The first step to radical evil is anxiety.  When I see an an- words, like anhydrous, which means “without water”, I conjure that the word means “without ‘something’”.  Anxiety, then, would be “without xiety”, where “xiety” means “anything that you can lose”.

Xiety is space, time, existence, life, your mind, your lover, your parents, your children, your future, your job, your money, your reputation … anything that you might say, after its loss, “give that back to me.”

Anxiety can drive anyone crazy.  How can one get a reputation back?  What about “one’s sense of security”?

It’s “us versus them”, when it comes to anyone who can mess with your xiety.  Employees bitch about their boss behind her back because, well, just because she can mess with their xiety.  When the boss asks if anything is the matter, everyone says, “Everything is fine”.  This is how the bittersweet elixir of “calumny” soothes employees’ anxiety.

The American “children of the sixties” secretly despised their parents because they had defeated evil.  They were heroes.  They had saved Western Civilization.  Even though no one bragged about it, the lesson was clear.  Dad’s “reputation” meant that “I was not important”.  Hell, Western Civilization was just a piece of crap anyway.  Pass the joint.

The American “parents of the children of the sixties” did not know how to face the rage of their children.  They could face the utopian enemies of Fascism and Communism (both the same, really) and not wince, but they could not face their own tantrum-throwing children.  They wanted to be loved.  So they stepped aside and let the intellectuals – the one’s who taught their children – deconstruct everything they had fought and died for.  Progressivism (the next utopian enemy) stands upon the ruins.

So xiety concerns more than things that anyone has; that is, things that can be taken away.  It encompasses whatever one might have had if circumstances had been different.  In different circumstances, the children of the sixties could have had “heroism”.  In different circumstances, the parents of the sixties could have had “the ‘honor’ emblazoned on Moses’ tables”.

Anxiety is the fear of losing the life that you never had, but could have had, if only … if only …