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.
So the point is, we are all eagerly waiting to hear your plan. What is it…exactly? And I hope it’s better than just talking about needing to Do Something, while simultaneously smearing anyone who might possibly be on your side.
Looking forward to it. Planning to buy a hardcopy to leave here, at a bar with a bookshelf with a “take one leave one” policy.
I’ve said this all along. It is too late to do anything at this point. The time for action passed by 50 years ago. Now nobody who might be in a position to effect positive change has the balls to do it.
So then, what’s your vision for the new version? What should be done in your view? Be specific, chapter and verse.
I don’t believe this demographic shift bullshit. Those are the self-serving lies of the left, who want to convince themselves they are due for a thousand year Reich.
Even Hispanics need jobs, and the failure of socialism is fairly obvious to everyone who isn’t a privileged liberal.
That’s why Abbott in TX got 51% of the male Latino vote.
Nah.
Things will turn around immediately if we get someone like Walker.
Whoa there, hold the presses, I certainly didn’t mean to imply that a conservative would or a squish wouldn’t get the nomination. I am however convinced that particular squish Bush won’t get it.
If you are going to trash me about plans and execution of said plans, I would point you at the protestors before the American revolution so you can chide them for flying by the seat of their pants.
But I think you also believe that we are done. I am agitating for separation, Rome became several nation-states after it’s collapse. I would recommend advocate supporting any secession movement in your area. And assert your right to self determination by force if required, and remembering those politicians who got us into this mess when that happens.
Obama gives out free stuff all the time, his successor will probably not be the one to stop the gray train, and be the big bad racist. Socialism being a failure does not matter to these people in the slightest, as the mountain of evidence against it is continually ignored.
Considering that we’re seeing an awful lot of whites with this same identical attitude, I don’t see how the problem is blackness.
Just as the Bible speaks of separating sheep from goats, and wheat from tares, seems to me that it’s a matter of the separation of “earners” from “entitlement whores”.
Just wait until the next recession. It should hit before the election.
BTW, I think a lot of the people on welfare would rather have a job.
Even the Blacks are dissatisfied, though they may not know exactly why. Obama has been a big letdown for many of them.
While I hope I’m wrong about this, I have to respectfully disagree. I think the deck is stacked against it, in a “too little, too late” kind of way.
Quite.
True, but at the heart of the matter, all that modern left and right are is derivatives of each other, sharing a common core comprised of universal brotherhood of man egalitarian ideas of the last century. We’d be better off but no one has told us what we are supposed to conserve. I’d imagine it’s their pocketbooks and ability to ride the Boomer (Evangelical) crowd until the last penny is pinched.
Dan Quayle said it was a fight against single motherhood almost 30 years ago. Now Lindsey Graham thinks that *Bruce* Jenner is welcome in the big tent. The goal post keeps moving because it was never fixed and always relative because, at it’s root, they were (left and right) always are mirror images of each other. The right is just the 10 year delay.
The Buckleyites, than and now, are more than willing to purge their dissident own than the left ever was. Look at the treatment Jason Richwine and John Derbyshire have received from Conservative Inc in recent years.
It absolutely will hit before the election (if there is one), and the precipitating event will happen this September.
“Doubting Messenger!”
LOL
”remembering those politicians who got us into this mess when that happens.”
Well that has adobe wall’s attention.
Do you read zero hedge by any chance?
Many “experts” say a 50% chance. We won’t have to wait long to find out.
Every day.
Hell rewind this a century and change “Black” to Italian or Polish and it sounds almost the same. Go back two centuries and change “Black” to Irish and it sounds almost the same. Its like the same sort of nativist BS that has hung around forever. As if some of these BS tribalism ideas haven’t moved past the days when we all were sitting as part of the various city states that were being formed when civilization was forming. I would wonder if the Greco-Roman’s has the same sort of stuff being said about back in their times.
I may be walking away, but I’m not going to forgive them either.
That last part is absolutely correct, yet he and the Social Democrats in general never gets the blame
I trust IP addys are being logged, to the extent the nutjobs haven’t spoofed them.
“Those damn Hittites! All they want to do is lounge around the square demanding handouts! And don’t get me started on the bath houses!”
No one is going to “trash” you. I do, however, want specifics. The regular commenters on this blog are the one’s who’ve been “trashed” and subjected to insults and juvenile photoshops.
In this new state, what do you do with those whose demographics do not comport with your ideal? What happens?
Nobody ever says it clearly, but it hangs in the air. Wait and see: Dem turnout will be in the toilet as a result.
By by 401ks.
Bail-ins too, but I did a very clever thing to thwart them: I have no money.
But 90% + blacks, blindly and to a fault, we always go for the give me’s. They are overwhelmingly tribal and ethnocentric. If Hillary or Jeb promises more empty platitudes, they will go with them.
Almost everyone would prefer a well paying job, but as Ross Perot’s “sucking sound” gets louder and louder, free phones and section 8 and other .gov goodies remain on the table, and the last middle class jobs head abroad, who do you think if left paying the tab and running the clock?
I possess two old newspapers from the mid 1800s. Both published in St. Louis. The first has an editorial complaining that the Germans are taking over the city and the state. The second published ten years later praises the German regiment which fought for the Union at Wilson’s Creek.
(Disclosure: my ancestor of the time trended toward the “butternut” end of the political spectrum.)
But. . .but. . . but. . .what about us happy drunks?
< hick >
Had a friend who did the ISFOR thing in the former Yugoslavic states and he mentioned how in some of the cities or towns they were in the citizens acted as if time hadn’t progressed past the days of the Persians, Romans and Ceasers. Even though they had cars, mobile phones etc. They still thought that there was evil was still the other folks of the other creed, language, tribe etc.
The demographic then becomes “get an effing job and support yourself and all your damn kids, you loser!” Anybody outside this demographic will be forced to rely upon the charity of those in the community. The community will know – and will visually see – whether the charitable contribution is justified or not (orphan, elderly vs able-bodied, lazy).
Best part is, if a person is forced to support his/her own progeny, he/she will take better care in terms of when, with whom, and under what conditions he/she does the deed. This will have the dual benefit of creating/strengthing families, and rebuilding the economy.
Some of my family is from the St Louis area and they Anglicized their names because of this:
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/a-look-back-defendants-walk-in-lynching-of-german-immigrant/article_5d28dd6a-0ae0-536d-ba28-f83f5f52ca4a.html
Of course not. But most of the left and right post 60s platform uses the condition of black America as a weapon against the other. There have, and always will be white sloths, but the quantity/quality of them isn’t built into the “R” and “D” platform.
Ta Nahesi Coates and the assorted black lives matter left wingers thinks it’s the right and their whites. Rand Paul and Rush think its the left and their whites. Both assume that middle class and above whites have something that they are withholding that will be the big fix.
I’m in Texas which is pretty much going to be reconquista like cali, Most northern territory is in good shape for the moment, and I’m all for repatriation of those others back to their home countries. Many of your multi generation immigrants wont likely have anywhere to go, but will end up segregating much like we do now, banning welfare will keep them from outbreeding everyone else. As far as laws on the books, I think miscegenation bans should be considered. It may all sound a little heavy handed, but it was much similar to “old america” as I like to call it.
The saving grace for the gimmedats is that they’re fickle. They won’t turn out for Hillary.
She can get 90% of their vote, but 90% of zero is still zero.
“Those damn Viches! All they want to do is call out the Persians and the Romans!” Hahahaha
Perhaps. Somehow, however, I think that the nasties on the prior post comment thread have a different idea. That’s why I keep asking the question. I want to see if they have the stones to write what they really think. Especially the “there’s a secret Jewish cabal” types.
As for your idea, no objection from me of course.
Not denying that at all. But by/after the 60s, the assorted ethnic distinctions among whites (Italian, Polish, German, etc..) became condensed into “White.”
(Check out Noel Ignatev’s “How the Irish Became White)
Also, when have you seen anyone on the left or right in the past 30ish years wring their hands over Swedish American incarceration rates or food deserts in Irish American neighborhoods?
Taleeb Starkes has another idea. You should read his book, because I think he’s right.
More like “Damn those Dalmatians and they will pay for their massacre of X city” when the Italian NATO force moved in when the US force moved out. When did the massacre happen? Oh back when Julius Ceaser was still a student in the finest school.
You know, that’s actually kind of cool in a way. As a Southerner, I should be calling out Damn Yankees.
The important thing is not to forget.
*Gasp*! I should take all my money and go on a massive shopping trip then! Could be my last chance, like, ever. I need to come up with a convincing story for Mr. DM, though.
Counted four strawmen. Good job.
Their relentless rhetoric is like that of ex spouses—the ones that are not missed.
Could happen, but once the ‘ol reliable “Every Republican is a Neo Nazi who wants to gas you and your dog” agitprop gets in full swing next summer and the grassroots Acorn types bus ’em in, you’ll get some 1,000% “D” districts and the band will play on…until it doesn’t.
I hope not Jeb. I prefer for the party’s nominee to be a vertebrate.