American Restoration

Substack articles by Bruce Abramson. From his About page:

Suppose you think that it’s wrong to discriminate based on race. To the Woke, you’re a racist.

Suppose you say that humans are either male or female. To the Woke, that’s dehumanizing.

Suppose you champion free speech. To the Woke, you’re promoting hatred.

Suppose you think that the ends don’t justify the means. To the Woke, you’re impeding justice.

Suppose you believe in God. To the Woke, you’re an unstable superstitious bigot.

The list of such absurd defamations is long, and it grows longer every day. But it’s no joke. Once the woke have labeled you a hateful, dehumanizing, unstable racist whose mere existence stands in the way of justice, they will treat you as if that’s who you really are. They will work to destroy you—terminate your personal relationships, professional aspirations, and financial possibilities.

Worst of all, the Woke are winning. The United States is mired in a Second Civil War. The country no longer functions as either a free society or a constitutional republic. Every single one of our major institutions has been corrupted: Academia, K-12 education, the media, the civil service, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the legal and medical professions, and nearly every important professional society. Recent years have even uncovered deep Woke rot running corporate boardrooms, the IRS, FBI, CIA, NSA, and the military.

Leaders and organizations that are not Woke themselves cower in fear and fall in line. More than 60% of American report being afraid to voice their opinions; they fear woke reprisal.

This situation is neither tolerable nor sustainable. If we don’t move quickly to restore the free society America was born to be, we will slide irretrievably into an autocratic, elitist oligarchy.

We are beyond the time of timidity and prudence. We have become both the counterculture and counterrevolutionaries. Very little of what we have done in the past is suited to those roles. If we are to restore America, we will need new lessons, strategies, tactics, and priorities.

This essay series is for those who want to master the techniques we need.

Is Abramson exaggerating? I'd say he isn't. What say you?

Comments

[Loquitur Veritatem]

Abramson isn't exaggerating. The only way out is to sue for a national divorce at the first opportunity, if it comes. Details here: https://loquitur.substack.com/p/a-national-divorce

[Joe Odegaard]

I'm not a racist, I hate all assholes, no matter what color they are.

[Kevin Kim]

I wouldn't dignify "woke" with capitalization, but I'd say Abramson is on point, and my own feeling is that things have gotten to the stage where we're long past dialogue and moving into the "saddle up, lock & load" phase. The old joke about socialism is "vote your way in; shoot your way out." Conservatives, being people of conscience, don't necessarily want to countenance this option, but conservatives themselves are greatly to blame for being so peaceful and passive, for letting this encroachment happen all around them. Just watch what conservatives do if Trump is indeed arrested. I half-joked over at Instapundit that it'd be nice to see all the gun-toting YouTubers assemble and form a protective cordon around President Trump, but we all know that no such thing will happen. Being a relatively peaceful sort, I don't want to see a hot war, but other options are rapidly dwindling. At this point, all I can say is: keep the powder dry.

[BV]

Thanks for dropping by, Kevin. Be sure to read LV's National Divorce article linked above. He has thought about this question rather more systematically than I have and he makes a number of good points. Dreher's Benedict Option, for example, is a nonstarter: leftists, being the totalitarians that they are, won't allow it. In general, any sort of retreat into the private life is a mistake. The private life needs vigorous public defense. Otherwise we will soon wake up to find that there is no private life left to retreat to.

Unless I missed it -- his piece is long -- LV does not mention the 'hot civil war' option which you are alluding to, though not promoting. No sane person could want a hot civil war. There would be nothing 'romantic' about it. It would be hell. Read about the atrocities on both sides in the Spanish Civil War if you haven't already.

But you are right: dialogue is no longer possible, and this for the simple reason that fruitful dialogue presupposes common ground, of which there is none.

I have often thought that we of the Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable are far too polite to our political enemies. Do we need more denunciation and ostracism in our politics? But denunciation is just words without concrete backup which is why many are now investing in such precious metals as Pb which is giving Au a run for its money.

One problem with national divorce is that it would weaken us over against our geo-political enemies. The ChiComs in cahoots with the Russkis are a formidable nuclear threat. We are getting weaker with every passing day with Dementocratic fools in the civilian government and wokesters in the military.

And as LV points out at the end of his piece, the wokeassery (my word) in the military nixes the Coup option. (My way of putting it.)

I pity the poor secularist who believes only in this world. As I said on Saturday Night, it'll be a hard rain should it fall.

[BV]

LV,

You are doing good work over at your Stack. I read your article on systemic racism and I agree with the whole of it.

https://loquitur.substack.com/p/break-out-the-systemic-racism-card

[BV]

Joe,

I am not now, and never have been, a proctologist, but I believe that all (clean) anal orifices are of the same color. If so, there is no use for the expression 'assholes of color.'

Pedantic side-comment: the 'asshole' trope is an example of a synecdoche.

[Joe Odegaard]

Of course this conflict will go hot. Evil is only stopped by force, and in its pride it always over-reaches. If we accept "church" in the broadest sense, as "the people of God," and note that "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it," is a promise by Christ Himself, then it is inevitable that this goes hot. That is, unless the 2nd coming happens first.

[BV]

Well then, you're going to have to upgrade your shootin' ahrn, son.

[BV]

Dov Fischer on DEI:

These DEI deans are malignancies on the body academic, absolute poison. They get paid boatloads of money collected from overblown tuition, which saddles students and their parents with debt for life, to provide an ostensibly valuable service that my law degree, rabbinical degree, advanced history degree, and other educational attainments still leave me unable to fathom. What do these noxious DEI warts do to better society other than to promote reverse racism, divide people by ethnicities and skin color, in many cases promote anti-Semitism, and preach virtue-signaling effluvium that, once analyzed objectively between the lines, promote nothing but hate, the good woke kind of hate, hate for the values that once made America great?
https://spectator.org/me-and-the-despicable-canines-at-stanford-law/

[Joe Odegaard]

Not regulated:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbINsn5EVg4

[Ted V]

Hi Bill,

I’m new to your blog and would like to say thanks. I'm still in my twenties and ever since graduating college, I've felt a bit lost in terms of how I should spend my time and what I ought to pursue. Your blog has inspired me to deepen my commitment to intellectual life and take self-study more seriously.

Regarding Abramson, I see little to no exaggeration. I’d like to share a quick story from my experience in academia. I got my bachelor's in philosophy back in 2018 and distinctly remember one of my professors fearing for his job over what we discussed in class (philosophy of science). It got to the point that he would lock the door before lectures and deliberately speak quietly to avoid eavesdroppers. I knew something was wrong but I was too busy fooling around back then to pay more attention.

A few years later I discover that my university is making national headlines over some kind of DEI training scandal, in which university staff were caught training student employees to recognize people who identify as white, male, Christian, heterosexual, and or able-bodied as 'oppressors.' It was clear evidence of indoctrination and an attempt to cover it up. I’m sure you are well aware of this phenomenon. I'm still trying to wrap my head around all the craziness myself.

Best,

Ted V

[BV]

Welcome, Ted V.

Thanks for the report. What is particularly disturbing is that a philosopher of science would have to worry about toeing the party line, unless perhaps the subject was the philosophy of biology. A few years ago the STEM disciplines were free of 'woke' indoctrination, but things have changed, and change is not the same as improvement. The Left is totalitarian to the core and out to infiltrate every nook and cranny of human life.

Everything is up for politicization and racialization including mathematics, the most ideologically-neutral subject imaginable. That math is racist is nonsense pure and simple. Wokesters call it that because blacks as a group are not good at it.

A particularly fascinating phenomenon is the ethnomasochism of the usefully-idiotic whites who go along with the 'woke'nonsense.