From a domestic perspective, this slavery repatriation talk could become bigger than any multichild massacre by an immigrant. I think it'll create more racial tension and movement to Nationalist ideals than anything in my lifetime.
Excellent framing, and yes for anyone old enough to remember those movies or young enough to have watched them growing up on video or dvd’s there is a definite hero story all laid out to hitch this to. I despise the nostalgia for the 80’s and 90’s, it was a perfect time at least for us, our children were little and life was incredibly good. But time’s arrow flies in one direction only, and they aren’t coming back. Population is one problem, almost all developed nations are now struggling with a much larger and in many ways less functional population than in those years. Trump isn’t Reagan, maybe Reagan wasn’t even Reagan, and there is no huge groundswell of prosperity waiting to be released.
What is real and even surpasses the old movies is the evil of the other side. Trump isn’t Shane, or John Wayne, or even Rocky, but Kamala is Darth Vader with a lobotomy. A woman with no convictions, no shame, no intelligence, but the overweening ambition we have been at the mercy of for years. He isn’t a good man by any standards, but he is a better man than the horror show on the blue team. They have managed to defend every disgusting and unnatural and ultimately because divisive racist cause out there. They have alienated all decent people by clinging to the idea that there are no limits, no limits to the degradation, to the predation of our young, to the homeless encampment under the bridges, to the fentanyl and violent gangs coming across the border, to the persecution of the poor in cities and towns with inadequate policing.
I am from Philadelphia and in the years around the release of Rocky Philadelphia was a very safe city. Frank Rizzo as mayor had increased policing. As a teenaged girl I felt safe on south street after dark because I passed a police officer every block. When I watched the film of Kensington (Philadelphia) on Academic Agent’s recent podcast I recognized it immediately and it made me sick. It was never a “nice” area but this was another dimension.
When I hear the line “I thought you were dead” I think of John Wayne in Big Jake. He had been lying low since separating from his wife (Maureen O’Hara reprising the Irish trope beautifully) and everyone he meets greets him with “I thought you were dead”.
It really wasn’t. Rizzo had been police commissioner before becoming mayor and he ruled with an iron fist. Kensington was always a bad neighborhood, it was industrial and when that went away it left only the hopeless. There was gentrification of society hill- the area by the river in federalist style, and Fishtown, and a lot of the neighborhoods were still proudly ethnic, the Italian market are was vibrant. The heavy police presence made downtown safe, when we were in high school we used to take the train into center city to shop and have lunch at the crystal tea room in John Wanamaker, it was a different world, still genteel and ladylike. Fancy restaurants flourished because it was safe. Downtown Philadelphia is about 2 miles on each side, 4 square miles, you can walk around all of it from the docks to the museum district to the Italian market. Outlying neighborhoods were slowly dying as the businesses that kept them going went away. Decades of mismanagement and emasculated policing have hastened the decay and Covid probably dealt the death blow to the remaining 9 to 5 offices which support the lunchonettes and coffee shops.
My daughter taught Catholic high school in south Philadelphia and the museum district in the late oughts 2008-2010. She lived in a tiny apartment in the area. It was still predominantly Italian, with a lot of Vietnamese some of whom were Catholic. She enjoyed it but we worried a lot. The public high school in the area made the news most nights, with a lot of murders in the parking lot and assaults on teachers.
I haven't really stayed in Philly but I know people who moved from there to a mostly conservative county on the eastern shore of Maryland. They are all keen liberals with signs in their yards, like Hate Has No Home Here. One is a lawyer who sued small white businesses for racisms. Another deals in "safety" issues by exploiting the fear of federal investigation for EEOC violations by offering diversity training courses, also targeting smaller businesses.
They wreck one place. Move to another in order to wreck that.
I hate that sort of thing so much! We now live not far from the eastern shore, just at the top of the Delaware part of the peninsula about two miles from the canal and the top of the Chesapeake. People are fleeing blue states like rats from a sinking ship only to bring their infectious and insidious ideas with them.
I do think the easy pickings for the grifters are getting slimmer, too many have been shown for the scum they are. Of course that kind are always quick to batten onto the next new thing.
The comedian Jim Breuer regularly compares politics to American wrestling, and never has it been more true than now.
What we’re witnessing at the moment is the equivalent of Wrestlemania 3 where Hulk Hogan (Trump) overcame the odds to secure a miraculous win against a seemingly unbeatable opponent in Andre the Giant (the Democratic party).
Rather like with subsequent Wrestlemania’s, I feel people will soon get bored of Trump/Hogan and be left with a feeling years later that he wasn’t that great after all….
(Yes I did spent too much of my youth watching that bollocks :D )
Can we, can America return to the 80s/90s, even if it wanted to? I don´t think so, though I do have some fondness for that period myself. Thank you Mr. Morgoth for this wonderful piece - but IMO the most relevant takeaway from the current state of affairs as regards the election is what AA observed a long time ago: The regime wants Trump. Why that is now the case (unlike in 2020 and 2016), I suppose everybody is free to speculate about.
Ultimately my view is there is no going back and any attempts to create a narrative of doing so will fail because, not to sound like a leftist, but material conditions have become so dire it is simply no longer feasible.
I fully agree, though it seems that the people creating that narrative do believe in that possibility themselves, at least to some extent - or why else would they hype up expectations in this way?
I'd caution against assuming that just because Trump might win, that means the regime wants him. They've done everything in their power to destroy him for nearly a decade now, while simultaneously propping up a doddering old fool and a dumb foreigner. The media blitz in favor of Harris these past weeks has been breathtaking. I think the regime is powerful but they're not ALL powerful and a lot of the time, things don't go according to any plan.
I suppose we'll see once he gets elected. I predict we'll see riots and lawfare that'll surpass the 2020 Summer of St. Floyd.
They say life imitates art and it has been so much. with Trump. This rally feels to me like a sequel to his attempted assassinations, especially the first and most dramatic. Seriously, "Trump- the Movie" would work! As for Kamala Harris... I pity the fool!
I think that movies, novels and video games are the most relevant cultural expressions of our time. They are ubiquitous enough that they are the water in which we swim. I also agree that our lives are so infused with them that it's practically impossible to separate ourselves from them, even when we intentionally try to unplug and "touch grass."
However, I think we should remember that prior generations had their OWN cultural touchstones, and moved about in the world referencing them all the time. Going on a journey "like Odysseus." In fact that's where our word odyssey originates. A man beset by endless trouble makes a reference to Job. People talk of being reborn out of troubles like "Jonah and the whale." For centuries, military orders have hearkened back to ancient heroes and their triumphs to instill bravery and pride. Even today we reference stories like Arthur's Round Table, a Sisyphean task, flying too close to the sun like Icarus, etc.
In my opinion, one of the things that raises humanity up from the animals is our ability to liken our struggles and triumphs to some kind of mythical arc. I don't want to give too much credit to a culture or political system that creates the spectacle of Hulk Hogan waving a flag on stage. But I don't think it's too different than the pomp and circumstance that have surrounded regimes since the Sumerians, whose leaders would intentionally dress and behave in ways that called to mind their gods. I suspect the people knew they weren't actually gods, but that doesn't mean the imagery wasn't powerful enough to influence them.
After reading you laying out the lore, while weaving in the Star Wars mythos into the tapestry, all I could see for my inner eye was this:
The Empire Strikes Back. 2 scenes plays out. One is Trump's friends and family, pleading with him. "Please don't go! You're not ready. You're not strong enough."
"I have to; it's my country!"
And the other is the Swampmonster - reaching out his hand; trying to ease the wounded and despaired man back in where it's safe: "Trump - I am your father." And unlike the real movie, in this one the audience is never really sure what happened thereafter, as the scene faded to black.
Darn our hyperreal, postmodern era indeed.
Good to see the rumors about your sudden demise seems to have been vastly exaggerated, mate. All my best!
I think I might push back my Monthly Review podcast so I can give some takes on the culmnation of the election in the US.
From a domestic perspective, this slavery repatriation talk could become bigger than any multichild massacre by an immigrant. I think it'll create more racial tension and movement to Nationalist ideals than anything in my lifetime.
Well it wrecks the idea we’re all the same.
Excellent framing, and yes for anyone old enough to remember those movies or young enough to have watched them growing up on video or dvd’s there is a definite hero story all laid out to hitch this to. I despise the nostalgia for the 80’s and 90’s, it was a perfect time at least for us, our children were little and life was incredibly good. But time’s arrow flies in one direction only, and they aren’t coming back. Population is one problem, almost all developed nations are now struggling with a much larger and in many ways less functional population than in those years. Trump isn’t Reagan, maybe Reagan wasn’t even Reagan, and there is no huge groundswell of prosperity waiting to be released.
What is real and even surpasses the old movies is the evil of the other side. Trump isn’t Shane, or John Wayne, or even Rocky, but Kamala is Darth Vader with a lobotomy. A woman with no convictions, no shame, no intelligence, but the overweening ambition we have been at the mercy of for years. He isn’t a good man by any standards, but he is a better man than the horror show on the blue team. They have managed to defend every disgusting and unnatural and ultimately because divisive racist cause out there. They have alienated all decent people by clinging to the idea that there are no limits, no limits to the degradation, to the predation of our young, to the homeless encampment under the bridges, to the fentanyl and violent gangs coming across the border, to the persecution of the poor in cities and towns with inadequate policing.
I am from Philadelphia and in the years around the release of Rocky Philadelphia was a very safe city. Frank Rizzo as mayor had increased policing. As a teenaged girl I felt safe on south street after dark because I passed a police officer every block. When I watched the film of Kensington (Philadelphia) on Academic Agent’s recent podcast I recognized it immediately and it made me sick. It was never a “nice” area but this was another dimension.
When I hear the line “I thought you were dead” I think of John Wayne in Big Jake. He had been lying low since separating from his wife (Maureen O’Hara reprising the Irish trope beautifully) and everyone he meets greets him with “I thought you were dead”.
Oh yes. Funny enough Eastwood's Western was probably paying tribute to the Duke in Unforgiven. I hadn't thought of that before.
Wild to think you grew up in Philadelphia at that time, it seemed to rough.
It really wasn’t. Rizzo had been police commissioner before becoming mayor and he ruled with an iron fist. Kensington was always a bad neighborhood, it was industrial and when that went away it left only the hopeless. There was gentrification of society hill- the area by the river in federalist style, and Fishtown, and a lot of the neighborhoods were still proudly ethnic, the Italian market are was vibrant. The heavy police presence made downtown safe, when we were in high school we used to take the train into center city to shop and have lunch at the crystal tea room in John Wanamaker, it was a different world, still genteel and ladylike. Fancy restaurants flourished because it was safe. Downtown Philadelphia is about 2 miles on each side, 4 square miles, you can walk around all of it from the docks to the museum district to the Italian market. Outlying neighborhoods were slowly dying as the businesses that kept them going went away. Decades of mismanagement and emasculated policing have hastened the decay and Covid probably dealt the death blow to the remaining 9 to 5 offices which support the lunchonettes and coffee shops.
My daughter taught Catholic high school in south Philadelphia and the museum district in the late oughts 2008-2010. She lived in a tiny apartment in the area. It was still predominantly Italian, with a lot of Vietnamese some of whom were Catholic. She enjoyed it but we worried a lot. The public high school in the area made the news most nights, with a lot of murders in the parking lot and assaults on teachers.
I haven't really stayed in Philly but I know people who moved from there to a mostly conservative county on the eastern shore of Maryland. They are all keen liberals with signs in their yards, like Hate Has No Home Here. One is a lawyer who sued small white businesses for racisms. Another deals in "safety" issues by exploiting the fear of federal investigation for EEOC violations by offering diversity training courses, also targeting smaller businesses.
They wreck one place. Move to another in order to wreck that.
I hate that sort of thing so much! We now live not far from the eastern shore, just at the top of the Delaware part of the peninsula about two miles from the canal and the top of the Chesapeake. People are fleeing blue states like rats from a sinking ship only to bring their infectious and insidious ideas with them.
I do think the easy pickings for the grifters are getting slimmer, too many have been shown for the scum they are. Of course that kind are always quick to batten onto the next new thing.
Great work as always! Nostalgia for the past (80s and 90s) seems to be what Trump has ran on. Few realize that world is impossible to turn back to.
Loved this, in fact I think I might just have to do a Rocky rewatch!
It'll brighten you day.
Cheers.
Another great analysis Morgoth.
Hope everyone will give it a SHARE.
Thanks.
The comedian Jim Breuer regularly compares politics to American wrestling, and never has it been more true than now.
What we’re witnessing at the moment is the equivalent of Wrestlemania 3 where Hulk Hogan (Trump) overcame the odds to secure a miraculous win against a seemingly unbeatable opponent in Andre the Giant (the Democratic party).
Rather like with subsequent Wrestlemania’s, I feel people will soon get bored of Trump/Hogan and be left with a feeling years later that he wasn’t that great after all….
(Yes I did spent too much of my youth watching that bollocks :D )
I loved it when Trump and the Ewoks got that shield generator down on Endor.
Can we, can America return to the 80s/90s, even if it wanted to? I don´t think so, though I do have some fondness for that period myself. Thank you Mr. Morgoth for this wonderful piece - but IMO the most relevant takeaway from the current state of affairs as regards the election is what AA observed a long time ago: The regime wants Trump. Why that is now the case (unlike in 2020 and 2016), I suppose everybody is free to speculate about.
Ultimately my view is there is no going back and any attempts to create a narrative of doing so will fail because, not to sound like a leftist, but material conditions have become so dire it is simply no longer feasible.
I fully agree, though it seems that the people creating that narrative do believe in that possibility themselves, at least to some extent - or why else would they hype up expectations in this way?
Because it’s coherent and in line with thinking of new elites such as Musk. As I outlined in my Centrist Caesar essay.
It’s actually containment.
But the question will be how it reacts to stabby Bomalians and demographic reality.
I'd caution against assuming that just because Trump might win, that means the regime wants him. They've done everything in their power to destroy him for nearly a decade now, while simultaneously propping up a doddering old fool and a dumb foreigner. The media blitz in favor of Harris these past weeks has been breathtaking. I think the regime is powerful but they're not ALL powerful and a lot of the time, things don't go according to any plan.
I suppose we'll see once he gets elected. I predict we'll see riots and lawfare that'll surpass the 2020 Summer of St. Floyd.
They say life imitates art and it has been so much. with Trump. This rally feels to me like a sequel to his attempted assassinations, especially the first and most dramatic. Seriously, "Trump- the Movie" would work! As for Kamala Harris... I pity the fool!
Whatever happens next week, to quote one of your phrases...."this isn't going to end well folks"
When push comes to shove, I would rather see a load of rainbow gimps lose their minds than the MAGA loons.
As an anti American, English republican it's all so far removed from my purview.
I think that movies, novels and video games are the most relevant cultural expressions of our time. They are ubiquitous enough that they are the water in which we swim. I also agree that our lives are so infused with them that it's practically impossible to separate ourselves from them, even when we intentionally try to unplug and "touch grass."
However, I think we should remember that prior generations had their OWN cultural touchstones, and moved about in the world referencing them all the time. Going on a journey "like Odysseus." In fact that's where our word odyssey originates. A man beset by endless trouble makes a reference to Job. People talk of being reborn out of troubles like "Jonah and the whale." For centuries, military orders have hearkened back to ancient heroes and their triumphs to instill bravery and pride. Even today we reference stories like Arthur's Round Table, a Sisyphean task, flying too close to the sun like Icarus, etc.
In my opinion, one of the things that raises humanity up from the animals is our ability to liken our struggles and triumphs to some kind of mythical arc. I don't want to give too much credit to a culture or political system that creates the spectacle of Hulk Hogan waving a flag on stage. But I don't think it's too different than the pomp and circumstance that have surrounded regimes since the Sumerians, whose leaders would intentionally dress and behave in ways that called to mind their gods. I suspect the people knew they weren't actually gods, but that doesn't mean the imagery wasn't powerful enough to influence them.
“Yas Queen Managerialism” Simply brilliant. Cuts right to the heart of it all. Can I borrow that one old friend?
Please do, feel free.
After reading you laying out the lore, while weaving in the Star Wars mythos into the tapestry, all I could see for my inner eye was this:
The Empire Strikes Back. 2 scenes plays out. One is Trump's friends and family, pleading with him. "Please don't go! You're not ready. You're not strong enough."
"I have to; it's my country!"
And the other is the Swampmonster - reaching out his hand; trying to ease the wounded and despaired man back in where it's safe: "Trump - I am your father." And unlike the real movie, in this one the audience is never really sure what happened thereafter, as the scene faded to black.
Darn our hyperreal, postmodern era indeed.
Good to see the rumors about your sudden demise seems to have been vastly exaggerated, mate. All my best!
https://open.substack.com/pub/slavlandchronicles/p/mozgovoi-warlord-of-donbass?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=ga0u4
Something for you to read in your free time Morgoth.
It's always good to walk in the hills.
It had to happen this way. The grand drama demanded it.