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.
You stroll (figuratively) into this space and accuse people of fear without knowing anything about the regular readers or the host beyond two posts. You accuse us of cowardice on immigration. What evidence? You know nothing about any of the regulars here or the host. You just enjoy lobbing unsubstantiated accusations, slurs and profane jabs around.
As for the rest of it, what is your solution? How do you save the republic? Over 400 comments in the prior thread and approaching a hundred on this one. Where are the answers from you? I’ve not seen any. All of seen is lame attempts at puns using the stem “cuck.”
Here’s your chance. Impart wisdom to us.
Because you are a bunch of Johnny come latelys. You burst in here, flash mob this site where you are FOREIGNERS (see what I did there?), and then accuse us for not being with the program, or something.
You have all the arrogance of a 22 year old snotnose kid just out of college.
Don’t lecture me, pal.
The only problem is like zombies, they don’t stay dead, free exchange of ideas has proven ineffective; we have to be the immovable object to their unstoppable force.
This is the other part I instantly recognized and DISLIKED about you people: the self-righteous martyrdom.
Get over yourself.
Gotta love the irony right? But stopping it the first time prevents it happening again.
When you save it, will you please acknowledge me? I want to a winner like you.
But it’s not just the GOP that is afflicted with this. It’s also the Tea Party and Libertarian elements that consider themselves a separation from the establishment. All three of those factions are working from the same hollow and failed playbook.
Goodbye America.
Gotta love it.
Standing athwart history *yelling* stop is not action or agency, just complaining and pointing “see, see what they are doing!!”
Force is something that should be applied only to those who believe as the alleged humans who can and will defend the indefensible, such as going for “less crunchy” abortions, selling the parts from them, lying about it, and recommending a way be found to punish those who had such an audacity to expose their little secret.
You conservatives have failed MISERABLY to conserve anything except leftist progress and yet you expect some kind of respect from us?
You had your chance, pal. You failed. Horribly. Time to move over and let the new guys have a shot. Lord knows we can’t do any worse than your abysmal track record.
No, I think instead I’ll go about my business while you goons are still shitting your diapers.
Good luck with the revolution.
Oh look! Another lame photoshop. Western Civilization is saved!
It would seem you are caught quite completely in the web of Leftist Thinking.
Your thinking is a mess of contradictions.
Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
There’s nothing left to conserve. You people lost it all due to cowardice and foolishness. Revolution is the only option left.
I wanted you to be a winner too, then we wouldn’t be fighting. You’re right that I am young, and that I am angry. We are supposed to be able to trust our elders, to prepare us for the world, and to provide one worth inheriting, so that we may do the same to our successors. Conservatives have failed to do this, and now you want me to shoulder the burden for you. I can help rebuild what was lost, but it was your job to protect our nation and our society.
Good day, sir.
image, not substance
About as useful as a #Hashtag Campaign.
Soooooooo what happens if I am proven right and I come in here to say, “I told you so?”
I’m sorry…do I know you?
Do you have any idea who I am? Because you talk to me like we’re lifelong acquaintances, and I’ve let you down.
A funny thing, since I never heard of even your screen name alias before today.
Climb down from the cross, junior. You aren’t the only one the establishment has betrayed.
Yet the left still manages to push ahead with just a hashtag.
They are but boring juveniles in need of a loooong time-out.
Even if the Buckleyites had consistently done that we’d be far better off than we are now. Instead after every loss they’d move the line leftward down the field to yell “stop!” at the next progressive infraction, only to lose on that point as well and pick up and move leftward yet again.
Worthless, unprincipled cowards, the whole lot of them.
And when your Revolution ends-up destroying everything America stands for and reducing it to rubble [as all Revolutions do] what will you say to the dead?
I’m still waiting for just one of these new visitors to enlighten us with their plan to save the republic. Be specific. Tell us how you intend to save white, western civilization from the barbarian horde. Go on. We’re waiting with anticipation.
It’s who they are; it’s what they do — just like the Bolsheviks.
In the spirit of friendly cooperation (though I imagine I’ll be ridiculed), here is the best thing you can do to change the course of the nation:
Find your local GOP and register as a committeeman. There are usually many open slots, and you will have an entry-level view of party politics. If you get enough friends to join you, you can even have a dramatic effect.
That’s how Eric Cantor got his ass kicked out of office: by angering the low-level operatives.
That’s how John McCain got censured in Arizona.
You spoke to me as my senior, I replied as your junior, and how that relationship works. If you don’t like being betrayed, then surely you see where most of us are coming from.
Spoken like a true child.
What does today’s America stand for, Bob? Men in dresses and fag marriage for all?
Is your last name ‘Zhirinovsky’, by chance?
Do you support that ‘Christian’ Putin?
Putin acts in the interest of his country, since when have any of our presidents done that?
Anglo Saxon tradition most assuredly does not come from northwestern Europe though many/most of the ancestors of those who created it did.
Which means…what? Do you have a point to make?
In that extremely unlikely scenario you’d be proven correct.
Just check history. Who was the last true conservative to get the GOP nomination?
“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.” ”
This is where the left and the right (broadly) are saying the same sentence, but one in Norwegian and the other in Spanish. The left agrees that the Great Society was good, but bad and intrinsic white racism and privilege (often Republican, conservative, or further right) will trump any public policy, regardless of how good or well crafted it is.
The right will look at the black community and cherry pick where they were the good guys: Party of Lincoln (who supported repatriation), free market policies that were designed in a ‘rising tides lift all boats’ way, MLK was a “natural conservative,” etc.. And the evil Democrats and their unions, Great Society, abortion policies, and post 60s counter cultural revolutions destroyed delicate, ‘on the rise’ black America.
Both “sides” agree that blacks need special care and paternalistic concern from whites, but neither will admit the “why,” and that is too painful to admit for either group. Neither will look at black communities between the end of the Civil War/Reconstruction era and the beginning(s) of the Civil Rights era. Blacks didn’t starve and die wholesale during that period and eked out an existence, in the north and south.
Could it be that there are certain behaviors, traits, historical circumstances and chance have made blacks, blacks? And that left or right ‘white’ fixes won’t definitively steer them one way or another? Could it be that, when left to their wits with or without Jim Crow, living in the north or south, sharecropping in the south or working in factories in the north, blacks are blacks and, for whatever reason, it is what it is regardless of what our “R” and “D” leaders propose to do?
Returning to Sowell’s premise; could it be, for some and not all blacks, that the hand out(s) from the Great Society made many of them go, “F— it! Why not?!” Keep in mind that the US was on the cusp of opening the doors and letting much of our manufacturing base float overseas, and that the knowledge/information economies (later enabled by the internet and tech) would displace the need for people only 2-3 generations removed from a lower-skilled agrarian society?
Can we consider that it wasn’t the left or right that failed blacks in some way, but that they reacted to a set of circumstances presented to them at that time, for better or worse?
It’s not censorship. It’s like cutting off the booze flow to the drunks at the bar at some point. And yesterday went way, way beyond that point.
Further more many who certainly should have known better thought Romney could win. Millions of Americans despair of the possibility of a Clinton/Bush race. In states where party registration isn’t required to vote in primaries thousands will cross to prevent one or the other from getting the nomination.
What contradiction? I simply said that ideology encompasses wide range of belief systems, not all statist, and not necessarily requiring action. Granted it is often a term used by or against the left, nothing about “the imagined conditions of existence” requires Bolshevism.
Yeah, sorry about that.
It wasn’t cowardice it was complacency.
Wombat Beyond Thunderdome
Two men enter…one man leaves
Two men enter…one man leaves
Two men enter…one man leaves
Still no substantive comment.
They are correct in that it is too late for that, Even kicking out ten Cantors per cycle will take 87 years and Canto was far more vulnerable than he seemed.
I’m afraid we don’t have the time it takes to rebuild the party that way. The demographic shift will make them a non-entity in the next couple of decades. It’s quickly coming down to more aggressive tactics whether you like it or not. Social breakdown is already apparent, and everybody and their dog knows what SHTF means. What we look like coming out the other side is my focus.
I’ll just finish my book of proofs of the unified field theory while we wait.
The current republic is about done, it’s replacement will be the one to call the shots, we need to make it’s the right-wing calling those shots, since the left and weak repubs got us here.