Thursday, February 14, 2008

The United States as Brazil

An important discussion, under the heading "The Western Crisis," is going on at Lawrence Auster's View From the Right.

It's prompted by the sense of shock and Angst that most traditional conservatives are feeling as they are forced to admit that they have been, not simply eclipsed or beaten in a skirmish, but defeated. Marginalized. Both prospective candidates for the presidency are left-liberals. The great majority of senators and congressmen are as well.
And there is every evidence that the population as a whole, inundated with leftist propaganda from the media, academia, and government, is on board.

Even most so-called conservatives, or what Auster calls "right-liberals," accept the basic premises of modern liberalism: ever-increasing state control, de facto open borders, a revived welfare state, and permanent legal and extra-legal preferences for all "minorities" — that is, everyone except white, non-Hispanic males.

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Some of the commenters are seriously discussing civil war. And although I can't imagine how a civil war could accomplish anything but kill off many of the remaining partisans of liberty, I understand the frustration that entices some to apocalyptic thoughts. The transformation of the United States into a quasi-Marxist closed society based on an ethnic spoils system, with heavy-handed suppression of non-politically correct speech, is gathering speed. It has already very nearly come to pass in Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway.

Commenter Dan McCulloch writes:
Our end will be like ... Brazil. We are undergoing the Brazilification of America. After which, there will be factions, group identity politics, terrorism, oppression, little race-based enclaves, multi-culti polyglot cities, no-go areas, bribery, corruption, poverty, Marxism, and pot-holes. (And lots of pot-holes.) But life will go on. It just won't be very much to our liking. Whites are going to have to learn to function as an ethno-centric minority within the larger population, in much the way Jews have done for the last 1500 years.
A commenter named Hannon writes:

What modern liberals have done so deftly is to suffuse national life with their version of morality and at the same time not threaten the economic basis of our existence. At least some of them recognize that their own ideological success would be impossible without the underlying material success of previous generations of thinkers, workers and investors. Their politics has avoided the effective promotion of collective bargaining (rather it has declined), nationalization of linchpin industries and similar oppressions.
That's bang on, I think. Today's quasi-Marxists, whether out of careful strategizing or just instinct, have learned from the failure of Communism. They know that overt social class war and nationalizing big business won't play with today's masses or even intellectuals. What they have contrived to do is insert their repressive values — what some call "cultural Marxism" —into the fabric of society, while leaving intact "private enterprise" (albeit with lots of ideological ballast like affirmative action). On top of that, instead of urging the lumpenproletariat to rise up and smite their masters, they've seen to it that the economy is artificially pumped up with E-Z credit so the plebs can knock themselves out with video games, 200-channel cable TV, SUVs, pygmy mansions, and all the rest of the entertainment and material high-tech opiates.

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Who cares if you must censor yourself every time you speak in public, lest you be anathematized as a "racist," "sexist," "Islamophobe"? Or if you must openly or tacitly agree to have your country invaded by the millions? The fact is, most people would rather have what they consider prosperity than liberty. Even if an immigrant takes your job for half the pay, even if your own race is destined to become a minority, even if everyone except whites is encouraged to celebrate their ethnicity — the Liberal Establishment has convinced you that that's just the way it is, no sense fighting, it's inevitable. Anyway, you've got ESPN and the Comedy Channel, so what's your beef?

The comments (as well as Auster's own postings) at VFR show that there are intelligent people who resist the country's slide into a balkanized, hyper-egalitarian, thought-controlled nanny state. As smart and articulate as they are, though, few can offer with any confidence a way to induce their fellow citizens to choose freedom over comfortable serfdom, as the night advances, as sleep overcomes us.

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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not much to add, Mr. Darby, other than to say, "me too." It seems my spirits sink noticably by the week as I contemplate the next year or two, the next five, the next ten.

Thanks again for you fine site.

Terry Morris said...

Rick, excellent post!

I've been following that discussion at VFR as well, and it is a good one; an important one, as you say.

But your post reminds me of the one you put up a few days ago concerning the Muslim takeover of Europe in "small slices". There are strong similarities, it seems to me, between the two strategies. Or is it one and the same strategy employed in successive stages with a degree and period of overlap?

-Terry

Rick Darby said...

-J,

It's not the end of the world.

That's the trouble. We're going to have to live in this disturbing future until our time is up.

Terry,

I do see some similarities between the Muslim takeover strategy in Europe and the left-liberal takeover in the United States. The big difference is that outbreeding the infidels plays a big part in the Muslim strategy, whereas liberals don't want or need aggressive reproduction. They can just rely on holding the high ground of the media, academia, and the federal judiciary.

Pastorius said...

Rick,

Where does ez credit come from? Is it not a mistake of the marketplace? And, if it is a mistake of the marketplace, then will it not be corrected, just as the dotcom bubble was corrected?

zazie said...

Rick, Of course most people had rather sleep comfortably than suffer for freedom ; and of course too, itis not the end of the world, we shall only have to go "underground",and teach, teach again and again ; we shall be called dotty, nevermind...
Will you forgive me for quoting Vigny in French ? Here it goes:
"gémir, pleurer, prier est également lâche ;
fais énergiquement ta longue et lourde tâche
dans la voie où le sort a voulu t'amener,
puis apès comme moi souffre et meurs sans parler"
Roughly translated : it is no use complaining, crying, beseeching ; do courageously what you have to do in the sort of life fate has in store for you, and then do as I do, suffer and die silently.....
That has been my motto ever since I read "la Mort du Loup" by Vigny ; I must have been ten or eleven years old then ; maybe you will find me conceited, yet I am sure France would still be herself if more people had adopted that motto!

Rick Darby said...

Pastorius,

Credit is directly supplied by the marketplace, it's true. But interest rates are strongly influenced by the Federal Reserve Board, which has tended in recent years to lower rates every time the market gets into trouble. That makes consumer debt more palatable.

At the same time, the federal government can print money as it pleases, and is under a constant temptation to stuff the money supply channel so the national debt is in cheaper dollars. Inflation also encourages consumer borrowing, since the real value of the dollars to be paid back shrinks. I'm no economist, but it seems to me just common sense that an economy can't go on forever based on debt for consumption. (Debt for capital spending by companies is a different critter, undertaken with the intention to raise productivity and profits.)

Zazie,

That's a powerful, if depressing, quote from Vigny, whom I have not heard of.

Tanstaafl said...

Who cares if you must censor yourself every time you speak in public, lest you be anathematized as a "racist," "sexist," "Islamophobe"?

Hey, don't forget the most anathema of all. The anti-semites. You know, what the "liberals" like Auster call the subhumans who don't want to "have to learn to function as an ethno-centric minority within the larger population, in much the way Jews have done for the last 1500 years". Even more so if they don't think it's any coincidence that it's being imposed upon them by the disproportionately jewish elite pushing jewish materialist, universalist, cosmopolitan norms.