Brother Against Brother, Father Against Son By Walrus.

This is sad but predictable, a son informs on his father to the FBI. The father is allegedly a Capitol demonstrator.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/teenager-hiding-capitol-riots-jackson-reffitt-b1792474.htmlhttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/teenager-hiding-capitol-riots-jackson-reffitt-b1792474.html

This child identified as a social justice warrior and has destroyed his family.

My opinion is that identity politics, the toxic spawn of modern marketing, electronic media and bad academic research, is going to destroy current American society. What will replace it I know not.

People are no longer satisfied to identify themselves as "merely" Americans or Australians for that matter. We have always done so in the past. It is possible to have sub categories, like Californian, Virginian, Southerner, etc. but in my view there was always a primacy of national identity. I say "merely" and "was" because todays youth are encouraged to identify (ie: label) themselves as for example: "Cis hetero male(for the time being) anti racist feminist vegan climate change warrior". I have a big problem with this.

The problem is that labels constrain our thinking and attitudes to a set compatible with the identified self image. My example person is a globalist because climate change is an international problem. He (she?) can be mobilized to support any Government policy quite easily by couching the argument in terms that resonate with the chosen labels. For example "responsibility to protect" resonates with the human rights crowd and this one - LBGT Kurds indeed!

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/in-isis-shadow-lgbt-kurds-take-a-stand_b_594e9b08e4b0c85b96c659d2

Can you see the problem? We are divided, manipulated and ruled by this crap. Nobody is talking about Americans as a national identity any more. That means that American solutions to problems won't do. Every policy is picked over by the identities to ensure their pet requirements are met. The end is no policy at all or a jumbled mess of conflicting rubbish. For example Bidens order regarding identified gender. How do you now provide "safe spaces" for abused women and children when a man decides he now "identifies" as a woman and claims right of access? How do you tell a vegan environmentalist that the grain crops he extols are protected by poisoning every living thing: birds, small mammals, etc. within a hundred miles?  That doesn't resonate with him(her) because she(he) isn't labeled as an animal lover. There are many more examples.

There are two options. You either dump the identity politics or it will dump you. Focus on National identity or watch the Nation fragment further. The purveyors of labeling have forgotten one thing; other people can make up labels too. What happens if  the current "deplorables" relabel themselves as "Patriots and freedom fighters" and social justice warriors are relabeled as "Traitors"?

If I was advising the Biden Administration, I would be throwing the extreme left under the bus politically, disowning Antifa and BLM, ordering the FBI and DOJ to back off the "domestic terrorist extremist" shtick, stop the persecution of Trump and his family, forget about firearm regulation and generally doing everything it can to defuse the current situation by bringing the deplorables into the tent. Jackson Reffitt is a sad example of where this country is headed if Biden fails to do this.  

Comments

[Barbara Ann]

Artemesia

I am truly sorry to hear of the estrangement of your children.

Jimmy_W

Yugoslavia and the USSR? I don't see how the post war(s) construction of this state and super state have much in common with the USA's foundation.

In thinking of the centrifugal forces at work in America, I think it is useful to cite the most obvious counter example of a state which is at pains to cultivate, nurture & preserve its cultural & national integrity; the Russian Federation. Among other things, its newly amended constitution defines marriage as between a man and a woman, bars non-Russian citizens from all high offices and gives precedence to Russian law over international law. It is no accident that this is happening at a time when President Putin can clearly see what is happening to the victors of the Cold War.

It can be done. At least Russia is trying to save itself in the face of the woke neoliberal & corporate globalist onslaught. But by and large politicians in the West simply lack the will (& vision) to save their countries. They have relegated themselves to overseers of the deck chair arrangements as the iceberg looms ever larger.

Perhaps someone will arise who has an adequacy of both vision and will. As others have said here, Trump was the easy way to save America what comes next will be the hard way.

[Jose]

“The purpose of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is to destroy the old culture. You cannot stop us!”
An unnamed Red Guard, 1966

Sadly, we have arrived at a point of no return.

There no way to save America as long as we practice identify politics.

We live in America, not Wokekonda.

Guess who the Red Gaurd is...

[Walrus]

Jimmy_W

Yes, I understand the mechanism of fragmentation, but you haven't mentioned the other side of the coin - the creation and growth of a national identity in the first place. It does not happen automatically either.

This is generally accepted, I think, as arising from great transformative events that result in a majority of the population sharing certain experiences: a religious uprising, war, migration and disaster. What arises then are shared values and cohesion.

When I was growing up, a high proportion of the population had the shared experience of WWII and to a lesser extent WWI. There were a lot of shared values which permeated society. Not so today.

Another good example is Germany - before say, 1870, Germany was a patchwork of principalities, many of which were a byword for laziness, backwardness and corruption. Yet 65 years later it becomes a monolith, single minded, intelligent and capable.

[Walrus]

Jerseycityjoan,

I disagree with you. Jackson Reffitt has destroyed his family as surely as if he had executed each of them, in a badly thought out action that defines the rest of his life. There are two aspects to this.

Most importantly, the basis of family is TRUST which is a two way thing. Jackson has destroyed that completely. No one can trust him and most likely the other members of the family can no longer trust each other. They are no longer a family, period.

Secondly, what is in the reports and documents are allegations and the FBI have a record of being highly inventive. This also comes back to trust. I say things to my wife and kids that I would never expect to be repeated outside the family and should be forgotten. We all say things that do not bear repeating, for example our personal opinion of certain Politicians and what we would like to do with them. However no one expects a kid to run to the FBI when his father suggests that a certain president should be hanged.

Furthermore law enforcement have a habit of building cases. They will go through the Reffitt family in detail and will find other things, misdemeanors and suchlike which will be used creatively to bolster their story-line.

[james]

Artemesia

I am also truly sorry to hear of the estrangement to your children... that is unfortunate and i hope it reverses itself before long... everyone loses in this arrangement and some wisdom must prevail beyond an attachment to narrow ideologies..

[JerseyJeffersonian]

Artemisia,

I am sorry to hear of your own children shunning you. Kahlil Gibran was correct - in theory - that childen are not your property or chattel, but this was to counter the views of others who actually believed this to be so, and acted in this manner. It is the duty of the parent to provide guidance, and to help shape the character of their children, however, and doing so insufficiently in the face of the indoctrination (not too strong a word) found in those corrupted institutions known as schools was likely an error, not out of malice, certainly, but out of a misplaced respect for the ability of your children to resist the indoctrination when they were being barraged.

And then, when they are in debt bondage (they start them young, both for profit potential and for future political leverage), in the workplace they feel themselves compelled to conform, or risk their careers and their ability to provide for their families, even if they had second thoughts. But those are too expensive once they have signed the contract, even were they disposed to question. In their minds, serving the globalist agenda is mandatory, for reasons of belief or necessity.

It's a shameful thing. My heart goes out to you. Bear up as best you may.

[TonyL]

Walrus,

I agreed with a lot of what you said.

However, you've failed to follow your own advice. "extreme left" is just a label you gave to people who don't agree with your conservative viewpoint.

And nobody identifies himself as "Cis hetero male" anywhere except on internet social sites where that label is useful in a social/sexual viewpoint context.

[Jimmy_W]

Fred,
People like Fukuyama and others (and Marx) thought that we Humanity had escaped the cyclic curse of History. That Ideology can transcend and replace Religion and Ethnicity. Hence USSR/Yugoslavia, as example of our Ideological-Imperial Hubris.

Blood remains thicker than water.

[Jimmy_W]

Paradoxically, the "Woke Religion" is the only way they can hold together their Diversity Multi-Culty coalition.

A more culturally homogeneous group can rely on its shared heritage for trust. A Diversity Coalition, on the other hand, has to be ideologically more didactic. That ideological uniformity, and attendant show-trials, is the only way they can maintain organizational coherence.
And therefore, they are more vulnerable to crises.

Centripetal forces can be endogenous and exogenous. Scapegoat is a time-tested way to bond together.

[optimax]

Americans can be very stupid. I see it all the time. This video of the pileup on ice in Fort Worth is a kinetic example of drivers traveling with no thought of their environment. As stupid as the Capitol transgressors. I hope the Republicans show videos of last summers riots burning buildings, looting and injurying police interspersed with encouraging words from Nancy, Waters and plenty more. They need good propagandists, the left has the best. People sleep-woking into destruction, living in a virtual world.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/M69zm6DjCXMQ/

[Fred]

Jimmy W,

"Scapegoat is a time-tested way to bond together."

Certainly it has not escaped your attention that the cultural marxists have moved to the view there are only victims and oppressors and that one must be loyal first to one's race. Thus the 'diversity coalition' bonds together by scapegoating the founders of the Republic - based upon their race - and all their decendents, as 'oppressors'.

[blue peacock]

My viewpoint is that identity politics including the left-right frame are primarily meant to divide and distract those on the losing end of the power deal.

My economic research leads me to conclude that the shift began decades ago towards more concentration and financializiation of the economy. It really began accelerating during the Reagan presidency and went into over-drive with full thrusters since the Bill Clinton administration when Wall St completely took over both the executive and legislative branches. The Trump administration did not apply any brakes either.

In this context Judith Stein's book "Pivotal Decade - How the United States traded factories for finance in the seventies" is well worth a read.

https://twitter.com/michaelxpettis/status/1359506447999115267?s=20

This transition to "finance capitalism" and now unprecedented economic concentration which has led to capture of the political, governmental & judicial system was aided and abetted by both the "left" and the "right". Yes, the "socialists" and "conservatives".

This interview of finance capitalist Sir James Goldsmith and his debate with Clinton's chief economic advisor is so important, because there were critical voices in the 90s who rang the bell against the sellout. Yet the majority of the "left" and "right" supported the sellout.

https://youtu.be/wwmOkaKh3-s

The Party of Davos have ramped up the "culture wars" precisely to prevent a reckoning of their unprecedented, at least in US terms, power grab. IMO, as long as the majority of the "losers" in this power war are distracted by identity and culture they will be unable to fight & overcome this extraordinary concentration of power. While today it appears the Maoist tendencies as Barbara Ann notes are directed towards "white supremacists" and "racists", we can be certain the pendulum will also swing and target other "identities" nominally associated with the "left" as that is precisely how authoritarians keep the "losing" populace from unifying against the common enemy.

[Artemesia]

Thank you for your kind thoughts, Barbara Ann, James, and JerseyJeffersonian.

The intersection between my personal experience and political goings-on is astonishing. The person functions within the political.

I have to admit, JerseyJeffersonian, that I practiced "misplaced respect for the ability of our children to resist the indoctrination," but even more, I trusted the schools. In the Catholic schools I attended the concept in loco parentis was emphasized. Reliance on the good intentions of those educators was a mistake, but it was an even greater, almost tragic mistake to fail to realize that our children were experiments in social engineering programs.

Again, thanks for your kind words.

Artemesia

[mcohen]

optimal

not one but two pileups

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-02-13/fuel-tanker-blast-at-afghan-iran-border-causes-massive-fire&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwivkKzP8-juAhVZbysKHSAxDhMQFjACegQIABAB&usg=AOvVaw2cu3dO3d3_h1rXmkIeUv4q">https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-02-13/fuel-tanker-blast-at-afghan-iran-border-causes-massive-fire&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwivkKzP8-juAhVZbysKHSAxDhMQFjACegQIABAB&usg=AOvVaw2cu3dO3d3_h1rXmkIeUv4q">https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-02-13/fuel-tanker-blast-at-afghan-iran-border-causes-massive-fire&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwivkKzP8-juAhVZbysKHSAxDhMQFjACegQIABAB&usg=AOvVaw2cu3dO3d3_h1rXmkIeUv4q

[English Outsider]

Artemesia -

Such a problem. The teachers have little choice but to inculcate the prescribed values. So if one points out that there are others they are forced into the position of classroom rebels. Or learn to despise their parents.

We were lucky. Found a school that didn't force any of that on the children. Respected the child's freedom to make up his or her own mind, as we did. But such schools are very rare. And in any case the media push current values and prejudices to such an extent that there's little free space for the children to grow up in. Sometimes one feels one is no longer living in a country. More in a vast social engineering project.

In a thoroughly dysfunctional one too. While we are chasing after or disputing vague notions of social justice or pursuing the various forms of identity politics, the very fabric of our countries is crumbling about our ears. There's little money for most of us in the financial engineering that now makes up the bulk of the takings of our economic elites. While we squabble about those notions the cronies, as ever, run off with the loot. Applauded by us, if they distract us with the right dog whistles, even as they reach further into our pockets and further consume the seed corn.

How does one tell those truths to those who have known nothing but those dog whistles?