(NC Scout / American Partisan) There’s few pleasures in life like having a conversation with an old friend. An intellectual equal, an open mind, and a counterpoise juxtaposed to any position I might hold. At least in some respects. Not a mental clone, and a radically different life philosophy than the one I live, replete with a well aged Che Guevara-turned-Guy Fawkes face inked on his upper arm. A free thinker and a beer drinker, an American original, and very much a product of a harsh upbringing. In another life he could have been leading any guerrilla force with a natural charisma and matching high intelligence; an insurgency’s wet dream and a security force nightmare. A person who recognizes the false charms of the Left, dangling Liberation in place of Liberty and begging you not to realize words have meaning. He’s an example of life on the eastern side of Appalachians.
It was a discussion on what freedom in America really even means anymore and what it will take to remain that way. Because it is a realization that we are indeed not free, that the world in which we reside has visibly chosen a path for us not to live but to die upon having no further utility to the machine. They don’t want you armed, they don’t want you thinking, and most importantly they do not want you on what they claim is theirs, as inheritors of the Earth. It begets a wonderful flow of questions, uncomfortable answers, and certainly interesting observations. When authority fails, that authority resorts to force.
To those brave left wingers cheering on airstrikes on civilians…
Many of us are trained in airfield seizure. (We train others, too…imagine that)
Best of luck. You’re going to need it. https://t.co/N8WdgPx4PC
— Brushbeater Actual (@Brushbeater) August 31, 2022
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A Guerrilla Movement must be reflective of the underlying culture which it seeks to preserve. I reflected upon my respect for the Afghan. In twenty years’ time, and perhaps forty, counting our exploitation of the Soviet misgivings, the West could never understand the Afghan puzzle. How can a people exist as a throwback to another time, absent the comfort we all come to know? Comfort to the Afghan serves two purposes; one, an outward showing of wealth, the other, a precursor to death. To the Afghan comfort leads to complacency, and at least in my experience, they sought simplicity. For all their failings as judged upon Western scales, they endure. Every aesthetic tells a generations-old story of what brought them to the present, and that story will carry their sons and grandsons forward generations more.
My old war rug I picked up in Kandahar. I’m reminded this morning of what we learn from our enemies through both losses and victories. pic.twitter.com/tqeYm1rOam
— Brushbeater Actual (@Brushbeater) August 31, 2022
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In America a great pain has been made to dilute the role of culture. We can no longer point to any one thing that is a cultural aesthetic, the last being the neon techno artwork of the 1980s. Not since then have we produced anything that can uniquely be identified as American, rather, we point to transnational corporate emblems as symbols of American culture. To the outside world its nothing more than a symbol of exploitation and oppression. But this culture was purposefully murdered, made to be called a ‘melting pot’, a cruel type of menagerie meant to establish a ruling hegemony while forcing out the competition. The old ways of Europe, those that cannot be commercialized, must be seen as rubeish, boorish, and backwards. Things to ridicule.
To a person that lives a steady diet of throwaway capitalism; McDonalds, Starbucks, Apple products, and Walmart; the very same traits exhibited at home are apostate. How can these rubes in their rural enclaves dare continue to exist against our metropolis? Clinging to their God, Guns and religion, how dare they. And that contemptful message of apostasy has given way to shades of genocide.
The people of a place, and thus the culture therein, creates the ecology of the Guerrilla. There are those pockets of cultural resistance in America, having borne the brunt of relentless attacks on its history and cultural significance. I frequently encounter these in my travels, training them to fight. One such is the Appalachian mountain region. Years ago in a conversation Dan Morgan made the observation, as an outsider, that the southern region of Appalachia was as clannish and buttoned up as any he’d ever encountered, paralleling his experience in Afghanistan, taking the better part of a decade to begin to build that fragile trust among the local populace. I chuckled, being intimately familiar with the anatomy of local politics. Those of the unelected kind. Those that are outwardly hostile to any unfamiliar face. These are protective measures to ensure the survival of culture. If you know, you know, or so its said, and if you’re fortunate enough to have been raised in such a culture you instantly understand.
I joking use the term Appalachistan, itself an internet meme among Afghanistan vets, to parallel this reality. I semi-jokingly refer back to another blood-soaked conflict, where a mountain people stared down a first world army that sought to crush them by force. And I only say semi based on the frequent comments people make describing my resemblance to those fighters in a faraway land. Replace Islam with Christianity and you have something of a mirror to the underlying culture of the region. The Chechen example is one that I’ve referenced again and again over the years because its parallel is uncanny to the reality we now face. Seen as backwards people constantly a problem for the ruling elite of both Tsarist and Soviet Russia, they were constantly subjected to genocides, forced relocations, conscription and brutal repression. And yet, the culture endured. The people bore the brunt of time and continued on. Those troubles never ended and thus they never will; struggle makes life worth living. Comfort is the absence of struggle.
The war in Chechnya came into full bloom amid the continuing financial crisis and fallout from the fall of the Soviet Union. The central authority had failed and resorted to force as a means of maintenance of power. When governments are questioned this is universally the case. Having a large number of Chechens who were veterans of the Soviet Afghan War. They knew the failings of Operation Magistral and the tone deaf lessons going unheard in the halls of Frunze. And, at least for a time, they won. Despite the lack of airpower and armor, but well armed with the prerequisite knowledge and understanding that preservation of culture lay upon their shoulders alone. That deafness cost Russia an entire Division of armor in the span of two days.
A disproportionate number of our youth went forward during the ignoble Global War On Terror. Seduced by fools promising small sums of money, we went forth, not in support roles, mind you, but as fighters. And while the luster of those combat awards have faded, it remains an epitaph of the knowledge painfully earned, from both our successes and our failures, in the process. A knowledge to be shared. The Taliban won, and we will too when pushed. We have a culture to be preserved, yours is failing.
Don’t threaten us.
Here you have a President threatening at least 50% of his fellow countrymen with military superiority. This man achieves new heights of idiocy daily. The winds of war are reaching hurricane strength, baton down the hatches my fellow Americans, these people are very dangerous.
The presidency of the USA reached a new low today with Biden’s threats. Undoubtably the left will say his speech showed a wonderful unity.
“Not since then have we produced anything that can uniquely be identified as American…”
– NC Scout
Oh yeah? What about Drag Qween Story Hour at the children’s library?
See, a sick-perverted-demonic and uniquely (Trotskyite)-American cultural aesthetic artform. Harrummph.
Excellent article.
We tried that once already. It was a state in the Appalachian Mountains in what is today eastern Tennessee called Franklin that was founded in 1784 and dissolved in 1790. Little known piece of American history. Had ancestors that lived there.
Refreshing
Outstanding insight, thank you for sharing.
Awesome and uplifting!, thank you!
I firmly believe had we actually tried to change thecAfghan peoples minds with The Word!,the Afghans themselves would see no more need for war!!
Killing just makes enemies!
War declaration tonorrow night??would not be surprised!
I have a tendency to believe people when they say they wish to do me harm……….
Had a mtn. house in Watauga Co., NC from 1988-2021. Did lots of work down in Wilkes & Caldwell Counties, as well as the surrounding mtn. counties. You don’t want to irrittate these people.
In unincorporated areas in Watauga County, NC, the sale of packaged alcoholic beverages is still prohibited. Skull Pop ain’t packaged.
Lived there from 1979-1985 the famous bumper sticker was ” A Polish Pope, and men on the Moon, but still no beer in Boone.” But their was plenty of shine!!!
The impact of tyranny is measured by the amount of fear and hypocrisy it generates.
If the White Man cannot find the way out of his “Brazilian Walmart”.
If the White Man is unable to distinguish beauty from ugliness.
If the White Man turns away from his ancestors and his gods.
If the White Man does not possess the survival instinct anymore.
Then he deserves to disappear. Because to withdraw from the stage in this fashion is GROTESQUE. It is unworthy of the Race of Titans.
There’s one thing I’m sure of, the fuse has been lit and its cord is not made to last 10 years. The Sorros, Schwabs, Gates and co. are getting old, arrogant and impatient. Their world is a utopia, an illusion. And above all they want to see their worldview come true WHILE THEY LIVE (what’s left to them), i.e. TRANSHUMANISM. For them it is nothing more or less than a RELIGION. But it’s already DEAD. Nature awaits her hour and her reply will be Dantesque.
Too much prosperity softens the body, poisons the mind and destroys the soul.
All people have a religion. The set of top shelf pre conceived tenets that you live by every
day. Some people just practice more devoutly.
Amen, Scout, There are also a few other cultural pockets as well. When the ventilator soon becomes shitty they will also come into sharper focus.
“…the West could never understand the Afghan puzzle. How can a people exist as a throwback to another time, absent the comfort we all come to know?”
“In America a great pain has been made to dilute the role of culture.”
Quigley Down Under (Georgetown was it?)’s great, as in big (so far, I just began it … it may prove out great in other ways, too) book:
Cultural Diffusion in Western Civilization
“We have said that the culture of a civilization is created in its core area originally & moves outward into peripheral areas which thus become part of the civilization. This movement of cultural elements is called ”diffusion” by students of the subject. It is noteworthy that material elements of a culture, such as tools, weapons, vehicles, & such, diffuse more readily & thus more rapidly than do the nonmaterial elements such as ideas, art forms, religious outlook or patterns of social behavior. For this reason, the peripheral portions of a civilization (such as Assyria in Mesopotamian Civilization, Rome or Spain in Classical Civilization, & the United States or Australia in Western Civilization) tend to have a somewhat cruder & more material culture than the core area of the same civilization.
Material elements of a culture also diffuse beyond the boundaries of a civilization into other societies, & do so much more readily than the nonmaterial elements of a culture. For this reason the nonmaterial & spiritual elements of a culture are what give it its distinctive character rather than its tools & weapons which can so easily be exported to entirely different societies. Thus, the distinctive character of Western Civilization rests on its Christian heritage, its scientific outlook, in humanitarian elements, & its distinctive point of view in regard to the rights of the individual & respect for women rather than in such material things as firearms, tractors, plumbing fixtures, or skyscrapers, all of which are exportable commodities.
The export of material elements in a culture, across its peripheral area & beyond, to the peoples of totally different societies has strange results. As elements of material culture move from core to periphery inside a civilization, they tend, in the long run, to strengthen the periphery at the expense of the core because the core is more hampered in the use of material innovations by the strength of past vested interests & because the core devotes a much greater part of its wealth & energy to nonmaterial culture. Thus, such aspects of the Industrial Revolution as automobiles & radios are European rather than American inventions, but have been developed & utilized to a far greater extent in America because this area was not hampered in their use by surviving elements of feudalism, of church domination, of rigid class distinctions (for example, in education), or by widespread attention to music, poetry, art, or religion such as we find in Europe. A similar contrast can be seen in Classical Civilization between Greek & Roman or in Mesopotamian Civilization between Sumerian & Assyrian or in Mayan Civilization between Mayan & Aztec.
The diffusion of culture elements beyond the boundaries of one society into the culture of another society presents quite a different case. The boundaries between societies present relatively little hindrance to the diffusion of material elements, & relatively greater hindrance to the diffusion of nonmaterial elements. Indeed, it is this fact which determines the boundary of the society, for if the nonmaterial elements also diffused, the new area into which they flowed would be a peripheral portion of the old society rather than a part of a quite different society.
The diffusion of material elements from one society to another has a complex effect on the importing society. In the short run it is usually benefited by the importation, but in the long run it is frequently disorganized & weakened. When white men first came to North America, material elements from Western Civilization spread rapidly among the different Indian tribes. The Plains Indians, for example, were weak & impoverished, before 1543, but in that year the horse began to diffuse northward from the Spaniards in Mexico. Within a century the Plains Indians were raised to a much higher standard of living (because of ability to hunt buffalo from horseback) & were immensely strengthened in their ability to resist Americans coming westward across the continent. In the meantime, the trans-Appalachian Indians who had been very powerful in the sixteenth & early seventeenth centuries began to receive firearms, steel traps, measles, & eventually whiskey from the French & later the English by way of the St. Lawrence. These greatly weakened the woods Indians of the trans-Appalachian area & ultimately weakened the Plains Indians of the trans-Mississippi area, because measles * whiskey were devastating & demoralizing & because the use of traps & guns by certain tribes made them dependent on whites for supplies at the same time that they allowed them to put great physical pressure on the more remote tribes which had not yet received guns or traps. Any united front of reds against whites was impossible, & the Indians were disrupted, demoralized, & destroyed. In general, importation of an element of material culture from one society to another is helpful to the importing society in the long run only if it is (a) productive, (b) can be made within the society itself, & (c) can be fitted into the nonmaterial culture of the importing society without demoralizing it. The destructive impact of Western Civilization upon so many other societies rests on its ability to demoralize their ideological & spiritual culture as much as its ability to destroy them in a material sense with firearms.” ~ Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, Carrol Quigley
Book came out 1966. “The West” understands all too well. And what it has “perfected” elsewhere has been deployed against the exoskeletal culture here at “home” … & for a long time, too.
Macroanalysis is fine. But the forest, as always, is made up of individual trees. It’s a mistake to macro-me (you know, knit one purl two, embroider, quilt, etc ) into monoliths – of one color or of rainbows. The biggest mistake, maybe.