In books, music, travel, nature, and, most importantly, my wife, I find the things that feel removed from the monotonous conformity of an American society that appears to be moving ever closer to an abyss of irrelevancy.

Yesterday, we voted to keep our heads in the sand. Today is the first time this year I’ve heard Christmas music in a public space. I move around a city where there is little to distinguish one corner from the next. No matter the business I visit, I will be greeted by the first victims of an education system that has not kept pace with our age of encroaching complexity.

I find nothing novel about life in the American city. The sense I have of broken people is running strong right now. We are no longer citizens of a shared identity called America; we are each other’s potential enemy. At one time, America was able to pit nations against other nations, and these new adversaries would battle one another. Today, our government has learned how to pit Americans against Americans, risking a conflagration that will allow the lowest common denominator of imbecility to demonstrate the extent of their rage against nothing besides their own personal failure.

In Europe, I’m ensconced in history. In nature, I’m embraced by beauty. With my wife, I’m enchanted with sharing love. While learning I’m enveloped in discovery. In American culture, I feel suffocated by aggression and the vacuous pride of those hostile in their rabid beliefs.

I’m taken back thirty years ago when Cabaret Voltaire sang “Don’t Argue,” which relied heavily on the words of Dr. Seuss when he penned the script for a propaganda film “Your Job In Germany” that warned occupying soldiers not to trust those around them. Then Mark Stewart and the Mafia comes to mind with “As The Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade.” Finally, Test Dept with “Total State Machine” rounds out my sense of needing to return to the sound of rebellion and discontent. I’ll try and hold on to the hope that just as these English artists saw the same ugly situation devolving in their culture, they seem to have endured.

The problem here is that I’m now 55, and for over 20 years, I’ve been comfortable in the simultaneous oblivion and hyper-awareness of ecstasy, where beauty and love ruled my life nearly exclusively. Today, I am forced to witness the banality of a malignant horde that feels reminiscent of the failing industrial culture that was being choked out in the mid-’70s. Maybe the problem has always been the baby boomers. I’m looking for an escape from a generation that not only produced some amazing minds but also created the conditions of decay that see society taking two steps back for every step forward.