Yesterday’s post, in which I attempted a taxonomy of civil war, brought out a long and sorrowful reply from a reader by the name of Casey. I began to respond in the comment-thread, but the concern Casey expressed seems to me so prevalent in traditionalist and conservative circles lately that I thought that I should promote my reply to a post of its own.
You can read Casey’s comment in full at the original post, but this excerpt should give you the gist:
I’m in my thirties and reasonably conservative (especially, agreement with your take on race, informed and scientific as it may be, makes me deplorable and anathema in my society), and my assumption is that, unless my views change, I’m destined to live out my days, especially from my 50s on, more or less censoring what I believe and adjusting however I must to exist in the new political order. My own workplace isn’t likely to become politically charged or fraught, and in any case in a decade I hope to be self-sufficient through rental income, and eventually via inheritance, making exposure to liberal pressures exerted in the workplace irrelevant. What concerns me most is future pressure to positively declare oneself an ally, failure to do so resulting in stigmatization. This is one reason I hope to opt out of public life.
In the future, I’ll read blogs like yours and Dr. Vallicella’s (long may you all endure), and whatever other stimulating dissenters to the new order emerge, but it’ll be for fraternal feeling and sane observation, not with an eye to political action. I predict conservatives will become more like chroniclers of society’s shift toward the left, attempting to understand, among themselves, what about human nature led it down this road, perhaps inevitably, continuing to speculate about the future, as we currently do, and practicing conservative values how we may. We might gather at a hotel for a conference of an intellectual nature, maybe hear about Michael Oakeshott or a panel on the evolution of healthcare coverage and why care is so bad, if it is, compared to yesteryear. Certainly we’ll bemoan education. Some of us will wax nostalgic about Trump the way people did about Reagan until recently. In this future, unless I see hard results that force me to change my tune on liberal policies, something intellectual honesty compels me to remain open to, I’ll look back with regret over the turn things took, remembering at least the diluted conservatism I saw eking out victories in my youth, even hope that butting against reality will force a course correction, at least temper how far leftward things tilt.
But I’m not sure I see myself becoming part of anything more reactionary than that. Some of us must fade into history. Sometimes there just are losers ”” pagan philosophers escaping into Syria from Justinian’s crackdown, Native Americans constrained to reservations, true-believing senior Nazis fleeing Deutschland, segregationists in the South, many of whom dot our nursing homes and have, one way or another, accepted the demise of the society they strove for in their heyday. These groups lost and had to cope with that in their own way, whatever verdict is passed on their place in history, whether in hindsight we judge them piteous or shameful. Long as I live, I will never be able to erase that I was one of those people who pulled the lever for Trump, hopefully twice, sure as a group to be cast as villains, sure, in my mind, to dwindle in influence and standing (such as we now have) as time passes.
Here is my reply:
Casey,
Please! Do not allow yourself to slip into such darkness. Nobody knows what the future will bring. Remember that the Left is ultimately waging war not only against us, but against reality itself, and against human nature — and so, ultimately, we have the stronger foundation.
Remember also that societies are living organisms, and that when a pathogen poses a serious enough threat, the organism mounts an immune response. The election of Donald Trump in 2016, despite all of his flaws, was the beginning of such a response. It may well continue, with growing strength and confidence. As for our opponents, be assured that in their arrogance, ignorance, and misguided moral certitude, they will overreach. (Perhaps they will, for example, seriously attempt nationwide gun consfication.) And the reaction, once they do, will be overwhelming.
Note also that the Left, which because of its tendency to define itself negatively, in relation to what it seeks to oppose and destroy, is necessarily a rag-tag assortment of sullen and resentful factions, between and among which are many fatal contradictions. It is in the nature of such coalitions to turn against themselves as they begin to gain power. Because the fundamental philosophy of the modern Left is to see everything as a zero-sum game, and because their axiomatic externalization of all responsibility means that they define their very selfhood upon victimization and “resistance”, they must always have someone else to blame and hate. In this way the cohesion of their coalition, and its possibility of victory, are self-limiting: the more they marginalize the rest of us, the more they must turn upon each other.
In the post on which you commented, I used a metaphor from the physics of black holes. In a post from a few years ago I used another — in which the Left, as it approaches its own singularity, is torn apart by tidal forces:
The leftmost edge of the Left has accelerated sharply leftward in recent years. This has exerted tidal stresses on what was never a monolithic cultural bloc to begin with, and the laminae are starting to pull apart ”” with the result that many old-fashioned and relatively moderate liberals are beginning to see for themselves the unmistakable features of a fundamentalist and authoritarian religion beneath the contours of what they had previously imagined to be nothing more than a compassionate and humanistic political attitude. Given that many of these sorts pride themselves on their atheism, to see that they have been associated with a religion is immediately to declare apostasy.
Finally, remember this: if there must be war, we will win. Not only do we have truth, American tradition, and natural law on our side — we also have the guns.
Let not your heart be troubled! Live well. Prosper. Marry. Take care of your body and your spirit. Read. Learn. Study history. Lift. Learn to fight. Identify and struggle against your vices and weaknesses. Teach your children. Be a good friend, a good husband and father, and a good member of your community. Love your family and your friends. Seek the truth, always.
Be the best you can be — and be prepared, should it come, for the worst.
There may be darkness ahead, but dawn will follow. We will prevail.
11 Comments
In addition to what Malcolm thoughtfully espouses here, it seems Casey’s desire to actually associate with others who share his conservative, traditionalist views is especially apposite. It makes me think of a secular version of Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option,” of cells of men and women in community preserving certain beliefs and ideas in a new Dark Age, which can be a candle to light the way. I’m also impressed with Casey’s desire to be financially self-sufficient in the future, which is quite wise.
Quite right, Jason. (In fact, I was out for a walk just now and was thinking I ought to have stressed that more clearly.) It is impossible to overstate the importance of finding communities of friends who share our understanding of what we are trying to preserve, and why.
There’s no reason not to have faith in our ultimate victory, which as you say is nothing more than reality reasserting itself. And I don’t mean to be a downer. But it’s also important to understand the situation. So here is my concern. Our side has the guns, sure, if we’re talking about individuals. But theirs has the state. Is there any evidence that the army and the police would not follow orders from Globohomo in a hot war? There’s nothing a collection of armed citizens could do to protect themselves against state violence nowadays. If Globohomo can destroy Iraq it can destroy (or conquer) the right wing half of the US. Am I missing something? Would the generals and police chiefs who march in Pride parades and happily bow to affirmative action really draw a line when they’re told to round up conservatives and kill those who resist?
“Would the generals and police chiefs who march in Pride parades and happily bow to affirmative action really draw a line when they’re told to round up conservatives and kill those who resist?”
Most probably they will draw that line. More importantly, the rank and file numbers, which are legion, will draw that line and brightly. After all, what type of people make up the vast majority of military and law enforcement? These people have family friends and neighbors who are “deplorables” like them.
Right, Robert.
Jacques, keep in mind also that the military, especially the mid-level command, is vastly more Red then Blue, and will have some misgivings about rounding up their brothers, cousins, and old friends just because the Progressive-In-Chief wants them to. (They are warriors, not Social-Justice warriors.) Remember too who it is that grows the food, drives the trucks that take the food to the cities, keeps the electrical grid running, etc., etc., etc…
After that, reflect on how completely even the vast U.S. military has failed to impose its will on Afghanistan, where we are fighting a rag-tag insurgency that is a tiny fraction of the number of armed and angry Americans who would take the field if the shit really hit the fan.
Tell you what: this outstanding essay by Larry Correia examines all of this and more. (I should probably feature it in a post of its own.) Read it all, and come back to comment afterwards. I think it might change your perspective.
Great article. He makes strong arguments. I don’t really know what to think. The main thing that worries me is that the citizens resisting would (I think?) have no way to co-ordinate or even communicate privately. The Enemy is monitoring all communications. Short wave radio or pigeons? We have to hope that significant numbers of cops and soldiers and local level authorities would turn against Globohomo in the event of such commands. Maybe I should add that my worry in that last post is really just that, a worry. I don’t know anywhere near enough to think that my worry is rational. I’m just disturbed to see that in Europe and Canada the military and police seem pretty comfortable as the enforcement arm of CultMarx. Even though most of these people, I assume, are not true believers.
This article speak to the issue of the ‘shape’ of a new civil war. Here is a snippet and a link:
“…we can envision what a modern U.S. civil war might look like. More sporadic and unexpected conflicts but with fewer deaths. Factions sprouting like mushrooms, taking different forms but coordinated across invisible networks. Waves of information warfare. Chaos and an accelerated bazaar of violence with a healthy immune response from the local and national authorities. The outcome (and probable goal) would likely be a fragmentation of the republic into smaller, more manageable alliances, though it may just as easily harden an increasingly authoritarian federal government. This is essentially how Russia waged its non-linear war against Ukraine.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/10/what-a-new-u-s-civil-war-might-look-like/?fbclid=IwAR1zCHoj529gnnmK7NcVjlql95NPgTYqg7EgOf2ilOkqkYaq-Lk3rVZQ1n8
Let me say how much I appreciate the replies here, and that that appreciation undergirds anything I might say in what follows. I concur entirely on the advice on how to conduct one’s life as an individual, and will pass on to the political and social comments.
I can vouch it is a dark vision to hold (though perhaps lighter than the bellicose vision in these comments!), but I was trying to sketch what I assume is the most likely future for conservative America and for the country in general. It may indeed go better, but to me it will be a welcome surprise if it does. I’m even willing to entertain that we must maintain a “will to believe” in a better outcome, if such a belief is itself necessary for us to play our part in bringing the better outcome about.
I agree with this, but not necessarily that it gives us a stronger foundation. I see habitual psychological defense mechanisms, including wishful thinking and self-deception, as themselves features of reality, as themselves, when they are in effect, aspects of reality playing itself out (against, ironically, our minds’ apprehension of reality, of the truth). In this sense, the left too has reality on its side, even if the truth is not. In any clash such as ours, we shouldn’t underestimate the power of emotional thinking, or, I hate to say it, overestimate the value of the truth.
Also, facts tend to be flexible, and enough of them can usually be found to support one’s values. A liberal who wants no guns around can point to countries with such a policy that thus far have worked reasonably well (at the least, they can be interpreted as working that way). The Nordic countries, bundles of facts and statistics, are held up as models for us in many respects. There, one man’s reality-recoil (a sharp increase in euthanasia) is another man’s welcome result of liberalization. Even when liberal policies bring clear ruin, the left is boundless in its ability to point the finger at its enemies as the real culprit. I don’t know that the truth can serve as a reliable corrective to liberal mischief.
Some truths will be forever unacceptable.
David Reich recently said liberals need to be ready to confront a new wave of ever more decisive scientific evidence of racial differences. It’s not clear to me that a racially diverse society with much of a liberal ethos can stomach this truth and continue to function (though I have thought to write a book presenting the idea in as humane and acceptable a way as possible to see how that would be received). It’s not a pleasant thought, and far from Aristotle’s “All men by nature desire to know,” but sustained acceptance of falsehoods, even unto death (of the individual or society), is not impossible, and in some contexts may do much to drive and sustain a movement.
This is apt, a reason for hope, but the organism metaphor also cuts both ways. For organisms are hardly ideally functioning entities who are assured a happy ending. Sometimes they commit outright suicide (especially humans). Prisoners to their impulses, they ingest junk that is bad for them (especially humans). Too, they are actually quite susceptible to falling victim to fatal microbes. Immune systems can be faulty, and even sound ones can be overwhelmed by invaders, even when the death of the host spells the death of shortsighted parasites.
Perhaps there will be the “overreach” discussed here as setting off a civil war of sorts, but I think more incremental steps are likely — gun confiscation in places that will tolerate that once the Supreme Court says each state may decide as it pleases, more minor restrictions at the national level, enough to provoke grumbling, maybe even a few shootings, but not a war, until in 50 or more years the number of those willing to support, much less physically defend, gun rights is small enough that confiscation, again enacted gradually as necessary, is less cataclysmic. Once the hardcore resisters are fringe enough, and associating or siding with them becomes a blemish on one’s reputation, we’ll see enforcement by the strong arm of the government — it, too, largely populated, to recall my basic assumption, by the overwhelmingly liberal element of society, if you project out far enough into the future.
True, the left tend to eat their own at a remarkable clip and for the smallest infractions against the latest liberal dogma, but I fear their infighting will only be fully unleashed once conservatives have been ostracized from society to the point of being irrelevant and unable to mount a comeback, even against warring liberal factions, which would in any case temporarily reunite to fend off any budding resurgence of conservatism.
I don’t take great a pleasure in laying this out (and grant I could be wrong), though there is a certain catharsis and relief in stating what seems to one to be true, especially when it is something rarely said. I will add I consider our nation’s attitude toward illegal immigrants to have been a decisive factor in our current and future situation, a seal on our fate without which I am not sure the future would look as it does, though preventing it would’ve required a different mindset than was apparently in existence decades ago. Even as a lad in the 90s, I seem to recall sensing that our tolerance for the situation was an aberration. I know I am outside the norm on this issue, even to the point of being unpalatable to conservatives. But to me, once it was clear, as it surely already was many decades ago, that people were willing to assail our borders in droves, we ought to have taken strict measures to deal very roughly with them, as any sensible person does when someone crosses into his land regularly and without permission. We missed that chance, and it is too late now for us to become anything but a patchwork country, destined to be run via plebiscite by a large mass of lower-IQ types whose votes will count as much as anyone’s, and whose achievements — such as their natural endowments allow for — the nation will grow obsessed with promoting to being on par with the highest achievers, whatever the cost, whatever the results of the efforts.
My idiosyncratic hope — and by temperament I’m loath to cling to this — is that technology will race ahead to the point that most of our society will be irrelevant as regards society’s operation, with just a few “technicians” necessary to keep the laboring machines in order. Perhaps technology will be the gamechanger, allowing us to defy history, and the current situation in other countries, and flourish despite our average drop-off, which we may also be able to compensate for by creating a superior funneling system to bring together the best minds, a smaller proportion of the population but still numerous enough to meet our needs if coordinated in groups. True, women’s sports will cease to exist with any integrity as men professing themselves women are allowed to compete at every level, but I suppose we can soldier on under such trifles. (The consequences of not just objecting, but of failing to speak out in favor of this, could be more severe.)
Who knows, long-term. I just know that I am already, today, in the situation of holding beliefs the public utterance of which would see me stripped of agency and banished to a nether region of scorn. The race and IQ issue; the morality, even if not the legality, of abortion; how best to manage our nation’s treasury: my views on one or all of these, to name a few issues, is reprehensible to enough of my fellow citizens that there is left only a small portion of society before whom I am able to express myself. (And dating, when conservative yet not Christian, is challenging to put it mildly.) This is the situation, but I must do my best with it, as per the advice you gave, grateful I am alive now and not a hundred years hence with these same beliefs. The really amazing thing is finding yourself, just as one begins to reach full intellectual maturity, with a point of view that seems poised — barring the alternatives we’re entertaining — to lose nearly all stature in your own lifetime, to be on history’s losing side, headed for the “waste bin of history,” as California’s governor just described the entire GOP.
I certainly hope I haven’t taken over the comment section here; this is a rare occasion when I’m allowing myself to speak my mind on these things. Also, a blanket thanks for some of the best prose on some of the most important topics.
http://malcolmpollack.com/2018/02/16/reaping-the-whirlwind/#comment-778772
Casey,
Yes, what you describe may all come to pass. There is no way to know. Perhaps the most dangerous scenario is a slow frog-boiling that gradually, incrementally, melts away the sinews of our civilization over a span of time long enough for those who “knew it when” to die off.
Tocqueville described an American descent into submissive mediocrity in Chapter VI of Democracy in America:
So, yes, your dark forebodings may come to pass. But they also may not, for all the reasons that I’ve outlined above. Again, we cannot know. And I’ll say this: you cannot know.
What we can do is: To live rightly. To join hands and hearts with those who see and believe. To be willing to fight if we must, and die if we must. To guide and teach our children, and cleanse their minds of poison. To cherish and preserve what we know is true and right and good — as openly and forthrightly as we can, but even in secret community if we must — until the seeds of liberty and beauty we have sheltered from storm and drought can find fertile soil again.
Above all: do not despair. Where there is life, there is hope. As we chessplayers say: nobody ever won a game by resigning!
Never, never give in.
Hope (and work) for the best and prepare for the worst, may sum it all up. I do appreciate the encouragement.