The Atlantic: Underlying Conditions

Good point.

The virus isn’t killing Americans so much as it is our underlying condition, which is liberalism, and its various comorbidities like an exaggerated fear of “racism” and “xenophobia” or an oligarchy of private equity and hedge fund titans overruling the World Health Organization.

The Atlantic:

“When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.

The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message. …

The purest embodiment of political nihilism is not Trump himself but his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. In his short lifetime, Kushner has been fraudulently promoted as both a meritocrat and a populist. He was born into a moneyed real-estate family the month Ronald Reagan entered the Oval Office, in 1981—a princeling of the second Gilded Age. Despite Jared’s mediocre academic record, he was admitted to Harvard after his father, Charles, pledged a $2.5 million donation to the university. Father helped son with $10 million in loans for a start in the family business, then Jared continued his elite education at the law and business schools of NYU, where his father had contributed $3 million. Jared repaid his father’s support with fierce loyalty when Charles was sentenced to two years in federal prison in 2005 for trying to resolve a family legal quarrel by entrapping his sister’s husband with a prostitute and videotaping the encounter. “

Jared Kushner failed as a skyscraper owner and a newspaper publisher, but he always found someone to rescue him, and his self-confidence only grew. In American Oligarchs, Andrea Bernstein describes how he adopted the outlook of a risk-taking entrepreneur, a “disruptor” of the new economy. Under the influence of his mentor Rupert Murdoch, he found ways to fuse his financial, political, and journalistic pursuits. He made conflicts of interest his business model.

So when his father-in-law became president, Kushner quickly gained power in an administration that raised amateurism, nepotism, and corruption to governing principles. As long as he busied himself with Middle East peace, his feckless meddling didn’t matter to most Americans. But since he became an influential adviser to Trump on the coronavirus pandemic, the result has been mass death. …

To watch this pale, slim-suited dilettante breeze into the middle of a deadly crisis, dispensing business-school jargon to cloud the massive failure of his father-in-law’s administration, is to see the collapse of a whole approach to governing. It turns out that scientific experts and other civil servants are not traitorous members of a “deep state”—they’re essential workers, and marginalizing them in favor of ideologues and sycophants is a threat to the nation’s health. “

Look at Vietnam and Mongolia.

No one has died there from the virus in spite of sharing a land border with China. Those countries still had enough common sense to close their borders and regulate international travel.

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

25 Comments

  1. Our rulers will never ever close the borders. We are not a country we are a dumping ground for every other nation/country.

    • Yes, that is why white nationalists must lay ground work so whites can survive as a minority. No more entertaining fantasies of the GOP closing the borders or whatever. Immigration is a done deal, and we can either ensure whites have some advocacy and legal support groups as a minority, or we can waste energy on deportation pipe dreams and end up a hated minority with nothing.

    • @Dart…

      “Diversity and individualism are weaknesses.”

      Yes, Dart, sometimes this certainly is true. Yet, I will say this, sometimes these things can be strengths.

      Example?

      My garden – it’s full of Hydrangeas, Magnolias, Crape Myrtles, Japonica bushes, Impatiens and Forget-Me-Not flowers – all of which, though Southerners like to think of them as quintessentially Southern, the fact is that these are all Oriental plants that were proliferated here in the mid 19th century.

      And these non-Native plants live quite well with Native American flora, though, in order to get it right, I have to pay careful attention to where a particular plant would like to be, and not force my idea of integration upon it.

      As to individualism, I would say this – if I were like other less ‘individualist’ Southerners, I long ago would have caved to the pressure we all feel to not fly our Dixie flag, or to think of all people as equal on Southern land.

      I continue to fly and wear our flag, and I continue to not think in egalitarian terms.

      So, in conclusion, I would say this – even at their worst, ‘diversity’ & ‘individualism’ only really become toxic when they are symptoms of greediness, self-absorption, and all the other characteristics of ungodliness.

      Ungodliness is the nuclear bomb of all killers – not just for individuals and families, but, for races, cultures, and countries, as well.

      That America is dying a slow death is NOT because of diversity, something which we have always had, but because of the greed and lawlessness that has overtaken it’s ruling class, sad states of being which, as you well know, are why this country has been made a hotel for every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the world.

  2. America was murdered a long, long time ago, long before CoronaChan showed up. The effects of CoronaChan are simply akin to maggots on a corpse

    • @Miss Denise …

      I totally agree, if, by that you mean that ‘The United States is gone’, all that is remains of the slowly murdered corpse the carrion and maggots feeding upon her vestiges.

      As to ‘America’, though, I think we will come through this as different countries, much as it was rightfully intended.

      Some of those countries may not fare so well, but, on the whole, at that point I think America will begin to recover.

      Right now we are at a terrible bottoming-out point, but, that said, I have lived in enough places in this country to know that there still are a lot of good hard-working people in this land who will put the new ‘Americas’ up on their shoulders and carry those countries to a better place.

      • Ivan – America is breaking up even now. Most Americans don’t know this. Most of Humanity exists in their own little sphere – which is normal.

        Were you or I to suggest that the DisUnited States break up into assorted regions, I think most people would still be viscerally horrified. We’re not a united country. Even before the widening political divide, America has been so different from one place to another it’s astonishing. No -wait it isn’t astonishing after all.

        Humans are innately tribal Local is what really matters to most people. Again this is 100% NORMAL. Most people are not interested in politics at all. This is what allows a power deranged political “elite” to take over, and wreak absolute mayhem. Were politicians locally accountable, because people pay attention, the world would be a very, very different place. All around the world now, it’s becoming blindingly obvious to the most blinkered person that the Political Classes couldn’t care LESS what the polity things, or wants, and demonstrates a smirking, acidic disdain and loathing for the people they are supposed to be serving, guiding, and protecting.

        I don’t know how long this can continue.

        The breakup of the Dis United America would be a mercy, to everyone. ZOG USA has been a nexus of crime and mayhem for decades. Smaller accountable political structures, in small countries would be a blessing to every one.

        • @DENISE…

          Oh, how right you are – The United States is breaking up, just as sure as we speak, BUT, and here you are right again – don’t you dare say a word to anybody about it, or else they’ll mark you with an X!

          And, yes, of course – we are all tribal, some more, some less … but, ‘tribal’ all the same.

          I do not know how long it can continue, either. it reminds me of watching a loved one die an agonizingly slow death, filled full of thousands of ugly moments, and on it goes – until one day, they are dead, and there is the last cry!

          As to your analysis of the People and The Ruling Elite, again – it’s spot on.

          I often find myself sad that so few know what you do.

  3. ((Those)) ppl are in a systematic process of nation wrecking. Open boarders is just one maneuver , in the greater scheme.

  4. America began dying in 1861, a death which was provided a firm scaffold by the the amendments to The Constitution the Northern States added during The War of Reconstruction.

    That scaffold was furthered by the Rothschild takeover of our fiscal system in 1913, more poisons administered to the republick by the wildly overreaching judicial decisions of the post WWII Era, (That Southerners refused to fight) her final breathes taken as her economy was authorized by presidents and Congress to be shipped out under Alan Greenspan, her borders left wide open for decades at a time.

    What started as a remarkably promising European Nation, is going to go out like a whimper, after 159 years of dereliction, usurpation, and being sucked dry.

    Like the loss of a dearly loved family member, I shed my tears for her years ago, at a funeral I held for her in my mind – and then moved on to awaiting the coming Confederacies.

    In dissolution will be her rebirth, though, it will not be allowed to happen until those who are still sucking at her cadaver, have sucked out every last drop of blood, eaten every last piece of her flesh.

    I suppose my ancestors, from Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia,who fought for The Southern Confederacy of the 1860s might see the demise of Jew-usurped New England Yankee America as a poetic justice, but I am sure that their ancestors, who fought with the New Englanders against The Anglo/Jewish Syndicate all those years, and who fought 150 years of Indian wars, here in Virginia & North Carolina before that, would be miserable, indeed.

    But, like those who were rowing away from The Titanic, we must wait patiently for the final plunge, after her bow breaks.

  5. I’ve noticed, Brad, that the negative comments seem to be easing up. Perhaps they’ve gotten tired of you. I think more likely they know their charade is up and that the bodies don’t lie. I can’t stand the fact that the “right-wing” has allowed this crisis to go to waste, something but the left never does. Even the socialists in New Zealand figured out they needed to close the borders and yet we couldn’t muster the strength to do so under the “anti-immigration” president. This country is finished, and instead of a resurgence of the genuine Right we are going to experience domination by the same liberal order that got us in this mess in the first place, all because Donald Trump is an idiotic, narcissistic fool. Am I overly black-pilled? If anyone has a positive interpretation of this, please share it. But all I see is that this once in a generation opportunity for destroy liberalism has been wasted.

    • I’ve adjusted the rules.

      Basically, if someone can make a coherent argument now, I will publish their comment. I’m not going to publish comments though from people who are coming here to spam the comment section with links to flat earth websites.

      • @Mr. Griffin…

        I am glad you ‘adjusted’ the rules.

        I have tired of comment sections (on any blog) blown up by those who seem hellbent on posting large pictures, posters, and or links, instead of delivering a civil personal comment that would add to the dialogue.

        Also, I have grown very very tired of those who have very little to say other than to smear, cut down, and or impune everyone else who does not have their exact point of view.

        I remember growing up in a time where intellectual discourse was common, disagreements handled in a genteel way, and, in general, real conversation was a skill that most everybody had.

        Nowadays, folks either seem to offer witless soundbites, or spew forth incredible barrages of vitriol.

        It’s like the whole country has either gone mad or dumb – and courtesy and manners are on the endangered species list!

        We used to try to rise to our full potential, and to expect others to do the same. Nowadays, it just seems like so many folks have begun the common carp and live and act as bottom-dwellers.

          • @Mr. Griffin…

            Thank you, Sir, so very very much for that!!!

            You hold a very high standard, yourself, taking infinite amounts of unseemly and ungentlemanly invective, with only rarely a cross word to pass through your keyboard and without ever cracking under what in the early 19th century would have qualified as pistol-duel worthy abuse.

            It’s a hard thing to do, I know.

            One thing that always helps me pull through the hard comments is that I know many many alien anti-Southern spectres look at this blog daily, as they once did Michael Cushman’s fine, ‘Southern Nationalist News Network”, and the last thing I would ever want them to see is a kind of behavior from Southerners that would lead them to think that we are like they, or that we are as they would wish the world to see us, and our culture.

            To that end, I am always I am always mindful of what our gallant general, John. B. Gordon, of Georgia, once said about us, Southerners…

            “No people in the history of the world have ever been so misunderstood, so misjudged, and so cruelly maligned.”

  6. Scions of the elites are always needing bailing out and multiple chances. They tend to get propped up throughout their lives. Dubya is an example of a particularly incompetent son of privilege. A lackluster student who was not bright enough to succeed anyway, all of his ventures failed. Papa got people to “loan” the idiot son out of trouble until Junior finally got lucky with the Texas Rangers. Competence isn’t transmitted through genes, and as the generations pass, the elites go through a decline that money covers up in order to make them still appear to be the best and the brightest. This viruscrisis has made their incompetence and stupidity more obvious.

  7. I’m reluctantly coming to agree with your diagnosis that liberalism is the root cause. Reluctantly, because racialism for such a long time coexisted with liberalism, and it was heartening to think that there wasn’t any real need for a grand makeover.

    I still have some reservations though. When a coup deposed the Dominican Republic’s dictator Rafael Trujillo, Kennedy said there were “three options, in descending order of preference: a decent democratic regime; a continuation of the Trujillo regime; or a Castro regime. We ought to aim at the first, but we can’t really renounce the second until we are sure we can avoid the third.”

    The alternatives to liberalism are SJW/progressivism/communism and racialism/nationalism. Right now, the first alternative seems a lot more likely than the second. So although I’d prefer racialism and nationalism, I’m afraid I can’t so easily renounce (conservative) liberalism until I’m sure we can avoid SJWism. Follow me?

    • @SILVER…

      I do not think that ‘Liberalism’ is the root cause of America’s decay, Silver.

      No, it is not.

      ‘Liberalism’ is like garlic – you need some in the soup, but, too much, and the whole soup is irrevocably ruined.

      We have an excess of ‘liberalism’ – THAT … is a problem.

      Another problem is how the liberalism is employed, that namely being to usurp the country, it’s culture, it’s values, and, yes, to pad the wallets of those greedy men of commerce & industry who fashioned and employed ‘liberalism’ TO THEIR OWN ENDS.

      So, ‘liberalism’, in and of itself, is not necessarily a problem, but, rather, it’s context, it’s application, it’s amount, and yes, to what end it serves.

      We have too much Liberalism, though, that is not nearly the problem that is the lawlessness and greed of The Ruling Elite.

      • ‘Liberalism’ is like garlic – you need some in the soup, but, too much, and the whole soup is irrevocably ruined.

        Liberalism is the soup, not the garlic. The garlic is nationality, religion, ethnicity, race etc. And liberalism has spent the last hundred years or so — and at an accelerated pace over the last fifty — removing them from the soup. It doesn’t need them, see. The soup tastes better without them.

        That’s why it’s a root cause.

        • @Silver…

          Thank you for reading and replying.

          The soup is human existence, Silver, or, to be more specific, the existence of North Carolina for me.

          The soup definitely needs things like garlic, pepper, and salt, just as societies need some liberalism.

          To have a social soup without liberalism would mean a totalitarian society along the lines of the Soviet Union or Maoist China, and most, myself included, would NOT see that as desireable.

          So removing all liberalism from the soup does not sound like a good idea.

          Take Hungary, for example – they have done the right thing in stilting The LGBTQ Movement in their country, and in having made sure that the preferred route is marriage between a woman and a man, and then to have children therefrom.

          BUT … they have not criminalized homosexuality.

          It’s the right balance and it is where we used to be in North Carolina, before, as you say, ‘liberalism accelerated’.

          That said, I see that a new ‘Anti-Liberal Age’ has begun in the West, liberalism having reached it’s apogee in the year of 2009.

          Liberalism has been declining since that moment, a process that has only accelerated since the election of President Trump – even though his principle contribution towards that is his rhetorical style.

          That said, reducing garlic in The Western Soup to restore the balance is going to be an ongoing process over the coming decades.

          As you say, it took a long while to get here, it will take a long while to get out.

          If you are discomforted by the pace of it in this land, you can always go to a central-eastern European land where the progress is quicker, because they never got so much garlic in the soup, in the first place.

          In any case, be well!

  8. No nation can long survive on deficit spending and open borders especially when it has outsourced its industry and insourced it technical labor. The United States was terminal long before COV-19 came along.

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