I spend a good deal of my time being furious and grief-stricken over the death of everything I was ever loyal to. Don’t let my “poise” fool you. I suffer from this all the time.
This is part of war. You see people you are close to die. You face humiliation and the enemy tries his best to make you feel hopeless. Whether it is in combat or in the bloodier battle of drug recovery, you have to watch while people you are close to die or are crippled for life. You get no respite. In fact the moment when someone gets hit is the moment when you can least afford to give yourself up to grief.
In one incident someone said to me, “He’s DEAD!”
I could see that.
The guy kept saying “He’s DEAD.” as if he thought I didn’t CARE. I was busy trying to keep me and HIM from being dead.
About the fifth time he said “He’s DEAD!” I replied, “So what am ***I*** supposed to DO about it?”
Which is the point.
You can’t do anything about the dead. This is the simplest point in war. It is also the HARDEST point about war one has to learn to face. Almost every critical lesson in life and especially war consist of points that are simple but cruelly HARD on a normal human being.
And not just human beings.
One of the most heart-rending parts of Meerkat Manor was when the group poor doomed Mozart belonged to was down to two members. Mozart was still looking for danger, but the other meerkat was doing nothing but cuddling up to Mozart. It died that night.
I identified more with those two meerkats than I can with human beings who have never been betrayed.
Mozart had been kicked out of her troop a couple of times, so she had experience of being alone, a situation which normally kills meerkats. She tried again and almost made it back.
Mozart certainly took every chance to cuddle with her dwindling fellows in the shrinking tribe. Almost all meerkats begin in a big group and then either never have offspring or start their own. Almost any large meerkat group has been at what we would call Valley Forge more than once. PLEASE don’t obsess on the historical example I give.
Stick with my POINT.
All meerkats cuddle. As the group gets smaller, they do so more desperately.
By the same token, all humans grieve. Humans need to grieve But when a meerkat does nothing BUT cuddle, he is lost.
All of us humans need to VENT. We need to see our anger and loss and express it to each other. But when all we do is talk about how bad things are, we are lost.
We can all see this. This is appoint which is simple but not EASY. In meerkat, there is a very fine line between doing the cuddling that is necessary for survival and giving up the ghost. All meerkat tribes go through this stage repeatedly.
Those who can deal with unbearable losses and go on survive. Those who fall short on that thin line between grieving and giving up the ghost die.
When we deal with the phenomenon of defeatism, there is no easy away to state it. Nothing is harder than rational grieving. But that line is the one that determines survival in ALL social animals.
#1 by Dave on 08/21/2008 - 12:00 pm
Comfort seeking, which we all do, is deadly. That’s because, in life, you always get more than you bargain for. Always.
Regardless of your race.
Dark skinned people desperately seek the comfort of white supplied benefits.
I know very educated blacks from all over Africa. This question is always shucked and jived when they are confronted with it: “Why don’t you stay in your own country, as you are one of the elites, and build YOUR COUNTRY?”
Of course, the real answer is, “That would get in the way of my comfort”.
Regardless of genetics, this is the very reason they could never defeat us.
#2 by Simmons on 08/21/2008 - 12:38 pm
The post above, when questions are asked liked that dominance is assumed. That is another thin line that few grasp as even existing, maybe it could be described as the border between inquiry and religious dogma.
#3 by shari on 08/21/2008 - 4:29 pm
The fine line between comfort and giving up is when a person starts to rationalize that evil isn’t really so evil, and we should try to be more “reasonable” not like those rabid racists, etc. But your right, this would not be easy when resistance involves bloodshed. I don’t have any great courage, but I KNOW that this program to genocide the white race is as evil as it gets.
#4 by Dave on 08/21/2008 - 7:27 pm
Shari,
That is exactly right. There is no way you can parse what BW is talking about in this post. It is as basic as it gets, because it has to do with character.
The load is load, and then the question becomes, who falls apart?
The answer is usually surprising. That is why I am very circumspect about judging people.
Everybody looks at the dead soldier lying on the caisson. But the question I ask is, “Who stole his boots?” That is the person I go with.
That’s why I like Robert Whitaker.
#5 by AFKANNow on 08/21/2008 - 7:39 pm
I used to grieve, and then, I realized I was grieving the loss of a series of Illusions.
I then asked, “Who Created these Illusions, and to what end?”
Somehow, Race, Nation and State became merged during the Roosevelt Administration, and then State took control as the model for social organization, eventually, during the Sixties, undermining the concept of Family in the only Form of Family that actually works in harmony with Race, FOR the Race.
This resulted in the social equivalent of an Inversion of the proper ordering of social relationships. Just like in the Soviet Union, the lights went out, slowly, and the Family, which worked, was replaced by the State, which appropriated unto itself the powers of a Family, without the spiritual foundation, or Cultural strengths, a Family has to offer.
With one exception, of course – the Jewish Race, which always put Race above all, and Family above all else.
Metzger, echoing Burnham, had this right:
“WE LET THIS HAPPEN TO US.”
Our Racial Enemies are simply doing what parasites do; occupying the dead and dying, and stripping the carcass from their bones.
“Movement Past” just whimpered, screamed, and did stupid things that played into the hands of their Racial Enemies – Cross lightings done by people who considered bedsheets and pillowcases to be formal attire spoke volumes of a people who had adopted the Forms of an earlier time, without the Substance to transform those Forms into a source of Creative Force.
In a more constructive, contemporary vein, the anger I feel when my Nephew reads from “A Distant Thunder” – with his lips moving – just acts to fuel me to greater efforts to insure that they form the Living Foundation of a new, explicitly Race-Based social order, based on a Positive Theory – and Practice – of Racism.
#6 by Z on 08/22/2008 - 6:26 am
Bob, did you serve or take part in combat? If so, where and under what circumstances? Unless you can’t talk about it?
#7 by backbaygrouch4 on 08/22/2008 - 6:48 am
There is an adage in Denmark: Every man’s death is another man’s bread.
#8 by Simmons on 08/22/2008 - 11:26 am
In a defeatist letter to the white race I respond. http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_culture&Number=296433758&Forum=All_Forums&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Old=allposts&Main=296433151#Post296433758