What started with tiki torches and fisticuffs has now escalated to gunfire. The Left has martyrs in Kenosha; the Right mourns its fallen Portland hero; both sides have vowed revenge. Government officials have proven unable or unwilling to stop three months of violence. The upcoming elections will inevitably leave half the nation convinced the other guys cheated. We cannot yet say when the fighting will end or how high the final body count will rise. We can no longer pretend it will pass us by.
Many on all sides have compiled enemy lists. I am on several: if you are reading this there is a good chance you are on one or two. Before this is over I expect to see quite a few of those names crossed out. I also expect a fair number of innocents will be written off as collateral damage. Wealthy powerful people have spent four years trying to start a Second American Civil War. They will not be slowed by humanitarian concerns. For them we are either tools to be used or obstacles to be cast aside.
While they worked for war, I spent four years seeking a way to peace. I did not expect to succeed. Reason has rarely held back the mad wind that smells of blood and whispers vengeance. Where I could I worked to undo their evil. What I could not undo I exposed. I came to know the Shadow the way partisans understand the occupier. I watched my people’s acquiescence with a partisan’s mingled pity and disgust. I mapped the enemy’s strengths and searched for cracks in its armor. And like every partisan I learned the value of loyalty, honor and choosing the right battles.
We did not vote for this war. We will not vote our way out of it. A few get to change history, but most of us just endure it. Some of you will be fighting alongside me; some will be fighting against me; some will be caught in the crossfire. The revolution may not be televised but it will certainly be livestreamed. And as that bloody whispering wind rises to a howl, I offer my friends and foes some thoughts on where we go from here.
A fragmented populace can be controlled more easily than a unified nation. Our enemy’s game plan can be sussed out by watching the conflicts they support and the ways in which they enflame them. For the past several years we have seen continuous attacks on “White Supremacism.” These attacks have been trumpeted by mainstream media like CNN and the New York Times and lavishly-funded “alternative” outlets like Slate, Vox and Buzzfeed. This seems curious, given that most of the people running these publications and writing these articles look White.
Further analysis reveals these attacks come with both a carrot and a stick. The prosperous White people reading these articles are encouraged to “own their privilege” and fight “White Supremacists” who support Donald Trump. Vandalizing cars with Trump stickers, DOXXing Trump donors, attacking children wearing MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN hats — all are fair game in fighting White Supremacism. The only thing these publications despise more than Donald Trump is his voting base.
Since George Floyd’s death we have seen increasing vitriol aimed at police officers. There have been calls to defund the police, disband the police and kill the police. Police officers have been branded the foot soldiers of White Supremacism, a sadistic militia waiting for some Karen to sic them on an innocent Black birdwatcher. Across the country police departments have been ordered to stand down in the face of hostile mobs. Cities have burned while Fortune 500 companies cheered the arsonists.
This is not to say that Donald Trump is a good or even a competent President, or that police brutality should be ignored. Neither are these the only hallmarks of White Supremacism. Like most expressions used in political discourse nowadays, “White Supremacism” has become for most a synonym for “things I don’t like.” But the fighting in this culture war has largely been aimed at the Trump administration, police and the working-class White people who look favorably on both.
Our enemy’s battle plan would have Trump deposed, police defunded and working-class White people rotting away after a desperate last Boogaloo. You may think this a great plan or a horrible plan. But have you thought about what our enemy hopes to accomplish — or what you want to accomplish?
Defunded police departments pave the way for an increasingly popular option, privatized police forces. In 2014 the Beverly Hills School District paid $1.4 million for 18 months of private armed security. Private security forces patrol the French Quarter of New Orleans and many shopping malls and superstores. As murder rates continue to rise across urban America, more and more people will cry out for a solution. Where there is a market you can always find somebody ready to profit from it. And where there are fat public contracts, you can be sure cash-filled envelopes will weigh heavier than community satisfaction or safety.
Whole swaths of American cities have burned in these protests. Many small shops caught between lockdowns and looting will not reopen. COVID-19 has resulted in a great wealth transfer from family businesses to major corporations like Amazon and Walmart. Those burned-out storefronts will be replaced with Dollar Stores and payday loan centers if they are replaced at all. There are many homes for sale in riot-torn cities. Most will be grabbed up by slumlords. Some will be torn down for projects that never get completed. The rest will stand empty as a politician’s promise. There will be money spent on “revitalization” projects, perhaps a great deal of money. Very little will trickle down to you.
If this is a Color Revolution — and it is — you can expect your anger to be stoked for so long as it works toward regime change. Once Trump is removed or it becomes clear that he is staying in office, that anger will serve no further purpose. If 2021 brings a hard economic downturn — and it will — you will bear the brunt of any austerity measures. I have seen the fate of my people in Appalachia and the Rust Belt. Surely you don’t believe they have any more concern for the well-being of poor Black folks? Color Revolutions promise free societies but deliver free trade. And when globalists fund your revolution, the first thing they do upon gaining control is work to stamp out any flavor of nationalism. Including yours.
City folks don’t pay a lot of attention to what they call “Flyover Country.” They drink water pumped from its aquifers. They eat food grown in its soil. They power their offices and homes with electricity generated in its power stations. But they care little for its endless fields of grain and fracking wells, or for its people with their dirty fingernails and aching backs. To them Flyover Country is a foreign land of wide open spaces and narrow minds. They would just as happily fill the place with robots if it meant their bellies stayed full, their lights stayed on and their lawns stayed green.
Alas, Flyover Country isn’t filled with robots. It is filled with small towns and trailer parks and people who used to have jobs. The factories and mills which once dotted its landscape are thinner on the ground now and the family farms largely swallowed up by agricultural conglomerates. But those outmoded farmers and surplus workers stubbornly refuse to vanish or to get with the program. As Barack Obama infamously put it in 2008, “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.“
Obama wasn’t wrong about the guns and religion. Flyover Country has both in abundance. Churches provide much-needed spiritual, moral and material support. They also serve as social centers where people can catch up on local affairs and organize against threats. Because hunting is a way of life in much of Flyover Country, many of those churchgoers have been shooting since they were children. Because enlistment has always provided an escape from poverty, many also have military training. This experience has made them less prone to chest-thumping than many keyboard warriors. It also makes them considerably more dangerous should they feel the need to take up arms. And right now many of those armed churchgoers are feeling very threatened indeed.
City folks are vaguely aware that Flyover Country is big. Most of them have never seen a thunderstorm rolling in on an Oklahoma horizon or driven for a day through midwestern corn fields. Policing America’s heartland would be as challenging as controlling the Russian steppes and taking the Appalachians would make Afghanistan look like a cakewalk. We cannot police every high-tension line on our electrical grid; we cannot watch every mile of pipeline; we cannot watch every mile of highway for IEDs or snipers. A Flyover Insurgency will not attack monuments, it will attack infrastructure. It will not protest outside the homes of hated officials, it will visit them in the night. And it will not be appeased by slogans or corporate contributions.
Your urban marches were tolerated and even encouraged by people with their own agendas. When you began moving outside those zones you encountered people carrying guns. If you come back carrying guns, you will come under fire. The lines have been drawn and will only be redrawn in blood. The only reason integration didn’t spark a second civil war is because everybody knew that sumbitch LBJ was crazy enough to nuke Birmingham. Donald Trump is no LBJ. Neither are Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris.
Our mutual enemy has profited from this chaos and seeks to profit further. They see us as an obstacle and you as a tool. Soon you will be an obstacle too. They would benefit from our differences. I would see us find our commonalities. Many of us on all sides are Christians of varying denominations and degrees of observance. While we differ on points of theology we share a common moral and ethical structure. That structure underlies Western Civilization: it will be a foundation upon we can rebuild our corner of a fallen America.
I stand beneath the Cross and I kneel before the King. If you kneel beside me, you are my brother in Christ. If you do not, you are still possessed of an immortal soul made in the image of God. Your life, like every human life, is sacred from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. I am never allowed to take an innocent life for any reason; I must go to war only when all peaceful means of resolution have failed; I must make every effort to spare non-combatant lives. I cannot promise you that everybody on my side will abide by these ideals. I can promise you that I will.
America is blessed with an abundance of land, water and resources. Once it was also blessed with hope. Today there’s a decided hope scarcity. We have taken our pain out on each other and mistaken our anger for power. But anger without hope only brings destruction. There are old grudges which separate us. The longer this conflict continues, the more new grudges we will add. We are all angry with a righteous rage. Let us turn it together toward a righteous target. We all hope for peace. Let us sit down together and build that peace.
Europa’s Children 