Great work and very thoughtful. I remember seeing this and the commentary and thinking it was all a very stark illustration of the difference in Christian vs Nietzschean nobility. I wouldn't say pagan for the latter, since even a heathen Roman like Caesar understood that his high position was contingent on his being a benefactor; he was a patrician in the truest sense, a father. The Nietzschean nobleman, or the internet approximation of him, is a self-centered creature driven to dominate from a sense of inner weakness; he recoils from women like the one in the video because her own vulnerability is terribly comprehensible. Our society lacks fathers. This is the main thing everyone involved would benefit from more of most obviously, and the main thing any aspiring noble should aim to be for his people.
🗨 The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. ~~Edward Gibbon
A tangent yet too clever to miss any slight opportunity to call back 🤸
You have grossly misread the point(s) I was making in the piece, reading your own biases and preconceived notions about what you are sure that I meant rather than reading what I actually said. I don’t think I once discussed whether or not you should date or marry this woman.
I spent some time in a trailer park, as my folks were down and out and couldn’t afford much else.
Fast forward to the age of Twitter, and I get drive by attacks from various dissident accounts either accusing me of being a communist, for discussing things from a wage laborer perspective, or from real whack jobs, who believe everything is about race and the fact I never discuss things in those terms makes me a traitor to the cause.
This was a great essay, Kruptos, and the reactions you received to that tweet were illustrative of the fact that so many dissident rightoids are just as much the same as the LibTards they spend so much energy critiquing.
Thanks! It means a lot coming from you. And your observations are spot on. The right is a hot mess for various reasons. Being “edgy” is not the same thing as having a meaningful and coherent worldview. And I say that as someone who tries to practice the idea of “no enemies to the right.” A lot of people need to see the handwriting on the wall and know what time it is (mixing metaphors and everything!).
Puts me in mind of a picture I use often of where we are. That the flood waters are rising and most are tripping over others in their rush not to get caught, whilst the Galilean seems to be headed down into the chaotic flood . . .
Once I took a trip on Amtrak across much of rust belt, it was off schedule so we moved slowly, slaloming between freight trains. But gave me opportunity to really take in a snapshot of small town America as we rolled past.
Clearly I noted these formerly thriving towns had been all hit hard by something, cultural, economical…something seismic. Boarded-up store fronts in most, a listless woman stumbling in middle of an otherwise deserted street wearing pajamas midday in one, vacant lots and sun bleached signs, yards unkempt, architectural flourishes rotting off stately Queen Anne houses. Factories shuttered, old mills rusting away. Trailers in parks or on their own lots were common...many in a state of disrepair.
These people didn’t choose this destiny for their hometowns, forces external shaped most of these outcomes. This was, intentional or not, the outcome of decades long trade/labor policy that put the well being of a select few elites (and their aligned interests) ahead of the stability and economic security of our fellow citizens. Crippling thousands of small communities along the way. These towns looked not unlike the most dysfunctional crime ridden urban ward apart from the obvious demographic differences.
And I noticed something (on this trip and others) common between destabilized urban ghettos I’ve worked in and these otherwise Norman Rockwellian towns. Much of the problems with family formation, chronic fatherlessness, directionless et al. Is substantially due to a lack of meaning which accompanies stable economic prospects. In other-words, a unifying purpose. For multiple generations men in particular have been robbed of an ability to support a wife and children, to be seen as a viable spouse and breadwinner. Kids being kids they still are driven by natures impulses, producing babies...but the fathers not serving a purpose beyond insemination often fall out of the picture as census surveys suggest.
When I see purple haired face tattooed 20-30 year olds throwing rocks at store fronts or shining lasers in the eyes of cops, or ODing in the street, I ask myself Why aren’t they working? Why don’t they have jobs? Why don’t they have children at home to attend to? To me it’s pretty clear they have no skin the game, nothing they can work towards, nothing to build, no young family, no career with purpose, nothing. Not to say it’s singularly an economic issue, there is a spiritual aspect as well as you note with the cultural influences steering them towards ruinous decisions, but self reliance begins with ability to afford the basics.
These folks are lost and they deserve better. They are our fellow countrymen and those of us who are at a different level owe it to them to see that they have opportunities in which they can contribute in whatever ways their skills and abilities allow at wages not manipulated by parasitic off-shoring of industries or mass immigration (legal or illegal).
This is a phenomenal piece you wrote. A piece that succinctly outlines our unfortunate reality and the daunting task before us. (Full disclosure: in college I lived in a trailer home for a few weeks one summer. Many good people there.)
Just a couple of recent illustrative examples of abject failure to account for disparate realities/viewpoints (myself guilty as charged in second case 😒):
When you quoted Psalms, that gave me goosebumps. I saw your original tweet and read it as such, and the ensuing revelations where she fell from the symbolic to the concrete was painful. I think a lot of women harp on it because of the same phenomena as the educated harping on the trailer park bound, the distance is uncomfortably close. Whatever grand achievement it is to be pure and traditional these days, you are blessed if you manage it, and should be humbled if you are. As ever your take on it based on Christianity is a breath of fresh air in the nobility discourse, and all the praise I have seen for this article before reading it, gives me hope.
Thank you! That is high praise indeed. There is a real need to challenge the philosophical foundations of our society, to expose how they have corrupted the Christian faith and then to begin challenging them without losing who we are as Christians. You don’t have to be an existentialist to have integrity (authenticity) and you don’t have to be an egalitarian to care about the downtrodden. In fact it’s better if you are not, even if having that discussion makes people uncomfortable.
Great piece. The reference to John 4 and Psalm 72 struck a poignant point with me. You are spot on when you say a flourishing society is built from the bottom up. And we see this throughout the Bible. The Psalms and the Prophets constantly make reference to helping the widow and the orphan, to giving to the poor to ease their burdens. Jesus also harps on this throughout his ministry, constantly telling his disciples and followers to give what they have to help the poor. After reading your piece, it reminded me of this theme and makes me realize God knew what He was doing. If the people at the bottom suffer, society does too. Until the right realizes this, we’ll stay stuck in our own abstraction, as you say. Well done man.
Thanks! God always knows what he is doing! And there is such opportunity there to forge a dynamic powerful bond of loyalty as well between and leader and led if they know that by following their lives will actually be made better by so doing. It can be done.
It’s easy to go to Africa, “do some good” and head back home leaving the Africans behind. Much harder to minister to the folks next door because they will still be there next week and the week after that; and they know my faults.
Written as I prepare to leave this week for a short term trip to Ecuador too aware that I have the potential to do more harm than good.
Yes, that is so true. And often they are hard to help as well. These things are not always easy. But helping them also makes them more human and harder to revile as well.
Yes, that is it exactly. I do think you are correct that we try to solve the problems in Africa because we don’t want to see the problems in our own backyard. Not that they can ever be “solved” in world where there is still sin and evil. But they should be faced and acknowledged as real. We don’t need to denigrate our own poor to make ourselves feel better.
Great work and very thoughtful. I remember seeing this and the commentary and thinking it was all a very stark illustration of the difference in Christian vs Nietzschean nobility. I wouldn't say pagan for the latter, since even a heathen Roman like Caesar understood that his high position was contingent on his being a benefactor; he was a patrician in the truest sense, a father. The Nietzschean nobleman, or the internet approximation of him, is a self-centered creature driven to dominate from a sense of inner weakness; he recoils from women like the one in the video because her own vulnerability is terribly comprehensible. Our society lacks fathers. This is the main thing everyone involved would benefit from more of most obviously, and the main thing any aspiring noble should aim to be for his people.
Astute observation. Yes, it does mark a distinct difference between Nietzschean and Christian ideas of nobility.
🗨 The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. ~~Edward Gibbon
A tangent yet too clever to miss any slight opportunity to call back 🤸
Good quote...
That is a big assumption you make. And I am not sure why dating her is the proper standard of help and care.
You have grossly misread the point(s) I was making in the piece, reading your own biases and preconceived notions about what you are sure that I meant rather than reading what I actually said. I don’t think I once discussed whether or not you should date or marry this woman.
Again, you make a lot of assumptions.
I spent some time in a trailer park, as my folks were down and out and couldn’t afford much else.
Fast forward to the age of Twitter, and I get drive by attacks from various dissident accounts either accusing me of being a communist, for discussing things from a wage laborer perspective, or from real whack jobs, who believe everything is about race and the fact I never discuss things in those terms makes me a traitor to the cause.
This was a great essay, Kruptos, and the reactions you received to that tweet were illustrative of the fact that so many dissident rightoids are just as much the same as the LibTards they spend so much energy critiquing.
Thanks! It means a lot coming from you. And your observations are spot on. The right is a hot mess for various reasons. Being “edgy” is not the same thing as having a meaningful and coherent worldview. And I say that as someone who tries to practice the idea of “no enemies to the right.” A lot of people need to see the handwriting on the wall and know what time it is (mixing metaphors and everything!).
Thank you
Puts me in mind of a picture I use often of where we are. That the flood waters are rising and most are tripping over others in their rush not to get caught, whilst the Galilean seems to be headed down into the chaotic flood . . .
Yes. Well said.
Once I took a trip on Amtrak across much of rust belt, it was off schedule so we moved slowly, slaloming between freight trains. But gave me opportunity to really take in a snapshot of small town America as we rolled past.
Clearly I noted these formerly thriving towns had been all hit hard by something, cultural, economical…something seismic. Boarded-up store fronts in most, a listless woman stumbling in middle of an otherwise deserted street wearing pajamas midday in one, vacant lots and sun bleached signs, yards unkempt, architectural flourishes rotting off stately Queen Anne houses. Factories shuttered, old mills rusting away. Trailers in parks or on their own lots were common...many in a state of disrepair.
These people didn’t choose this destiny for their hometowns, forces external shaped most of these outcomes. This was, intentional or not, the outcome of decades long trade/labor policy that put the well being of a select few elites (and their aligned interests) ahead of the stability and economic security of our fellow citizens. Crippling thousands of small communities along the way. These towns looked not unlike the most dysfunctional crime ridden urban ward apart from the obvious demographic differences.
And I noticed something (on this trip and others) common between destabilized urban ghettos I’ve worked in and these otherwise Norman Rockwellian towns. Much of the problems with family formation, chronic fatherlessness, directionless et al. Is substantially due to a lack of meaning which accompanies stable economic prospects. In other-words, a unifying purpose. For multiple generations men in particular have been robbed of an ability to support a wife and children, to be seen as a viable spouse and breadwinner. Kids being kids they still are driven by natures impulses, producing babies...but the fathers not serving a purpose beyond insemination often fall out of the picture as census surveys suggest.
When I see purple haired face tattooed 20-30 year olds throwing rocks at store fronts or shining lasers in the eyes of cops, or ODing in the street, I ask myself Why aren’t they working? Why don’t they have jobs? Why don’t they have children at home to attend to? To me it’s pretty clear they have no skin the game, nothing they can work towards, nothing to build, no young family, no career with purpose, nothing. Not to say it’s singularly an economic issue, there is a spiritual aspect as well as you note with the cultural influences steering them towards ruinous decisions, but self reliance begins with ability to afford the basics.
These folks are lost and they deserve better. They are our fellow countrymen and those of us who are at a different level owe it to them to see that they have opportunities in which they can contribute in whatever ways their skills and abilities allow at wages not manipulated by parasitic off-shoring of industries or mass immigration (legal or illegal).
This is a phenomenal piece you wrote. A piece that succinctly outlines our unfortunate reality and the daunting task before us. (Full disclosure: in college I lived in a trailer home for a few weeks one summer. Many good people there.)
Very perceptive observation. You have captured it well.
This hit me rite in tha feelz. I grew up in a trailer park, raised by a single mom.
Thanks! Glad it resonated with you.
Just a couple of recent illustrative examples of abject failure to account for disparate realities/viewpoints (myself guilty as charged in second case 😒):
#1 charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/the-upside-down-privilege-narrative/comment/18256973
#2 www.nojesuits.com/p/rest-area-rules (be sure to check out the illuminating comments)
When you quoted Psalms, that gave me goosebumps. I saw your original tweet and read it as such, and the ensuing revelations where she fell from the symbolic to the concrete was painful. I think a lot of women harp on it because of the same phenomena as the educated harping on the trailer park bound, the distance is uncomfortably close. Whatever grand achievement it is to be pure and traditional these days, you are blessed if you manage it, and should be humbled if you are. As ever your take on it based on Christianity is a breath of fresh air in the nobility discourse, and all the praise I have seen for this article before reading it, gives me hope.
Thank you! That is high praise indeed. There is a real need to challenge the philosophical foundations of our society, to expose how they have corrupted the Christian faith and then to begin challenging them without losing who we are as Christians. You don’t have to be an existentialist to have integrity (authenticity) and you don’t have to be an egalitarian to care about the downtrodden. In fact it’s better if you are not, even if having that discussion makes people uncomfortable.
Outstanding article, Kruptos! I’m praying that the Lord not only help me to view the world differently, but to know what action I can take.
Thanks!
Great piece. The reference to John 4 and Psalm 72 struck a poignant point with me. You are spot on when you say a flourishing society is built from the bottom up. And we see this throughout the Bible. The Psalms and the Prophets constantly make reference to helping the widow and the orphan, to giving to the poor to ease their burdens. Jesus also harps on this throughout his ministry, constantly telling his disciples and followers to give what they have to help the poor. After reading your piece, it reminded me of this theme and makes me realize God knew what He was doing. If the people at the bottom suffer, society does too. Until the right realizes this, we’ll stay stuck in our own abstraction, as you say. Well done man.
Thanks! God always knows what he is doing! And there is such opportunity there to forge a dynamic powerful bond of loyalty as well between and leader and led if they know that by following their lives will actually be made better by so doing. It can be done.
It’s easy to go to Africa, “do some good” and head back home leaving the Africans behind. Much harder to minister to the folks next door because they will still be there next week and the week after that; and they know my faults.
Written as I prepare to leave this week for a short term trip to Ecuador too aware that I have the potential to do more harm than good.
Yes, that is so true. And often they are hard to help as well. These things are not always easy. But helping them also makes them more human and harder to revile as well.
Yes, that is it exactly. I do think you are correct that we try to solve the problems in Africa because we don’t want to see the problems in our own backyard. Not that they can ever be “solved” in world where there is still sin and evil. But they should be faced and acknowledged as real. We don’t need to denigrate our own poor to make ourselves feel better.