It's raining.

Just recently we had the SOPA and PIPA threats to free speech and open information, and an attempt to control artistic profit and output.  The ACTA agreement vote in Europe looms in the near future as solid dodge of democratic process and another a threat to free speech.  It feels like every day it's something else attacking what I perceive as our way of life.  If it's not one thing, it's another.  Man, it's raining out there.

Back in the seventies, social commentators were discussing the fall of the American Empire.  University pubs and cafeterias were rife with this kind of talk and we, in Canada, were so smug in our intellectual superiority. (Well, what else did we have to feel smug about regards the juggernaut to the south?  Hockey.  Maybe hockey.)  But we, as the client state, the little brother next door, we somehow felt immune to the effects of the process of decline of the American Empire.  I definitely remember our pronunciations about what would happen in the States and the clucking, the shaking of the heads, but no acknowledgement that anything would happen here.

As it turns out, we were in denial then just as most folks in North America are in denial now that the whole of western civilization has been on the decline for decades. You would be surprised what we predicted at those tables over coffee or cheap draft beer.  We predicted the emergence of religion as a dominant force in politics.  We predicted the emergence of form over function.  We predicted a slow, steady decline in civil rights and women's rights and the slow, steady decline of our own values, institutions, etc.  We predicted unfair wars and dominance.  All this and more, all from studies of the fall of the Roman Empire.  We knew what was going to happen just not what particular forms it would take.  So we were aware.  It was already raining but we were only ankle deep.  A nuisance but not life threatening.

And then, culture seemed to ramp up to bursting.  It was raining movies, television shows, internet culture, all falling steadily practically free from the sky.  It was fun.  It made one laugh.  It distracted one.  And there was so much falling that there wasn't enough of a filter for the average person to see the danger that some of what was falling was pure acid and that shared core values, civil rights, reproductive rights....  These would start to erode as a result.  And, in the nature of gentle rain, so slowly that we wouldn't notice.  So, now, here we stand on tippy-toes trying to keep our heads above water.  Forty years not forty days.  A quiet deluge.  We are swamped. 

The cultural process is unstoppable at this point, I expect, and it's hard for me as an individual to understand what I can do about it; the very process has made me feel so small and ineffectual.  Well, maybe I am still in denial, but I believe I won't drown. I am going to try to continue to be a voice for free thought  and civil rights - as small as this voice might be.  It's going to be hard given all this rain.  Glad I've always been an excellent swimmer.