Uncivil Savages: The Erosion of Civility in a Savage Age
Civility, that once-vital lubricant of a functioning society, now teeters precariously on its last legs, kicked aside with all the grace of a drunken reveler who never liked the furniture to begin with. It is no longer simply neglected; it’s actively mocked—dismissed as the sanctuary of the timid, the foppish indulgence of those too weak for the robust sport of perpetual outrage. As we gaze into the murky waters of the next four years, the pertinent question isn’t whether civility will vanish entirely. No, it’s whether we’ll even remember what it looked like in the first place.
The Savage Within
The modern savage isn’t wielding a club or grunting in a cave; they’re armed with hashtags, shouting into echo chambers, or gleefully dissecting opposing views with the precision of an online executioner. Today’s weapons of choice are not crude but digital, their reach vast and their anonymity reassuring.
Social media, initially heralded as a tool for connecting the world, now functions as the coliseum of modern life. Algorithms, bless their little mechanical hearts, work tirelessly to ensure your biases are confirmed, your opponents vilified, and your indignation monetized. The result? A cacophony of tribal warfare where shouting replaces dialogue, and the loudest voice wins—not by merit but sheer decibels.
Progress? If you squint hard enough, maybe. For now, it looks a lot like shouting into a void where no one is listening.
The Next Four Years
Spoiler alert: things will probably get worse before they get better. Expect technology to turbocharge the descent, with AI crafting propaganda so perfectly attuned to your anxieties that you’ll almost thank it for ruining your day. Political leaders, meanwhile, will continue to treat governance as performance art, pandering to their bases with the finesse of carnival barkers.
Economic inequities, that ever-reliable tinderbox, will grow more pronounced, ensuring we all have someone else to blame for our frustrations. Society will fracture further into opposing camps, each more convinced of the other’s villainy.
But wait—there’s hope! It’s faint, like a candle in a gale, but hope nonetheless. History has an odd way of veering from the inevitable, often just as we’re about to walk off the cliff. Perhaps the collective fatigue of perpetual division will push us toward something better. Or perhaps not.
The Case for Civility
Let’s be clear: civility is not a genteel pat on the head or a spineless retreat from confrontation. True civility is a high-wire act, requiring strength, discipline, and the kind of self-control that feels almost quaint in an age of instant gratification.
Civility is the ability to wield words with care rather than as cudgels, to see disagreement as an opportunity rather than a threat. It’s not for the faint of heart; it takes guts to stay your hand—or your tweet—when outrage is just a click away.
Leaders have a part to play, but so do we all. Institutions, for all their flaws, can only do so much. The real work of civility begins at the individual level: in how we speak, how we listen, and—dare I say it—how we hold ourselves accountable for the tone we set.
A Savage Choice
“Uncivil savages” isn’t just a turn of phrase; it’s an epitaph in waiting. The choice before us is stark: cling to the transient thrill of division, orinvest in the far more arduous—and infinitely more rewarding—pursuit of shared humanity.
Civility is not a decorative frill on the tapestry of society; it’s the very thread holding it together. Lose it, and we’ll find ourselves unraveling at a pace that even our most cynical forebears would find alarming.
Here’s the irony: to rise above our basest instincts, to practice civility in the face of chaos, will require a kind of savagery of its own. The savagery of courage, of restraint, of refusing to give in to the cheap allure of anger.
Let’s hope we’ve got it in us—because if not, the only thing left to fight for will be the ashes of what could have been.
All my life I stumbled, staggered like a drunk at closing time, reaching for something, anything. I’d been told to find meaning in the sermons of men, the wisdom of books, the clink of coins in a beggar’s cup
it was all more of a junkie’s dream. The kind of thing you’d find slipped in between the folds of the Interzone, tucked inside the sweaty palm of some two-bit dealer with half his face gone, nodding off in the alley. I wasn’t looking for it, not really. But it found me. They always find you.
Years spent in the static haze, the off-channel white noise of existence. I moved through life like a virus spreads—covert, unnoticed, but always present, always creeping. Everything felt slippery, synthetic. The streets, the people. All part of a bad signal, fuzzing in and out of view. I tried to decode it, cracked open veins and heads alike, trying to read the messages in the blood and the circuitry. It all led nowhere. Circling the drain.
Then the tablet. Green. The color of rot, the color of new life. One third of the tricolor draped along the walls of the long, hollow corridor of time, reverberating with the somber hymns of Irish proverbs, and maybe, just maybe, carrying enough luck to turn pessimism into hope. Sort of like a coin toss, only with a tablet. I didn’t so much find it, it found me, pressed itself into my hand, throbbing like some living thing. Organic. Synthetic. All of the above. I swallowed it without thinking.
And then the world folded in on itself, a collapsing wave. Time ceased to have meaning, space unraveled into dimensions I didn’t believe existed—places where gravity was just another bad trip, a suggestion instead of a rule. The walls of the room bent, melted, reformed. Faces flickered, sliding in and out of their skulls. Bureaucrats with insect eyes and needle fingers. All the usual suspects.
The tablet wasn’t knowledge. It was beyond knowledge. It was access, a key to a hidden layer of reality, a frequency just out of reach unless you knew where to tune the vibrations. And there it was—the whole system laid bare. The machinery behind the facade. The puppet strings of control, the invisible hands pulling us all in circles.
The thing I’d been looking for in gutters and bars, in the eyes of strangers and the bottom of empty bottles. Turns out, it was the very thing that made me stop searching.
I don’t remember what was written on it. Maybe there was nothing. Maybe it was just the act of finding it that mattered. That green tablet wasn’t salvation, not in the way they sell it in churches or schools. It was just a reminder that the world, the one I had spent years fighting, didn’t give a damn. It never would. And finally, I no longer needed it.
I wasn’t stumbling anymore. My new found saunter suggested confidence, not arrogance—just the ease of a man who knew the system and could slip through its cracks unnoticed, the few eyes that caught me probably green with envy. But I always looked past them, through their lost souls, and left a simple inscription on their softened brains…
the rest of us? just junkies chasing the first high. eyes glazed, hands outstretched for the next hit of belonging. the tribe, the party, the movement—they offer you a fix, say you’re one of them now, part of something bigger. they sell you purpose in a pill, a flag to wrap around your shoulders like a noose disguised as a security blanket. but here’s the thing—just like the junk dealer’s push, it’s all laced with something lethal. the high doesn’t last. it never does. you wake up sick, needing more. always needing more. and the cold truth is, the club you think you’re part of? it doesn’t exist—not the way they sold it to you.
talking heads and politicians, like junk peddlers, know the game. they cut it just right, enough to keep you hooked, just shy of dead—or at least, that was the plan. but the bodies are stacking up. 279 die every day from counterfeit killers. more dead recruits than Vietnam, and these aren’t soldiers, just citizens swallowing the lie. it’s all poison. they toss you a pill, tell you to vote, tell you it matters. but it’s counterfeit, a placebo laced with sweet nothings. you down it, even though it chokes you every time, feel good for a minute, like you’ve made a difference, like you’re part of something righteous. but what’s in that pill? more poison. just another way to keep you tethered to a system that doesn’t give a shit if you live or die. hell, they’d prefer you sick, obedient, just healthy enough to show up and follow orders.
and they need you to chase it again—the high of belonging, the sweet lie that you’re on the “right side.” but there is no side. it’s grey. the world is grey, the people are grey. the skies are always grey, the streets paved in grey since day one. I’ve walked down that avenue, eyed grey faces lost in the grey mundane of their everyday. everything’s muted, colorless, lifeless—just the way they want it. they need you blind, seeing in black and white, picking one of two flavors, because they need you to believe you have choice. But you’re just another number on that team jersey they sold you at the concession stand. they know you’re never actually going to be a real player on the squad. that’s why the numbers are grey—just bright enough to keep you loyal and coming back for more counterfeit salvation.
i’m done with their game. i’m done swallowing their pills. i’ll walk through the grey, hands dirty, eyes wide open, because that’s where the truth is. the rest of them? let ‘em keep chasing that first high, keep lining up for another spoonful of sweetened bullshit. i prefer the chaos, the mess. i want the real thing, the uncut stuff—bitter and sweet, raw and true. not the garbage they keep the masses hooked on.
it’s all an illusion, this belonging. a drug they sell to keep you numb, keep you thinking you’re alive, when really, you’re just another junkie in line, waiting for your next fix. the question is, when do you wake up and realize—the high isn’t coming?
As we peer through the rear-view mirror at the years 2015-2025, the contours of that tumultuous era appear both jagged and instructive. With the clarity that only hindsight affords, we now ask ourselves: was this the period that presaged the demise of the West, or was it merely a tempest in the teapot of history?
The decade began with a global landscape pockmarked by crises. Political upheaval, the resurgence of nationalism, and a pandemic that rattled the very foundations of societal norms—these were but a few of the seismic events that defined the period. The United States, that erstwhile beacon of democracy and economic prowess, found itself grappling with internal schisms as deep and abrasive as any since the Civil War.
It was a period characterized by the rise of populism, where figures like Donald Trump in the United States and other nationalist leaders across Europe commandeered the public discourse. They tapped into a wellspring of discontent that had festered in the underbelly of globalization’s promises, harnessing the fears and frustrations of those who felt left behind by a rapidly changing world.
Yet, as is often the case, the pendulum of public opinion swung with vigorous unpredictability. The West’s obituarists, who in their haste had drafted somber epilogues, perhaps underestimated the resilience of democratic institutions and the liberal order. Despite the cacophony of crises, the core structures held firm, battered yet unbroken.
The mid-twenties were a testament to the tenacity of these systems. Despite burgeoning cries that the liberal model had run its course, there emerged a renewed commitment to the principles of freedom, equality, and justice. This was not a smooth recalibration; it was contentious, often messy, and invariably incomplete. Yet, it was a definitive rebuff to those who predicted a rapid descent into irrelevance for Western democracies.
What then of the extreme divisiveness that marked those years? It is here that we glean perhaps the most poignant lesson. The divisiveness was, in no small measure, fueled by the echo chambers of digital media—platforms that often amplified the most extreme voices to the detriment of nuanced discourse. The societal polarization this engendered was palpable, reaching a crescendo in the early 2020s. Although, the greatest achievement that seemed to bring the country and the west a touch closer was the declaration of Fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction in late 2024. Before the end of 2025 the military had demolished every Cartel and their annexes, and all who were caught selling counterfeit pills laced with the poison were sentenced to death and that was the end of what took more lives than 911, the pandemic, or any war since World War 2. And, thus far, no new cartels have been able to resurrect themselves.
Now, decades later, we appreciate the cyclical nature of history. The fissures that seemed so insurmountable have, in many respects, been bridged by a subsequent generation that views the ideological battles of their forebears with a mixture of bewilderment and instructive caution.
In retrospect, the decade from 2015 to 2025 was neither the nadir of the West nor an era of unmitigated calamity. It was a crucible moment, one that tested the mettle of institutions and the spirit of societies. The lessons gleaned from those years have informed newer, more adaptive approaches to governance and social cohesion.
Thus, as we look back from a vantage point of relative stability, we realize that our forebodings were perhaps overstated. The period under review was undeniably marked by trials and tribulations, but it was also a testament to the durability and adaptability of the Western model. It reminds us, in no uncertain terms, that the course of history is seldom linear and never preordained. The resilience of the West was not guaranteed—it was earned. And therein lies the fundamental insight of this retrospective examination.
In a dimly lit room, with the flicker of a single, dying light bulb overhead and the hum of the city’s night leaking through the cracked window, there it sits—the essence of a world spoiled to its very core, marinated in its self-entitled glory. It’s an American tradition, not the kind bound by the pages of history books or celebrated with fireworks, but the kind you see in the glazed eyes of the too-many, wandering through their days like kings of a forgotten kingdom, unaware of the ground beneath them or the sky above.
The streets are filled with the sounds of their discontent, a chorus so constant it blends into the backdrop of daily life. “The wifi’s too slow,” they cry, in cafes where the coffee beans have traveled further than their complaints ever will. “There’s nothing good on Netflix”, they moan, flipping through a thousand channels on their flat screens that glow like false moons in their too-big houses. They drive cars that could feed families for months, to jobs they say suck the soul from their bones, not pausing to think of those who sift through bones for a meal.
This great American spoilage, it’s not just in the things they have but in the air they breathe, taken for granted like the last cigarette in a pack, smoked without thought or care for where the next might come from. It’s in the way they view the world, through lenses tinted with convenience, unable to see the beauty in struggle, or the strength it takes to simply survive in places where the ground is harder, the water scarcer, and the sky a luxury afforded only to the dreamers.
They throw words like “hardship” and “struggle” into conversations like loose change, not knowing the weight of those coins in pockets other than their own. They speak of rights as if they were the only ones to have them, blind to the fact that for some, rights are not a given without a battle fought every day.
And yet, amidst this spoiled landscape, there are those who see, truly see, the absurdity of it all. They’re the ones that nod to one another in passing, those who understand that to appreciate the light, you must also know the dark. But they are the whispers in a storm of shouts, the flickers of truth in a sea of contented ignorance.
So here’s to the spoiled, the entitled, the blissfully unaware—may you one day find the beauty in a single blade of grass, the wealth in a shared meal, the fortune in a breath of air without having to experience some godawful tragedy in order to gain perspective.
Until then, the world waits, not so patiently, for you to regain consciousness and see the value of looking passed your sixth finger, which is now a mobile device, a screen serving as a detour to personal hell. We’re anxious for you to wake up and see that while the American Dream may have always been a nightmare, there’s so much still out there, sprawled out like a roadmap of a million smiley faces, waiting to be titillated , waiting to be traveled and truly seen.
In a dimly lit room, with the flicker of a single, dying light bulb overhead and the hum of the city’s night leaking through the cracked window, there it sits—the essence of a world spoiled to its very core, marinated in its self-entitled glory. It’s an American tradition, not the kind bound by the pages of history books or celebrated with fireworks, but the kind you see in the glazed eyes of the too-many, wandering through their days like kings of a forgotten kingdom, unaware of the ground beneath them or the sky above.
The streets are filled with the sounds of their discontent, a chorus so constant it blends into the backdrop of daily life. “The wifi’s too slow,” they cry, in cafes where the coffee beans have traveled further than their complaints ever will. “There’s nothing good on Netflix”, they moan, flipping through a thousand channels on their flat screens that glow like false moons in their too-big houses. They drive cars that could feed families for months, to jobs they say suck the soul from their bones, not pausing to think of those who sift through bones for a meal.
This great American spoilage, it’s not just in the things they have but in the air they breathe, taken for granted like the last cigarette in a pack, smoked without thought or care for where the next might come from. It’s in the way they view the world, through lenses tinted with convenience, unable to see the beauty in struggle, or the strength it takes to simply survive in places where the ground is harder, the water scarcer, and the sky a luxury afforded only to the dreamers.
They throw words like “hardship” and “struggle” into conversations like loose change, not knowing the weight of those coins in pockets other than their own. They speak of rights as if they were the only ones to have them, blind to the fact that for some, rights are not a given without a battle fought every day.
And yet, amidst this spoiled landscape, there are those who see, truly see, the absurdity of it all. They’re the ones that nod to one another in passing, those who understand that to appreciate the light, you must also know the dark. But they are the whispers in a storm of shouts, the flickers of truth in a sea of contented ignorance.
So here’s to the spoiled, the entitled, the blissfully unaware—may you one day find the beauty in a single blade of grass, the wealth in a shared meal, the fortune in a breath of air without having to experience some godawful tragedy in order to gain perspective.
Until then, the world waits, not so patiently, for you to regain consciousness and see the value of looking passed your sixth finger, which is now a mobile device, a screen serving as a detour to personal hell. We’re anxious for you to wake up and see that while the American Dream may have always been a nightmare, there’s so much still out there, sprawled out like a roadmap of a million smiley faces, waiting to be titillated , waiting to be traveled and truly seen.
