Despairing of America

Striking a very different note from Richard S. here, Jeff W. writes:

My sense of things is that E Pluribus Unum is now dead. In order for it to work, the flow of immigrants would have had to have been strictly limited in numbers, and the immigrants would have had to have been assimilable.

Now, however, after 40 years of third-world immigration and open borders, E Pluribus Unum is dead. The black community will never become one with the white community. The Muslims will not assimilate, nor will many of the Hispanics. An ideal dies when no one believes in it anymore, and no one can anymore believe in the ideal of E Pluribus Unum. Up until recently, there may still have been some deluded believers, but I sense that they have now been disillusioned by events.

Now that E Pluribus Unum is dead, Americans can give their full attention to internecine tribal warfare in its various forms, and that is what is next on the American agenda.

LA replies:

Well this is very downbeat. Instead of just giving up to a future of tribal warfare, with white Americans being one of the tribes, how about aiming at the possibiliy that the 65 percent white majority, or, at least, the 33 percent more-conservative half of the white majority, pushing to restore Euro-centric, Anglo-conformityAmerica, and those who don’t like it may then start to gravitate back to their native/ancestral countries? In this connection, let’s remember that many naturalized citizens still have citizenship in their native countries.

Instead of seeing whites as nothing more than a tribe among other tribes (the typical paleocon way of seeing things), how about seeing whites as leaders aiming to take charge in their own land?

Rick Darby writes:

I can’t remember what Jeff W. has written to you in the past, but he seems to be ostensibly on the side of a Euro-centric America. So his statement is particularly counterproductive, far more disturbing than anything coming from the New York Times and other multi-culti indoctrination units.

What I saw in Washington on September 12 was a million or so arguments against his defeatism. Those people on Pennsylvania Avenue and the Capitol weren’t beaten-down mopes making a last stand. They were proud and determined, aggressive in a civil way. I won’t claim they represented an overwhelming majority of the country; I can’t honestly say, like some others reporting on the scene, that all classes and races were present according to their proportion of the population. We all know this is a deeply divided nation. But I saw a positive force in action, people drawing strength from one another.

Jeff, don’t count us down and out yet. Life is full of surprises. The future is not a mere extrapolation of the present.

LA replies:

Among Jeff W.’s recent comments are his hopeful comment here about a possible reversal of the West’s downward course (very different in mood from his comment today), and his dynamite restatement of Rose’s four stages of nihilism, in this entry.

You write:

“The future is not a mere extrapolation of the present.”

That is a truth that people constantly need to be reminded of.

Richard P. writes:

In the “Despairing of America” thread you said this:

“…and those who don’t like it may then start to gravitate back to their native/ancestral countries? In this connection, let’s remember that many naturalized citizens still have citizenship in their native countries.”

Technology may be about to handle much of that for us. There’s been much made over the loss of manufacturing jobs over the last 20 years. What many people fail to realize is that most of those job losses weren’t from offshoring or foreign outsourcing—they were lost due to automation. The rapid increases in computing power along with decreases in cost have made it possible. This is a process that is speeding up.

Many of the low skill jobs that have been done by immigrants in agriculture and food processing are about to disappear over the next few years. What are they going to do when there are no more jobs in orchards or meat packing plants? The construction jobs aren’t coming back in a big way for a decade or more because we are overbuilt for our current population growth. Many of the call center jobs that are heavily staffed by immigrants will disappear as voice recognition software improves. It’s much cheaper to maintain a server than hire a person to sit on a phone.

I’ve seen estimates recently that more than a million immigrants have left the U.S. in the past year because of the collapse in available jobs. Here in the Southwest this has started a downward spiral for immigrant enclaves. The construction and landscaping workers can’t find jobs, so they leave. The businesses that catered to them are losing money and shutting down. Earlier in the year there were lots of local news stories about the hard times for businesses that catered to Hispanic immigrants. Those news stories have pretty much ended, probably in part because of the schadenfreude expressed by their viewers.

If we see the adoption of an “assimilate or leave” attitude by many Americans, combined with a tight economy and increasing automation of low skilled jobs, then the exits are likely to be crowded.

LA replies:

“What are they going to do when there are no more jobs in orchards or meat packing plants?”

Can automation replace human labor in meat packing or fruit picking?

“Many of the call center jobs that are heavily staffed by immigrants will disappear as voice recognition software improves.”

This also seems doubtful to me.

September 17

Jeff W. writes:

In response to what has been said about the demise of E Pluribus Unum, I shall make a few brief points:

The American Project has consisted of two main tasks. One is to create a new, unified nation out of disparate tribal and ethnic groups. The other is to create and maintain an elected, non-abusive government that works on behalf of the people. The first part can now be described as “failed.” The second part can now be described as “mainly failed,” because our current government, while still elected, is now abusive and works on behalf of government insiders, rather than the people, as the vast majority of governments throughout human history have done. Americans are exceptional because they have attempted to perform simultaneously these two nearly impossible tasks.

The unity of the American people has had its ups and downs. Americans felt unified in the 1820s, the Era of Good Feeling. In the 1860s there was murderous disunity. In the 1950s it again appeared that Americans were a unified people. Today we are again separated into hostile tribal groupings.

In confirmation of my thesis, I saw a black woman walking down the street yesterday who wore a T-Shirt that said “UNITE AND CONQUER” in large capital letters. The unity she seeks is of anti-whites, not of the nation as a whole.

In opposition to a united, anti-white coalition of tribes, it obvious that whites must also unite. That will be difficult. Whites are not naturally unified, as this linked map of cultural areas shows. Moreover the people in the Yankee group, in particular, would much rather ally themselves with the anti-whites than to ally themselves with Midland or Southern racist rednecks. Who in their right mind wants to be on the side of loser racist rednecks? The anti-white strategy of divide and rule is working very well.

I used to think that a Christian majority might prevail and bring unity. But as Mr. Auster has rightly pointed out, real Christians are always a small minority who fit through a strait gate. Thus the real, believing Christians will never have a majority of votes. The anti-white Democratic party is at least as much anti-Christian as it is anti-white. Traditional believing Christians are systematically excluded from its leadership ranks.

Under Obama’s leadership, the anti-whites are feeling confident. They know that they are now a majority in the youngest age group, that of children under five years old. They know how open borders policies are changing the ethnic mix. Last weekend Obama did not even feel it necessary to acknowledge the existence of a huge demonstration by white taxpayers.

A central task for those who still believe in the American Project is to figure out how to revive a unifying spirit. Under what principles and in what spirit can Americans unify? At this late date is national unity even possible? I believe that Americans probably cannot unify again except after much bloodshed.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 16, 2009 02:20 PM | Send