Chemo Thoughts: The End of My World?

Cross posted from Roger Gardener's Radarsite.

Earlier today a friend emailed me to ask how I was doing. I assume they were referring to my ongoing battle with leukemia. I answered that I was doing fine. I had determined early on when I got that first lethal prognosis that I was not going to use the pages of Radarsite for a continual updating on the morbid details of my chemotherapy. So I answered that I was doing fine. But, I wonder, how am I really doing? Am I really doing fine?

Nothing concentrates the mind like a death sentence. Especially one that is so close at hand and almost certain. Priorities are immediately questioned and reshuffled. What seemed of great import yesterday may have lost much or all of its weight today. The love and closeness of family and friends becomes paramount; whereas the opinions of strangers become less and less relevant. The often frenetic muddle of everyday life is quickly subsumed into the greater battle for life itself. There's only enough space left in your life for those things of real value, or perhaps for those values which are real. There's just not enough time left for empty rhetoric or endless gentlemanly debate. In whatever time is left you must embrace your family and your values and hold them dear.

The whole purpose of developing Radarsite was to speak up for America. To come to her defense. To answer her enemies and her critics with truth. To fight for the truth in the face of the relentless barrage of propaganda and lies. In short, a place to express my love and my respect for America and for American values. This mission has never wavered. The wonderful contributors whose fine work now fills these pages all share this love and respect for our great nation.

And now? Oh, I still love this beautiful country of ours, this wonderful meritocracy we call home. But my love is tinged with anxiety and fear. Like the love for a child who has gone astray, who has ignored all of our good advice and chosen an ignoble path to self-destruction. We can only watch helplessly as they slip further and further from our embrace and deeper and deeper into the black pit.

How do I feel? my friend asks. Here's how I really feel. From those very first days I have accepted my personal prognosis completely and without complaint. I am grateful for the endlessly fascinating life I have been allowed to live. But I have not yet accepted the dire fate that awaits my beloved country. I am filled with shame and disbelief at what we have become, what we are becoming, what we are giving up, what we have forgotten. My usually dependable inherent optimism has been all but eroded by the preposterous events of these last few years. That America I have so long loved and respected has been turned upside down.

Those values that separated us from the rest of the world have either been ingloriously degraded or completely abandoned. We no longer know who we are or what we stand for. We allow others to define us, we allow our sworn enemies -- both within and without -- to determine our national agendas. We are in the fateful process of completely losing our national identity. And according to our recent elections, this makes half of our population happy. Half of our population considers our formerly-precious American identity to be the problem. America is what's wrong with this world. To fix the world we must therefore change what it means to be an American. Change we can believe in.

We are presently besieged by savage enemies. Islamists, Marxists, Anarchists, cruel dictators and criminal tyrants. We are besieged by alien cults of death who nurse apocalyptic visions of destruction. Everything that we hold dear is under attack and threatened. But the most dangerous and shameless enemy of all lives right here amongst us. Our very own treacherous patriots, who rush to give the keys to the kingdom to the barbarians at our gates. The idiots, the fools, the delusional liberals, and those elitist amoral progressives who honestly believe that by utterly destroying the fabric of this great nation they will somehow save it. They have traded our pride for guilt and our strength for safety. And I despise them for it. I despise them more than I despise our sworn enemies, because our sworn enemies do not disguise their motives under the cloak of patriotism.

And what of our innocent children? Our beloved grandchildren? What godless world have we bequeathed to them? What is our message to these innocents? There is no right or wrong. Everything is relative. All peoples and all belief systems are morally equal. There is no such thing as good or evil, just different points of view. War is morally wrong, no matter what its purpose. To defend yourself with violence is as unjustifiable as to attack one with violence.

How do I feel? I have been told that my life is coming to an end. So be it. I can deal with that. But can I deal with the prospect of my beloved country coming to an end? Is my beloved country eagerly embracing its own demise? Will our new America truly be willing to fight for its survival in this savage world? Or, as it seems to me now, have we chosen the ignoble road of appeasement and dishonor? Is there still hope for us?

Someone out there please tell me that I am wrong, that my pessimism is premature or unfounded, that my deductions are somehow flawed. Someone please tell me that I can leave this world in peace and not in this awful despair for our future. - rg