Ol Remus Discusses the Balkanization of the U.S

He writes:

DC increasingly stands alone, and if we rely on what they do rather than what they say, it's no unintended side effect. But pulling up the drawbridge and manning the parapets has consequences. Insular command from above falsifies the notion of unity, it replaces "we're all in this together" with "you're all in this together." DC no longer pretends their window on the nation is the freely expressed will of the people, rather it's surveillance of the kind once deployed against kidnap-murder suspects or, further back in time, of the kind feudal kings used to repress their subjects.


The absence of a constitutionally legitimate central government warranting the trust and support of the people, and DC's us-versus-them internal realignment which decouples it from the people, and DC's sponsorship and protection of groups hostile to elementary civic duties, have encouraged and enabled fragmentation on a scale not seen since the 1850s. There are those who see this as an intentional unraveling of the republic by DC so their power may be nearer to absolute. A compelling case can be made neither for nor against such a proposition so we'll let it be for the moment. Here's what we do know.


Some Hispanics are busily constructing a breakaway confederacy called Aztlán, to consist of the southwestern states and southern California. The goal is to evict Asians, whites, blacks and all others not of La Raza—The Race—which goal they declare at street gatherings large and small. ...


Elsewhere, some of the native population of Hawaii are building a parallel government which excludes Asians, whites, blacks, Hispanics and all others not of the race. ....

The Congressional Black Caucus, The National Conference of Black Mayors, The National Association of Black Journalists and many other organizations also pursue overtly racial ends. The goals of black activists are not easy to summarize, they're ever-shifting and difficult to reconcile. Supremacist outfits like the Black Panthers and the Black Moslems are straightforward enough, they advocate zero-sum plunder—taking the country by force and exterminating everybody else. Oddly, their rhetoric is cribbed from paleo-socialist screeds already antique when Hoover was president.

While they recite some supremacist cant, street level politicos and pseudo-academic community organizers opt instead for urban-based, de facto separatist enclaves, to be supported by everybody else. ....
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Moslem associations in America have adopted the off-the-shelf American victimhood template so we can spare ourselves the tedium of itemization here. They're particularly fond of "lawfare"—nuisance suits designed to intimidate onlookers—but rely mainly on the tried-and-true to grow their enclaves, namely, physical confrontations and credible threats of worse. Professional diversity enforcers, rootless thrill seekers, Big Time journalists and other witless bottom feeders have attached themselves to the Islamic cause with barely restrained enthusiasm. It may be only coincidental Islam seems particularly attractive to pedophiles, misogynists and homicidal sadists. The goal is plainly stated: bring ever-expanding areas under Islam until the former United States is a full caliphate in a Moslem world.

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By their own narratives these organizations are committed to separatist goals. To them, civic affairs are legitimate and material only to the extent it advances their agenda and, however prettified, their agenda is about race and racial advantage. Not sometimes. Not mostly. Always. ...


The working definition of racism is "any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin," so we can dispense with the "color of their skin" bromide. By this measure the only difference between these outfits and the olde tymme night riders is middle America's remarkable ability to imagine it ain't so. Middle America is told what to think art-link-symbol-tiny-grey-arrow-only-rev01.gif, what to say and how to say it. And they do. There are those who say they deserve all that has befallen them and all that will befall them. With no persuasive evidence otherwise, refutation is a hard prospect.


Pretending these organizations protect the vulnerable from ongoing oppression, or pretending they serve some common good reveals contempt for both common sense and the common good. A nation survives only if enough citizens respect the common good. For that reason there is no Congressional White Caucus or National Association of White Journalists, nor is there likely to be. There is a crucial difference between preserving one's heritage and seeking influence and benefit from it. It's a bizarre foundation for racial pride. Their contention that race supremacy is the default motive for everybody else merely reveals an unhealthy obsession with it. Nor is it convincing to reprove the putative origins of racism itself if it's merely to be the foundation for a different racism.

So much for the bright side.

The dark side is this: we are some ways down the road to the Balkanization. If the law of intended consequences still holds, and if everybody gets what they say they want, the disunited states will be a patchwork of territories run by the same kind of demagogues that are advocating for it now. And the aggressive, no-quarters hostility of these organizations suggests the nature of their hoped-for autonomy.

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If we can rely on their own words, many Hispanics and blacks and Moslems and even nativist Hawaiians believe autonomy is preferable to integration with the larger America. How the rest stand won't really be clear until a decision is forced. Whatever happens probably won't happen as a showdown, there are few actual showdowns in history. More likely we'll see a series of sharp nudges that, while unpleasant, aren't immediately catastrophic. At this point we don't know which reality, civics or racial supremacy, is the more compelling should a choice be imposed. For the present, something near enough to civility holds the field, but civility has been only lightly tested thus far.