I have pointed out that when I was playing high school football, the coach would often shout, “Feel around you, Whitaker, maybe you’re still in bed!”
So the obvious question is, why would the coach let a dunderhead like that play in the game in the first place? In my case, the reason is because I was strong as an ox, if not any brighter.
But my point has to do, not with the tackle, a linesman, like I was, but with the backfield. They are the guys who run for the touchdown. Those in the backfield got the glory when they were running with the ball.
As a result, a coach had a real problem when those backfield heroes were running a fake. In a fake, the quarterback acts as if he has handed the ball off to one ball carrier and then actually hands it to another. The idea is, of course, that while the other team is tackling the guy who doesn’t have the ball, the one who does get the ball goes through for a touchdown and gets the glory.
So the guy who did NOT get the ball is critical. He is the whole point of the fake. For the fake to work he must be a damn good actor and not get the credit with the crowd.
If you are in the line blocking, you are used to not getting roars of approval from the crowd. Not so the backfield. So when a fake is played in high school it is almost impossible for the guy who does NOT get the ball to convince anybody he has it. He just runs it out like he does in practice, and everybody on both teams has been in practice a lot so they know he hasn’t got the ball.
In other words, you are asking the backfielder who does NOT get the ball to run interference while the guy who DOES get the ball runs for the touchdown and gets the glory. The crowd is not going to notice that HE is the one who caused the touchdown any more than they will see the blocker who opened the hole the touchdown runner went through.
In fact, the only person who notices a crucial block or a great fake is the professional scout. Many a wildly cheered backfielder has never understood why the scouts never noticed him. The reason is because that scout is there to find people who will win the game for his team.
To put it simply, the scout is not there just to see who RUNS the touchdowns. He is there to see who CAUSES the touchdowns.
I’ll give you an example from my political career. For years most Republicans were trying to get the black vote. Others could do arithmetic.
Those who could count noticed that the combined conservative Wallace vote and the Nixon vote in 1968 amounted to 57%, a landslide against the left. But in 1972 the Republicans sang the praises of the Magic Political Center, where they could pick up the precious black vote.
Only an evil racist would try to get The Wallace Democrats.
At long, long last, after the disaster of 1974, even many respectable conservatives were coming to the conclusion that they needed those evil Wallace Democrats. William Rusher, publisher of National Review, had been one of the most fanatical opponents of going after those evil Wallace Democrats. In 1974 he had an epiphany. He is one of those few people who can learn from a mistake and declare in public that he had made it.
By the way, this was when Pat Buchanan and Joe Sobran demanded open borders for Mexican immigrants.
So in 1975 William Rusher wrote a book demanding a coalition of Wallace Democrats and conservative Republicans. That was when he met with me. I had a long, long record as a Wallace Democrat vote-getter. In the 1970s I had been in the streets with anti-busing groups and anti-textbook groups. In 1968 I had lived in a campaign headquarters in the steelworker district of Chicago getting the Wallace vote for my conservative Republican candidate. Long before that I had worked the textile worker vote in South Carolina to get them for Goldwater.
And on back, ad infinitum.
I had always gone where no Republican had gone before.
At that point, Rusher’s problem was that he represented an extreme point of view in the conservative establishment. He needed somebody who was reasonably well known where it counted to put him in the mainstream. He needed interference.
I wrote a book that put him back in the middle of the Republican Party. It was called “A Plague on Both Your Houses.”
I even demanded the preservation of the white race in “A Plague on Both Your Houses.”
Rusher did the Foreword to that book, in which he specifically excluded himself from my nasty comments about William Buckley.
I also made remarks in that book about how Reagan was pussyfooting on issues “Wallace voters” were concerned about. I know for a fact those remarks had a HUGE effect on Republican strategy because I knew so many people in the Reagan Administration. I became a Reagan appointee.
When my book came out Rusher’s heresy was forgotten. National Review had a cover article attacking my book.
But then Jeffrey Hart wrote the National Review review of that same book called “Read This One.”
In the meantime nobody noticed how my book made Rusher mainline.
If Whitaker had been trying to make points for Whitaker, the coach would have said, “Feel around you, Whitaker, maybe you’re still in bed.” I became the extremist.
But I was not making points for Bob. I was making points for the team, and Bill Rusher has never forgotten that. Everybody else has, because they are the crowd, not professional scouts.
Conservatives are not pros.
But being for the team is not enough. Rusher needed somebody who was good at what he did.
A scout does not notice how hard you try to work for the team unless you are also a damned good tackle. I am a damned good writer. Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus gave it rave reviews and the Library Journal recommended it for purchase.
It was a damned good book.
Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus and the Library Journal all distanced themselves from the opinions I expressed, exactly the way Rusher did. What they said was that it was a genuine, well-written point of view which barely avoided all the third rails of political rhetoric.
Nobody else could have conceived it, much less written it.
So Rusher and Hart became a non-radical point of view. In 1980 the term “Wallace Democrats” was totally forgotten. They became the mainline Reagan Democrats. Reagan ran the touchdown and the Soviet Union was history when he finished.
Could it have happened without me running interference? I doubt it. But others would say I had nothing to do with the final outcome.
Who cares? Our team won, and that was what I was in the game for.
Recently I was walking alone across the bridge over the Moscow River, right in front of the Kremlin. I stopped, turned, and gravely gave that symbol of Soviet tyranny the finger.
It felt good.
#1 by Peter on 04/19/2005 - 10:17 pm
Do I hear a “Nay” to individualism?
#2 by Bob on 04/20/2005 - 3:00 am
Huh?
#3 by Antonio Fini on 04/20/2005 - 12:58 pm
Yes, but who is Bob helping to win this time? Our cause is so far from real political power that we can’t even formulate election strategies yet, at least not with an openly racial platform- although there was that guy in the Tennesee congressional race, James Hart who got 26 percent of the vote running on a eugenics platform to sterilize certain segments of the (non-white) population.
So how would YOU have managed his campaign Bob?
#4 by Mark on 04/20/2005 - 4:59 pm
Bob, I have kept a portrait of President Reagan in my office for several years now. I admired him when he was president and greatly missed him when he left office. Knowing you were on his team, helping him get things done, makes me wonder if I oughta put a picture of you underneath that of the Gipper. The only problem is, where do I find such a picture, and do they make a frame big enough to keep that ego in bounds?
Yes, of course I’m poking fun…
#5 by Bob on 04/20/2005 - 5:16 pm
Mark,
Many profound truths are stated in jest.
#6 by Bob on 04/20/2005 - 5:23 pm
Antonio,
If you are a reader and commenter in this blog, every second you spend worrying about regular politics right now is worse than a waste.
James Hart may be an exception. We need people saying what no one else dares to say, and running for office can be a good place to do that.
I don’t know anything about his campaign so I can’t say how I would have run it. If he got 26% saying that, I could probably have won for him.
People don’t call me until it’s too late.
#7 by Mike on 04/20/2005 - 8:11 pm
So [i]you’re[/i] the guy who conned conservatives into the belief that Republican politicians (out of Hollywood, no less) are different than Democrat politicians!
And the jews still control Russia (too) btw.
#8 by Don on 04/20/2005 - 8:11 pm
RE: Recently I was walking alone across the bridge over the Moscow River, right in front of the Kremlin. I stopped, turned, and gravely gave that symbol of Soviet tyranny the finger.
It would be a good day when Bob can take a walk in Cambridge past the buildings occupied by Dershowitz and Ignatiev for a magnificent encore.
#9 by Peter on 04/20/2005 - 10:15 pm
Re: Individualism
My reading of this entry was that you gave up personal “glory” so the team would win, unlike the individualist who looks only to his own advantage.
Of course, there is the rarified type of individualist who goes alone against the tide while working to save the greater community. So, maybe I should have said I heard a “Nay” (political “No”) to HYPER-individualism?
#10 by Peter on 04/21/2005 - 12:47 pm
By “individualism” I mean looking out for number one at the expense of the team. There is also that kind of individualism which is to fight all odds and public opinion to help the team — the community. So maybe I should use the term “hyper-individualism” to mean looking out for number one at the expense of the team. There is another word for the man who swims against the stream and gives up personal glory so the team can win — hero.
#11 by Bob on 04/21/2005 - 2:14 pm
Mike, the Soviet Union no longer exists, and, despite what the media say, it was not Pope John Paul who brought it down.
#12 by Bob on 04/21/2005 - 2:16 pm
Peter, I understand your point now.
You said, “There is another word for the man who swims against the stream and gives up personal glory so the team can win — hero.”
Dead right. No war hero ever made any difference in history. It is the MORAL hero who does.
#13 by Mike on 04/21/2005 - 6:54 pm
Bob – Money still rules, whether in Russia or America. Going from “Soviet Union” back to “Russia” amounts to about the same as the White House going from one branch of the American political party to the other. Changing labels always mislead the goyim.
#14 by Bob on 04/21/2005 - 9:10 pm
Mike said:
Mike, if you went across the Communist borders and saw the land mines and automatic rifles or saw and smelled an African kraal after the Liberators got through with it, you wouldn’t say the present Russkis are the same as the old Reds.
It is the conventional wisdom that money is everything in politics. Soros spent $27 million to defeat Bush and didn’t make a dent.
I wrote a book in 1970s called A Plague on Both Your Houses saying what you are saying about the parties. I know what you are saying.
But you shouldn’t just get crabby about the whole thing, like some old right-wingers do.
I did some important things in regular politics. But I was also fully committed to political revolution, as you are.
The parties now are out-of-date and on their way out. So now I am strictly into ideas and getting us ready to represent whites in the future and, above all, discrediting respectable conservatism. The time will soon be here when racial politics are center-stage.
I knew Reagan would betray us on most things. I said so in my book before he appointed me.
A friend of mine in the White House actually had to tear pages out of my book to be sure I got cleared for my appointment.
But I did what I could do at the time, and I am proud of it. Give the old man a little credit.
#15 by Peter on 04/22/2005 - 12:57 pm
So, Bob what do you think?
If physical courage does not lead to moral courage, does moral courage lead to physical courage?
#16 by Bob on 04/22/2005 - 1:23 pm
Peter, I’ve been where a lot of both moral and physical courage were needed, and I have not seen much correlation between the two. I’ve seen combat medal winners melt when they had to stand up for something too often to respect military courage much.
The Germans fought a hell of a war and they have been groveling ever since.