Notes on Survival Amid the Madness

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We live in an Orwellian dystopia, where the Thought Police constantly monitor our every word for evidence of any tendency we might have to think for ourselves. We are supposed to think only what government school officials teach us to think, and expected to believe whatever the Democrat-controlled entertainment/media industry wants us to believe. If we begin to doubt — if we “Question Authority” as the old hippie bumper sticker urged us to do — we find ourselves confronted with insanity. Without a quasi-religious faith in liberalism, an hour’s worth of watching CNN becomes an ordeal, psychologically traumatizing, and MSNBC is like shock therapy, or perhaps a lobotomy.

Mental toughness is necessary to withstand the constant psychic assault we must daily endure in a world gone mad. Having spent years diving head-first into the swirling cultural vortex of a society descending into chaotic lunacy, I’ve learned the secrets of survival:

  • Focus — Keep your mind on your chosen or assigned task. You cannot cover every story or worry about every problem in the world. If you let yourself be constantly distracted by whatever Big Story is headlined on the Drudge Report or getting wall-to-wall coverage on CNN, you will find yourself whiplashed back and forth, and risk becoming disoriented and overwhelmed by it all.
  • Objectivity — No one is ever actually objective about anything. We all have our opinions. However, if we are to survive inside the 21st-century asylum, we must maintain some kind of emotional distance from the events and people we write about. I once said that, in the news business, objectivity is just a way of saying “I don’t actually give a damn about these people.” You have to imagine the daily work I did as a news editor years. Six people killed by tornados in Oklahoma? Grab the AP story off the wire, cut it down to two paragraphs, stick it in the National Briefs column and move on to the next story. “File it and forget it,” as they say. There is no time to mourn the dead or become emotionally involved with the suffering of those Oklahoma tornado survivors. Your job is not to care about them, your job is to put their stories in the newspaper. Murder, mayhem, war, famine, disease — these are just so many column-inches of news copy with which to fill the pages. Fit the headlines, write the captions, crop the pictures, and get it all done by deadline. The news business is not the Red Cross. It’s not the Peace Corps. Learning not to care is part of the job.
  • Reality — The problem of the 24-hour news cycle and the constant connection of the online environment is that we are easily tempted to think of that (the stories in the news) as “real life,” so that our own actual flesh-and-blood existence seems unimportant. More than once during the 2012 presidential campaign, I noticed how reporters at rallies were glued to their iPhones. Instead of observing the event they were assigned to cover, they were checking their emails or scrolling their Twitter feeds. To be at a major rally and see political reporters all staring into their phones was disturbing to me. What’s the point of being “on the scene” if you’re not paying attention to the scene? By the same token, now that I’m back home doing the blog thing,  I find it necessary to remind myself that real life (my home, my wife, my children) is actually more important than, for example, the problems of queer feminist artists on Tumblr. That is to say, blogging is what I do to pay the bills, thus enabling me to enjoy real life. It’s important to be able to tell the difference, or else you can’t enjoy real life at all.

All of this is preamble to discussing the #cuckservative furor that has erupted in online warfare in recent days. This is a distraction to me — at a time where I’m racing a book deadline next month — even though, on the other hand, it involves subjects which I am perhaps uniquely qualified to address as a conservative journalist. I am personally familiar with many people on what is called the “New Right” or the “alt-right.” In the past couple of days, I’ve made phone calls to some of these sources/friends, and one of them informed me of the proximate origins of the #cuckservative swarm. In the past six months, there was a bitter schism among the so-called “neo-reactionary” (NRx) online community, with purges and counter-purges. It was a multi-faction quarrel. Certain ultra-traditionalist Catholic/Orthodox activists were involved, as were various European nationalist types and futurist “singularity” devotees.

After months of this factional infighting, somehow the Donald Trump presidential candidacy — especially Trump’s controversial remarks about immigration — became a rallying point for many of these “alt-right” people and, amid this, the slur “cuckservative” was coined to describe the cowardice of mainstream Republicans.

Frankly, I’ve been paying as little attention as possible to the 2016 campaign, because (a) I spent 18 months covering the 2012 campaign so it’s “been there, done that,” (b) I’ve been busy working on the Sex Trouble project, and (c) my gut hunch is that, when the dust settles, Scott Walker will be the Republican nominee. I like Walker, who thrice defeated the full power of the Left in Wisconsin, and think he will be good enough to beat to Hillary next fall. If my hunch is correct, therefore, it will not be necessary for me to become directly involved in the fight for the GOP nomination. Walker obviously knows a thing or two about winning tough campaigns, so that if he wins the 2016 Iowa caucus, it should be green lights all the way to the nomination for him, and I don’t have to worry about it at all.

So I’ve made up my mind to ignore the campaign to the greatest possible extent and, if my hunch is correct, the Trump candidacy will ultimately prove to be a flash in the pan except for this: By proving how popular a blunt-talking “get tough” approach to immigration enforcement is among GOP primary voters, Trump is pushing the borders/sovereignty/culture discourse onto center stage. The sheep will be separated from the goats, and the Open Borders candidates (e.g., Jeb Bush) will be flushed out of their hiding behind vague talk about “comprehensive reform.”

Well done, Mr. Trump. Well done, I say.

This has happened without me having to lift a finger, and I’ve barely even commented about it. Yet this #cuckservative thing sprang up, Ace of Spades commented on it, and when I took notice, people started attacking me, as if I were some kind of Chamber of Commerce shill or RINO Establishmentarian. So I blogged about it, and the comments exploded with trolls, and among the comments I offered this explanation:

You see that racialists (of whatever persuasion) must always impute dishonorable motives to their critics. This is a mirror-reverse of the way that the Left is forever accusing the Right of racism. The fact that I have been hate-listed by the SPLC does nothing to defend me from the accusation by racialists that I am, somehow, insufficiently aware, lacking “racial consciousness.”
Caught between the Devil of the SPLC and the “deep blue sea” of racialism, I have no answer except to say that (a) I am profoundly interested in facts, and (b) I consider the conservative cause to be a defense of American liberty. On the latter point, I consider that our liberty is threatened both by cultural decline and by the remorseless expanison of federal authority. These are related, because as immorality flourishes, the people are less able to govern their own passions and to provide for their own material needs, so that government expands to fill the vacuum created by the collapse of organic institutions, i.e., faith, family and community.
As to point (a), we ought to be able to candidly discuss the facts regarding human behavior without being required to endorse any particular theory to explain these facts. For example, liberals look at facts about racial groups and attribute observable differences to discrimination, prejudice and historical oppression. Conservatives, while not denying that any of the factors cited by liberals are relevant, insist that what is important are the (equally real) opportunities available to individuals in a free and prosperous society. Even before the civil-rights revolution of the 1960s, many black Americans were remarkably successful, even in the segregated South. As a matter of fact, Thomas Sowell has pointed out that many socioeconomic measures show the black community was (generally) advancing more before the mid-1960s than afterwards. Sowell attributes the problems that affected the black community after the 1960s to the vast expansion of the Welfare State that began under LBJ’s “Great Society.”
Of course, Sowell’s analysis is more complex than that brief summary suggests, and we are under no obligation to endorse Sowell’s analysis. My point is that the Left/Right argument over the causes of racial problems in America is about ideas — it is a debate over public policy — and is not (as the Left claims) a matter of the Right’s “racism.” And really, why should it matter whether or not anyone is “racist” in any sense of that word? This word has become a mere epithet, a slur used to silence critics of liberalism, so that liberal policies can be enacted without any real debate over the efficacy of those policies.
Perhaps I am more “racist” than some people and less “racist” than others, but what does this have to do with anything in terms of debating public policy? Why are we expected to subject ourselves to a sort of public psychoanalysis where it is to be determined (by whom?) whether we pass the Not-a-Racist Test?
The attempt to debate public policy (or to discuss social and cultural problems) is not helped when you have a swarm of avowed white racialists insisting that any conservative who does not adopt racialist rhetoric (and subscribe to whatever theorythis rhetoric expresses) is a coward, a “race traitor.”
Three words: Bull. Fucking. Shit.
Just as I will not let feminists dictate to me what I can or cannot say about sex, neither will I let anyone (Left or Right) tell me what to think about race. I will say, in concession to the “New Right” (or “alt-right” as they sometimes style themselves) that they are essentially correct that discourse about race is hemmed in by artificial constraints imposed by Cultural Marxism. Anyone attempting to talk about race relations is required to tiptoe around a minefield where any false step produces explosive accusations from the Left that one has exposed his own racism. The mainstream Right frequently cooperates with the Left in this project by periodically purging someone (e.g., Sam Francis, Trent Lott, John Derbyshire) who has transgressed the boundaries of permissible racial discourse. I myself was targeted for such destruction, and miraculously survived, because I had watched what happened to Sam Francis (whom I knew personally) and learned a lot about the tactics of the Left.
Notice this: I have never apologized for anything, and this drives the Left insane. How could someone hate-listed by the SPLC manage to continue a career in conservative journalism with such remarkable success? The Left’s theory, of course, is that my success proves that everybody on the Right secretly endorses the racism of which I am accused. Yet the truth is that my friends on the Right know I was unjustly accused — that I am not the hateful bogeyman depicted by the SPLC — and so the Left is confronted with its failure to destroy me. Grant that I have been harmed by the Left’s attack, it was my destruction they had in mind, and I am manifestly not destroyed. This example of the Left’s impotence might encourage others to defy the Thought Police, and I hope this possibility troubles their sleep.

People need to calm down and get a grip. Either we are doomed, or else the American people will come to their senses. Either way, the Cuckservative Crisis is a controversy ginned up by people with too much time on their hands, and my plan is this: File it and forget it.

I am an objective journalist. I don’t give a damn about these people.




 

282 comments

  3. File and forget dissent from your own side, kowtow to the left like always, author sounds like prime cut cuck

  4. Race will matter when have nowhere to run, and the left’s ideology has race at the core, so there.

  7. You can’t discuss topic with the left intelligently now, you never could. They just gin up dissent and faux outrage and shout you down. Who you are associated with and how you conduct yourself is immaterial to communists, so you might as well throw down the gauntlet, draw a line in the sand, and impale every SJW phag who crosses it.

  9. Disqus has been fairly well behaved of late, of course I attribute that to our not launching a nuclear counterattack when it became self aware. When Disqus is giving you a hard time take it personally that’s how it’s meant.

  10. That’s the part the conservatives are missing, and missing badly. The founders did what they did for their posterity and kin, not for everyone.

  11. And thank you for proving the point with your non sequitur response. Your purpose is not to have a discussion. It is to insult those you perceive disagree with you without bothering to determine what precisely they believe. Profanity laced ravings about Jewish conspiracies and white nationalism do absolutely nothing to solve problems like immigration.

  13. What do you consider to be the “Anglo-Saxon tradition?” Where did that tradition originate? Was it organic to northwestern mainland Europe in the century? Ideas are not racial; they are not limited to skin tone.

  14. Interesting that you write about a ‘conservative movement starting’.

    Considering being conservative is a way of life and a rejection of Ideology, and movements are creations of Ideologues, especially of the Leftist kind, it would seem you are not a student of Edmund Burke, but of Paine, Marx, Lenin, etc.

    Hmmm.

  15. If conservatism is passive, then it’s no surprise that the left is steamrolling us. Activism>Passivity

  16. Reminds me, RS, of the way the Bolsheviks used to rant and rave and denounce the Mensheviks and all other ‘bourgeois Socialists’ at the Internationales.

  17. I was referring to the previous post.with multiple hundreds of remarks, a substantial number of which discuss a nefarious Jewish cabal and preservation of the white race. Try to keep up. My point stands. You’ve said nothing to advance the debate; you’ve only engaged in insults. (BTW, look up “hypocrisy” before you try to use it in a sentence.)

  18. I guess a cuck’s gonna cuck…you are a big part of the problem that RINOs want to shut us up about. My father would not approve…Goldwater Republican, anti-Rockefeller Republican, WW2 vet.

  19. Ah, um, where in my comment did I say a conservative is, by his Nature, passive?

    If you can’t even read and comprehend my modern English usage, then you must have been totally lost reading Mr. Burke, with his old stylings [if you have ever read him at all, Clyde].

  20. Civilizations do come from cultures, but not all cultures are capable of equivalent civilizations. Look across the globe, and you will find the majority are distributed in Europe and East Asia. Cultures that can’t create civilization higher than human sacrifice will corrupt and weaken those that do.

  21. Were the Founding Fathers communist, Bob? Can’t have any of those pesky ideologies getting in the way of do-nothing conservatism.

  23. So is the 2016 republicuck strategy play nice and get totally trashed again, or are we going to start playing dirty for once?

  24. Actually, Spaced, the majority of them were not Ideologues.

    What they sought was not Revolution, but a Restoration of their God-given Rights. When Britain refused to do so and began quartering soldiers in the Colonies, The Founders effected a separation because they believed – quite correctly – that doing so was the only way left to them to Restore their Rights.

    As Russell Kirk described the War For Independence, it was ‘a Revolution not made, but prevented’.

  25. As far as they’re concerned we are the ones refusing to discuss the issues intelligently and it is only our squeamishness about what the left calls us that make us so. If their first premise were correct (about the inherent superiority of the white race) they would be entirely rather than partially correct about our squeamishness. That our culture is superior is inarguable, why it is, is to some extent, beside the point. To attribute it to our being white doesn’t answer the question of why our culture is also to some degree superior to other white cultures.

  26. Is that the reverse of “no true scotsmen”?

    Practically every political belief of every kind is considered an ideology. You’ve allowed Marx and the commies to hijack that term for themselves. The founders had what was called a republican ideology. As for the restoration of their rights as Englishman, those rights were gained through an ideology of personal liberty. It is not inherently statist.

  28. That is reductionist and revisionist.
    The 2012 field was extremely weak. Every candidate had baggage, and Romney was simply the one with the most staying power.

  29. A way of life under continuous intellectual attack requires a rigorous intellectual defense. The problem for American “conservatives” is that most serious right-wing scholarly thought is/was produced on the Continent, and these scholars are not beholden to the American conceit that capitalism, democracy, and equality come directly from the mouth of God. In short, they are free to criticize the founding ideals of liberalism.

  30. Still no substantive comment. You accuse me of desiring to “shut you up.” Where is the reasoned, logical argument without the juvenile epithets? You’ve had three opportunities and still nothing.

    (BTW, I’m sure your father was/is a decent man. So was mine. A Navy aviator. Survived a ditching in the Pacific in 1945. Had an “AUH20” bumper sticker on the 1963 Chevy Bel-Aire. However, neither your father or mine has anything to do with this discussion.)

  32. Well, modern “conservatism” is simply liberalism-light. If you actually stand for the preservation of Western Civilization, the “conservatives” will distance themselves from you and call you names.

  33. The problem is that these #cuckservative goons think they’re making a difference because they post on the internet. Go start a political movement and come back when you’ve accomplished something, losers.

  34. Have the republicans made a difference in the last 8 years? They are an impotent, weak, cowardly party and have proven they don’t care about anyone on this forum. Now you have an insurrection on your hands.

  35. Glad you enjoyed the book. I’m about three weeks from my (self-imposed) deadline for the revised and expanded second edition.

  36. Michael Enoch explains…

    “Look, you guys have lost, even on the issues important to you as Christians because of your cuckholdry on the race issue. You’re not doing anything to preserve the white majority, but you’re not winning on your issues either. Gay marriage is a done deal. Abortion is here to stay, particularly as more broken nonwhite families enter the social services system and are encouraged by bureaucrats to abort. You lost, you lost, you lost.

    With a white majority these issues were winnable, because whites vote conservative in the majority. But by being cowards on the issue of immigration and bending over for the left’s quite open plan of demographic replacement of whites in order to secure a permanent nonwhite left wing majority you lost. In 8 years it may be demographically impossible for the GOP to win a national election ever again. Even your precious Christian issues are done. Even your cucking for Israel is under threat. Do you think a nonwhite majority in the US is going to be keen to support your favorite ethnostate? They side with the Palestinians!

    You lost everything, and all because you were afraid a group of communists, atheists and homosexuals would call you racist.”

  37. “…they don’t care about anyone on this forum. Now you have an insurrection on your hands.”

    Who are you talking to, sport? Am I a member of the establishment, or part of the people they don’t care about?
    Do you just float in an ocean of incoherent anger? Pull it together, cherry.

  38. Relative to size we have done a lot more than the Repubs have, we have accomplished getting you and several other sites to pay attention, to engage us. You can’t get the Democrats to even acknowledge you as they push their cultural agenda.

  39. The problem is defining the word “culture.” They use it implying that it is this monolithic construct, when it is not. It is a wide variety of attributes developed and borrowed over millenia. To say there is one “white” culture is idiotic.

    If the discussion concerns political philosophy, i.e. an idea or set of ideas, the skin tone of those who originated them is irrelevant. Truth does not discriminate or change based upon skin color or DNA. Further, if we consider only political philosophy as “culture,” we have to acknowledge that such philosophies are amalgamations of beliefs over millenia, which beliefs are refined into a coherent whole. The loons in the prior thread ranting about Jews fail to acknowledge the substantial Jewish contribution to our political system, maintaining instead that it sprang fully formed on Frisian islands around AD 500, I guess.

    Madness.

  43. Asleep at the wheel is pretty much republican MO. When will you wake up and realize that this is not the America of our fathers?

  45. We are suppressed. Like the original Christians, our beliefs run afoul of the establishment. We’ll win eventually, but for now, we take our lashings with our heads held high.

  48. What’s funny about the left is they have a tendency to make the same cookie-cutter arguments over and over again, even when said arguments have been completely and utterly destroyed, and then assume an air of intellectual superiority.

    In the arena of the free exchange of ideas, the sociopolitical left are intellectually incapable of winning any debate without going ad hominem or trying to change the parameters of the discussion to include false arguments. The key is paying attention and not letting them do it. We saw an example of this in the past week with Carly Fiorina.

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