"Cultural chaos" and loneliness
One of the most quoted political scientists over the last year or so is probably Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone. He noted, based on a five-year study on 'diversity', that
We all instinctively know this, at least if we have lived with ''diversity", especially governmentally-engineered and enforced diversity.
It tends to destroy communities in more ways than one, and the result is a balkanized congeries of mismatched people thrown together, but gravitating towards their own group as their primary social connection. With the increased immigration (and internal migration within our countries, as people shuffle around searching for a livable place), people have fewer ties to their communities, and often end up retreating within their own little cocoon surrounded by immediate family, if they are lucky, or in isolation, if they are single people living in impersonal urban areas.
Britain, of course, is being subjected to the same malevolent social engineering as we here in America are, but theirs seems to be proceeding pell-mell, perhaps because of the small size of their territory, and because of their more aggressively PC government. So this story surprises no one: Britain has become a lonelier place over the last 30 years
The brief article mentions immigration in passing, but seems to treat it as just one of many factors in the disintegration of the sense of community in Britain. The research seems a little shaky in the way in which they determine which cities are most lonely and which are least lonely, but one would expect that the big cities like London would be lonely places, just as most large urban areas can be lonely though crowded.
Overall, though, I don't doubt the conclusions.
One of the rather poignant comments on the Daily Mail website says:
Like so many Americans do, this commenter seems to turn this into a problem of partisan politics; 'Nulab' is being blamed, and no doubt deservedly so, as Labour is a socialist party and as multicultist as they come. However, just as in our country, both major parties are to blame, because both parties are cravenly politically correct.
The commenter refers wistfully to a time when ''there was no PC brigade."
If only this person would just take the next obvious step, and ask "WHY is there now a 'PC brigade?' " Obviously it's because Britain has been made into an artificially 'diverse' multiracial country, by mass immigration and preference given to all the protected people ''of color", those who have no ancestral ties to England or Britain.
Our country has had a small minority of nonwhites since its early days, first with the Indians who already lived here when our colonial ancestors arrived, and then with the African slaves who were imported here. We have had to struggle with racial conflicts since day one on this continent, though we had achieved a kind of impasse or a stable situation before Reconstruction, Part 2 began in the 1950s and 60s. Britain, apparently seized by similar racial guilt (perhaps because of colonialism, and incited further by leftist propaganda) imported ''diversity'' en masse in the mid-20th century. So now they have as much or more racial/ethnic conflict than we Americans have.
Hence the opportunity for the rise of the ''PC brigade", the sometimes official, sometimes self-appointed thought police who act to hunt down any potentially ''insensitive" or ''offensive'' words, thoughts or actions that might unfortunately disrupt the interracial harmony which supposedly should prevail in a 'diverse, multiracial' country.
Homogeneity means never having to say you're sorry. Diversity means the opposite.
And the "PC brigade" are the enforcers who make sure that ''offensive'' or potentially offensive words or ideas or opinions or feelings are stifled and discouraged, and that appropriate apologies and amends are made for any transgressions.
No diversity, no PC brigade needed.
When our countries were homogeneous, sure there were conflicts and differences between individuals and sometimes between groups of people. Friction happens, even in homogeneous countries. But where nobody is a 'protected victim' class or race, where everybody is truly more or less equal in the sense of claiming no special status or special considerations, we can all hash out our differences honestly, without someone dragging government sensitivity police into the picture. Now we cannot discuss our differences honestly or speak our minds freely, when certain groups are offered special protections against ''offense'' by the majority.
Too many of our people here in America as well as in Britain are aware of how badly wrong things have gone in the last several decades. Even people who were not born in the pre-PC days, or who were too young to remember it, have a sense that things are not what they should be in our country. But many will come just to the edge of acknowledging what is wrong, and draw back, because the "PC brigade'' has become an internal voice in many Western people's heads, warning us away from even approaching certain subjects, scolding us if we say the wrong words.
So commenters like our British cousin quoted above know that the PC enforcers are an oppressive and malign presence in all our lives, but they cannot go further and ask: 'Why political correctness? Why do we need 'thought police' and 'hate speech' laws and propaganda to drum the correct ideas into our heads?"
We need to become like little children in the sense of asking ''why?" all the time, rather than accepting an unacceptable state of affairs, and resigning ourselves to it as too many of us are prepared to do. Rather than accepting this present order of things as an inevitable, inescapable one, we have to ask why we suffer it, why we allow it to go on, why we fail to challenge it and question it and poke holes in it.
On this forum for English nationalists, we see our cousins are in much the same boat as we are, and some of them, fortunately, see through it all, and are resisting it. The thread is wryly titled: The country is a 'lonelier' place but it has nothing to do with immigration!
One commenter says:
All the above sounds familiar.
About a year and a half ago, Leo McKinstry wrote:
In this blog entry, the blogger, an American, bitterly laments what has become of his country, seeming to believe that the country as a whole, all of the American people, are lost, beyond redemption. [Caveat: profanity]
I empathize with what he is feeling; I've seen it happen in places that I've loved, and I am seeing the first signs of it in this place which has been relatively safe from it -- until recently. So I understand the anger and the near-despair, but I hope the blogger understands that his hometown or state is just one part of this vast country. Battles may be lost, and the war ultimately won, but not if we give way to despair.
He says:
Well, first I might advise him to stop reading so much Jim Kunstler -- whose blog name is one more example of a debased culture.
Kunstler, like so many of these libertarianish postmodern writers, does not seem to see any racial/ethnic dimension to the America that he too seems to bitterly lament and condemn. And I would advise the Oregon blogger, as several commenters did, to hightail it out of multicultural Oregon and find some corner where America still exists. Granted, that is getting increasingly hard to do, but it is possible, and once having found such a place, it's necessary to become like protagonist Miles Bennell in The Invasion of the Body-Snatchers and warn the unsuspecting townsfolk: ''You're next!" If they are awake and aware people, they will heed the warning -- but if not, they have already become ''pod people."
I suspect, though, that one's perspective of America varies according to one's presuppositions, and one's geographical and cultural vantage point. Those who have always been part of a 'diverse' or multicultural America as in the big coastal cities full of 'wretched refuse', cannot know the heartland American perspective, and they cannot be part of preserving the real America, as they've never known it nor do they feel any deep allegiance and loyalty to it.
No, it will fall to those of us who do have ties to the real America, that is, the old American people and their ways, to try to preserve what is left. Likewise, it will fall to those like the commenters on that English nationalist board to do what they can to rally and awaken their fellow Englishmen.
In another more recent piece, Leo McKinstry, quoted earlier, said of Britain:
How those who are intent on vilifying and destroying something which has taken centuries to create and build up can accuse others of ''hate'' is beyond me. If the desire to destroy and pull down, to call names and coerce, is not ''hate'' then I don't know what is.
Unthinking people often accuse those who feel as we do of being motivated by ''hate'' and ''fear". No; it's love that motivates us. Love of what was and what should be and what could be. Love of our ancestors and love of our children and grandchildren. Love of the land that generations of our sires tended and fought for, land which holds their mortal remains.
Least of all is it love for 'ideals' or 'proposition nations' that impels us.
And if our only response to what is being done to our countries is bitterness and resignation, then we must simply accept it and go on about our business, and acquiesce. However, if we truly love our people and our heritage, that is not an option. We must love enough to defend what is ours, what our ancestors created for us.
From this side of the Atlantic, I will be cheering on those ''happy few'' in England who care about their people and their heritage, and I pray they will prevail, rather than the forces of destruction which are at work on both sides of the Atlantic. And I hope and pray the same for us.
Are many of our people ''lonely", or are they simply homesick, homesick for a country that they once loved, but which they feel is no more?
Yes, I think even people who never knew the real America -- or the real England -- can be homesick for it. We all have that longing for a haven, a home, a place of peace, safety, and acceptance and understanding. A place where you can be yourself, be comfortable. A place where you belong and ''fit''.
We've been rendered, in effect, homeless by the leftist forces of destruction, we in the West, and it's no wonder that many of us are lost and disheartened.
But we needn't give up and give in.
We must not let the forces of destruction prevail.
“In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’—that is, to pull in like a turtle.”
The study found that regardless of which community was studied, the results were similar:
In the 41 sites Putnam studied in the U.S., he found that the more diverse the neighborhood, the less residents trust neighbors. This proved true in communities large and small, from big cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Boston to tiny Yakima, Washington, rural South Dakota, and the mountains of West Virginia.
[...]
Diversity does not produce “bad race relations,” Putnam says. Rather, people in diverse communities tend “to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.” Putnam adds a crushing footnote: his findings “may underestimate the real effect of diversity on social withdrawal.”
We all instinctively know this, at least if we have lived with ''diversity", especially governmentally-engineered and enforced diversity.
It tends to destroy communities in more ways than one, and the result is a balkanized congeries of mismatched people thrown together, but gravitating towards their own group as their primary social connection. With the increased immigration (and internal migration within our countries, as people shuffle around searching for a livable place), people have fewer ties to their communities, and often end up retreating within their own little cocoon surrounded by immediate family, if they are lucky, or in isolation, if they are single people living in impersonal urban areas.
Britain, of course, is being subjected to the same malevolent social engineering as we here in America are, but theirs seems to be proceeding pell-mell, perhaps because of the small size of their territory, and because of their more aggressively PC government. So this story surprises no one: Britain has become a lonelier place over the last 30 years
Britain is an increasingly lonely country where even our neighbours are strangers, research suggests.
The breakdown of family ties and more people moving around the country for jobs have contributed to a society without roots or ties.
Researchers say that the fragmentation of the UK started in the late 1960s, but has accelerated over the past decade,"
The brief article mentions immigration in passing, but seems to treat it as just one of many factors in the disintegration of the sense of community in Britain. The research seems a little shaky in the way in which they determine which cities are most lonely and which are least lonely, but one would expect that the big cities like London would be lonely places, just as most large urban areas can be lonely though crowded.
Overall, though, I don't doubt the conclusions.
One of the rather poignant comments on the Daily Mail website says:
...Nulab has ruined the fabric of this once great country. If only we could turn the clock back to the 1950s when people respected those in authority and there was no PC brigade.''
Like so many Americans do, this commenter seems to turn this into a problem of partisan politics; 'Nulab' is being blamed, and no doubt deservedly so, as Labour is a socialist party and as multicultist as they come. However, just as in our country, both major parties are to blame, because both parties are cravenly politically correct.
The commenter refers wistfully to a time when ''there was no PC brigade."
If only this person would just take the next obvious step, and ask "WHY is there now a 'PC brigade?' " Obviously it's because Britain has been made into an artificially 'diverse' multiracial country, by mass immigration and preference given to all the protected people ''of color", those who have no ancestral ties to England or Britain.
Our country has had a small minority of nonwhites since its early days, first with the Indians who already lived here when our colonial ancestors arrived, and then with the African slaves who were imported here. We have had to struggle with racial conflicts since day one on this continent, though we had achieved a kind of impasse or a stable situation before Reconstruction, Part 2 began in the 1950s and 60s. Britain, apparently seized by similar racial guilt (perhaps because of colonialism, and incited further by leftist propaganda) imported ''diversity'' en masse in the mid-20th century. So now they have as much or more racial/ethnic conflict than we Americans have.
Hence the opportunity for the rise of the ''PC brigade", the sometimes official, sometimes self-appointed thought police who act to hunt down any potentially ''insensitive" or ''offensive'' words, thoughts or actions that might unfortunately disrupt the interracial harmony which supposedly should prevail in a 'diverse, multiracial' country.
Homogeneity means never having to say you're sorry. Diversity means the opposite.
And the "PC brigade" are the enforcers who make sure that ''offensive'' or potentially offensive words or ideas or opinions or feelings are stifled and discouraged, and that appropriate apologies and amends are made for any transgressions.
No diversity, no PC brigade needed.
When our countries were homogeneous, sure there were conflicts and differences between individuals and sometimes between groups of people. Friction happens, even in homogeneous countries. But where nobody is a 'protected victim' class or race, where everybody is truly more or less equal in the sense of claiming no special status or special considerations, we can all hash out our differences honestly, without someone dragging government sensitivity police into the picture. Now we cannot discuss our differences honestly or speak our minds freely, when certain groups are offered special protections against ''offense'' by the majority.
Too many of our people here in America as well as in Britain are aware of how badly wrong things have gone in the last several decades. Even people who were not born in the pre-PC days, or who were too young to remember it, have a sense that things are not what they should be in our country. But many will come just to the edge of acknowledging what is wrong, and draw back, because the "PC brigade'' has become an internal voice in many Western people's heads, warning us away from even approaching certain subjects, scolding us if we say the wrong words.
So commenters like our British cousin quoted above know that the PC enforcers are an oppressive and malign presence in all our lives, but they cannot go further and ask: 'Why political correctness? Why do we need 'thought police' and 'hate speech' laws and propaganda to drum the correct ideas into our heads?"
We need to become like little children in the sense of asking ''why?" all the time, rather than accepting an unacceptable state of affairs, and resigning ourselves to it as too many of us are prepared to do. Rather than accepting this present order of things as an inevitable, inescapable one, we have to ask why we suffer it, why we allow it to go on, why we fail to challenge it and question it and poke holes in it.
On this forum for English nationalists, we see our cousins are in much the same boat as we are, and some of them, fortunately, see through it all, and are resisting it. The thread is wryly titled: The country is a 'lonelier' place but it has nothing to do with immigration!
One commenter says:
How can you have a Nation consisting of every race, creed, colour and Religion under the sun in one small place?
That is not a Nation, if Britain ever was a Nation in the first place, which i doubt, but again that is not a Nation, it is a melting pot of sperate ideas, Cultures and Identity's pulling in seperate directions, it is a melting pot of segregation, if not en-forced by the British Political System, then enforced by the seperate Ethnic Cultures and Identity's, who are for ever struggling against one another, that is not a nation, it is a very Volatile and dangerous mess of conflicting ideas and races, but it isn't a Nation.''
All the above sounds familiar.
About a year and a half ago, Leo McKinstry wrote:
The England that we cherished has disappeared. We can only raise our glasses to the memory of a once great country whose spirit has been broken by her own rulers, its fabric torn apart by social revolution.
The words of that stirring wartime song There’ll Always Be An England have acquired a tragic poignancy. For there is no longer a real England – not the England that was once renowned for its gentleness and humour, its decency and sense of history, its rich language and inspiring landscape.
The relics of our past are still around us – such as the monarchy or the village green –‑but they have been robbed of all meaning and vitality, becoming little more than heritage landmarks in a place without a soul.
The country of Shakespeare echoes to the babble of a thousand foreign tongues. The land of Elgar is held hostage by the thud of the rapper’s boom-box. The stiff upper lip has been replaced by the wail of victimhood. A land that used to be known for its lack of crime is now scourged by gang violence, shootings and stabbings.
[...]
My sense of connection, so powerful 20 years ago, has become frayed. I increasingly feel as if I am living in a foreign land, having nothing in common with large numbers of my fellow citizens – not even a language or a shared set of values.
When I go to parts of London, Manchester or Birmingham I am struck by a sense of being in the Third World, with all its attendant chaos and tension. This is not the England that I once loved.
Yet I am told by Government and civic institutions that I am not allowed to harbour such dangerous sentiments. Instead, I should be overjoyed at the changing face of our country.''
[Emphasis mine]
In this blog entry, the blogger, an American, bitterly laments what has become of his country, seeming to believe that the country as a whole, all of the American people, are lost, beyond redemption. [Caveat: profanity]
I empathize with what he is feeling; I've seen it happen in places that I've loved, and I am seeing the first signs of it in this place which has been relatively safe from it -- until recently. So I understand the anger and the near-despair, but I hope the blogger understands that his hometown or state is just one part of this vast country. Battles may be lost, and the war ultimately won, but not if we give way to despair.
He says:
When I got home, I happened across a review of the new Batman movie on Jim Kunstler's website.
Goodness has lost its way in the dark night of the American psyche, as might be understandable considering the nation of louts, liars, grifters, bullies, meth freaks, harpies, and tattooed creeps we have become. The best we can bring to this predicament is the low-grade pop therapy that passes for thinking nowadays in educated circles. Any consideration of the heroic is off the menu here. We can't ask that much of ourselves. It's too difficult to imagine.
And then it hit me: We are a nation of louts, liars, grifters, bullies.
The old me used to think, well, only some people are like that. Look at our creativity, our energy, our art, our medical advances, our universities, we're doing well.
No. That stuff is momentum. We're living on the shoulders of giants, walking on streets they built, living lives of mindless consumerism on the riches bequeathed to us by people who knew better. Like the spoiled kid squandering his inheritance, we're pissing it all away.
The society I saw on display at the mall was sickening, a joke of a culture. One that I want no part of.''
Well, first I might advise him to stop reading so much Jim Kunstler -- whose blog name is one more example of a debased culture.
Kunstler, like so many of these libertarianish postmodern writers, does not seem to see any racial/ethnic dimension to the America that he too seems to bitterly lament and condemn. And I would advise the Oregon blogger, as several commenters did, to hightail it out of multicultural Oregon and find some corner where America still exists. Granted, that is getting increasingly hard to do, but it is possible, and once having found such a place, it's necessary to become like protagonist Miles Bennell in The Invasion of the Body-Snatchers and warn the unsuspecting townsfolk: ''You're next!" If they are awake and aware people, they will heed the warning -- but if not, they have already become ''pod people."
I suspect, though, that one's perspective of America varies according to one's presuppositions, and one's geographical and cultural vantage point. Those who have always been part of a 'diverse' or multicultural America as in the big coastal cities full of 'wretched refuse', cannot know the heartland American perspective, and they cannot be part of preserving the real America, as they've never known it nor do they feel any deep allegiance and loyalty to it.
No, it will fall to those of us who do have ties to the real America, that is, the old American people and their ways, to try to preserve what is left. Likewise, it will fall to those like the commenters on that English nationalist board to do what they can to rally and awaken their fellow Englishmen.
In another more recent piece, Leo McKinstry, quoted earlier, said of Britain:
At the same time, ordinary Britons are vilified by the Government for their instinctive love of their country and told that their fears over immigration are nothing but xenophobia.''
How those who are intent on vilifying and destroying something which has taken centuries to create and build up can accuse others of ''hate'' is beyond me. If the desire to destroy and pull down, to call names and coerce, is not ''hate'' then I don't know what is.
Unthinking people often accuse those who feel as we do of being motivated by ''hate'' and ''fear". No; it's love that motivates us. Love of what was and what should be and what could be. Love of our ancestors and love of our children and grandchildren. Love of the land that generations of our sires tended and fought for, land which holds their mortal remains.
Least of all is it love for 'ideals' or 'proposition nations' that impels us.
And if our only response to what is being done to our countries is bitterness and resignation, then we must simply accept it and go on about our business, and acquiesce. However, if we truly love our people and our heritage, that is not an option. We must love enough to defend what is ours, what our ancestors created for us.
From this side of the Atlantic, I will be cheering on those ''happy few'' in England who care about their people and their heritage, and I pray they will prevail, rather than the forces of destruction which are at work on both sides of the Atlantic. And I hope and pray the same for us.
Are many of our people ''lonely", or are they simply homesick, homesick for a country that they once loved, but which they feel is no more?
Yes, I think even people who never knew the real America -- or the real England -- can be homesick for it. We all have that longing for a haven, a home, a place of peace, safety, and acceptance and understanding. A place where you can be yourself, be comfortable. A place where you belong and ''fit''.
We've been rendered, in effect, homeless by the leftist forces of destruction, we in the West, and it's no wonder that many of us are lost and disheartened.
But we needn't give up and give in.
We must not let the forces of destruction prevail.
Labels: acial division, cultural Marxism, diversity, l decay, multiculturalism, Political Correctness, societal decay, Western decline
posted by Vanishing American at
10:07 PM
