Motus Mentis

I am chastened by the discussion in the previous posts. (See here and here.) All I had sought to do in my original remarks was to point out the natural advantages of cohesion, compact unity, patriotism, faith, competence, and positive worldview that Red America has over Blue, and to suggest that whatever happens next, we have at least those assets to give us hope. The response was that those things aren’t nearly enough without effective organization, which we have failed to create. I must agree that this is a fair critique, and that the matter is becoming urgent.

Along with other historically literate voices on the Right, I have been predicting this calamitous state of affairs in America — this disintegration of national unity, and descent into ruinous civil strife — for many years now. In the early days I took a lot of heat for my alarmism. It would proceed “gradually, then suddenly”, I warned, and so it has — and now it is, suddenly, obvious to all that the crisis is upon us.

It is in the nature of the conservative people of the Anglosphere, despite their capacity for lethal fury when aroused at last, to prefer a quiet and local life until they no longer have any choice. (The old English saying “Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you!” sums this up neatly.) The runup to World War II was a perfect example: even as it became clearer and clearer, during the 1920s and ’30s, that Germany was intent on diabolical mischief that would affect the security of all of Europe, the British, still in shock from the maiming of Europe in the First World War, clung desperately, and naively, to hopes of peace. Winston Churchill, who was the only prominent man in all of England to sound the alarm — and who was excommunicated from political life for it — would later refer to this period of squandered opportunity as “the years the locusts have eaten”.

And so it has been for us: for at least the last sixty years, a poisonous, corrosive ideology has made its long march through our institutions. The Marxist rebels of the 1960s assimilated themselves into every corner of our academies, media, and government, and made it their top priority to take charge of the education of our children. What they sowed so patiently for so long has now produced its bitter harvest. When Barack Obama promised, in 2008, that his election would herald the fundamental transformation of America”, he wasn’t kidding. (A lesson that we never seem to learn is this: when these people tell you what they intend to do, you should believe them.)

My own shortcoming in all of this is that I am only, by nature, an observer, and a reader of history, and all that I have offered all these years is a warning, a diagnosis. Seven years ago I wrote about what I called “Cultural Immunodeficiency”, an AIDS-like condition that prevented the West from mounting a natural defense against pathogens that threatened its survival; in the intervening years its effects have brought our civilization almost to its deathbed.

Can we now mount a reaction? The election of Donald Trump four years ago, and the massive outpouring of support he has awakened this time around, are heartening signs, but our national illness is now very far advanced. If we had sensed the urgency twenty years ago, we might perhaps have prevented the current crisis — but we didn’t, and it’s no use crying about it.

So: although the point of my original post was to focus on the positive, and to remind us of our natural assets, I think our commenters are quite right: something must be done, and it has to begin now. As I write, merchants in cities everywhere in America are boarding up their properties, knowing that if the Party of Love and Inclusion loses the election, its brownshirts will embark on a vengeful and destructive rampage. The era of comity and national unity in America is over, and we must face this horrifying truth without further delay. A resounding Trump victory tomorrow will, perhaps, buy us a few years without the government itself wielding its crushing power against us; if so, that’s a blessing, but we must not be lulled into feeding more years to the locusts. It is already evident that 2016 was the last “normal” election in America; from now on, nothing is ever going to be “normal” again, not for a very long time.

The message of our commenters “vxxc” and JK is simple: ORGANIZE. The Left has been doing this energetically for decades, while the rest of us coasted along thinking that, having “organized” in 1776 and 1787, we needn’t bother now. How to do this is not my area of expertise, but there are a very great number of patriots — ex-military people, in particular — who can help. I do know that it will, almost necessarily, have to begin locally: as the Framers understood, a “well regulated militia” is “necessary for the security of a free State”.

It grieves me to write this post, but history teaches us that collapse can happen here — it can happen anywhere, and indeed, given enough time, it inevitably does. As much as I hate to say it, it appears to be happening here today. I will confess that all along, even as I saw the diagnostic markers of national disintegration and civil war piling up all these years, I’d hoped that it might simply be a passing spasm of cultural madness, and that as the so-called “progressives” moved farther and farther Left, they would gradually peel off adherents until they marginalized themselves. Some of that has indeed happened — the seismic support for Trump this year is evidence of that — but at this point, with our political system and civil society breaking down before our eyes, a purely political solution may no longer be enough. We may very well have crossed the event horizon, and if so, we are headed for the singularity. Whether or not this is now inevitable — and I still hope it isn’t, as civil war is nothing to wish for — it behooves us to be prepared for what had, just a few years ago, seemed almost unimaginable. As depressing as the prospect of continuing collapse may be, we should begin to hedge our bets.