From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 3: From Encirclement to Breakout
From the desk of Takuan Seiyo on Thu, 2008-11-27 09:22
The night that changed the world
This serial essay started with the assumption that Barack Hussein Obama’s election as the 44th President of the United States would accelerate the creation of a multicultural supra-state encompassing all the countries founded and developed by whites. This entity, that I called Meccania, would be an ideological extension of the European Union, suppressing and diluting its white majority, its original civilization and its civic freedoms while force-flooding its territories with ever more black, brown and Muslim minorities, and increasing state control over all areas of life.
A week after Mr. Obama’s election, it was impossible to exaggerate its impact on the world. That oxen had been slain for feasts in Kenya, and black Americans had cried for joy is fair and normal. But what the descendants of Europa were doing was unique, fascinating and terrible. They were dancing on their own grave in euphoric rapture, by the hundred millions, celebrating their own demise.
There were the leading airheads. For Gordon Brown, “America stands at its own dawn of hope” and St. Obama is about to usher a new age of “progressive multilateralism.” For Madame Sarkozy, the election of Obama was a fount of "immense joy" and hope that the "Obama effect" would reshape French society. For America’s “conservative” President Bush, Obama's win was 'good for our country'.
Journalists, those custodians of facts who are supposed to inform the public, were writing about Mr. Obama, “Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope.”
Norway's Aftenposten wrote, "We have great hopes that we are standing at the dawn of a new era." Dominique Moïsi, a senior adviser to the French Institute for International Relations, crowed, “And now we have to think, too, about our identity in France. We realize we are late, and America has regained the torch of a moral revolution.” And Germany upped the ante by electing a Turk as leader of the Green Party, with the MSM hailing it as a “major turning point”.
What is going on here? For the record, I do not believe that there is anything intrinsically wrong with electing a black president in a country whose blacks have a longer tenure on its soil than perhaps 80% of its white population. It depends on who is the black person being elected.
In the case of Barack Obama, from university through election to the US presidency, every step of his career was either arranged for him by, or served to further the cause of, black ultra-racists, black racial shakedown thugs, terrorists, felons, scam-artists, blackmail and economic mayhem organizations (e.g. ACORN), and communists. Just a sample of the names linked irrefutably to the 44th U.S. President includes Saul Alinsky, Frank Marshall Davis, Khalid al-Mansoor, Antoine Rezko, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Nadhmi Auchi, Louis Farrakhan, Franklin Raines, and Raila Odinga.
A link to any two such malefactors would have sunk any white presidential candidate in a matter of days. Yet Mr. Obama, coasting on a silver tongue and his blackness, and aided by the imbecility of the opposition party and its candidate, has won the ultimate prize.
Young Americans, says American college professor Paul Kengor, don't care about Obama's radical past, because of the failure of the American educational system to teach the lessons of the Cold War and horrors of communism. “This is especially true of higher education,” writes Kengor, “where the leftist worldview is so extreme and so upside down that America's professors share a hearty contempt not for communism but for anti-communism.”
It’s the rare semi-conservative journalist, Peter Hitchens, who read Obama’s election accurately: “The night we waved goodbye to America... our last best hope on Earth”. Walking in a Washington suburb on election night, he observed:
“There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy. They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.”
That “standing against” is now passé. From now on, the U.S. will be adopting such ruinous European mistakes as socialism, witch-hunts for “racists,” full retreat before militant domestic Islam, and vilification of the political right at double speed.
But Europe will be adopting those American diseases that it has so far managed to avoid, starting with the dumbing down of its university education system, coupled with Affirmative Action. Already the burning question on the minds of Europe’s cultural pashas is, Can Europe produce an Obama? Racial minorities that have so far only diluted Europe culturally and financially will now be pushed to dumbed down universities and from there to positions of power from which they will be able to accelerate the decomposition.
The viral global infection has even adopted a slogan from subliterate, irredentist Mexican border jumpers. What began as ‘Si, se puede’ was transformed by Obama’s handlers into ‘Yes, we can,’ and has spread into every European language as 'Oui, nous pouvons' ‘Ja, wir können,’ ‘Ja, we kunnen het,’ etc.
In a recent BJ post about the Belgian establishment’s enthusiasm for Obama, Alexandra Colen wondered whether America’s future will resemble that of Belgium. This is to assert that it will, and that the way to refuse that future is similar as well.
The great asymmetry
95% of America’s black and 90% of America’s Muslim votes went to Obama, and there was never any doubt that they would. Predictably, 67% of Hispanic votes did so as well. But what defies understanding is that 43% of white votes went to Obama. And one subset of the latter – the 78% of Jewish votes cast for their latest Messiah – is so extremely suicidal that it has to be addressed as a separate issue.
It’s the same issue, however, as the support of the European secular left for an invasion of Muslims that will lead to sharia rule; or the support of the majority of Western women for Muslim immigration from which issues an unprecedented wave of murder, rape, and oppression of women; or the support of labor unions for a flood of lower-wage immigrants who displace indigenous workers.
When former US Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for president, he averred that he was not supporting Mr. Obama because of his race but because he was “transformational.” The conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh retorted that he could not think of inexperienced, white extreme liberals Mr. Powell had endorsed in the past.
What is “transformational” about Barack Obama is that he will be a black man holding power for the benefit of other blacks and “minorities,” disfranchising the white majority in its own country under a smokescreen of “racial healing, “end of divisiveness” and “social justice.” And Mr. Obama is black not so much by his genes but by an ardent ideological commitment, expressed in his writings and in his life’s work.
Among others, when Obama co-chaired the Chicago Annenberg Challenge foundation, he dispensed funds to organizations promoting radical leftist and black racist indoctrination of school children. One of the beneficiaries, South Shore African Village Collaborative, included this statement in its application form: "Our children need to understand the historical context of our struggles for liberation from those forces that seek to destroy us." I will suggest that this very phrase become one of the cornerstones of the Antipod school system we must establish, if our culture is to survive.
Afro-American “scholars” Jacob Carruthers and Asa Hilliard were training SSAVC teachers in "consciousness raising” and “curriculum readiness.” Caruthers’s main distinction in academia was his claim that the true birthplace of civilization was “Kemet,” which is ancient Egypt claimed for the Negro race, with whitey’s Greek civilization being either stolen from or, where genuine, inferior to that of Kemet. Hilliard, a similar Afrocentrist, asserted additionally that the fictitious Negro-Egyptians were the true discoverers of manned flight and of the theory of evolution.
There is nothing wrong with Carruthers’s and Hilliard’s black supremacist views, if one ignores the ethical question of academics teaching demented piffle. Where the disease lies is in white Pods’ universities that had granted these charlatans their PhDs, white institutions that paid their salaries, white Body Snatchers’ money that funded the propagation of their deranged black racism, and 43% of America’s white voters electing for president the man who had been dispensing this money to such black racist ends.
American blacks act in their racial group’s interest, nullify what they consider white people’ laws when serving in juries, and vote for black candidates, including convicted felons, irrespective of their merit. They have no compunction about using Pod (1) society’s soft social policies to live at the expense of the white taxpayer, nor to engage in electoral fraud in order to gain more power.
During the 2008 election, stories about black electoral fraud were a daily feature in the few media that are still not sworn tools of the left. That ranged from bums registered by ACORN each 72 times as voters, to Helen Jones-Kelley, a black lawyer and high Ohio government official who misused the state’s computer system to find sensitive information about a famous McCain supporter and to mobilize potential donors to the Obama campaign.
Mario Obledo, who was a high California official under Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown and who founded MALDEF, once said, "California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doesn't like it should leave. Every constitutional office in California is going to be held by Hispanics in the next 20 years. People who don't like such demographic changes should go back to Europe."
Actually, if there still were a Europe, this might be an attractive proposition, preferable to sharing a country with Mr. Obledo and his Body Snatcher vanguard, let alone being ruled by their kind. But in the not-too-distant future, the Muslim phalanx in the Netherlands or in Sweden may say to the indigenous people, if they don’t like sharia to go back to…. where?
For America’s black supremacists and brown irredentists are not alone in treating their adoptive country as a rich imbecile heiress, fit only for a fiscal or physical mugging. Bosnian Muslims in Bern are a conquering tribe. Somalis in Malmö are a predatory tribe. Pakistanis in Birmingham are a tribe with an Islamic conquest agenda. Lebanese thugs in Sydney have already taught Australian women how a tribal group practices “love Leb-style.”
Only Western Europeans and their genetic footprint in the Anglosphere have ceased being tribal. They have foresworn all salient features of tribalism such as group solidarity, group evolutionary strategy, endogamy, ethnocentrism, cultural fealty, not to speak of such salient Third World (and in the past, First World) tribal custom as imposition of the tribal interest over the individual one, physical intimidation and domination of other tribes, different moral codes on the inside and outside of the group, etc.
To the contrary, practically 99.5% of the millions who constitute the West’s ruling class, plus the hundreds of millions they have turned into true believers, hold these truths to be evident that tolerance and non-discrimination of alien tribes and customs within Western society is something so devoutly to be wished that it justifies a gigantic funding of such entities in matters ranging from subprime mortgages for illegal aliens to subsidized mosques for invited jihadis, to the changing of the Western way of life — from textbooks to to animal slaughter practices.
Barack and Mrs. Obama’s deep commitment to their black racial and ethnic heritage has been in much evidence since their student days and during the presidential campaign. But the white men who were the putative leaders of the counter-Obama forces — John McCain, President Bush and the latter’s grey eminence, Karl Rove — had repeatedly proclaimed the glories of multiculturalism, “diversity” and belief in universal equality as the glue that holds America together, rather than a culture, a language, a history, a body of customs and attitudes, attachment to a particular land and to the ancestors buried there — all of which would have borne the predominant stamp of their race and their ancestral culture.
Western blacks vote black, western Muslims vote Muslim, and American Hispanics vote Hispanic. Once in office, “minority” mayors, parliamentarians, cabinet ministers work to further the interests of their respective tribes and their “rainbow coalition,” at the expense of the white majority. They seek to profit by the insanity and weakness of the formerly-white countries in which they live.
But the white majority goes on voting black, Muslim and Hispanic, as though such distinctions didn’t matter. The whites will learn otherwise, and they will learn too late.
The Stoslo syndrome
The Stockholm Syndrome has been in evidence with enough frequency for the term to become a part of the colloquial vocabulary. It’s a neurosis shown by abducted and abused hostages who develop loyalty and identification with their abductor/abuser. The syndrome is named after the 1973 robbery of Kreditbanken in Stockholm, in which bank employees kept by the robbers for six days became emotionally attached to their tormentors.
The Oslo Syndrome is a term coined by a Harvard psychiatrist, Kenneth Levin, in his book The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege. It’s a neurosis of a besieged people, unable to withstand the continuous pressure and accepting the indictments of the besiegers in the hope of winning relief and peace. This is the psychological process by which Israel’s deluded leaders embraced Yasser Arafat in 1993 as “peace partner,” even as he was waging war upon them and promising in Arabic to eradicate the Jewish state while promising peace in English.
During the 1993 Oslo accords, Levin quotes, “enlightened Israelis were affected with a Messianic craze – they believed that the end of the old Middle East, the end of history, the end of wars and the end of conflict was near. They fooled themselves with delusions, bedazzled into committing an act of Messianic drunkenness.”
And so, by way of Stockholm and Oslo, we come to the suicide of the West, the Stoslo Syndrome. It can be defined as a hallucinatory delusion that wars, strife, hate, racism and poverty can end by the West’s unilateral capitulation before that part of the world that’s far more bellicose, strife-torn, racist, poorer, primitive, tribal and lawless, but far less developed, educated, tolerant, ENLIGHTENED.
The internal component of this capitulation manifests through the opening of the borders to a stream of what the West used to call “barbarians,” and the transference of empathy, consideration, protection – all expressed through legislation and great sums of the indigenous taxpayer’s money – from the autochthon whites to the foreign invitees.
It’s the Oslo syndrome because the West’s obsession with “diversity and tolerance” is an act of Messianic drunkenness, of mass folly with hardly a precedent in history. It is Oslo when Great Britain shelters jihadis so fanatical that they have been expelled by Saudi Arabia, or refuses to deport a rabid Al-Qaeda mullah for fear he will suffer abuse in a Muslim country asking for his extradition.
And it’s Oslo in America, where, in addition to a steady influx of Somalis, Sudanis et al., the political establishment and half the country’s population are pushing to open the demographic floodgates from Mexico ever wider, paving the road for la reconquista.
But it’s the Stockholm syndrome too because it’s an emotional identification with and protectiveness toward the victimizers – the chaos and social discord generating, states’ treasury emptying and disproportionately criminal Third World invitees-invaders.
It’s the Scandinavian judges and feminists blaming Scandinavian women’s blondness and short summer sleeves for their being raped in unprecedented numbers by Muslim savages with Swedish and Norwegian passports. It’s the 42% of the Dutch people who see Dutch (Muslim/Third World) immigration positively even as 61% say that immigration will increase crime. And this when Dutch non-white children are 10-to-6 times more likely, depending on origin, to have parents living on welfare than their white Dutch peers do.
The question remains, if the Israelis’ despair is the result of a very long siege by a much larger and implacable enemy, who besieges the Western peoples so as to drive them to their own Oslo?
Since 1945, it’s the West’s conscience that has been besieged. It’s a conscience unique to the Judeo-Christian morality. It had been manipulated by the Bolshevik-guided Comintern and by lying Cultural Marxist professors, with the initial modest seeding multiplying vastly through the work of influential writers, directors and other artists and intellectuals whose common denominator was overdeveloped emotions and moral sensibilities at the expense of rational thought. They all magnified “the original sin” of Western Man, from racism to capitalism, colonialism to imperialism, with no mention that such and other sins and “sins” had manifested throughout history in every human race and society.
All held territory everywhere was obtained by conquest and frequent genocide. Slavery, even in the 19th century, was practiced far more and more cruelly in Asia and Africa than it was in America. All people were once racist, xenophobic and misogynist. With the exception of whites, most still are. Even Hitler’s evil was unique more by its Germanic planning, technology and efficiency of execution than by being qualitatively different from what Muslim, African Negro, Amerindian, Bolshevik and East Asian tyrannies had done to conquered or otherwise subject populations.
Moreover, the Comintern/ Frankfurt School/ Gramscian besiegers had left out the unique and enormous good that European civilization has wrought over the ages. And so, the Stoslo Syndrome snatched people into Podisms, into a cult of delusional zombies. But the unfolding downfall of the West is not only the work of utopian naïfs, but also of clever connivers.
The 50-50 solution
One by one, the countries of the West reach and surpass the 50-50 ratio in which at least 50% of the population works for or lives off the government. The United States has been a notable exception, but eight years of a ruinous Bush administration capped by four years of a ruin-equalizing Obama administration will have eliminated that anachronism.
Where the 50 -50 State exists there is no hope, under democracy, of regaining civic liberty, relief from rapacious taxation and from inundation by low-skill, low-culture aliens. The ruling elites may have instigated the Body Snatching scheme, but many of the elite are smart and cynical men [sic] whose main aim in life is Looking Out for Number 1. Their complicity in Eurabia, NAFTA, and in the future Republica del Norte is due to a cold calculation that increasing the number of the State’s dependents increases their own power base.
Western politicians want a more primitive, manipulable electorate, one more dependent on government handouts. Presto – import a few dozen millions of unassimilable, sub-90 IQ immigrants, and with their breeding rates, within one generation you will have built yourself a fiefdom of pliable and grateful clients.
The eternal creeping upwards of social needs, social expenditures, and policies that put the autochthon whites out of profitable work have positive consequences also for those who work for the state. If you are a government employee, the bigger the budget for social services outlay, the larger your leeway for salary increase demands and the larger the soft cocoon into which more state employees can be sucked to consume the taxpayer’s money with unalloyed relish.
Not all the Communists in Hell
On 14 November 2008, project Charter for Compassion was launched on a website sponsored by a high-profile group of celebrities, the so-called TEDizens.
The TEDizens, hailed as the “Brain Trust of the New Economy” include such brains as Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, such hips as Cameron Diaz’s, plus various high-IQ academics and atheists, the whole a self-congratulating gathering of what a friend of mine calls one-world lunatic gerbils. The aim of the Charter of Compassion is “to better the world” according to the wish of a “religious scholar,” Karen Armstrong, by combining universal principles of respect and compassion into a charter based on the "golden rule" that, Ms. Armstrong maintains, is at the core of every mainstream religion.
Ms. Armstrong further believes, and with her must her illustrious sponsors, that "The chief task of our time is to build a global society where people of all persuasions can live together in peace and harmony." The Charter for Compassion has a “Council of Sages” of international Christian and Jewish super-dhimmi Body Snatchers and an Islamist supremacist or two, intellectuals all.
Incidentally, on the same dame day, a blogger named Zenster posted on the Gates of Vienna blog an essay about the execution of the Bali bombers. Zenster quotes one of the jihadis’ Indonesian sympathizers, “There’ll probably be retaliation. What is clear is that no drop of Muslim blood is free. It has consequences.”
Zenster comments that this promises the eternal cycle of violence that Islam has been delivering since 630 AD. He wonders why so few Westerners seem to feel a similar desire for retribution over their kinsmen’s blood spilled in so many Islamic atrocities. “Should Western leaders continue tolerating such hideous rapacity,” Zenster concludes, “their collective inaction must eventually be construed as criminal.”
So here is our dilemma. On one side is Larry Page and Sergei Brin with Google’s resources, and Bill Gates, and George Soros and Maurice Strong, and Hollywood’s tinsel and Barack Obama and Angela Merkel and Al Gore and the European Union and the Roman Catholic Church, and the National Council of Churches USA, and the West’s universities, and a host of expensively packaged, solipsistic magic lanterns such as CNN, The New York Times and Der Spiegel, and dhimmi training institutes such as the American Society for Muslim Advancement and Soliya. On the other side is Zenster, and the middle-aged couple in Virginia that maintains the Gates of Vienna blog, and the rest of the few of us here and there.
By whom will the Western leaders’ collective inaction be construed as criminal, and what will such construing be worth in view of such a balance of power? To paraphrase again that great teacher, Stalin, “Zenster? How many divisions has he got?”
We haven’t got the divisions. We haven’t got the numbers. We haven’t got the unlimited funds the other side has, including its ability to print money. We are surrounded everywhere by Body Snatchers and Pods hatching further Body Snatchers. And they, by far, are the more dangerous and, in the foreseeable future invincible, foe.
Islam is indeed in its essence a creed of desert savages, imbued with the bloody ethos of 7th century Arabia. But it’s not nearly the mighty, unstoppable force that we few, we happy few, will repulse at Thermopylae. For one, our ruling elite of Body Snatchers and the great majority of the Pod-citizens, wouldn’t allow it. And it is they who control the police and the armed forces, the sources of employment and the tax collectors, the TV programs and the book publishers.
In Great Britain, a presenter for Al-Beeb (known previously as the BBC) was fired for stating that she didn’t want “a guy with a turban” as a taxi driver for her 14-year-old daughter. BBC’s spokesman said that such a comment was “completely unacceptable.”
Completely? Is that so?
Incidentally, in Toronto, a certain Muhammad Parvez, a taxi driver, had just murdered his daughter because she would not wear the head-covering rag that goes by different Arabic names – all of which we should refuse to learn. Toronto Life’s report of this deed states, “Canada prides itself on its multiculturalism and condemns institutionalized patriarchy. But there is growing concern that recent waves of Muslim immigrants aren’t integrating, or embracing our liberal values.”
“Growing concern” about “waves of Muslim immigrants”? But the “growing” of this apparently heretofore-unwarranted concern is retarded in the cognitive sense by 50 IQ points, and in the chronological sense, by 30 years!
The counter-jihad movement has circled its wagons against encroaching Islam, while Islam’s shock troops in the West are the white ruling elites. It’s just a few stragglers outside the wagons. The main enemy force is on the left flank.
There are probably 30 millions Muslims in Western Europe and perhaps 6 million in North America. But there are maybe 300 million leftists in Western Europe, and over 68 million Americans, 53% of votes cast, voted for the leftist Messiah and erstwhile Indonesian madrassa pupil. And no effective counter-jihad action will be possible when every agent of mayhem, chaos, social deterioration and economic calamity is being sheltered by giant crowds of Body Snatchers, Pods, dhimmis, traitors and idiots.
An otherwise perceptive military commentator, Ralph Peters, once predicted that there would be civil wars in Europe, with the post-Christian population rising to get rid of the Muslim nightmare in its midst, and achieving it quickly and easily. But the U.S. Army Colonel (Ret.) had not thought it through. Because when the U.S. Marines will be landing in Normandy to help the beleaguered continent, it’s the Muslim minority they will have come to help.
There is not a single person in America with a current chance of reaching the White House, whose administration would choose otherwise. CAIR is now an official adviser to both the CIA and the U.S. Marine Corps. Recently, a Marine veteran whose son had been killed in a jihadi attack was issued a citation by the Military Police for displaying "offensive material": a decal on his van, reading “No Quarter - Islamic Terrorist.”
Our societies are far gone, and there are no discernible ways to reverse the foul tide. We have to escape the grip of the Body Snatchers before we can escape the hold of the “Religion of Peace.” But defeating the Body Snatchers is impossible in the near future. This battle is lost -- but the future is not.
The battle is lost because the minds of the great majority of the Western people are lost. If you want to know where the future is headed, a just-published survey from the organization once known as YWCA and now designating itself eliminating racism, empowering women, ywca (all in lower case and inseparable) provides a good indicator.
Entitled “What Women Want -- A National Survey of Priorities and Concerns” [pdf], the survey’s conclusion is this:
“GENERATION Y IS UNIQUE – Generation Y women (aged 18-29) distinguish themselves from all older generations of women (aged 30-70) by their levels of interest in, and concern about, issues of racial tolerance and discrimination”
77% of young women (18-29) respondents said that “civil rights and racial justice” should be a “top priority” for Barack Obama’s administration, while 54% of older women expressed the same opinion.
The poor young things, who said further that discrimination against blacks and Hispanics is a “very serious problem in the U.S. today” and who desire above all that the Obama administration “do something” about it. The election of the first black president in Western history, with the current president’s choice cabinet positions having been occupied by blacks and Hispanics for eight years now means to Pods only that a lot more “work” remains to be done.
You, reading this, are the racist that charges these young women with hatred and revulsion, and you are who they aim to work on. These are the wombs from which generation Z will issue. After that, no more letters in the alphabet. The tidal wave of hysterical stupidity, having reached its nadir, will have crashed onto Brain Snatcher civilization.
Generation Y, particularly its “racism” obsessed women, might have been named as well for that portion of their buttocks showing between the low-slung jeans and the dorsal tattoo. Superficial differences notwithstanding, their aggressive stupidity, lockstep thinking, shallow conformism, and boundless enthusiasm for The One are portrayed most convincingly in a documentary film, Triumph of the Will, made in another country, in another era: Germany, 1934.
Our people have been snatched and they will not return to normal, ever. Except after a catastrophe, which is the probable end of Body Snatcher society through a confluence of economic, energy depletion, demographic, and jihadi scenarios. All catalyzed further through the Idiocracy factor, with the West’s population degenerating continuously with respect to intelligence, learning, use of language, culture, values, discernment of the good, the true, even the useful.
We will not be able to prevent that catastrophe; we can only learn how to survive it and emerge stronger, and serve then as a core model for the disoriented, shell-shocked multitude of the Pods.
Right now, this is how we look: on the ground, surrounded by the jackboots not of brown jihadis but of those who once were like us, but no longer are:
When asked if the Marines were retreating, Gen. Smith responded, "Retreat? Hell, we're attacking in a different direction!" During that encirclement, one of Smith’s officers, Colonel and later legendary USMC general himself, Lewis Puller, said to his soldiers, “Remember, you are the 1st Marines! Not all the Communists in Hell can overrun you!"
Nor can all the legume Pods in Hell overcome a small group of thinking, united Western people of sound character, minds grounded in traditional wisdom and learning, staunchly determined to refuse to partake in Pod society’s problems and their “solutions.”
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(1) The basic analogy reverts to Part 1, where we cited the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In the film, alien “Body Snatchers” produce giant legume Pods that replace living people while appearing to be identical to them. From the Pods develop the new Body Snatchers who cultivate further Pods etc. Here, I use these terms interchangeably, usually preferring Pods as a catchall term, and Antipod as the antithesis of Pod.
See also:
From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 1: The March of the Body Snatchers, 28 October 2008
From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 2: From the Clenched Fist to the Raised Middle Finger, 1 November 2008
From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 4: Tribe, 12 December 2008
Cats and dogs
Submitted by Wynne on Thu, 2008-12-04 20:05.
I find Mr. Seiyo's polemical tour de force instructive, entertaining and, in the main, well-founded. To be sure, there are weaknesses in his exposition, in particular the occasional tendency to yoke the facts to the narrative. But the same fault can be found in many of the critical comments. Indeed, it is something all of us do: a matter of degree. Given the scope of his essay, and what I regard as a valuable contribution to the debate, I am willing to cut him some slack.
In any case, we know the nature of the cat (les partis senestres). Our challenge is to find the bell and the balls.
Scene: A hunter is standing in the woods, bordering a gravel road. His birddog is sitting beside him, howling in pain.
Passerby: What’s wrong with yer dawg?
Hunter: He’s settin’ on a cocklebur.
Is that so?
@capodis3as: let's burn incense
Submitted by Sagunto on Wed, 2008-12-03 09:40.
Yes I know @capodistrias,
My concerns however, are not about this one essay, and certainly not about all parts of each installment, but about a certain esoteric undercurrent I thought I detected, whenever TS shifts into "we"-gear. But perhaps I'm only imagining gorillas in the mist ;-)
And you're right of course. Shouldn't have used such drastic labels right now and just wait and see how this journey comes to a conclusion.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Common denominators and redundancy
Submitted by Sagunto on Wed, 2008-12-03 01:19.
So says Seiyo after his blanket statements about a Dutch Stockholm syndrome have received the tiniest bit of well deserved criticism:
[Quote=TS]
"..I want to get away from discussing issues of interest only to Americans, or Dutchmen.."
That's a nice way of saying that statements which can actually be verified, tested and duly criticized, are not essential to the main point this author is trying to make:
"..I am trying to address our common denominators"
So why not leave those asides about Holland out then? What's the point of adding this stuff at all, when it appears to be little more than ornamental "factuality"?
Well, perhaps that is their point. Like listening to the way alternative healers spice up their claims with "hard facts" in a typical need to somehow appear scientific.
Because that's the impression you're left with. In the end it's all about the grand scheme of things, and for sure it's nice when facts can be found to give off a reasonable impression, but ultimately they shouldn't get in the way of preaching and denouncing.
In my opinion, a lot of the baroque language and logorrhea in essays like these works like a fog: pretty impressive and easy to get lost in, but cold water all the same. The main message being quite simple, after all the fake factuality and extensive, over the top denouncing of Madonna c.s. is stripped away. And that message i.m.o. is about the author's dream of a small movement, but not necessarily or primarily a counterjihad movement. The message is about sectarianism, not about common grounds or denominators. It's has all the characteristics of "guru-talk", especially at moments when the author switches into "we"-mode. Just take all those moments from the essays so far and put them together, along with the allegorical obscurantism on yin, yang, and Gestaltology.
Then the question might arise whether one needs yet another self-styled postmodern guru or another counter-cult that specializes in alienating possible allies, in order to defend civilization against Islam.
Perhaps one early comment by @KO inadvertently sums it all up:
"..The faithful who appreciate Takuan Seiyo's writings.."
I hope I'm actually wrong though about what this author is trying to accomplish. But I think that a little scepticism is warranted, and though I often find myself in strong disagreement with @peter vanderheyden's views on a lot of things, I too prefer the more balanced outlook of @marcfrans, both on content and the way it is presented ánd discussed. Perhaps it's all just a matter of speech ;-)
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Logorrhea is a messy word to throw around
Submitted by Capodistrias on Wed, 2008-12-03 06:44.
@Saguntum
"A little scepticism is warranted"? A little?
I appreciated the tone, and some of the sentiments, in your first comments on TS' latest installment, more than the preemptive and presumptuous little snit launched on where he 'might' be going.
Why not let TS write his own conclusion rather than snidely suggest he's out to set up his own cult? I know I'm sitting here breathlessly, burning incense waiting for the next installment.:)
Doom and gloom # 7
Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Wed, 2008-12-03 01:07.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/02/who-elected-barack-obama/
takuan seiyo
Submitted by peter vanderheyden on Tue, 2008-12-02 15:54.
No evil meant, but I really think Takuan Seiyo is somebody who is , to his credit, looking for big pictures, but obviously in the wrong direction. It is my view that large revolutions, of the caliber of the end of the Roman Empire, the end of the Soviet Union, or the end of western civilization are very difficult if not impossible to predict. As a student I had some affection with catastrophe theory, (from a mathematical point of view). Some interesting work was done on what would trigger an uprising in a small micro-cosmos: a prison. De difficulty in prediction on that level (read the number of parameters to take into account) can give a good insight on the difficulty to predict such outcomes on a “civilization” level. It’s virtually impossible. We can talk about positive or negative influences of certain events. And as a conclusion we can even act upon this prediction. But the model used by Takuan is so oversimplified and so farfetched in his predictions that it becomes useless. Of course, if one puts 100 inmates together with only tree guards, and one deprives them from food and water, predicting an uprising is easy. But I think it’s way to “gloomy and doomy” (in marcfrans words) to see such a situation in the election of Obama, and some immigration figures. I differ a lot in opinions with Marcfrans, but I value a lot his sense of realism, his large and broad knowledge and the use he makes of them, and above all his modesty in the scale of his predictions. Marcfrans seems to believe a lot more in balance, that isn’t that easily overthrown and I think he is broadly right about that.
Reply to Marcfrans
Submitted by Armor on Tue, 2008-12-02 01:11.
You want me to talk about immigration. As I see it, immigration amounts to population replacement and is much worse than any cultural disease. But I think Takuan Seiyo's series focuses on the cultural disease. In the last decades, we have not been able to maintain our former culture and civilization in the West. It is a very serious problem which is not due to immigration, although it is made a lot worse by immigration. Leftism has done heavy damage to western societies. I say "leftism" for want of a better word.
You already know I don't believe in your theory that a Pygmy can be changed into a Fleming by the magic of living in Belgium. I also wonder how the whites can still have a cultural influence when they become a minority. But it is even worse than that: the whites are losing their culture even in places where there is no immigration (I mean: if such places still exist in the West), due to the media, the deteriorating schools, and other factors. You have already told us that you see nothing in the West to be over-gloomy about. I think you need new eyeglasses. Our current problems are going to get worse in the near future as the third-world population living in the West increases, while leftism becomes more entrenched in our institutions. There is a lot of idealism among young people in the West, but due to the leftist disease, it is not channeled in the right way. Here is another gloomy depiction of what American society is becoming: Oregon Scene: Washington Square Mall. (From the blog: Deep in the Blue). It is probably a little too gloomy.
@ marcfrans
Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Tue, 2008-12-02 00:42.
I'm never quite sure what to make of Armor. Clearly, he is no fool, but his (willful?) misreading of people like Hanson leave me speechless. (I suspect that if you were to probe the cunnery that is Armor's imagination you'd find a large Harvey lurking in there somewhere). On the positive side, however, he now appears to have got MY name right, which is progress of sorts.
Hanson # 2
Submitted by marcfrans on Mon, 2008-12-01 23:26.
@ Atlanticist
It is unfortunate that not everybody can read and write as well as Victor Davis Hanson, and that few are as well versed with the military history of classical Greece and Rome as he is. Let's consider some of Armor's 'misunderstandings' and oversimplifications that must derive from superficial reading.
1) Hanson has written a lot about immigration, but not from the sort of black-white perspective that typifies Armor. It would be fair to say that Hanson is (1) a strong OPponent of ILlegal immigration, and (2) a strong PRoponent of domestic policies that encourage and ensure cultural assimilation of LEgal immigrants. This complements his strong belief in the necessity of maintaining national sovereignty in a larger world of UNfreedom and great injustice. I doubt that he has a problem with immigrants per se, but he does have a big problem with illegal immigrants and with (liberal) domestic policies that undermine the common civic culture of the USA. He correctly identifies the contemporary domestic 'enemy' of Western civilisation as naive liberalism (or cultural leftism, not traditional liberalism).
2) Hanson also appears to value demographic dynamism, but I think that is essentially because he writes from the perspective of a country that matters in the world, and that manifestly has made a great difference (for the better) in the world over the past century and a half. I suspect that this point is difficult to grasp for most people in the world who live in 'follower' and/or unfree countries. The point is that Armor's perceived contradiction between Hanson's stances on demography and immigration is illusory. It is based on an oversimplification (misrepresentation) of both stances.
3) Hanson's purported "gloating over Russia's difficulties" should be seen in the context of the current spate of 'American declinism books', as Hanson clearly stated in the article. Armor's term "gloating" is of course a misrepresentation and entirely of his own choosing. It is the recurring phenomenon (every ten years or so) of 'USA doomsday books and articles' that Hanson was putting in perspective with his comparisons. And, yes, the recent Russian revival is based on the exogenous (economic) factor of high commodity prices, not on any systemic endogenous economic factors and certainly not on 'rule of law'.
4) It is indicative of Armor's eurocentric worldview that he picked out Berlusconi's comment on Obama. But, Hanson clearly put that in a series of comments by famous foreigners from all over the world. Hanson is a Californian who is familiar with both the Pacific and the Atlantic worlds. His point was simply that the rest-of-the-world is more obsessed with 'race' than most Americans are today. And only naive-leftie Americans in the USA, as well as anti-Americans abroad, will deny that manifest reality.
5) I thought that Hanson's last 2 paragraphs were masterful in exposing the shortsightedness of much of media coverage and of political punditry, and indirectly in expressing the hope that the responsibility of governing could or might lead to a renewed sense of realism in much of the mindless Bush-bashing crowd.
GWB
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Mon, 2008-12-01 22:42.
I want to get away from discussing issues of interest only to Americans, or Dutchmen etc, as I am trying to address our common denominators. However, since the W issue seems to have taken a life of its own, let me say that our common denominator will have to be built over a chasm related to our respective opinions of the GOP and of Bush.
So that you know my opinion, and to close the issue on my side:
GWB did some things right, but because he is not well read, has no grounding in the philosophical principles of the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, conservatism and governing itself, and is generally a simpleton, what he gave with his right hand he took with his left.
Tax cuts were cancelled out by a flood of govt. expenditures. Firm stance toward the Axis of Evil in the 1st term was cancelled out by appeasement in the 2nd. The humanitarian good that the invasion of Iraq could have produced was cancelled out by the timidity and duration of the execution. Bush has engaged in the largest nation-building project since WW2 despite of having run on a platform of no nation building. To sum up: the US has plucked the Shia chestnuts from the fire and gifted them to Iran at a cost to itself of ½ trillion dollars, 4000 American soldiers’ lives, and at a cost to Iraq that includes, among others, 2 million Iraqi refugees, holocaust of Iraqi Christians, etc.
I can go on with this analysis for pages, on every aspect of GWB’s tenure. In the final analysis, these are the only two things Dubya did right: John Roberts, Samuel Alito. And even with that, what preceded it with Harriet Miers was so stupid that it actually hurt the prestige of the office of POTUS.
For the sake of Bush admirers I won’t rub their noses in further aspects of W’s tenure including his true-believer multiculturalism; Mexican brown-nosing; Invade Them Over There, Invite Them Over Here; support for and vigorous practice of Affirmative Action; complicity in the subprime meltdown; inability to hold firm reins over his often-incompetent charges ("Good job, Brownie," presidential medals for the nincompoops who presided over 9/11, Iraq invasion); and so on.
It’s been a monumental disgrace. For readers who think otherwise, it’s fine by me; but let’s please drop the subject and just become aware of each other’s biases.
GWB 2
Submitted by KO on Mon, 2008-12-01 23:06.
GWB is a tremendous disappointment to American conservatives. However, it is probably more economical to explain his apparent veering from right to left as a relatively consistent (if the word can be used here) fusion of Rockefeller- and Goldwater-Republicanism, with the Rockefeller-element in the ascendant at most times. In other words, understand him as a Right-liberal tending towards Left-liberalism as Right-liberals inevitably do, and there is no need to postulate lack of learning or poor advisers or other intangible factors. Just see him as George Bush, Jr., who had to create a new coalition in a Reaganized electorate. On the bright side, we didn't elect George Bush III, bringer of amnesty and CO2 cap & trading. As The Who sang optimistically, "We Won't Get Fooled Again," until next time. As Lawrence Auster wrote of the election, "Either Way, We Win."
VDH--blessings and peace be upon him--was more persuasive when he found his inspiration in what he knew and what he had observed than in the deadlines for his syndicators.
GWB III
Submitted by Capodistrias on Tue, 2008-12-02 05:09.
@KO
TS was more 'economical' when he stated what W:
"gave with his right hand he took with his left."
@TS
You're right Bush is a simpleton in intellectual and philosophical matters, which suggest a more ambiguous meaning to "mindles Bush bashing" than many of his defenders might care to admit.
However, Traveller is also right it would be wrong for me to dismiss W as simply a nitwit. I don't. I consider him dangerous and arrogant, and possibly one of the worst managers to ever sit in the oval office.
Hanson 2
Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Mon, 2008-12-01 22:26.
Armor wrote:
"If mass immigration to the USA is an asset for America, why did he write a book to say the opposite?"
Well, the short answer to that question is that he didn't do either.
Here is what Hanson actually advocates rather than what Armor has convinced himself Hanson advocates.
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/immigration_solution/
Gloom and doom # 6
Submitted by marcfrans on Mon, 2008-12-01 18:19.
@ Takuan Seiyo
1) A semantic discussion on the difference between "disappointment" and "just anger" cannot be very fruitful. The fact that the sitting US President did not even attend this election year's Republican national convention speaks for itself. It confirms the presence of both disappointment and anger on the right. In a way it speaks well for Bush himself, for it shows that he is a man at peace with himself, who is able to take the 'slings and arrows' of both the nutty left and the "angry" right. One cannot imagine, say, a Bill Clinton putting party and country before his own ego in such a way by getting out of the way.
2) I am sorry if I offended your sensibilities by taking a different tack and by criticising a part of your unending gloom and doom vision. But, I thought that you had already received enough accolades from admirers here, and that some 'balance' was in order. I did NOT label your writings as nonsense. In fact, I enjoy many of your texts, even though I also find them sometimes lacking in proper focus, too long, and often blowing details way out of proportion. I DID state "It is nonsense to write that Bush has terminated the right as a viable political force in America". That is not the same as claiming that what you write is nonsense, unless you were to think that you are never wrong or never get 'carried away'. I would be surprised if, on reflexion, you could not recognise that particular statement of yours as nonsense, for it is so obviously inspired by momentary despondency and so thoroughly anti-historical. I think that disagreements are inevitable, and should be tolerated. And I have written "my own essays" for the TBJ, but I cannot claim your level of 'productivity' and I hope and trust that that will remain so.
3) What do you mean by me "continuing to mention skin color"? I have only mentioned it once, and that reference to skin color (in the context of governors like Jindal) was clearly intended as a shorthand. If you want me to spell it out more clearly, I will. I do not for a moment believe that you could be "concerned with skin color", but I do think that you are overly obsessed with "racial and ethnic heritage". It 's an opinion, not the end of the world.
4) My admiration for general Eric Shinseki is no less than yours. I thought I made that very clear by describing him as "an American patriot". His removal from the Joint Chiefs and his 'retirement' while not normal was pretty "ordinary" (my word), certainly not "unprecedented" (your word). There exists a long history of senior military personnel clashing with presidents/D-Secretaries. It is an example of a detail that you blew way out of proportion. The politics of senior military personnel at the Pentagon is a fascinating subject, and it is very important for the country's long-term health that the senior military remain 'in sink' with both sides of the political spectrum.
5) We are obviously both aware and unaware of "multiple facts" (contemporary and historical), but we can draw different conclusions. I agree that the conservative worldview is a pessimistic one (about human nature). However, the proper (useful) lesson from that is not "gloom and doom", but rather 'realist' caution.
@ Atlanticist
Thanks for bringing Hanson to the fore, once more. I had not yet read it, but I usually agree with him on most things. In battling 'gloom and doom', he does the same thing what I am trying to do here. But he does it so much better. He puts 'meat' on our skinny bones.
@traveller ;)
Submitted by Capodistrias on Mon, 2008-12-01 17:32.
Strength of character? I find it very difficult to understand what 'strength of character' one finds in Bush.
I see a very small man. A man who was confronted by enormous historical challenges and who failed miserably. Yes the failure can be spread around to cabinet members, staff, congress, the media (conservative as well as MSM), supporters and non-supporters, but Bush has caved in so many times on principles, the fundamental issue that should have guided his resolution of a crisis or problem, I see no reason to give solace to the Bushies about W's ultimate standing in history by declaring him a man of strong character. He is a small man who has consistently put family,friends and enemies above his duty to put God and Country first. A man of little historical vision, whose few flashes of brilliance and historical greatness that he managed to stage were just that staged. A stooge of an historical actor who simply managed to blurt out now and then great ideas and quotes from great figures of history be it Churchill, JPII. or RR, but who had very little, if any understanding of how to pursue and realize the objectives 'inspired' by others.
Bush does deserve 'more thought' but only in so much as what further damage he and his self-promoting, self-obsessed minions will inflict on the US and world in his and their retirement.
He will be the right's Jimmy Carter. Incompetence has been celebrated and rewarded by the left for years I expect no less from the right, since it has now been as complicit and responsible for the mess we find ourselves in than those who charted the course on the left.
@ Capodistrias
Submitted by traveller on Mon, 2008-12-01 19:19.
So I did get you out of your corner my friend, welcome.
I know what you think about Bush and I have to agree that he squandered opportunities galore, but still...
I am not so sure that he was a hopeless nitwit. Future will tell us.
Hanson
Submitted by Armor on Mon, 2008-12-01 21:26.
Hanson is one of the authors of the book Immigration Solution: A Better Plan than Today's. The presentation of the book says: "Victor Davis Hanson writes about his own experience growing up in California's farm country and watching the Hispanic immigrant influx transform his state for the worse."
However, in the link provided by Atlantic911, Hanson writes:
- "Our demography is far more encouraging than Europe’s."
- "One can do almost anything with a $13 trillion economy, a two-percent-plus growing population, and a stable political system"
If mass immigration to the USA is an asset for Americans, why did he write a book to say the opposite?
In his column, Hanson also does the usual neocon gloating over Russia's difficulties: "Russia is a mess; with less than $50-a-barrel oil, it will be worse than a mess."
At the same time, he laments "insensitive slurs by foreigners about our President’s skin color". I think Berlusconi's remark about Obama being young, handsome... and tanned, was innocuous and good-natured, while Hanson's characterization of it as racist is aggressive.
Hanson is concerned about America's place in the world: "The question is not whether America is in decline, but whether it is in decline at a more rapid pace than true of Europe, Russia, or Asia." I think it is the wrong philosophy. The priority should be to have an ideal society at home.
Hanson has fun casually dismissing every foreign country. He could be flippant and still say something interesting, but he says nothing of interest in this particular column.
"Well, here's another nice mess..."
Submitted by Thalpy on Mon, 2008-12-01 15:20.
Takwan, If there is one thing I cannot abide, it's gifted, prophetic thinkers who insist on sugar coating! Your outstanding articles provide a vivid assessment of the morass we find ourselves in just now. The levels of idocy exhibited by our institutional leadership is immeasurable. Our lack of vigilance has assured a life(perhaps)of turmoil for many we love and care about.
@ Takuan Seiyo
Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Mon, 2008-12-01 13:58.
In no particular order, I too have "great respect " for -among others- VDH, Mark Steyn, PETER Hitchens along with the Takuan Seiyos of this world and I am always ready to learn from the wisdom of the wise.
"If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up!"
IMHO this advice applies as much to the 'true' conservative as it does the so-called neocon, (which, incidentally, is something I am not ). Perhaps they/we can all learn a lesson or two from each other.
@Atlanticist911
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Mon, 2008-12-01 01:39.
I have great respect for VD Hanson, but he is a neocon and therefore an apologist for Bush, the GOP etc. He is a right-liberal. The proper conservative vision is pessimistic. Start with 'Leviathan' and life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." The US Constitution, the Federalist papers are pessimistic documents -- in that lies their greatness and longevity.
Pessimism does not mean giving up. It means assessing situations realistically, preparing properly, and persevering. Joy, happiness and thanksgiving are a personal choice that ought to be independent of one's judgment of the conditions of society or of life's pain and evanescence.
@ Takuan Seiyo
Submitted by traveller on Mon, 2008-12-01 11:21.
While I enjoy reading 99% of your articles, I am sad to read too much labeling in your answer to Atlanticist911.
Hanson wrote an optimistic article and while it is definitely over-enthousiastic and patriotic due to the Thanksgiving mood, it should be read in that Thanksgiving perspective, so dear to the real people in the US.
Further I really would like you to think some more about Bush.
The man had a mission, totally screwed up by his cabinet members, but he stuck to his mission, no matter how much his cabinet screwed it up. I have respect for that strength of character.
His war in Irak is not over and although I was totally against it in the beginning, like I was against the stopping short of the war by his father, I am not sure anymore today if that war wasn't a beneficial catalyst for the development to the good of the Middle East. At least the vipers came out of the woodworks and the Saudis had to take a hard look at themselves.
The future will tell.
Gloom and doom # 5
Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Sun, 2008-11-30 22:36.
@ marcfrans
Forgive me if you've already read this, and even if you have I think perhaps others should.
http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson113008B.html
Some Thanksgiving Random Politically - Incorrect Reasons To Be Optimistic
by VDH.
@marcfrans
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Sun, 2008-11-30 22:31.
I did not mention the right’s lack of disappointment with Bush, but its lack of just anger. For what GWB has done to the country and to its conservative movement, “disappointment” is not nearly the properly cognizant reaction. I believe that you profoundly misread the dynamics of what has happened in America since 1965, you also misread my own words in continuing to mention skin color as though I ever indicated I am concerned with such. You seem to be unaware of multiple facts, from the broad strokes of the tableau, to the medium-grain detail such as what’s happening in suburban high schools (I have close friends who are teachers) to smaller details such as, for instance, that Shinseki was brutally railroaded. He was humiliated in an unprecedented way by having been fired without being told and learning about it from newspapers.
We are obviously not in the same bin as far as perception of reality is concerned. Please therefore, instead of having the rudeness of labeling what I write “nonsense” and giving me advice as to what kind of view essayists should take, conclude that this feed is unsuitable for your palate and write your own essays.
Gloom and doom # 4
Submitted by marcfrans on Sun, 2008-11-30 20:52.
@ Takuan Seiyo
Agreed, of course, on "trying to minimise lying and falsifying in our institutions" and on the need to "consider what others do right".
Contrary to what you seem to think, there is considerable disappointment about GWBush on the American 'right'. But, surely "derangement" is never a sensible attitude to take. Essayists should try to take the long view, and avoid being blinded by the moment. American history is a long series of ferocious societal cultural battles (and one violent one, the civil war, as well), but the duality of the political spectrum remains alive and well. It is nonsense to write that "Bush has terminated the right as a viable political force in America". Both the left and the right have changed their 'spots' over time, and the genius of the American open democratic system is that it enables constant rejuvenation. You also underestimate the ability of the left to mess things up. They have in the past, and will again. Both sides have done so, and will do so again. Listen to governors like Jindal, but ignore their different skin 'colors'.
America's political center of gravity lies in suburbia and exurbia, not in its big cities, nor in rural areas. My judgement about the culture is not based on the noisiest and silliest voices in media and academia, but on what is happening in local school districts and the like in most regions of the country.
I disagree that Shinseki was "brutally railroaded". What happened to him was in fact very ordinary, as every President chooses his own military advisers. And, I fail to see how Irak's history would NOT have been on "a better course" if the "voice of truth" would have been heard better. The truth is easier to see ex post than ex ante.
Chaos
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Sun, 2008-11-30 20:11.
@traveller
Not familiar with chaos theory, but even good old Newton’s 2nd Law of Thermodynamics points at a growing entropy. Important works of philosophy, literature, film, deal with the imputed human illusion of making sense of life, control over one’s destiny, rationality and order, versus the forces of random mutation and chaos.
My concern is not with the philosophy but with practicality. Whether the force animating cosmos is an intelligible order (e.g. per Biblical narrative) or entropy, we, like cats, like order. Our societies are meant to wrench order out of chaos and to maintain it that way.
Therefore, political leaders who deliberately increase chaos by infusing millions of foreigners from many drastically different cultures into our midst, are guilty of treason. Financial leaders who deliberately increase chaos by changing their leverage ratios from 6:1 to 30:1 are traitors to their society too and ought to be dealt with as though they committed massive fraud. And, returning to politicians, preventing via bailouts market forces from imposing order on financial chaos is a form of betrayal also. It only moves the wall you allude to a little bit farther, but makes it also thicker and more painful when the impact will occur.
Doslockholm-syndrome fantasy of TS
Submitted by Sagunto on Sun, 2008-11-30 18:20.
A few remarks about Seiyo's claim concerning the "Doslockholm-syndrome", i.e. Dutch dhimmitude.
It's this sentence that drew my attention:
"It’s the 42% of the Dutch people who see Dutch (Muslim/Third World) immigration positively even as 61% say that immigration will increase crime.
"
Two rhetorical questions:
- is it really that bad?
- is it really about the Stockholm-syndrome?
But before that, just a reminder that the link used by the author points to a research project "Transatlantic Trends on Immigration" with convinced PC multiculturalists on its advisory board, like German sociologist Claudia Diehl. So apparently an academic Pod can be trusted to factualize an anti-Pod i.e. "podoclastic" essay (can do too ;-)
Of course there's always the question whether this kind of survey-research should be taken at face value to support stout claims. But suppose one does. Then dozens of surveys can be summoned to paint a somewhat different picture, if so desired. Take this one for instance, and pay special attention to negative views of Muslims: Netherlands 51%; US for instance 22%. In fact, this figure in the Netherlands was highest among the seventeen countries under investigation. Whether or not a gloomy view about Oslockholmic Holland is justified might depend on more than just dropping some survey links.
But let's stick to form. Even in the short newsflash-article linked by Seiyo, the concluding remarks about Holland don't exactly support the gloomy view that pervades the essay.
It reads:
"..The Dutch, much more so than other Europeans, reject multilateral immigration policies. "The United Kingdom and the Netherlands clearly favour national sovereignty on the management of migration," say the researchers, with "54% and 74%, respectively, favouring a unilateral approach".."
Now where's the terrible Stockhoslome-syndrome in that, I wonder?
So there you go. Both questions cannot possibly be answered based on the material presented as "evidence" of a supposed "Oslock-syndrome" in Holland. A little knowledge of the vast support for the late Pim Fortuyn and now Geert Wilders; or the observation that today, even avowed leftists like Job Cohen are confronting Moroccans in the MSM, would have prevented such drastic claims.
In other words: invoking a Scandinavian neologism for societal dhimmitude might not be that helpful to really understand what's going on in the Netherlands. But then again, that is just a minor point and perhaps the essay is less about the need to understand and more about (justified) moral indignation. The strong claim by the author about Dutch "Stosloïsm" seems little more than some loosely applied "couleur locale" to a preconceived storyline. Checking the "facts" presented, is actually somewhat of a "minor sin" that only distracts from the irresistable flow of thoughts, destined to empty out into a small reservoir of fantasies about a fictitious counter-jihad movement that "has circled its wagons". A beautiful and rather picturesque way to display the esoteric undercurrent in this essay.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Chaos Constant vs Constant Chaos
Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Sun, 2008-11-30 12:25.
@ traveller
Of course, one must always be mindful of the fact that, the progeny of generation '68 will always see these things rather differently. And I kid you not...
Constant Chaos is the debut album by electronic musician Green Velvet. On the album, he explains why he wants to be brought back as a water molecule, how the world is going to end, and how he was abducted by aliens.
Source: wiki.
Gloom and Doom #3
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Sun, 2008-11-30 02:59.
@marcfrans
There are several pundits who predict civil wars in Europe and in the
US
Lying and falsifying is endemic to the human condition. Life everywhere is harsh and too difficult for all but very few to take as is. But that’s no excuse for not trying to minimize lying and falsifying in our institutions, even if others’ institutions are based on them too. Take the American Founding Fathers. They built a system meant to govern real people in this real world, with no libtard hallucinations. If we could only scrape off the barnacles that have grown on that…
My aim is not to analyze, praise or improve other (e.g. Japanese) societies but to improve the Western one. For that, we need only consider what others do right, if they do, and we do wrong. An error committed by others is no excuse for our own error. Patting ourselves on the back for what we do right and others don’t is not necessary except for weaklings.
You mention Bush derangement, correctly, as a left syndrome. G&D is warranted precisely because of that, among other reasons. Because if the right, if the GOP, were in touch with reality and not lying to themselves, they would be suffering from BDR at least as much as the left, if for different reasons. Bush has terminated the right as a viable political force in
America
Note that nothing I have written can be construed as stating that Obama’s mixed racial background is the reason, or even a reason, for disconcertment. Nor would it be if he were 100% black.
As to your opinion about
America
America
America
Shinseki is not an example of cultural defeat but of someone who spoke the truth and was brutally railroaded for this, by Rumsfeld. Had Dubya’s minions listened to the voice of truth,America ’s history would have been on a better course now, though
Iraq
@ Takuan Seiyo
Submitted by traveller on Sun, 2008-11-30 11:43.
I am a firm believer in the chaos-theory, which implies that even total chaos is still somewhat controlled in our universe, see the chaos constant number.
Keeping this in mind and looking at history, I am convinced that we are going against a financial/economic/cultural wall which will be, in the end, beneficial for mankind to redress the ideological stupidities of the last 2 centuries.
I am also convinced that it will be very painfull, no gain without pain!!!
gloom and doom # 2
Submitted by marcfrans on Sun, 2008-11-30 00:18.
Takuan Seiyo has promised Armor "curative prescriptions" to our deplorable condition in Western civilisation. I, for one, look forward to learning more about such prescriptions. But, surely, Armor's or Kapitein Andre's long-delayed "civil wars" cannot be among them.
The author also seems to think that "modern democracy and consumer capitalism" demand lying and falsifying reality. I do not think so, because "lying and reality falsification" are at least as prevalent in nondemocracies and under conditions of consumer poverty. One does not advance the cause of moral recovery by attacking 'democracy' or 'capitalism' (and the latter is not synonymous with 'consumerism') . However, I do tend to believe that behavior has consequences, also group behavior, which means that behavior will inevitably lead to unpleasant 'events' that in turn can have a curative effect. At times, history seems to confirm that.
Frankly, I find all this gloom and doom stuff a bit overdone, a sort of 'rightist' version of the BDR (Bush-derangement syndrome) that used to be so prevalent on the left (and is now rapidly evaporating in the mists of superficial thinking whence it came). That is not to deny that the election of Obama should be seen as a disconcerting event, but it is definitely not disconcerting because of his mixed racial background. In my opinion, American culture is more conservative today than it was 30 years ago. And Jimmy Carter made Ronald Reagan possible.
P.S. It was gratifying to see General Eric Shinseki (a proud Japanese American, but more importantly an American patriot) in the same list with "Cassandra, Socrates, and Jesus". It should be pointed out that Shinseki DID consider "a career in a large organisation", and did become the top general in the US Army and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He may have 'lost' some temporary skirmish with a "compassioned conservative" president, but that certainly does not mean that we all have lost a larger societal/cultural war.
gloom and doom # 2
Submitted by marcfrans on Sun, 2008-11-30 00:16.
Takuan Seiyo has promised Armor "curative prescriptions" to our deplorable condition in Western civilisation. I, for one, look forward to learning more about such prescriptions. But, surely, Armor's or Kapitein Andre's long-delayed "civil wars" cannot be among them.
The author also seems to think that "modern democracy and consumer capitalism" demand lying and falsifying reality. I do not think so, because "lying and reality falsification" are at least as prevalent in nondemocracies and under conditions of consumer poverty. One does not advance the cause of moral recovery by attacking 'democracy' or 'capitalism' (and the latter is not synonymous with 'consumerism') . However, I do tend to believe that behavior has consequences, also group behavior, which means that behavior will inevitably lead to unpleasant 'events' that in turn can have a curative effect. At times, history seems to confirm that.
Frankly, I find all this gloom and doom stuff a bit overdone, a sort of 'rightist' version of the BDR (Bush-derangement syndrome) that used to be so prevalent on the left (and is now rapidly evaporating in the mists of superficial thinking whence it came). That is not to deny that the election of Obama should be seen as a disconcerting event, but it is definitely not disconcerting because of his mixed racial background. In my opinion, American culture is more conservative today than it was 30 years ago. And Jimmy Carter made Ronald Reagan possible.
P.S. It was gratifying to see General Eric Shinseki (a proud Japanese American, but more importantly an American patriot) in the same list with "Cassandra, Socrates, and Jesus". It should be pointed out that Shinseki DID consider "a career in a large organisation", and did become the top general in the US Army and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He may have 'lost' some temporary skirmish with a "compassioned conservative" president, but that certainly does not mean that we all have lost a larger societal/cultural war.
Brilliant
Submitted by anglicus on Sat, 2008-11-29 11:54.
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. But what can we do, we are all held in contempt by our own governments (Me, UK) because we cannot see the benefits of immigration or the joy of islam.
Two newspaper headlines you will not see
Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Sat, 2008-11-29 01:32.
#1 BUTCHERS OF BOMBAY WERE PACIFISTS
#2 PACIFISTS FREED HOSTAGES AND PREVENTED FURTHER WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER IN BOMBAY.
A tactical blunder by TS?
Submitted by Sagunto on Fri, 2008-11-28 20:32.
Every time generation '68 receives a trashing, I'm all for it ;-)
That's the part I especially liked in yet another panoramic essay by this author. And a long article like this always contains some brilliant moments, some less brilliant but still valuable enough to swallow all those heavily charged adverbs, and also a few phrases that are actually a bit troubling i.m.o., from a counterjihad(ist) point of view.
For instance, when one puts the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian groups squarely in the other "no-good" camp, I think such denouncing may very well turn out to be a tactical blunder in the long run, that is, if it was advanced by someone with more impact in those circles. That does not seem to be the case here.
But nevertheless, I suggest that for opposition against Islam to be succesful, it would perhaps be wiser to look for opportunities instead of estranging potential and powerful allies. And there's just one other thing, and that is the blaming of "consumer capitalism". I don't know..
Oh well, let's wait for the next mega-scroller from TS. See if there's any hope for the ever smaller band of brothers encircled by Madonnists, Pods, Y-Women (húúh! scary), Capitalists, Catholics, Consumers in general and other Body Scratchers. That's going to be a veritable thriller, no doubt! Breaking out seems almost impossible (should have chosen another title, or written a different, perhaps shorter, essay), this movement seems like one tailored for an underground existence, almost like a sect. Call it: ze Moles.
But a Counterjihad "movement"? Don't think so. Right now, there's sort of an international network at best. A network that better use all allies it can get. That's the message of sensible people who really have an impact, like Robert Spencer (get his latest: Stealth Jihad)
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
@ traveller
Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Fri, 2008-11-28 13:22.
Brilliant article, indeed.
Anybody stumbling across this blogsite for the first time and does so believing that this crisis has nothing to do with, as you so aptly put it, "the public school system" and "the May '68 crowd", need only check back on some of the more bizarre exchanges between myself and the teacher-creature kappert to discover the sad truth for themselves.
The truth shall set you free
Submitted by KO on Fri, 2008-11-28 14:07.
A thousand thanks to Takuan Seiyo for his efforts to put our current situation into perspective. The truth is indeed a bucket of cold water, which will make it hard to give it political effect until people have suffered much worse from the reigning delusions than they have to date. The faithful who appreciate Takuan Seiyo's writings understand that human destiny is tragic: we pay a hundredfold for our sins against right order of the world. And even when we don't sin against the right order, the chances of disaster are high. That is fundamental to our Judeo-Christian and Classical understanding of reality. The fall of Troy, the fall of Jerusalem, the crucifixion of Christ, the end of days: these are the archetypes of Western being (thank you, Gerry Gillespie). The faithful understand that collective destruction is inherent to the order of the world, but that we still have a vocation to assert and struggle for right order and that vocation will sometimes be rewarded, temporarily, with peace and prosperity. That is the best we can do--when we overreach, and try to do more than we properly can, we run our ship onto a reef or into a violent storm.
The tragic nature of truth and the modesty of what human beings can hope to achieve with their best efforts prevents the faithful from prevailing in the minds of the deluded mass of mankind until it is already too late to prevent catastrophe, but not before it is too late to save a remnant of what the faithful hope to preserve. Let the faithful develop the language and the institutions they will need to be of service when their moment comes.
Happy Thanksgiving to all. The Lord blessed the Christian settlers of New England, faithful refugees from oppression. Pray He will bless the next New England, wherever and whatever it may be!
@ all
Submitted by traveller on Fri, 2008-11-28 17:03.
I take advantage of this article to comment on the Bombay happenings. Takuan will forgive me because it touches on the same core business.
The terrorists are mostly young to very young people, probably educated, at least part of them, in England and in "good" schools in India and Pakistan.
They definitely were not educated with "christian" values in mind. I am pretty certain that those values were not even touched upon.
The conclusion of this is of course very gripping: those who believe that the coming generation of youngsters worldwide, following all kinds of pied pipers, black, brown or blue will be different from the terrorists in Bombay are terribly wrong. The loss of thousands of years of values and discipline will be exponentially dangerous for our coming generations.
Amen and I hope, against hope, that I am wrong.
Kappert, my dear pacifist, go to hell.
Arius
Submitted by Arius on Fri, 2008-11-28 08:09.
Your read on the West is to such an insightful depth that it takes my breath away.
I have experienced generation Y women in my own family. While talking to my daughter about her intention to vote for Obama and trying to explain his shady background she told me straight on that 'all white people are racists'. This in spite of the fact that I married a Filipino-American woman which in her eyes brings no redemption from my 'original sin' of racism. White people need to understand that nothing they do will satisfy the dogmatic self righteous mentality of generation Y.
@ Takuan Seiyo
Submitted by traveller on Fri, 2008-11-28 12:20.
Brilliant article, as usual.
The "cure" will come in a burst of economic turmoil. Our children have no cultural guidance and morality anymore, thanks to the public school systems and the May '68 crowd.
2 good friends of mine have, with all the good intentions of the world, educated 2 female monsters with no sense of value, obligation or responsability whatsoever. My friends don't understand at all what happened, they trusted the schoolsystem and didn't listen to their own warning systems.
Gloom and Doom
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Fri, 2008-11-28 02:55.
@Armor
Any writer who pours a bucket of cold water on his readers, particularly when the news out there is, shall we say, not encouraging and Christmas is approaching, had better have a good reason. In my case, I have this rare prejudice, a deep faith that:
1. The truth is knowable;
2. The truth shall set you free.
In this view, whether current reality looks good or bad is less important than ascertaining that one touches that reality. All solutions, all hope, stems from that. So first, I had to do my best to try to diagnose the condition. The next step will be to suggest curative prescriptions. I shall not fail in that, and promise that at least a few of them you will find hope inspiring.
BTW, this paradigm would not be my recommendation to you if you want to lead a “happy,” “well adjusted” life, or consider a career at law, politics, or any large organization. Just think Cassandra, Socrates, Jesus, and, of late, General Eric Shinseki.
Still, I consider it indispensable, and see the root of all our problems in the pervasive lying and falsifying of reality that modern democracy and consumer capitalism seem to demand of their leading practitioners.
Dire straits
Submitted by Armor on Fri, 2008-11-28 01:49.
At this point in Takuan Seiyo's narrative, things don't look good at all. I'm waiting for the next instalment...
"defeating the Body Snatchers is impossible in the near future. This battle is lost -- but the future is not."
I wish I knew when things will come to a head. The sooner, the better. I hope not every white country will have gone down the tube before there is a large-scale reaction. The unraveling of the European world does not proceed at the same pace everywhere. I hope Russia at least will be spared. And also, if civil war breaks out in one country, it may inspire other countries to change their policies.
"You, reading this, are the racist that charges these young women with hatred and revulsion, and you are who they aim to work on."
Scary !
National Suicide
Submitted by njartist on Thu, 2008-11-27 15:25.
In the last few weeks, the leftists and pseudo-Republicans have destroyed the American economy and promised a vision of the new socialist state. With the 2 trillion and rising "bailout", they have rendered us and the succeeding generations impoverished. We have become serfs in our own nation.
Reply to NJArtist
Submitted by mary jo anderson on Tue, 2008-12-02 18:25.
Yes, NJARTIST (reading your bio) heaven help you--and all of us. It is true that our children and grandchildren will hold us in contempt. The question is, will this realization turn Christians into saints rather than cardboard Christians? We have no choice but to acknowledge that "Christians" have voted for a socialist state, a socialist candidate and lust for socialist programs that they hope will relieve them of their own responsibilities.
How is it that Christians send their young to schools that feature texts such as Heather Has Two Mommies and a revised Cinderella story where the Prince prefers the Prince from the neighboring kingdom?
How is it that "Christians" --who are statistically weighty-- have zip weight when it comes to influencing US public policy?
These are questions that nag at the mind of this journalist who has had some Christian editors refuse to ask these same questions in print.
Submitted by mary jo anderson on Tue, 2008-12-02 18:25.
@TS: From now on?
Submitted by Sagunto on Thu, 2008-11-27 14:48.
[quote:TS]
"..From now on, the U.S. will be adopting such ruinous European mistakes as socialism.."
From now on?
Socialism was adopted way back, even before the start of the 20th cent. Many, many US intellectuals were studying in Germany in the 2nd. half of the 19th century. And look what you get: American schools, taken over by the State, socialist schools teaching children these things.
The biographies of the Bellamy nephews (Francis and Edward) are a case in point. Nationalism, Socialism, Statolatry, it's all there, long before Oboema.
No need to dispute your point, except for the fact that you're at least one hundred years late, and of course things are definitely getting worse.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.