascism-communism-progressivism-globalism) will kill the ”body” of America as an idea at the same time it fetters the physical bodies of our populace.
An eventual demise of advanced societal structure happened to every great civilization in the past, and America’s societal structure is desperately ill right now. But demise is not certain … yet.
So, how to fight for life? Suggestions:
Stay accurately informed. Except for reliable internet or non-mainstream media hard news, turn off all radio-TV voices and avoid ”opinion” segments. Attend only to individuals who support ideas with direct knowledge of their subject and verifiable facts.
Read. Read idea books past and present, avoiding those that distort history to serve current political agendas. Understand for yourself the true underpinnings of western civilization and America’s unique place in it.
Short book list for starters:
Past — Aristotle’s “Ethics,” Edward Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Ayn Rand’s “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.”
Present — “Nature’s God” by Matthew Stewart, America’s Revolutionary Mind by C. Bradley Thompson.
And … think to form your own opinions.
PHOTO: Hollywood. PHOTO BY: Topher., Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).
Alexandra is the founding president of American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART), a NYC-based 501 (C) (3) nonprofit educational foundation devoted to a rebirth of beauty and life-affirming values in all of the fine arts.
