A newsletter about what it’s like to live in a country when you’re watching its democracy undergo a seemingly preventable erosion. Toward the end, I make a case against cynicism as a response.
— Jared Holt (@jaredlholt) July 4, 2022
Edited by @samthielmanhttps://t.co/Y1FMzfIvA4
Media: @mariaressa to @brianstelter @ReliableSources: "Over the last six years in particular, this death-by-a-thousand-cuts of our democracy has become full-blown. We're at an existential moment. The world has come closer and closer to a word I don't use lightly: fascism." pic.twitter.com/cUL3HUOAcU
— Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) July 3, 2022
I’m not going to shit on July the 4th this year. As I have explained, I am feeling better and more confident of victory. Truth be told, I didn’t expect to be where we are today so fast.
Basically, I no longer believe in the myth of progressive liberalism. I don’t believe this country was born liberal. I don’t think history is on the side of progressive liberals. I don’t think the future is a slow and inexorable slide into a more liberal and more degenerate version of the present.
If the American Revolution had never happened or had been defeated, the American colonies would have still been infected by 19th century liberalism, which was pulsating through Britain and other European countries. Formal independence from Britain didn’t lead to cultural independence or economic independence. Victorian America remained a cultural satellite of Britain. It was racist and sexist and liberal because the Mothership which was the world hegemon at the time was all of these things.
As I have thought more about why we ended up in this terrible place, I have put more emphasis on the 20th century. The challenge of Darwinism, for example, which American elites wrestled with in the late 19th and early 20th century like their counterparts in Europe could not have been avoided. The same is true of the rise of mass media technologies (radio, film and television) which shifted cultural power away from the countryside to the metros. The same is true of urbanization which made New York our dominant metropole. The same is true of the World Wars which we would have only entered even sooner as a British dominion. The same is true of the cultural shift toward modernism which began in Western Europe and spread across the entire West. Formal borders didn’t stop the spread of this sensibility.
The tone of our culture – cynical, self-absorbed, self-hating, hyper-individualistic, permissive, decadent – is the backwash from the World Wars. Western culture has been in this funk since World War II. It is not unusual in the wider scope of history for decadent periods to follow in the wake of major wars. The mainstream culture contains the seeds of its own demise. We’re living through a period which will end at some point. The reigning ideology of our elites, which is progressive liberalism with a modernist sensibility, which rose in the 1920s and 1930s will be taken to its logical conclusion by our elites, exhaust itself, run out of answers and generate massive new social problems which will be the preconditions of its demise.
Every 100 to 120 years the dominant culture rots and combusts like this. The last such explosion was the World Wars. The rot and malaise of fin de siècle Europe ended in the wildfire of World War I. The culture that we live in today when the current period began was new and vibrant in the 1920s. In that 20 year period between World War I and World War II, American culture radically shifted as elites became modernist, cosmopolitan, antiracist and technocratic. The culture pivoted away from 19th century ideals which were rebranded as Freudian -isms and -phobias. The old hegemonic culture was shuffled off the national stage into backwater towns and rural areas as one version of America died and the next began. The earliest stirrings of the so-called “mainstream” can be traced back to the 1910s.
Seen in this light, the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution look different. Two cycles ago, Americans were swept up in the wider Age of Revolution. The culture rotted and combusted as sleepy, backwater and relatively wealthy colonies suddenly became violent, radical and restless. There was a devastating war and cultural upheaval which solved polarization between Patriots and Tories and led to an era of national renewal after a fringe movement was thrust into power. This was all done and justified in the name of Enlightenment ideals which were fashionable at the time.
Progress is a myth. Stable countries inexorably destabilize and fall into violent periods. Healthy countries rot into decadent periods like China in the 19th century. From the standpoint of the 1990s, it seems incredible that America would fall apart so fast and the culture would become this decadent and polarized and the population would become this radical and receptive to violence. The “moral arc of history” isn’t moving toward liberal progress either. History is reactive with one cultural era tending to be totally repudiated in the next. Progressives only make sense when you realize they were repudiating the Victorian era. They were reacting to the 19th century which passed over a century ago. They were reactionaries.
These abrupt twists and turns which seem in retrospect to end one historical era and begin another are eternal. The American Revolution was one twist in the road in one unexceptional country. There is no such thing as an “End of History.” The current elite and their decadent culture and their senile, doddering president will be swept away in time. Their world is going to come crashing down on them in a way that we are unable to imagine today. We’re probably going to live to see it.
All elites tell themselves the same comforting story – the wildfire, the flood, the hurricane, whatever natural metaphor you prefer to describe the process of cultural renewal – isn’t going to come. This time it is different. We being special and different will rule for all eternity. It never works out that way in the long run. The storm clouds rapidly form on the horizon. It starts pouring.
Enjoy your Independence Day and take comfort in this: no one alive in this country today has lived in a time when there have been more radicals in the United States. It is also radicals who break with the status quo, who pioneer new ways of living and dealing with the pressing problems of the day and who fertilize and renew dying cultures. That’s the function of radicals or “extremists” who surge in number at the end of every historical cycle. Then radicals or extremists live long enough to mature and mellow out when the culture reproduces itself, the new culture takes hold and the old culture passes away.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams lived through one of these periods. They were radicals in their youth and lived through a period of violent upheaval. They mellowed out with age and died in a relatively placid America after the storm passed. The storm which will define our lives is just over the horizon and it too will pass. The outcome of this crisis will leave its stamp on the country for the next hundred years.
We’ve been gifted the Joe Biden presidency which is discrediting progressive liberalism and our elites. Could we have invented a character who better symbolizes how ossified and exhausted the status quo has become? Joe Biden is the beginning of the end.
Note: I have optimistic moods and pessimistic moods. It comes and goes. I’m just feeling optimistic these days. Not everyone sees it that way and that is fine. I was a lot more down in the Dump years.
For the first time i have nothing to add in my comment, good Hunter, I share from the first to the last line what you wrote.
The king is dead; long live the king.
The Declaration of Independence is a long litany of outright lies. It generated almost no interest at the time, and has never had any kind of legal standing. They were hoping perhaps to gain some support from the French Freemasons, and it seems to have worked, in that regard.
The meme No Taxation Without Representation also worked, although taxes from across the pond were almost nonexistent at the time. The chances of the Colonials getting seats in Parliament were zero, and they had no actual desire for representation.
The actual problem was with the Rothschild owned Bank of England, and the powers that Parliament had given the BOE over Colonial trade and money. The problem was completely insoluable within the existing system, so they opted for seperation.
Such complicated financial matters were beyond the ken of the people however, so the Colonial elites opted for inflammatory lies and catchy slogans in their information war. It worked.
The notion of an “Independence Day” is outright Orwellian these days. We lost our independence in 1860 and became outright slaves by 1917, under the Federal Reserve Banker Dictatorship.
The Patriots in 1776 did what they had to do. And they succeeded, using whatever arguments they could think up. They got free of the BOE tyranny, at least for awhile.
Our rulers have never been liberals. Never have been, never will be. The bankers rule, and they answer to the Rabbis. None of these Jews are liberals. The problem is how to break free from the banker tyrants. We may in the end wind up using disingenuous arguments, same as the patriots did.
The Great Replacement.
Hey, whatever works.
But, End The Fed, yes
Bravo.
“I remember in the 1930s there was a family from Ohio in town, God knows why, and on July Fourth they drove their car up on the levee and spread a blanket and had a picnic. They didn’t set the brakes on the car and it ran down into the Mississippi River and everyone said, ‘It served them right for celebrating the Fourth of July.’ We despised Yankees, just on the face of it.”
— Shelby Foote
The last true-to-its-name American government on this land known as the United States of America was the CSA — Confederate States of America. The name “America” is named after an Italian explorer who was a slaver. The true Americans that allowed slavery and wanted to take their slaves with them into the new territories were from the South, not the Yankee North for the most part (the war, however, was NOT fought over slavery).
” …and we thereon made sail for Spain with 222 captive slaves: and reached the port of Calis (Cadiz) on the 15th day of October, 1498, where we were well received and sold our slaves. Such is what befell me, most noteworthy, in this my first voyage.”
— Amerigo Vespucci
Most Yankees and Blacks want to cancel the South and its culture and wipe it out as if it never existed. Indian Nikki Haley cancelled the Confederate flag in SC, as Miss Lindsey Graham wimped out/caved, for political gain and the Marxist/Commie Left seized upon this and it has spread worldwide and morphed into an attack against all white people in general and this cancel-culture against all things White continues.
159 years ago today…
The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia began its Retreat from Gettysburg on July 4, 1863. Following General Robert E. Lee’s failure to defeat the Union Army at the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), he ordered a retreat through Maryland and over the Potomac River to relative safety in Virginia. The Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, was unable to maneuver quickly enough to launch a significant attack on the Confederates, who crossed the river on the night of July 13 into South Mountain through Cashtown in a wagon train that extended for 15–20 miles, enduring harsh weather, treacherous roads, and enemy cavalry raids. The bulk of Lee’s infantry departed through Fairfield and through the Monterey Pass toward Hagerstown, Maryland. Reaching the Potomac, they found that rising waters and destroyed pontoon bridges prevented their immediate crossing. Erecting substantial defensive works, they awaited the arrival of the Union army, which had been pursuing over longer roads more to the south of Lee’s route. Before Meade could perform adequate reconnaissance and attack the Confederate fortifications, Lee’s army escaped across fords and a hastily rebuilt bridge.
Combat operations, primarily cavalry battles, raids, and skirmishes, occurred during the retreat at Fairfield (July 3), Monterey Pass (July 4–5), Smithsburg (July 5), Hagerstown (July 6 and 12), Boonsboro (July 8), Funkstown (July 7 and 10), and around Williamsport and Falling Waters (July 6–14). Additional clashes after the armies crossed the Potomac occurred at Shepherdstown (July 16) and Manassas Gap (July 23) in Virginia, ending the Gettysburg Campaign of June and July 1863.
— Wikipedia: “Retreat from Gettysburg”
Let’s now begin our final retreat from all things “Yankee” and make the final secession and form a nation that is truly a nation that represents the South that preserves its history and heritage.
Secede now!
May God Save the South!
Too stupid too realize that slavery was the worst mistake that Whites on this continent ever made. You should have picked your own cotton.
You try to prove that slavery is a sin from the Holy Scriptures, Drive-By. Your fake Yankee-Doodle Conquer-the-South religion you’re riding will get shot out from under you.
The South was Right! There was no prohibition in the Constitution against secession or slavery. There is no prohibition against secession or slavery in the Holy Scriptures.
And in the future when Christ returns, He will allow regathered Israel to take and possess servants once again.
Isaiah 14:1-3
1 For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land: and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob.
2 And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place: and THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL SHALL POSSESS THEM IN THE LAND OF THE LORD FOR SERVANTS AND HANDMAIDS: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.
3 And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve…
“But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat? And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.”
— Jesus Christ
Secede now!
May God Save the South!
July 4 is just another day to blow off fireworks and have BBQ. You can do that any day.
The sense of societal cycles as Hunter describes above is classic – Aristotle himself giving an outline 2350 years ago – and well-grounded in human psychology
But with tech capabilities of monitoring & control advancing like blazes, it seems that society can soon be a kind of high-tech, open-air prison that was never possible before
So it might ‘be different this time’ due to advances in tech repression capabilities, which finally overwhelm the natural long patterns of political and social psychology
Just look at what they were able to pull off with covid and getting half the world shut down and vaxed … and that was maybe nothing, compared to what they can do by the end of the decade
John Adams v. Thomas Jefferson on an originalist view of the Constitution versus “a living document of the present time.”
I think this Republic was built on faulty or dubious premises. A dispute with a particular King or with Parliament over some taxes are not sufficient justification for a dozen colonies to engage in armed rebellion. The Framers also seemed to believe their Republic would be ruled in perpetuity by wealthy White male landowners and lawyers. They never entertatined the possibility that eventually women, jews, Negroes and other riff-raff would be demanding their “rights”. It was an experiment in government based on 17th and 18th century English notions about the Enlightenment. Such notions are now hopelessly obsolete.
It was the (((Bank of England))). Our lying overlords have turned it into “no taxation without representation”.
” never entertatined the possibility that eventually women, jews, Negroes ”
They couldn’t imagine an electorate so stupid.
A Christian Monarchy is the only form of government authorized by the triune God. Anything else is rebellion against God and his holy word.
I’m not going to shit on July the 4th this year.
Not to worry. Some Church of Woke type or government agent provacateur dropped a nice stinky pile on a parade up in Highland Park, Illnoize – a very true blue place with more gun control than many states.
There were no women who signed the Declaration, no blacks, no homosexuals, no illegal aliens, no jews, no atheists, and no transgenders.
This country was founded by White men for White men and I for one think that is based!
Happy 4th! I’m proud to not just have Confederate ancestors but also American Revolutionary ancestors. No 1861 without 1776!
Demography is destiny ..
Race is not a ‘social construct’…society is a racial construct.
Excellent essay, Hunter. I just copied it so I can study it at work, and it is a good summary of your past essays on culture. As for the Fourth, I’m 70 and feel very little attachment to this country or system. It doesn’t work for me anymore, but I celebrated the fourth as I always do. I listen to a lot of early American music (1776…on Memorial Day I listen to Civil War Music…Labor Day…songs about unions and labor), and did my usual writing. It’s always a quiet day, ended with a meditative walk.
when I lived in Boston in the 80’s and 90’s, the celebrations were more festive. I lived on Beacon Hill, and walked to the Old state house, where a crowd was gathered and the Ancient and Honorable Company of Artillery was assembled. Its commander was at the balcony and read the Declaration of Independence, which is what the original commander did in 1776. There was a black guy who sang The Battle Hymn of the Republic (always a black guy, always the only black there), a band played It’s a Grand Old Flag, and people were asked to greet each other. Then came a parade, and at Fanquiel Hall was a Fourth of July oration. In the harbor, the U.S.S. Constitution did its annual turnaround cruise, firing off cannon. That night, there was the Boston Pops concert on the Charles, with fireworks as the Pops played the 1812 Overture. It seemed like the best celebration I ever knew. Of course Boston and its liberal mores have scooped out and destroyed any of the old patriotic feeling, but up there in Liberalistan, they still pay lip service to it. It was the wave that eventually drowned the south, but the outward symbols are still heart tugging.
Most places in Missouri seem to be a lot of military display and tons of honking cars and trucks in the parade. One city where I lived had the army parachute team drop downtown, and there was a big airshow. Crowds of patriotards LOVVVE airshows and air power. Also, they had…seemed at this time everyone had…some REAL Tuskeegee airmen in the parade like they were walking holy relics.
Twenty five years ago, it was like a damned cult.
All of that seems faded now, as memories are, and the nation it celebrates is a shroud…much like Rome was imperial as all hell, but they always carried those standards saying SPQR.
I resent the fact Americans BS so much, that for years I’ve waited and waited…and will be too old to do anything.
Again, very good essay.
I saw a story in the news on July 4th celebrations and some glutton stuffing 60 hotdogs down his gob in ten minutes, falling short of his record of 76 achieved previously.
I’m sure 59 other hungry people would have loved a feed of all that now wasted food, consumed by a pig who didn’t need it.
What happened to sport and competition promoting health and fitness? It sets a shocking example to young, impressionable people. The obesity epidemic is real.
And you now drive pickup trucks that are bigger than a regular truck used to be.
In all things, we should just consume what we need, and avoid being greedy.
Is this really what the West, and America, have become?
You’ll also be happy to know that idiot makes about $250,000 per year with his “awesome” talent. Isn’t the world just great?
Tikkun,
The sort of money that you’d think someone who found a cure for cancer would earn. The mind boggles.
“As I have thought more about why we ended up in this terrible place, I have put more emphasis on the 20th century”.
Women got the vote in the 20th century. That’s what changed.
First thing they voted for was alcohol prohibition to punish their husbands and force them to give their paycheck to the wife instead of the bar. Second thing women voted for was the welfare state under FDR, third was divorce rape. Fourth was a massive expansion in the welfare state under LBJ, as well as sex drugs and rock and roll. Then came the coup de gras – the 1965 Immigration Act that virtue signaled our way to extinction. Thank you ladies!
Happy July 4th “Independence Day” for some – I wore a T – shirt on July 4th. “Unhappy, ungrateful colonialist day” with the Union Jack flag.
The Declaration of Independence is utter nonsense – globalist Free Mason with lies about universal equality.
If TJ really believed in universal equality, then why was he a slave owner?
I guess he believed his negro slaves weren’t really human/men. I think most of the Negro slaves thought that they were at least human.
Jees.
But like Bastille Day in France – it’s mostly a patriotic holiday for Whites.
I think we should be OK with that.
Happy July 4th, it’s certainly a better holiday than Juneteenth or Kwanza or Indiegenous People’s Day which has been introduced to supplant Columbus Day.
Like our host, I feel more confident than I did say five years ago. Of course I’ve felt like this before too. The alt right will get going fairly good, then the establishment types or the flag wavers will take over and mess it up. To me the movement isn’t about thanking the gun toters for their service every twenty minutes, or idiotic obsession with deregulation.
Liberals seem to attract people that are crybabies and self absorbed jerks. Conservatives seem to attract reactionaries who think we can bring back the past, or a past they thought maybe existed.
We need to try to go forward and deal with where we are now.
I hear from the right that there is no climate change, drill, drill, drill. There are droughts all over the southwest, Lake Mead has never been lower, has been losing volume since 2000, and hasn’t been completely full since 1983. New Mexico, Colorado have had the worst wild fires in the history of the states. What the hell do they think is happening?
The right needs to do something except listen to dip shits like Shawn Hannitty every day.
The right should never have surrendered ecological issues to the left.