by John Young
Audio Here
Welcome to Western Voices, I’m John Young of European Americans United.
Sometimes you can find valuable insight in the most unlikely places. Today we will be discussing a phenomenon described in a book written by a feminist psychotherapist Dr. Robin Stern with a forward by prominent feminist author Naomi Wolf. This book, entitled “The Gaslight Effect” is ostensibly aimed at professional women whose bosses and romantic partners are using a particular technique of psychological manipulation. It takes it’s title from a 1944 movie starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer; in which the male lead uses a variety of methods to undermine the heroine’s self confidence and self esteem toward the end of convincing her she is crazy. In this way, he can commit her to a mental institution and take ownership of her inheritance.
Taken at a superficial level; the book, as I mentioned, is really aimed at professional women and has a decidedly feminist bent. Certainly, at that level, the message of this book is not something worthy of listeners to Western Voices. But when the ideas in the book are subjected to meta-analysis; an entirely new picture emerges that is of considerable relevance to our Folk and our organization.
The Gaslight Effect; while applied too broadly by the author in my opinion, is nevertheless a very real means of psychological manipulation. In publishing this book; our would-be masters made the same mistake they did with the movie “Eyes Wide Shut” by revealing the inner workings of the techniques that they employ, on a grand scale, against US. So let us explore this idea; and then expand it.
Dr. Stern defines the Gaslight Effect thusly: “The Gaslight Effect results from a relationship between two people: a gaslighter, who needs to be right in order to preserve his own sense of self and his sense of having power in the world; and a gaslightee, who allows the gaslighter to define her sense of reality because she idealizes him and seeks his approval.”(1) But Dr. Stern also quite candidly states: “In that sense, I believe, we are living in a Gaslight Culture. Rather than being encouraged to discover or create our own reality, we are bombarded with a million different powerful demands to ignore our own responses and accept as our own whatever need or view is currently being marketed.” (2)
Furthermore, Dr. Stern has identified the atomized individualism of our current culture as making people more susceptible to the Gaslight Effect because of the lack of grounding that occurs through a network of relationships in more traditional cultures. In addition, the focus on consumerism leaves us far more socially isolated; which again makes us more susceptible to the Gaslight Effect. (3)
We have already explored many of these issues in other Western Voices podcasts; including the research demonstrating that multiculturalism increases social isolation while decreasing community involvement and how a society driven by consumerism and a devolution to one-dimensional homo-economicus is harming our mental health on a grand scale. So Dr. Stern isn’t really telling us anything new about our culture. Rather, in describing the Gaslight Effect, she is simply adding one more indictment to the list of ills to which we are subjected.
Dr. Stern goes further in describing the Gaslight Effect as having three distinct stages between which the gaslighter and gaslightee will move: Disbelief, Defense and Depression.
We are going to take this apart, see how it works, apply the ideas to our culture and Cause, and then put it all back together again with practical solutions.
Let’s look at the stages of Gaslighting.
Stage 1: Disbelief
You may make a statement of what seems to you to clearly be a self-evident fact. For example, you may state that since you can ascertain percentages of racial admixture through a cheek swab analyzed by DNA Print Genomics, that race is a physical reality rather than a social construct.
In response, a co-worker, fellow student or – especially – an authority figure, will tell you that what you are saying is “racist” and that they don’t want to hear anymore “pseudo-science.”
When this first happens, you can’t believe what they are saying. They are accusing YOU of adhering to fantasy; when, in fact, it is THEY who are pushing fantasy. It is completely topsy-turvy and you are aghast in disbelief.
The important elements here are that YOUR intellectual or moral validity is being questioned by someone from whom you would otherwise seek approval in such a way that the facts of reality are being contradicted right in front of you.
Stage 2: Defense
Once you recover from your disbelief; you mount a defense. You demonstrate that what you are saying is a fact. You show a genetic test that demonstrates race. You show how a forensic anthropologist can differentiate race just from bones. You show medical studies demonstrating different diseases and different medication responses that break down by race.
But the gaslighter accepts NONE of this. Remember, for the gaslighter’s own sense of self to remain intact and for her to maintain her sense of power in the world; she can not admit that you are right or even that you MIGHT be right. This is a POWER thing. So what she will do is turn your defense into your own admission of guilt.
“You must REALLY be a RACIST,” she’ll say, “because you have really dug DEEPLY to try to prove this pseudoscience. But the deeper you dig,” she continues, “the more you show your true colors.”
Your very defense is turned against you. After enough of this, you enter …
Stage 3: Depression
Keep in mind, we are social creatures. We don’t want our peers or authority figures to think ill of us. We want to be accepted, treated as valued, and liked.
But so long as you maintain a point of view that contradicts the one that the gaslighter believes you should hold; you will be psychopathologized. No amount of defense will work. No amount of facts will be relevant. Nothing you can do except surrender will allow you to be accepted. And even then, that acceptance is only provisional. It exists only so long as you toe the line.
So you surrender. Even though you have known you are right, you start to question yourself. You become rich in insecurities. Your social milieu in which you are grounded becomes something that can be snatched away from you in a heartbeat and you never know what you may say or do that will run afoul of the gaslighter.
Instead of trying to prove the gaslighter wrong, you are actively trying to prove him right in hopes of securing approval. You can see this with people involved in what could be seen as implicitly white activism who ostentatiously take a non-white mate in order to “prove” they aren’t racists.
But this sort of thing never works. The accusation is still made!
You could get down on your knees and slash your wrists in homage to the great and powerful multicult; and it STILL would not be enough. The multicult will NEVER be satisfied because its very purpose is the exercise of power in order to have others validate its flawed nature. As this realization dawns, exhaustion sets in. You buy into the gaslighter’s view of you so completely that you can no longer access your true self.
Think now of the people you know who are European-Americans, but have explicitly adopted anti-European-American views. According to Dr. Kevin MacDonald; we have a “human kinds” module as part of our psychological makeup that serves to prevent this; as well as a great deal of implicit processing favoring the survival of our folk. But this is all overridden by the Gaslight Effect to the extent that many of those most ready to destroy us, belong to our own group. These people have long-since been enmeshed in Stage Three of the Gaslight Effect. They derive their own sense of value from the esteem in which someone who hates them ostensibly holds them.
In such a wide culture, it is only natural that gaslighters themselves fall into various categories. Dr. Stern defines three types of gaslighters: the glamour gaslighter, the “good guy” gaslighter and the intimidator gaslighter. For our purposes, we’ll only be looking at the latter two.
Each of these takes a different approach to inducing you to surrender to their psychological manipulation.
The intimidator is easy to recognize; and for that reason I used the techniques of an intimidator in describing the three stages of the Gaslight Effect. You know when you are involved with an intimidator by the fact he invokes your worst feelings or fears about yourself, carries the explicit threat of exclusion, mocks you openly or under the guise of humor and so forth.
One doesn’t have to look at much TV to see these mechanisms in action; with white folks generally, and white heterosexual men particularly – especially husbands – being the subject of open mockery under the guise of humor. But you can also see this in college campuses every day when a student dares to differ from orthodoxy.
The “good guy” gaslighter is harder to spot because his power motivations are far from obvious. He STILL has a need to be right; but also needs to see himself as being “good” by some particular definition. He has a need to do nice things – at least, “nice” as defined by a certain worldview – and you just happen to be the foil he uses to accomplish this.
In dealing with a “good-guy” gaslighter, you almost get a good-cop/bad-cop thing going on. “I know you have a point of view,” he will say, “but it needs to be surrendered for your own good.” The implication is that if you don’t; an intimidator gaslighter will come down on you. So within the social context we are describing; the good-guy gaslighter will most likely be someone who is a stage three victim of the Gaslight Effect himself; and is using “good deeds” from the perspective of the multicult perspective to prove his own gaslighter correct. He has surrendered, and is using good deeds to inspire your surrender as well.
Multicult Gaslighting, within our culture, comes from every direction. It comes from television, commercials, movies, bosses, professors, human resource managers and even friends and family. It inspires disbelief, futile defense and ultimately surrender, exhaustion and depression. Probably it is at its worst in college environments.
How can we fight back and reclaim our own sense of self?
The book is aimed mainly at relationships and is primarily focused on the perspective of a woman who is the victim of gaslighting by a romantic partner. Naturally, the author being a therapist, her solution is therapy.
Of course, this won’t work in this case because practically the entire psychology profession itself; along with kindred specialties in sociology and cultural anthropology, is devoted to employing the Gaslight Effect among others to force us to knuckle to their will. It should be pretty clear that the last person you can turn to for help is the person who is doing the manipulation.
Nevertheless, Dr. Stern gives some sound advice that is applicable to our purpose; which I will be combining with other ideas; most notably a revised version of the concepts of taqqiyah and asabiyah from Islam.
Dr. Stern notes that no attempt to stop gaslighting will be effective unless the person being gaslighted is willing to walk away from the relationship. In other words, one must be willing to end the gaslighting relationship. In the arena that we are discussing; that means walking away from the wider culture at large.
Some aspects of this are easy. Turn off the idiot box; which I have previously discussed as being harmful. By doing that you not only deny the gaslighters access to your wallet, but also access to your mind. We have published a book, entitled “EAU’s Guide to Completing Your College Degree” that shows you how to earn a fully regionally accredited college degree while largely avoiding the Gaslight Effect. And we have published an elementary school curriculum for homeschoolers, so that our kids aren’t subjected to the pernicious effects of our controlled government education system too young.
But it simply is not practical to walk away from the job and many other sources of gaslighting in our culture and still be able to live.
So how can this practically be done?
The answer lies in two concepts that exist in English, but are expressed in Islam as taqiyah and asabiyah. I credit Rob Winfield, our Special Project Coordinator for Relocalization of Agriculture, for bringing these ideas to my attention over the course of a number of conversations.
Taqiyah can be translated, loosely, as “dissimulation.” That’s just another word for lying. But this is a special form of dissimulation based upon a hierarchy of values. A hierarchy of values states that a lesser wrong is permitted in order to prevent a greater wrong. Thus, it might still be wrong to steal an apple to save a starving child; but allowing the child to die would be an even greater wrong. We explored this idea extensively in the third podcast on ethics.
Taqiyah, for certain sects of Islam, is a concept substantively similar to the idea underlying the Jewish Marranos in Spain following the Alhambra decree. The Alhambra decree, in essence, stated that everyone in Spain had to convert to Catholicism or be expelled. Rather than face expulsion, many Jews instead adopted the forms and veneer of Catholicism while maintaining their own distinct ethnic identity and religious beliefs in private.
So what taqiyah says is that, if you hold a right belief for which you would be persecuted if it were publicly known; it is acceptable to appear, in public, to subscribe to the notions of the gaslighters – all the while maintaining that correct belief in private.
In practice, that is what many ethnically-aware European-Americans do already. But they do it implicitly or automatically. Unfortunately, doing it implicitly is simply a defensive posture that does not separate you from your oppressor. However, when this maneuver is done explicitly, it becomes an offensive posture that give you power.
Think about it a moment. When you walk into the workplace or school and implicitly cower and adopt the trappings of your oppressor; it is a form of surrender that hurts your spirit and is really just a symptom of the third-stage of the Gaslight Effect.
But when you walk in, actively deciding to hide your views from someone you identify as an oppressor explicitly in your mind; this strengthens your spirit. Moreover, it makes you an active enemy in their midst. You may adopt their trappings and mouth their phrases, but in your heart you are just biding your time until they can be brought to heel. You can look around you and realize that with others doing this as well, a secret army is building in the midst of your oppressors without their knowledge. Instead of seeing your silence as a capitulation; you instead see it as what it should be: strategic misdirection and hiding in the enemy’s midst. This is a source of power rather than weakness. It is repudiation rather than subjugation.
The other concept, which complements taqiyah, is asabiyah. Asabiyah can be translated as meaning “social cohesion.” In our case, it means social cohesion with our fellow ethnically-conscious European-Americans.
Social cohesion with our fellow ethnically-conscious European-Americans is an important aspect of opting out of the Gaslight Effect. This is because your loyalties are such that authority figures who are NOT members of that group automatically lose the status in your mind such that their approval would have no effect on your self-image. As a result, their gaslighting would have no internal effect on you.
When asabiyah is combined with taqiyah; you become a member of a hidden and powerful socially cohesive network of European-Americans that are no longer internally affected by the multicult. Gaslighting that would have otherwise weakened your resolve and self-image instead serves to strengthen your resolve and confirm the rightness of the Cause.
Of course, this doesn’t mean we are going underground. This is merely a prescription for how an individual can empower himself under intense enemy scrutiny. Overall, we will continue to actively engage the system in myriad ways with our goals, as always, being the long-term best interests of our Folk.
And today we have learned a great deal from our enemies that I am sure they are surprised that we learned. Nothing is safe from the analysis of the weaponized intellect of an ethnically-aware European-American.
This is John Young with European Americans United. Thank you for joining me again today.
Thank you for this article. I am a freeborn White woman, and a Celt.
Keeping my mouth shut, and engaging in willful deceit – this will be the hardest thing I could ever try to do. Especially the “keeping my mouth shut” bits.
I loathe the idea that I must engage in deceit, to accomplish our goals, but I appreciate the necessity, in order to achieve our Racial goals.
Uuurrgghhh.
Denise,
The energy required to bite your tongue is jihad-energy, Denise. That’s the third concept that JY didn’t go into because that term is a can of worms.
Taqiyah breeds jihad-energy, and practiced in a group, becomes asabiyah. You can read about this in the book, “The Muqaddimah.” There’s several hundred pages about “The Path to Royal Authority,” and this is of course asabiyah. The people on the fringes become a very hostile minority, and become savvy enough to systematically hide their hostility when it’s not safe to do so, and to condition themselves and their progeny to be systematically oppositional to Jewish and Muslim political forms and agendas.
You could also call it “the cultivation of secret group fanaticism.” The Muslims do it, the Jews do it. We are playing on their turf now, so we must do it too. It’s not part of our history, however, alien species have a foothold on our real estate. We have to play THEIR GAME.
But that’s OK. Because once we start playing, we’ll win. The Ottoman empire used White janissaries for a reason. The Path to Royal Authority runs in our veins, and pulses through our arteries.
Taqiyah is the White version of the Frankfurt School. It’s our moment in history to Evolve.
I know, Kievsky. I know. I just don’t want lies to become truth, to our people.
Brilliant.
Taqiyah can be translated, loosely, as “dissimulation.” That’s just another word for lying. But this is a special form of dissimulation based upon a hierarchy of values. A hierarchy of values states that a lesser wrong is permitted in order to prevent a greater wrong. Thus, it might still be wrong to steal an apple to save a starving child; but allowing the child to die would be an even greater wrong. We explored this idea extensively in the third podcast on ethics.
Heh, awesome. I’ve been promoting this (and pointing out its employment by non-Gentiles) for some time now. I framed it as the “white lie,” the lie you tell to spare greater harm.
Taqiyah, for certain sects of Islam, is a concept substantively similar to the idea underlying the Jewish Marranos in Spain following the Alhambra decree. The Alhambra decree, in essence, stated that everyone in Spain had to convert to Catholicism or be expelled. Rather than face expulsion, many Jews instead adopted the forms and veneer of Catholicism while maintaining their own distinct ethnic identity and religious beliefs in private.
Yep. I’ve been saying for years that we need to engage in crypsis as a way of life. Skinhead type WNs seem very resistant to this, but I suspect it sits well with the newer breeds.
It’s satisfying to see others coming to the same conclusions under different names, independently. It’s like seeing our work confirmed by fellow scientists. 🙂
So what taqiyah says is that, if you hold a right belief for which you would be persecuted if it were publicly known; it is acceptable to appear, in public, to subscribe to the notions of the gaslighters – all the while maintaining that correct belief in private.
In practice, that is what many ethnically-aware European-Americans do already. But they do it implicitly or automatically. Unfortunately, doing it implicitly is simply a defensive posture that does not separate you from your oppressor. However, when this maneuver is done explicitly, it becomes an offensive posture that give you power.
Think about it a moment. When you walk into the workplace or school and implicitly cower and adopt the trappings of your oppressor; it is a form of surrender that hurts your spirit and is really just a symptom of the third-stage of the Gaslight Effect.
But when you walk in, actively deciding to hide your views from someone you identify as an oppressor explicitly in your mind; this strengthens your spirit. Moreover, it makes you an active enemy in their midst. You may adopt their trappings and mouth their phrases, but in your heart you are just biding your time until they can be brought to heel. You can look around you and realize that with others doing this as well, a secret army is building in the midst of your oppressors without their knowledge. Instead of seeing your silence as a capitulation; you instead see it as what it should be: strategic misdirection and hiding in the enemy’s midst. This is a source of power rather than weakness. It is repudiation rather than subjugation.
Totally the same wavelength here. It’s like covert ops. You don’t sound the horn and wave the banner when your objective is to sneak onto an enemy base to sabotage the ammo dump. And once you make that transition, that you’re on a mission, not a liar or a coward, the whole thing takes on a new dimension.
I think “reframing” is the psychological term for this.
Denise, not that you need me preaching at you, but the way to reframe it is that deceit is the way to win. Once you really internalize that, you can easily reframe it away from “lying” and into “winning.”
I know, Kievsky. I know. I just don’t want lies to become truth, to our people.
For example, let’s reframe this. What we want is victory, right? If a lie secures our future and that of white children, how can it really be a lie? It becomes truth. It’s transformed by its service to an ultimate truth, the 14 words.
I think it all comes down to “ganas,” – desire. If you want to win you don’t just become resigned to doing “dirty deeds” to win; you stop even seeing them as “dirty deeds”; you start seeing them as good deeds.
I don’t see this as selling your soul or selling out or anything like that. I see it as becoming one with your commitment to your cause.
And I can’t help noticing that a very deep strain of the indoctrination we’re bombarded with from cradle to grave seems designed to short-circuit the very thing we’re talking about here. Ever noticed the “if we do that we’re no better than them?” meme? It’s everywhere in popular entertainment. You see it a lot in action, sci-fi, and post-apocalyptic stories; the “heroes” are usually willing to lose, or risk losing, to “keep their humanity” or somesuch. It’s such a load of pig slop! Of course they never do lose, there’s always a convenient way out or a bit of luck to save them, so they never have to make the hard choice.
Svigor @ post 9
Very good point about the indoctrination into being principled losers!
If a group of men invaded your home and asked where your daughter was, you’re money or any guns? Would you owe them an honest answer? You never owe such a duty to those actively engaged in stealing from you, lying to you and worse. Free men in a civilized society are one thing this is survival. There’s no taint to us for using deceit against our deceivers and our persecutors. We didn’t force them to lie to us or steal from our kind, we are better than those that do.
Thanks Kievsky.
If a group of men invaded your home and asked where your daughter was, you’re money or any guns? Would you owe them an honest answer? You never owe such a duty to those actively engaged in stealing from you, lying to you and worse. Free men in a civilized society are one thing this is survival. There’s no taint to us for using deceit against our deceivers and our persecutors. We didn’t force them to lie to us or steal from our kind, we are better than those that do.
Dave gets it! When you’re lying to useful idiots or enemies, you’re keeping a pack of rapist negros away from your daughter. It doesn’t matter if the pack of rapist negros is actually in your house looking for your daughter, or even if you have a daughter, because they’re waiting to be born so they can go looking for your granddaughter.
And make no mistake, non-Gentiles understand this perfectly, even if they do so only unconsciously. That’s why non-Gentiles go berserk when you give a hint of resistance; they have it in their heads that you’re stuffing them into ovens.
I play that game everyday, as I work with White liberals and Mexicans, mostly. My “Taqiyah-personae” is a good-old-boy paleocon, accepted by everyone. However, in one-on-one conversations with some of my White co-workers over the last half-decade, I have managed to indocrinate several of them step by step. Just making comments about the news on TV in the lunch room or in casual conversation. Anything negative about our enemies I usually couple with something like “it’s too bad, man” or “I feel so sorry for them, dude”.
I guess it takes a certain personality type to have the ability to do this, but I find it very intellectually rewarding and highly amusing, as well.
You are brilliant Kievsky; your meme spreads like wildfire.
We are a shadow brotherhood (and sisterhood), but we are maturing in strength and finesse. It would be nice if there were markers that would help us to identify one another in public – markers that are too common to be recognized by the lay public, but too peculiar to indicate anything but belonging. It could be anything – like carrying an old fashioned pocket watch for men – or wearing a particular gemstone on a particular finger for women. Then, of course, we would need some sort of secondary indicator of group belonging such as a particular greeting or gesture – or comment about the indicating object. Anyway, it’s just a suggestion, but it might be a good way to find contacts at public events (protests, festivals, etc).
Also, it is essential to stress that a public face is necessary for our triumph. Some of us are either not in a position to be public or are not “media friendly,” yet some of us (who are now hidden) are. Those who are intelligent and of high character need to be supported in an activist capacity – to attract the “others” and to shift the tide. My belief is that when the time is right (and that time is coming soon), they will come forward. When that time comes, all of us who are dissimulating will be obligated to support them – financially and reputationally.
In publishing this book; our would-be masters made the same mistake they did with the movie “Eyes Wide Shut” by revealing the inner workings of the techniques that they employ, on a grand scale, against US.
Kievsky,
I saw the Kubrick film “Eyes Wide Shut” a while back when I was pretty young. I was young, naive, and quite ignorant. I just remember my impression of the film being that it was simply a weird film. I didn’t think much of it nor did I understand that there was more to the film. I didn’t know how to interpret or what exactly to look for when viewing the film.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve heard it mentioned more and more from various sources, like you have here, that there are deeper meanings, themes, and revelations in the film. Could you explain some of them, or direct me somewhere with some good, detailed analysis? Thanks. Much obliged.
Bernard,
I didn’t write that article. John Young did. I’ll ask him what the meaning of Eyes Wide Shut was the next time I speak to him.
Ygg had a decent review that I even contributed a bit. Kubrick and the Coen brothers will tell you shades of the truth of judaism, its a horror story predicated upon a religious curse. One thing related to this fine piece of work, I think part of it is always being negative towards those who you can be in front of those you wish to impress, ex; “The news is slanted crap always blaming whitey like the nazis blamed the jews.”
Yggdrasil on Eyes Wide Shut:
http://www.whitenationalism.com/cwar/shut.htm
Don’t forget People I Know by Robert Redford:
http://www.whitenationalism.com/cwar/piknow.htm
Kievsky,
Thanks. I’d be interested to hear John Young’s thoughts on it especially in light of his excellent review here of “The Gaslight Effect.”
Simmons,
The Coen brothers’ films are another bunch of movies that I’ve enjoyed but that have kind of gone over my head regarding deeper meanings and themes. Like “Eyes Wide Shut” I saw most of them when I was younger, naive, and unaware and unawakened. Some things I can notice now during repeat viewings, though. Such as the contempt for and mockery of Middle American Christians that’s quite explicit in “Fargo.”
Robert,
Thanks for the link. Excellent stuff and really mind blowing. I always naively presumed that the film was just “weird” and just about sex with nothing much more to it, like the MSM told us. I’ll definitely have to check out the film again with this review in mind.
I hate side tracking a thread but the Coen’s latest “A Serious Man” used the fable of the Job to put an utter stake thru the heart of judaism. It was a horror movie I even felt sorry for the main character.
I think we could take these concepts here and add a slice from Bob Whitaker to it for enhanced effectiveness. Two things “anti-racists” need to always be identified as anti-white, their actions always need to be classified as genocide.
I think all of us have felt this way, journeying alone through a Jew dominated world:
“Such as the contempt for and mockery of Middle American Christians that’s quite explicit in “Fargo.””
Well, but the mockery is overall not malicious, in respect to the character played by Frances McDormand it is even sympathetic. The Coens portrayed their own kind in far more biting and mocking terms in “A Serious Man”.
That stuff about Eyes Wide Shut is major bullshit, by the way.
Has Yggdrasil’s site been updated at all recently? Seems to me its been dormant for some time, or is he doing stuff elsewhere?
He still posts on Stormfront.
A Serious Man is funny and very good.
Eyes Wide Shut is amazing and Kubrik knew exactly what he was doing. The party scene itself is brilliant in its simplicity, Cruise is being seduced by the two models (male polygamy) and Kidman by the Hungarian aristocrat (female hypergamy)
Class was shown through the apartments, Cruise’s apartment is upper-upper middle class Manhattan, Victor’s mansion of the ruling class, and the prostitutes apartment the lower class. Just in case Kubrik hammers you over the head with it by the Sociology textbook on the table and Cruise calling the apartment “cozy.”
Oh, and the orgy scene is a replay of Victor’s party, obviously, just check out the blocking and sets.
Let’s see. The “Gaslighting” book written by a couple of Jewesses. Then the Kubrick flick; then the Coen brothers. Something is fundamentally wrong here.
Unfortunately I am being gaslit out here in clovis by fellow confed-ups in guise of my wife. The disturbing part is that I DO hold the same values dear and near to my heart….and have the intestinal fortitude to defend what’s rightfully mine. It has taught me an inner strength I couldn’t learn on my own in these 30 years, even after bootcamp and too-many-to-count near death “oh shhhhh….” experiences. It mainly saddens me however because my pride in being an Irish Texan came from realizing that the 14 words is a moral fiber engrained as a gift from above. That does not hold true to my antagonists who portray themselves as people of the same kin, targeting me and mine without even knowing who I am or what I am about, despite what may be said about me. THANK YOU for the insight. I am eternally greatful. -Niall