Shots of Wisdom, Part 2

Alcoholism. With regards to drinking, there are two kinds of people. One type of person will have two drinks, feel the buzz, and his body tells him “I’m done.” The other type of person will also have two drinks, but then the fiend within whispers “feed the buzz.”

Angels. If a stage play is written about the late Lawrence Auster, one can do worse than my premise: one of Lucifer’s rebellious angels seeks to make amends with the Almighty. As penance, he assumes a body of bachelor intellectual in New York City who struggles to overcome his Jewish tribalism and achieve wisdom through his writing, ultimately to die of pancreatic cancer. He appears to have fulfilled his journey of penance in the final act and becomes an angel, as evidenced by the short blog post he wrote ten days before he died.

Authenticity. As presidential candidate, Michael Dukakis presented himself as a phlegmatic, mild-mannered man, ridiculed for his goofy pose in a tank and for his bloodless reply to a debate question involving the hypothetical rape and murder of his wife. No doubt, the campaign’s merciless judgments stung, but there is a lesson: stand by your persona when the image is accurate. Running from it only amplifies the caricature, as Dukakis demonstrated twelve years later in his guest appearances on Fox News, looking ridiculous in his leather jacket and affecting a guido posture. If you’re a coupe, be sleek like a Camry, don’t rev your four cylinders like you’re an F-150.

Despair. It smells like a dog park in an SWPL district.

Devils. This was in the twilight between sleep and lucidity, sometime during my early teenage years. I wake up in the middle of the night to see a large, flat face filling the entirety of the wall opposite my bed. The face was luminous. It was God, it told me and it wanted to talk with me. Terrified I said “NO!” and heart pounding, I curled up under the sheets in icy sweat, making sure that no part of me is exposed and I frantically crossed myself and prayed. Later as an adult, I described that vision to a man with prodigious knowledge of the Bible. I told him that I once saw God but it was terrifying. He lost his smile and said “It wasn’t God and it’s good that you refused to talk with it. What you saw was a demon.”

Due Process. Angela Merkel’s half-hour’s trial for genocide and treason begins immediately after her arrest. For twenty minutes, the prosecution recites a list of accusations for the sake of historic record, in a manner that breaks her down to chest-rattling sobs. She gets five minutes for a statement of defense, also for history’s record. She stumbles over her words and falls silent. The verdict of “Guilty” is delivered. She is granted five minutes alone with a priest, if she chooses to take them. She is then led down the stairs, out into the courtyard, toward the wall.

England. The persecution of Emma West, as well as the Rotherham revelations, should have—by conventional wisdom—sparked an English revolution. Instead, nothing of the sort happened and the English slumped down in despair. Their response is consistent with historic templates for social change. A beaten dog licks its tormentor’s hand. The master must show weakness for the dog to begin to hate and then to lunge for the throat.

Feminism. Nations that liberate their women perish. Ones that subordinate their women, live. I want to live, not die.

Identity. Men generally enjoy meeting men from other nations and races. There is a lot that is interesting, even fraternal, in the crossing of cultures—so long as these three conditions are met: both parties are coming from positions of equal relative status, each man has a home of his own, and each man knows who he is. Even Pashtun tribesmen are famed for their hospitality toward strangers whom they do not perceive as invaders. But multiculturalism, by imposing strangers on another’s home and codifying this intrusion with the Marxist duality of oppressor and oppressed, precludes any such fraternity. E.M. Forester’s “A Passage to India” asks whether an Englishman and an Indian can be friends. The answer comes via the Indian doctor’s reply to the liberal Englishman: they cannot be friends until the English leave India.

Revolution. Revolutions are created not under the conditions of despair but under conditions of hope. Hope in this case is coming from a confluence of diminished respect for our leaders and inspired fresh words of an upstart champion. The groundwork has been laid. Now, it’s just a matter of a spark.

Trump. Suburban_elk has asked if White Americans exist. The established positions of every mainstream liberal and conservative institution over the past 50 years make that answer clear. Yet now there are stirrings of a glacial but unstoppable recognition that Whites as such do exist as a legitimate population with its own rights and interests. We’re certainly not there yet; our identity, our grievances, our demands aren’t yet articulated in everyday conversations. Whites’ low voter turnout in the 2012 election may have been the proverbial rock bottom.

Soul. You can appraise a person’s intelligence just by looking into his eyes. People with low IQs have lifeless bovine eyes, like there is no animation behind them. A very intelligent person’s eyes are drawn by a talented artist. A very dull person’s eyes are sloppily drawn with a crayon.

Zoology. Even the lowliest living organism resists its own physical destruction, even when the struggle is against pressures it does not understand.

The will to live: the scene is from Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “Decalogue 2: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” The man in the bed is a cancer patient who wakes up feeling that he will make it.

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The original “Shots of Wisdom” are HERE 
Shots of Wisdom, Part 3 is here

Idle Thoughts on International Songs

This is my own private Eurovision, a list of popular songs from (mostly) European countries, performed in an other-than-English language. I make no claim on having deep understanding of most of those countries’ pop scene, nor are the selected songs necessarily the best of, or representative of, their nations.

While we’re on the subject of music, reader Nikcrit recommends his former music biz colleague Ben Ratliff’s “Every Song Ever” and writes: “[the book] is a critic’s guide on how to enjoy pop music in this unprecedented age in which virtually every song of any time is damn-near instantly available at our fingertips; it’s a true ‘poverty of abundance.'”

Now on with this post’s international song selection. Links in song titles:

Bosnia: Bijelo Dugme, “Te noci kad umrem.” The title means “the night I die,” and the song is about different women’s reactions to the news. The guitarist (wearing a white shirt) in this 1987 slow-tempo, fan-participation live performance, Goran Bregović, is now highly respected in Europe as the Balkan folk-pop musician.

Brazil: Roberto Carlos, “A Montanha.” This is the earliest pop song I recall liking, which was in the very early 1970s. Its refrain, obrigado Senhor is a giving of thanks to God for life’s everyday miracles.

France: Les Brigandes, “Antifa.” One of two overtly political songs on this list. It’s no longer possible for the Left to do protest songs. Creativity and righteous rage now belong to nationalists. (English subtitles in the video).

Germany: Rammstein, “Ohne dich.” This song’s official music video is probably the most masculine ever produced. I wasn’t thinking about that video when writing the previous “Freedom” post but they would go together.

Greece: Maria Athanasopoulou, “Golden Dawn Song.” The second overtly political song on this list. Well done musically and inspiring in its visuals and lyrics. This artist knows the score. (English subtitles in the video).

Italy: Florent Pagny, “Caruso.” The singer is a Frenchman, but this operatic ballad is as Italian as it gets.

Latvia: Tumsa, “Lietus Dārzs.”  An upbeat rainy day mediation. With their balance of crisp and melodious phonics and proto-European sounds, Latvian and Lithuanian languages are the most pleasing to the human ear, after French.

Lithuania: Marijonas Mikutavičius, “Trys Milijonai.” A celebration of the country of three million, featuring their basketball team’s highlight reels. The song is so infectious, I’d sing along if I spoke Lithuanian.

Poland: Budka Suflera, “Jolka, Jolka.“ This band’s dark, sweeping 1982 ballad includes love, loss, youth, booze, road-time, a baby sleeping in the other room, Merkel’s invasion (sort of), and a solar eclipse. “We’ll have the next one, maybe in one hundred years.”

Quebec: Mes Aïeux, “Dégénérations.” The closest you’ll get to 14/88 lyrics without the song being a right wing speech set to music. Judging by its live versions, it appears that the Québécois like getting down to this odd but very danceable tune. (English subtitles in the video).

Romania: Cargo, “Daca ploaia s-ar opri.“ I don’t know anything about this brooding power ballad or the band, but I really dig the song.

Serbia: Ceca, “Kukavica.“ In the video, a man who has it all is torn between his perfect family and his raven-haired vamp mistress. The singer Ceca (Svetlana Ražnatović) has had an interesting personal life, including marriage to a well-known Serbo-Croatian war figure Željko “Arkan” Ražnatović.

South Africa/Afrikaans: Bok van Blerk, “De la Rey.“ An invocation to the great Boer Wars general, now with new urgency. A powerful moment occurs in the video when the downtrodden overcome their fear and stand up. (English subtitles in the video).

Sweden: Mando Diao, “Gloria.“ This entry breaks my rule on showing solely non-English lyrics. Does the Swedish accent count?  The video is a 60s retro-style intrigue featuring sleepyhead pretty-boys, a hardened detective, and a big-breasted femme fatale with lips made for…

So smokin’ I can’t contain it in a hyperlink:

Freedom

 “Adventure, huh? That word stirs up some longing, resentful emotions. I wouldn’t trade in my time as a homeless, hungry teenager, because it’s part of my character and my self-image. But as soon as I got a little security I didn’t want to let it go, and when I was young enough for adventure I saw no value in it.” —Reader Heretic Phi

The Open Road

Freedom is not exactly the same thing as liberty, the latter entailing responsibility. In the comments under a recent post, reader JumpinJackFash kicks things off with a response to Suburban_elk’s riffing on youthful optimism and its derailment into techno-utopian fantasy:

I am a young man and you hit the nail right on. I dont want to stay in one place and I want much more than a simple steady life in a homogenous community because I dont think thats enough.

In response, I wrote a few words about my own period of wanderings during the early 1990s and how I value it now:

Right after high school, I dropped out of college and in a series of forays, drifted around places like east Tennessee, before going into the Army for a couple of years. There were more rough and frustrating moments than happy ones. I was always broke — spending half of my income on cigarettes, working on and off in restaurants and sleeping in my car or in cheap motels — and I had no idea where I was going for a while, but today I would not trade those couple of years for anything.

Where the 1950s America Failed

On the Alt-Right, commenters make the blog and aside from the host’s periodic supernova outburst of insight, the comments sections of blogs is where ideas churn. On that note, Trainspotter weighs in with this grand slam, raising the scope of the discussion to the very heart of White man’s restless brilliance:

A young man needs some adventure, and the best adventures involve trial & tribulation. That’s why just going back to Leave it to Beaver won’t be enough (though it would be a fantastic improvement over where we’re at today, obviously).

A healthy tribe is going to have rites of passage through which a young man can prove himself – through which he can gain respect and become a man, learning to hold his head high. Leave it to Beaver didn’t really offer that – it was largely just about being “nice” and becoming a productive worker bee. Nothing wrong with either of those things as far as they go but, again, it’s not enough. It’s spiritually dead and deeply unsatisfying to an important part of what we are. The European soul craves more; it needs more. If necessary, it will upend and destroy the world to get that “more.” It will even destroy itself.

In a sense, the 50’s were actually very feminine without being feminist – its masculine aspect was a dwindling holdover from another age. Looking back, it’s no great surprise that such a society would fold like a cheap suit, giving way with virtually no meaningful resistance to the degeneracy which quickly followed. From Leave it to Beaver to White Genocide within a single human lifespan.

Traditionally, our people created honor-based societies which produced the best of both worlds – toughness as well as manners, martial vigor as well as beautiful art. These things, superficially at odds to the ignorant modern mind, actually go together quite well. For our people, anyway; with other races your mileage may vary.

Whites must rekindle those old flames, both to achieve our own homelands and to defend them once they are ours again. Among countless benefits, a European honor culture will have no problem preventing racial aliens from trespassing upon the tribe.

Check him out on twitter: @trainspotter001. Heretic Phi agrees:

As idealistic and wonderful as that world in the past looks to me from this decomposing, empty society we live in, something important was missing from that era. Something lost in security, success and scale. Or how then did it fall so quickly? A kind of cowardly ignorance, or something. I wasn’t there so it’s hard to say. Like we (they?) hadn’t adapted to the invention of television yet, and were too easily seduced by the warm snuggly comfort of trusting authority.

It was a one-two punch. We opened the door to anarchy through our acquiescence to Civil Rights. We opened the door to tyranny when we acquiesced to the Patriot Act.

‘Murkan Liberalism vs. Warsaw Pact Communism

One of the phenomena of living under our present condition of anarcho-tyranny is the nostalgia for mere tyranny, minus its “anarcho-” partner. In extreme cases, some of us get a wistful feeling at the sight of an ethnically pure North Korean city with docile citizens marching in and out of their humble apartments. Even I flirted with that sub-rational form of Communism-nostalgia. And more openly, I’ve written fondly about my childhood in 1970s Warsaw.

Former Yugoslavian dissident Srdja Trifkovic makes an eloquent statement about the old Iron Curtain Communism; specifically, the degree of  freedom of thought and conscience it allowed relative to our conditions in the contemporary West. Here is a short excerpt:

Now, in those days it was possible to […] have on the one hand, the official discourse to which everyone had to at least formally subscribe, and on the other hand to have the private discourse of the family and friends. And that there was, one might say, a parallelism between the state above and the society below.

Now, in the terrorist phase of the Bolshevik revolution, there was a deliberate and very bloody attempt to blend the two, and that was the period of Lenin’s liquidation of the priests and intelligentsia, and Stalin’s liquidation of the Kulaks and the late run of “deviants” of all kinds.

But by the mid-50s, especially after Stalin’s death, what we had was the settling down of a system in which it was possible, oddly enough, to be free within the circle of one’s friends and family, and not to subscribe to official ideological norms wholeheartedly. You could go through the motions of display if you’re obliged to do so — if you’re a member of the Party, if you’re a part of the Nomenklatura — but when push came to shove, people behind closed doors with other people they could trust, could be themselves. And then it was possible to have meaningful conversations about politics, economy, or culture, or religion without the blinkers of imposed right-thinking. And then it was possible to be free.

Today in the postmodern Western world, it’s very hard, regardless of where you reside or what social circle you mix with, to exchange any meaningful thoughts on race, on immigration, on educational policy, on cultural policy, without encountering some seriously strange looks, and even strained and uncomfortable reactions from friends and neighbors. And that’s why you avoid these conversations.

So in other words, in a funny way, I might say I feel less free today, in my fifties in the United States, than I did in my teens as a teenager in Tito’s Yugoslavia because at least with people you could trust, and with people who shared the same cultural and social milieu that you come from, you could share your innermost thoughts without being looked upon as an eccentric or a deviant. Of course, if the secret policeman heard you, he might have looked upon you as a dissident and then it’s a totally different kettle of fish. You may have some difficulties, you may be expelled from school, you may even have your telephone tapped or your passport withdrawn or whatever, but you could at least function—within the parameters of what was a society untouched by the state—as a free person.

Trifkovic is not an apologist, nor does he advocate Communism in any way. What he’s saying is that the tyranny we live under right now is deeper-reaching and more insidious than one Eastern Europeans had lived under then. Notably, every former Cold War émigré of my parents’ generation with whom I have discussed this video emphatically agrees with what Trifkovic is saying.

Though maybe what some of us miss from Communist days, at least from my own then-child’s point-of-view, is its own kind of freedom. Middle class American children are kept close to home under their parents’ eye in the helicopter-parenting Zeitgeist born of the paradoxical anxieties of diversity and the intrusive state. I noticed that my strongest pangs of Communism-nostalgia point to recollections of being seven or eight years old, bus and tram numbers memorized, roaming freely about the city. To this day, the smell of diesel exhaust on a cold snowy day takes me back there.

“To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”

After we overcome the present system, we will have to remain vigilant about restoring our rough American internal freedoms, which are possible in a country that will once again have external security, and not overshoot into the realm of tight control over ourselves. I wrote this short meditation about the value of balancing order and chaos in the “What Have We Learned” post:

Man has a wild side that compels him to find life under perfect order stultifying. Life needs an element of chaos to remind us that it all hangs on a thin string and to steer us clear of Eloi-like complacency and softening of character. Passion and creativity come from the darker recesses of our soul and thrive under a touch of danger.

Over the course of his life, a man realigns his spirit from youth’s fire to maturity’s self-command. In that transition, his temperament changes from adventurousness to territoriality, where he demarcates his claim on the world. As fathers and as men who’ve come to glean bits of life’s lessons, we become future-invested in desiring to create the same opportunities we had—and to preserve and expand the same space we enjoyed—for our next generation.

And yet, that spark of wanderlust never quite dies. I was recently riding a bike through the city when a large truck began drifting toward me from my left, parked cars to my right. Adrenaline and instinct did their thing as I maneuvered myself out of danger. Danger makes you feel alive. Come spring, a group of friends and I are heading for the mountains.

Victorian poet Lord Alfred Tennyson wrote “Ulysses” in 1833, dramatizing the restlessness of an old adventurer upon reclaiming his estates. The full poem is HERE; below are its concluding lines:

Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
[…]
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Tennyson’s superannuated Odysseus (I’m used to the Greek names) entrusted his son with the task of ruling the family’s lands and sailed off once more. Yet right this moment, a pair of piercing blue eyes opens amidst the bustle of maternity ward’s nurses. A little wanderer cries, impatient to test his wings and to roam, maybe setting his aim on descending to the gutters of Hades or ascending the peak of Olympus—either way, forged to stand in radiance and despise chains, proof-enough that we are created in the image of God.

The Age of Shivalry, or Goodbye jeb

Sometimes it’s hard to resist feeling pity for a pathetic adversary, until you remind yourself of how hard he’s been working at creating a future without you in it. The underwhelming yet spectacular and now failed candidacy of presidential hopeful jeb bush (sic) is what I am talking about here.

I wrote this at Chateau Heartiste last night, with minor revisions here, in the wake of jeb’s dropping out of the race:

The Hannah Arendt coinage “banality of evil” fits well with jeb bush, in the unfolding great morality tale of our time. He’s a beta, goofy and endearing, a dad who’s trying to do the right thing by his family. Calls his homely wife his “best friend.” He’s not the first or the last man to do that, and we normally wish those fellows well.

He wrote about the dispossession of all of our children and grandchildren in their own lands as “an act of love.” There already is a Mexico, a Guatemala, a Somalia. There is no second America, though, and American kids, I guess, just have to step aside. But does a nullity (your grandchild) even need to step aside? No, a nullity does not figure into the equation.

South Carolina loser jeb bush did his damned best on behalf of his nuclear family (the extended Bush family may be a complicated story here) and on behalf of every hill troll that wanted to grab a piece of your grandchildren’s birthright. Jeb bush is a good man by his lights, that awkward big galoot who wants your grandchildren to be brown, or never-born.

You will burn in hell one day, traitor, but first twist in agony at the mental replay of every campaign humiliation your introspective mind torments you with, as Columba pushes you away in bed tonight.

Commenter Greg Eliot over at the Chateau writes: “PA ushers in a New Age, a True Age of Shivalry. Well done.”

A fine pun it is, sir, and I thank you.

A Simple Advice for a Boy

Good teachers have an ability to wrap complex ideas in a few simple, memorable words. A friend I talk with about Alt-Right politics has that talent. You appreciate it when someone who isn’t familiar with our ideas but is interested asks him a question, which he answers with a zing! that makes the concept clear.

Imagine a scenario in which you are mortally injured and you only have a minute to tell your ten-year-old son, who’s right next to you, everything you know before you lose consciousness and close your eyes for good. Your kid knows you love him, but you can tell him that anyway. But what else do you tell him? Haze settles over your thoughts.

Or, you are a high school coach. Your team just won the final game of the season and as you congratulate these bright-eyed teenagers, one of them asks “coach, got any advice for us—I mean, in general?” That advice, simple and comprehensive, good for a teenager or a child, is encapsulated in these three points:

Fear God. Respect good men. Believe in yourself.

This advice happens to follow Christ’s directive in Luke 10:27, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.” Here, however, I say fear rather than love on account of the latter word’s contemporary churchian corruption. The young man will also take the word fear more seriously; it will make him think.

About that first instruction, to fear God—”But isn’t religion superfluous?”—asks an agnostic. To that, I can reply: there are things that are greater than you. Give them their due and your life will be better.

Now, on to the second point, respecting good men. This helps you avoid being a Gamma male. Just as importantly, sincere respect for men of character—as well as for men who had mastered a skill or overcome challenges, or are simply older than you and have given you no reason to hold them in low regard—teaches humility and self-knowledge.

Finally, believing in yourself helps you trust your instincts and gives you the courage and dynamism to take what you want from life.

America’s Greatness

The fictitious dialogue that follows is inspired by conversations on related subjects with “Ace” during our long car rides.

PART 1 – THE STANDOFF

Ace: This is what the elites don’t get. War is brewing and the Trump campaign is our way of telling them “this is your last opportunity to let us resolve our differences peacefully.”

PA: You’re making it sound like an ultimatum. But what are we gonna do—just stop giving a shit about the country?

Ace: Not just that. This is what I see happening: the system does something very dirty and Donald Trump never makes it to the elections. The newly-sworn president Hillary Clinton’s first act in office is to issue executive orders to each of the 48 contiguous U.S. states to prepare accommodations for specified numbers of third world asylum-seekers. The numbers are in the millions of Muslim and African refugees to be relocated into each state. In response, the governor of Texas immediately defies the executive orders. In a nationally televised press conference, he says “No. We don’t want them here.” What do you think happens next?

PA: We know what happens next. After private talks between the administration and the governor fail, federal marshals leave for the Texas state capital, Austin, to present the governor with a choice: comply with the executive order or face arrest. As the marshals’ plane approaches an Austin-area airfield, the governor sends Texas state troopers to the airfield with instructions that the federal marshals must leave the state as soon as their aircraft refuels. So they fly back to Washington, DC and the Clinton administration is now in a tough spot because backing down to such an open defiance in the first days of a president’s term would set the tone for the remaining four years. So after an emergency cabinet meeting, the chiefs of staff call up the 1st Cavalry Division units at Fort Hood in Texas and instruct them to deploy an armed brigade for Austin with the objective of detaining the governor. And several days later, a massive, low-speed vehicle convoy heads 70 miles south for Austin.

Ace: People are lining up around Route 175 to watch and jeer the slow-rolling convoy, as television news and state police helicopters fly overhead.

PA: Meanwhile, the Texas governor had activated his state National Guard and has them form a perimeter around the state capitol in Austin, from which he intends to continue executing his responsibilities as state governor. The Guardsmen understand the seriousness of what they are doing. They secure a large perimeter, stockpile provisions, set up sandbag fortifications, lock and load, and wait.

Ace: This is a foolhardy escalation by both parties.

PA: It is. And the whole word is watching. As U.S. Army’s 1st Cav units from Fort Hood head for the Texas state capital, the governors of Alabama and Arizona hold emergency press conferences in which they declare their support for Texas. Joining Texas in defiance of Madame president, they make statements vowing to deny any refugees access to their state and call up their respective state National Guards.

Ace: Steps toward secession?

PA: Technically, no. All three governors—Texas, Alabama, and Arizona—make it clear that their defiance of the executive orders is being carried out within Constitutional bounds and they are appealing to the federal government to rescind those executive orders compelling states to host new refugees.

Ace: But things have a way of spiraling out of control because there is too much potential energy in the system. It’s like in a fist-fight: the two guys with major beef circle each other with eyes locked for a long time, but one shove and it’s on.

PA: Exactly. There’s been too much bad blood simmering over the decades. And now, 1st Cav units have arrived in Austin and they are encircling the state capitol and beginning a standoff with the Texas National Guard. And it’s an impasse for several days. The Army is not making any moves. President Hillary Clinton is not making any public appearances. The vice president goes on CNN and makes a long rambling speech. The Pentagon is bristling and urging the president to have 1st Cav units return to Fort Hood.

Ace: The feds aren’t acting decisively or showing much of a united front. It’s beginning to smell like weakness.

PA: And the other state governors smell it too. As do the American people. Americans are angry over what happened with Trump and they are ready to blow; nobody knows exactly how, but the cold anger is turning white hot. The refugee thing was simply a bridge too far, and seeing the defiant southern states has energized everyone. Massive protests rock the country coast to coast. The media underplay the protests, trivializing them as them “hate rallies” and “domestic terror”—because it’s Whites protesting.

Ace: The media will lie even as they get laid off from their jobs, even as they rot in their graves.

PA: Journalists aren’t even scum at this point. They are a joke.

Ace: But the standoff in Austin continues and emotions are tense. Another state governor, this time from a liberal northeastern state, declares that he will not allow any refugees into his state. And then another state defies the president, and then another. Finally, you have a cascading effect and days later, every single one of the 48 contiguous U.S. states has formally defied the Hillary administration’s executive orders to prepare facilities for the refugees, and they all expressed support for the Texas governor. They aren’t defying the federal government in mere words. National Guard is activated in each state and ordered to obey state authorities, not the president. Anticipating airlifts of refugees, state governors throughout the United States close airports to inbound flights from a long list of countries.

PA: Unanimous defiance. Hillary now understands how unpopular she is.

Ace: No one had ever liked her. And now, with the federal government’s prestige tanking, RealTalk sees the light of day. One of the governors calls the planned migrant invasion “a genocide of the American people.” Another governor goes on record to say “we must secure a future for American children.”

PA: Meanwhile, the stand-off in Texas has now been going on for over week. The Clinton cabinet is in disarray. The chiefs of staff are openly sympathetic to the Texas governor. The president gets calls around the clock from federal agencies as well as from foreign heads of state, everyone hoping for a resolute decision. In all this disarray, the president calls a meeting in which she screams at the attendees and then outlines the choice facing the U.S. federal government. The choice, ultimately, is to either: back down on bringing refugees to the United States and pull back from Austin, or to double down in a show of reasserted authority.

Ace: She chooses option two.

PA: Regaining her composure, she stares down the general of the Army and icily hisses, referring to the Texas governor: “Bring me that steer-fucker. In cuffs or on a coroner’s slab. Tomorrow by noon.” And she leaves the meeting.

Ace: And the Army general says “Yes, ma’am,” looking at the empty doorway through which she had stormed out.

PA: The 1st Cavalry general in Austin gets orders to secure the state capitol and arrest the governor. She (the general) is informed that her troops are authorized to use deadly force at will. So she relays these instructions to battalion commanders and on down to individual companies, all ready and in their positions around the state capitol grounds. Finally, the order is given: Company B is to open suppressive small arms fire on the Texas National Guardsmen protecting the capitol and Company A and C are to move in.

Ace: But something that’s contrary to all expectations happens: 1st Cav troops mutiny. Dramatic footage of enlisted soldiers shouting “I will not shoot at my brothers” flood social media. A firefight breaks out as several Company B soldiers start firing in the direction of the Texas National Guard and their own comrades start mowing them down, in solidarity with Texans. The Texans briefly return fire, and then lower their weapons to watch in amazement. 1st Cav NCOs are screaming “cease fire! cease fire!”

PA: Thousands of civilians break through police lines and surround the U.S. Army units, throwing rocks and yelling “shoot me, fuckers, shoot me!” Large numbers of local men brandish weapons and scattered shots are heard. In the ensuing chaos, scores of 1st Cav soldiers run away and once clear of the capitol area, take off their uniforms. Local Texans take them in and give them civilian clothes. The remaining soldiers are ordered to mount up and get the vehicles rolling back up Rt. 175, as rocks, other debris, and even an occasional civilian gun-shot hit their vehicles. Four bodies accompany the convoy back to base and ambulances speed toward University Medical Center with wounded men. The 1st Cav convoy returns to Fort Hood as people hurl rocks on them along the entire length of the route.

PA: This is unprecedented in American history.

PART 2 – LIBERTY

Ace: Hillary’s next meeting is chaotic.

PA: Among the joint chiefs of staff, it just started to sink in that U.S. Army was ordered to open fire on Americans. The general of the Army who relayed the president’s orders to seize the Texas capitol resigns his commission and issues a brief statement of apology to the American people. A power struggle erupts within the Department of Defense, splitting the military into two unequal opposing factions: the existing U.S. military who remains loyal to the president, and the much larger faction that supports the defiant states.

Ace: The rebellious faction declares the president illegitimate as commander-in-chief and begins communicating with state governors to create a new strategy for national defense. They also consolidate all active duty U.S. military all the way down the chain of command under their new realignment. This pro-states, anti-president military is soon known as the National Coalition Army.

PA: At military bases, armories are stormed and National Coalition Army-aligned troops secure control over the military bases and hardware, with no resistance from units whose field grade commanders remain loyal to the president.

Ace: Of course. Would you die for Hillary?

PA: Thousands of service members who are either unsettled by the chaos up their chain of command, or who opportunistically see an open door to leave the service, get into their private cars and get the hell out.

Ace: Didn’t the bases go on lockdown?

PA: They did. But many of the MPs posted at the gates had deserted as well. The whole situation is one big, fat Charlie Foxtrot from the federal government’s perspective. Soldiers who had aligned themselves with the National Coalition Army command structure swiftly consolidate their control over all domestic military assets. All others, if they didn’t already desert, stand aside as National Coalition Army units secure the vehicles, weapons, and ordnance.

Ace: And so now, the entire U.S. military, effectively, is loyal to the defiant governors. Therefore, it now appears that Washington has lost all control over the country. Are we finally at secession?

PA: No. At this point, the governors of all contiguous U.S. states are coordinating with each other. They are ignoring the federal government and acting like they are sovereign internally to their respective state territory. But there is no movement for breaking off from one another. All states are willing to continue functioning as fifty united states. Following a joint governors’ convention, they submit their demand to the federal executive branch: the president and her entire executive team must step down immediately and new elections are to be held two months from now.

Ace: This is when Hillary gets that massive stroke. She’s done.

PA: Sic transit gloria lesbium. Her vice president resigns from office. The speaker of the House, next in the presidential line of succession, is unwilling to assume the presidency. Therefore, secretary of state Miriam Beria is sworn in as president of the United States.

Ace: The U.S. government appears to be mortally wounded. How is the National Coalition Army doing?

PA: Winning. Morale through the roof. Individual state national guards are incorporated into National Coalition Army, which the Council of Governors placed under their newly appointed commander-in-chief. His strategic objectives are two-fold: to assume the former U.S. armed forces’ duties concerning external threats, and to neutralize all non-Coalition military units on United States territory.

Ace: And the U.S. armed forces units that are still loyal to the president are negligible in strength at this point. Most of their White service members have deserted or joined the National Coalition Army, which is meeting no resistance from the old federal Army wherever they go. The National Coalition’s goal is to secure Washington’s concession of total surrender and hold new election.

PA: So the National Coalition’s ultimate objective is to reboot the country.

Ace: Yes. The perennial campaign slogan, “let’s clean up Washington,” is finally put into action. By the way, what is our new president Beria doing in the midst of all this?

PA: She and her inner circle have moved to an undisclosed location under the protection of U.K. and Israeli special ops security teams. But she has lost control of the country’s formal executive processes: her government has no military power; the alphabet agencies and the private sector contractor complex are in talks with the Coalition of Governors. As to the other branches of the federal government, the Congress and the Supreme Court have been indefinitely suspended.

Ace: And yet, president Beria is unwilling to step down. Therefore the National Coalition resolves to march on Washington in order to formally occupy the country’s seats power.

PA: National Coalition’s leadership agrees that is that entire superstructure of the federal government: its bureaucracy, the financial sector, NGOs, lobbying firms, media—the whole beast—is to be dissolved. With Beria as an on-the-run figurehead, bold new proposals are made at the states’ convention in Austin. It is resolved that the 1788 Constitution of the United States is nullified and will be replaced, for the duration of three years, by a Provisional Government for National Restoration that reports to the council of governors, and then permanently superseded as ratified in the upcoming articles of confederation talks.

Ace: Wait a second—”Provisional Government for National Restoration.” Where have I heard that before?

PA: There is that nationalist surfer from Laguna Beach who comments on a few of the Alt-Right blogs. It’s his idea.

Ace: I’ve been meaning to mention this for a while… you have interesting commenters.

PA: They are good. My comments section has a high signal-to-noise ratio.

Ace: But in the midst of all those epic events we’re talking about, you know what’s remarkabe? The fact that locally, life for the most part goes on as before. Mail gets delivered, cops pull people over for speeding. We all keep going to work. There is one big exception to the old-ways normalcy: everything is now local. Ordinary interstate travel is almost non-existent, with fuel prices becoming astronomical. Military units “own” the highways to inspect trucks and other commercial delivery vehicles. Fuel deliveries are pretty much all that travels longer over distances. Food production and even manufacturing are therefore becoming local and regional phenomena.

PA: How does America’s racial diversity play into all this?

Ace: A lot less than you’d think. As the National Coalition rule has nullified all federal-driven laws and incentive structures, most of the Hispanic and Asian immigrants, even second-generation individuals, have left for their home countries.

PA: What about the Blacks? By that, I mean legacy African-Americans, not the Obama-era immigrants.

Ace: Not as bad as you’d expect. They are reacquainting themselves with the fear of God’s wrath. Americans had been sitting on a mountain of guns and this defiance of the feds changed a lot in how people think of themselves. The defacto repeal of all Civil Rights laws has had an effect of removing psychological handcuffs from Whites’ wrists. Middle class White men started driving around armed and telling Black punks to beat it where they weren’t wanted. Nothing focuses Black folks’ minds like serious White men in groups with no courts to stop them. Black communities themselves started controlling their more unruly Dindus, sometimes by publically whipping their ape-stupid Michael Browns.

PA: I still remember the day after George Zimmerman was acquitted. I went to Walmart and saw all those Black people… they seemed tranquil. Anyway, how does that repeal of Civil Rights laws work, vis-à-vis the old desegregation battles?

Ace: They call it “peace through patchwork communities.”

PA: But there is an even bigger picture here, something really big, I see during this period of uncertainty and localism: it’s the taste of liberty. This is the real story in this whole epic, historic upheaval. Americans had tasted liberty, to be frank, for the first time in sixty years. And they like it.

Ace: Hey, you once wrote something on your blog about liberty and public space: “‘Liberty’ means to have an undisputed dominion over your public space, keeping it in your own image to reflect who you are. ‘Community’ means sharing that space with like-minded people.”

PA: Yes! Good memory. And those are the thing that Americans are rediscovering. Most never even knew what it feels like to be free.

Ace: Yeah. Slogans like “it’s a free country,” or “the free world” had been thrown around over all these years in which we’ve been enstupified in a haze of fear and shame of who we are. We were going through the motions in everything important that we did: watching football, watching our daughters grow from sweet girls to hardened cunts. All those noble words we parroted like “freedom” itself amounted to buying brittle plastic shit after shit, after shit. You go into a fucking Dunkin Donuts and you just want to banter with a familiar face, not deal with Ganges accents.

PA: You know that John Mellenkamp video, “Small Town”? It’s got all of those scenes of people looking relaxed. And that spirit is back and something amazing happens. Suddenly family picnics have more babies than aunts and uncles. Churches are full and people sing loudly. The music gets good: new guitar riffs and chorus melodies come out. It’s like the American spirit is alive again. The poz had lifted, people feel awake for the first time in generations.

Ace: People are living locally, solving their own problems, owning their public space. They stopped being afraid.

PA: During the fall of Communism, it was said that once people taste liberty, they won’t be satisfied with just a small taste of it. They will desire to tear down every wall that had held them in. And now the federal government looks done. The National Coalition wants complete sovereignty and goes explicitly identitarian. After all, why not? The hunger for identity, something to die for if it comes to it, has built up over the decades. So many humiliations we’ve put up with over the years. All those decades of crawling.

Ace: The walls of political correctness came tumbling down.

PA: Freedom of association.

Ace: Smashing the old Overton window.

PA: Throwing cinder blocks through it and pissing on the scattered shards of glass.

Ace: But something tells me that this flash of American renaissance is an interbellum. The sky is darkening.

PART 3 – THE GLOBALIST PUSHBACK

PA: Yes. There are very powerful global interests with too much to lose in the demise of the old ways. Beria gets down to business. She publicly reasserts her claim on presidential authority, declares martial law over the entirety of the United States, calls the National Coalition a criminal rebellion, and convenes a court martial that sentences the all fifty governors to death for treason for treason in absentia.

Ace: Is anybody taking her seriously at this point?

PA: Everyone should. She’s a sociopath with friends in very powerful places. She freezes bank assets of state governments. All members of the National Coalition Army are offered a pardon upon immediate surrender to her foreign security forces; otherwise they become categorized as irregular combatants with no Geneva Convention protections and will shot upon capture. Their families are to detained and placed in mobile FEMA camps on suspicion of providing aid and comfort to domestic terrorists.

Ace: This all sounds like delusional gestures. How is she going to back any of that up? She doesn’t even have an army.

PA: But something devastating happens —  key infrastructure grids and communication networks coast-to-coast go down. Massive and widespread electromagnetic pulse attacks cripple the country and the National Coalition Army.

Ace: China is suspected of delivering that attack.

PA: In coordination with those attacks, she deploys her new army. The U.K. and Israeli defense and contractor elements, as well as Pakistani special units, begin forming a core security apparatus around her, as well as setting up loyal ground forces and air power to oppose the National Coalition.

Ace: How about the rank-and-file soldiers — where will she get them from?

PA: New volunteers for Beria’s army are reporting for training by the thousands. Those new recruits are coming via round-the-clock, fighter jet-escorted flights from several west African countries. Planes are landing one after another at federally controlled airfields.

Ace: Why from Africa?

PA: The UN and NATO offered military support but Beria declined their offers. On U.S. soil, she wants a military she can properly control.

Ace: Beria also had the German government’s support… until that Merkel thing. Wow, what they did to her in the Volksaufstandes.

PA *shudder* Burned at the stake.

Ace: And so this new mercenary-filled U.S. Army is nicknamed “Beria’s Brigades.” First mockingly, but then that phrase came to evoke terror in the population.

PA: As promised in Beria’s State Department’s massive recruiting drives in Africa, the arriving enlistees are naturalized as American citizens. Each of them is also promised a house, a fast-tracked resettlement of their families here, as well as two American wives at completion of their service.

Ace: Jay-zus. So now polygamy is not just legal but downright endorsed. Where will they get them these wives?

PA: As the National Coalition Army is duly informed, female detainees in the FEMA camps will be given opportunities to help the Beria Brigade soldiers assimilate as new Americans. There will be tutoring and social mixers.

Ace: Imagine the Beria Brigade military formations doing cadence. Platoons of wild-eyed Congolese in unbuttoned BDUs rhythmically stomping, clapping, and chanting “USA! USA! USA!” while firing their rifles into the air.

PA: America finally goes full-nigger.

Ace: Needless to say, nobody in the National Coalition Army is deserting. But Beria wasn’t bluffing. Mass arrests of soldiers’ families begin where National Coalition is not in control, on charges of providing material support of an insurgency.

PA: Beria’s Brigades are formed slapdash but fast. Where they fall short in discipline they make up for it in enthusiasm for raiding civilian areas. Unsettling reports surface, showing savage acts of violence against outgunned American civilians, which are intended to break the National Coalition’s morale.

Ace: Like the bombings of Dresden.

PA: Foreign special-ops teams clear areas and set up large zones where Beria’s government exercises its sovereignty. Fighting becomes intense, with National Coalition’s efforts now being primarily expanded on protecting civilian communities. This diverts the National Coalition’s manpower from their ultimate objective of securing the American government.

Ace: This is analogous to a scenario in which King George’s Redcoats would be mass-murdering colonial civilians to distract and demoralize George Washington’s Continental Army.

PA: Both armies engage in search-and-destroy missions against each other. Where the forces engage, the casualties are heavy, with the heaviest losses always sustained by Beria’ Brigades. The African units fall into disarray and whether they run or surrender, Coalition soldiers make it clear that they have no use for prisoners.

Ace: But for every one hundred of Beria Brigade fighters that the National Coalition wipes out, another ten thousand fresh bodies fly in. The National Coalition’s and sympathetic countries’ primary agitprop efforts are expanded toward informing potential African recruits that Beria’s is leading them to slaughter and that she has no intention of keeping her promises. But enlistees, from Nouakchott to Luanda, form miles-long lines of eager volunteers. I can understand their motivation.

PA: Human airlifts from Africa continue and civilian bodies pile up. Beria-controlled zones grow and her camps fill with detainees. If this war were dramatized in a theatrical play, at this point we’d have the stage go dark, the lights go out. Nightfall.

PART 4 – YOU AND I

PA: Hey, here is an interesting question. Say, you’re young and fit, and president Hillary wants you to enlist to defend America, as she puts it. There are no Beria’s Brigades, just the regular Army when they’re still doing that stand-off in Austin. Would you sign up?

Ace: Hell no I won’t go.

PA: How about this scenario, now downstream from the Austin standoff: National Coalition forces take control over our area, and they are recruiting. They say “all willing American men of any age and any skill level, join us. There is a job for every one of you in this fight. Quit your job. We’ll feed you and pay you. If we win, you will be an honored veteran with a pension, living in a free country.” And we all know that if we lose, we lie in mass graves. Will you join the National Coalition?

Ace [Eyes lighting up]: I’d want nothing more than to serve. But I’m 45, out of shape, bad knees…

PA: Remember what I said. The recruiting says that all willing American men can serve, regardless of age or skill-sets. The fattest fuck who loves his people can drive a truck or be a quartermaster. You’re a smart engineer. You can do a lot to help.

Ace: You’re right. I could set up communications systems, networks. I’d do it. They are going to have to kill us all, before this is over.

PA: I would too. I’d be a rifleman and I’d keep up with the 19-year-old boys. “Give me liberty or give me death.” After our conversation, those words from high school history classes hit close to home. Either way, I’d die satisfied that I did what I could.

Ace: Even if the odds seem crushing. A man can acommodate, bend, only so far. And we’ve been bending to the point of breaking. And then something shocks the system and we tell ourselves “I don’t have to live this way.” Then a profound calm washes over you and you just don’t care anymore. Even if we were to lose, when led toward the ditch blindfolded and with bound wrists, I’d walk with my head high for the first time, praising the Almighty ahead of the journey toward Him.

PA: Yes.

Ace: What was it you wrote at the end of that “What Have We Learned” post?

PA: I wrote: “History never ends and as human beings, we are bound to repeat our mistakes, over and over. Satan stands behind you in the shadow, always watching. But there is Truth that blazes our path through the darkness. Not losing sight of that light is our hope for making it through just far enough to let our sons and daughters, in turn, walk yet farther onward, straight and true.”

Ace: Funny, how everything we strive for comes down to that.

PA: Let’s see to it that everything we just talked about goes down a different road. Donald Trump wins, cleans the stables, makes our country great again.

Ace: His administration will have to take a breath and disconnect from the world, reconnect with America. Trump 2016.

“The Internationale,” a North Korean Performance

Soviet communism had stirring anthems like “The Internationale” and the USSR national anthem, both of which made your hair stand up when performed by the Red Army Choir. American communism has Beyoncé. Reader Suburban_elk perceptively captures the essence of our own communism as embodied in the dread-and-circuses ideological rally featuring a synthetic Black woman’s cocksure strut:

Beyonce came over as UGLY evil thing who struts around her vagina – literally her vagina and big butt lead the way and she follows it around, and she has that evil hard demonic face.

There is no reference to “the People’s mighty hand” in Beyoncé’s songs.

There are still countries that openly call their system of rule “Communist,” most prominently among them the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Below is a video of their military choir performing “The Internationale” in the Hangul (Korean) language.

My aesthetic sense resonates like a tuning fork hitting a pure note when I see national particularism emerge from under the blanket of universalist systems. Sometimes—such as in this case—even when those national forms are not my own. The performance below expresses aspects of the Korean identity, buried as it is under those Soviet-style uniforms and that old French melody, most essentially in the ethnically-coherent formations of purely Korean faces. Another nod to Korean sensibilities is the overlay of their much-beloved teeny-pop synth sounds over the majestic bars of the hymn.

A denunciation of DPRK’s abuses of her own people would be outside of the scope of this post. Similarly, a hypothetical blog post that revels in American line dancing should not be expected to also denounce the ethnic cleansing of Detroit and the ongoing dispossessions.

Update: see realgaryseven in the comments for additional perspective on North Korea.