My Redneck Problem -- And Ours
Don't call it a "culture war." Our highly symbolic politics deserve careful explanation.
My title comes with it a mixture of due appropriation from Norman Podhoretz whose 1963 essay, “My Negro Problem — and Ours” remains essential for understanding the conflict between blacks and Jews, a conflict which we will touch on in our treatment of Eric Adams’s rise to power.
My own ancestry includes a significant Scotch-Irish portion. I’ve learned from experience the dangers for me of intoxication, literal (by alcohol) and symbolic (by the mob-infested modern GOP and foreign-controlled social media). I’ve increasingly come to believe that I’m not alone. We’ve elsewhere explored the genetics of cult susceptibility but it needs repeating: some of us are especially susceptible through no fault of their own. It’s wrong to punish people for things that they cannot control though it may sometimes be necessary.
The Scotch-Irish, that unruly tribe of Scottish cattle herders imported by the Redcoats first to Northern Ireland and then to North America, were the vanguard of American settlement inland. They were spoiling for a fight and they ran the British empire’s militant wing.
Our red necks cleared and civilized the Low Country of South Carolina and the “Highlands” of Appalachia for the Union. Their intensely symbolic consciousness makes them capable of intense dedication to the “public religion” of the American Founding, whence the many distinguished Scotch-Irish explorers and military men, and their strong tribal sense lets them build strong communities. There are vestiges of this world in our sports, our military, and, of course in our politics.
How such intense symbolism evolved remains unclear but I suspect has a lot to do with the hypervisual that’s a part of the Scottish way. The more engineering minded of them see in pictures. Cyan Banister, who is of Okie stock, is a ne plus ultra of this world. There is a kind of beauty in that. It’s easy to examine, say, a user experience or the schematics for a car when you can see it in your mind’s eye.
The rest of them see it in symbols. The crest, the cross, the flag. The statues. The stars and bars. They enforce codes against themselves and against others. There is no greater friend and no worst enemy. These are the types who fight our wars wherever they are.
And they get intoxicated by it. But their love of intoxication, literal and symbolic, brought the Union to the point of dissolution in the Civil War. Their pride was wounded by the Yankees who tariffed their industries while the (largely but not exclusively) Jewish financiers of the slave trade excited them into war to defend their turf. Many slave holders owed money on their slaves. (When their slaves ran away it was as if their collateral ran away too. Hence the Fugitive Slave Act.)
Indeed then as now the Scotch-Irish have demonstrated a susceptibility to hypnotism that was preyed upon by foreign tribes and foreign influence in the 1860s to precipitate succession.
If this sounds familiar it ought to. Jared Kushner is Judah Benjamin, in this formulation. Both are all too happy to sell out the goys for lucre, be it from the British (in Benjamin’s case) or the Chinese, Israelis, or Arabs (in Kushner’s). To follow how much money Kushner has taken in from the Arabs (and may yet take in) in particular is to be shocked.
Lincoln’s masterly statesmanship of keeping perfidious Albion out of the conflict is the template for would be presidents who seek to keep others out of American affairs.
Kushner’s not alone in running from the problems he has helped to cause. You also have the (largely) Jewish Silicon Valley types who decamped for Miami, one of America’s money laundering capitals. They’ve made their money and now have absconded in California’s hour of need. It ought to be a source of great embarrassment the addicts who wander the streets of California and charitable solutions ought to be offered. And yet they’d rather look the other direction.
How aware Trump is of all of this is unclear though he does show signs every now and again of getting it — like all hostages do. He blinks once or twice and speaks almost in code but sometimes he just lays it all out.
“The biggest change I’ve seen in Congress is Israel literally owned Congress — you understand that. Ten years ago, 15 years ago, and it was so powerful, it was so powerful and today it’s almost the opposite,” Trump said to radio host Ari Hoffman on October 29, 2021.
If it were true that Israel no longer controls Congress why did so many American congressmen vote for Iron dome?
British spy Andrew Sullivan — we will turn to him soon — once noted the disproportionate nature of our relationship with the State of Israel and there’s been a concerted effort to make such criticisms unacceptable.
To bar a friend from criticism isn’t being a good friend; it’s setting them up for failure. I oppose boycott, divestment and sanctions — what thinking person could boycott a people? What victim of a blacklist could encourage it for others? — but I’m not blind to Israel’s faults — just as I’m not blind to America’s or to China’s or to Russia’s or to England’s. All human institutions have their faults and failings.
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In the current moment, we see foreign influences yet again, this time empowered by Facebook and other forms of social media, hypnotizing the Scotch-Irish into rebellion against the country they helped build. It’s worth noting American Blacks are on average perhaps as much as 50% Scotch-Irish. This is the phenomenon that Thomas Sowell was identifying in Black Rednecks, White Liberals. When Dave Chappelle mentions the black slave breeders he’s talking about this sort of thing. We will explore Chappelle’s own ties to the intelligence community and that of his family in subsequent posts.
The establishment right would like this discussion to be about culture — as if culture itself weren’t itself a product of biology and genetics. Con Inc. takes a dim view of behavioral genetics because a recognition of the limits of human nature places limits on their own power. Far easier to wrap yourself in the flag and depend people pledge allegiance. If that doesn’t work it’s easier to sell libertarianism or abstractionism generally when people have no science or numeracy.
The behavior patterns and susceptibilities of both groups are closer, especially now post civil rights, than either would probably care to admit, and the Antifa riots of the summer of 2020 and the Jan 6 Insurrection probably closer in style and foreign origin than many partisans want to say. You see the hand of the Chinese funding crowdfunds in both cases, for example. Or do you believe that the famously generous Chinese are suddenly all great backers of the Proud Boys?
The Democratic Party, just like the Republican Party of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, needs to relearn how to play the symbolic games that resonate with the Scotch-Irish, and start a strong dose of counter programming against the siren songs of Ben Shapiro and other propagandists whose work is now propagated in memes across Facebook and WhatsApp. When you abandon the meme turf you lose the meme war. This is ultimately why regulation of the content on Facebook by our deep state is going to happen. We can’t allow our underemployed population to be weaponized against us.
Youngkin’s victory in VA, driven by building upon Trump’s strength with rural voters typically of Scotch-Irish heritage, shows the possible dangers. Youngkin’s backing was made possible by a Jimmy Carter aide turned billionaire David Rubenstein himself backed by the Russophilic Mellon family.
Youngkin essentially bought off the Republican Party and cheaply at that, starved as they were for funds and a champion. You’ll note that Youngkin lent himself $20 million. That money will now be repaid. We should be asking by whom. When we see that Youngkin says that one of the larger problems facing Virginia is antisemitism, well, I think we have our answer. That federal court after federal court has found state bans on boycotts of Israeli goods unconstitutional does not diminish the ardent love of the policy.
That Mark Brnovich, attorney general of Arizona and current candidate for U.S. Senate in Arizona, continues to litigate the matter all the up the federal circuit tells us how powerful the Israel lobby really is.
Just what Arizona has to do with Israeli boycotts is anyone’s guess but to ask that question is to be called anti-Semitic so we dare not.
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Speaking of anti-Semitism we might address the growing alliance between Orthodox Jewry and Eric Adams.
Gone are the days of Jesse Jackson calling New York City “Hymietown” now that Adams has elevated Ezra Friedlander to his point person for “moderate” Democratic engagement.
There is an interesting aspect to NY selecting Eric Adams as their nominee/mayor while simultaneously voting against same day voter registration and no excuse absentee. Is the Big Apple going through a moderation? And if it is what does that mean?
The success of Eric Adams in New York, a distinctly non-woke Black man who nevertheless still belongs to the Democratic Party and supports the Biden Administration, shows other possible political paths. Indeed it was easy to imagine a Adams mayoralty with a Dave Chappelle much in the same way as it was possible to imagine Barack Obama's ascension after David Palmer, the fictional black president on 24. Pop culture both predicts and eases along transitions.
Adams improved on DeBlasio’s performance in 2017 while Democrats struggled nationwide by embracing the police and police reform simultaneously, and respecting the established symbolism of the city and its civic government. This approach will succeed with voters who otherwise may fall victim to foreign tunes by respecting the symbolic nature of their consciousness. Statesmanship is educative, yes, but so too is it protective.
The glaring exception to loving the police was Michelle Wu, who was elected mayor in Boston. I do not believe Wu’s origin story, as recounted here. How convenient her father isn’t in the picture.
Time will reveal her CCP bona fides. And no, that isn’t just because she’s Asian. Mark my words. She was instrumental in banning facial recognition in Boston, a key tool for catching the sorts of spies who have become all too common. She is the kinder, gentler, Harvarder face of Chinese domination of America’s cities and elites.
It’s my contention that Wu is but the Harvard-aligned Chinese mob replacing the Irish mob as a loci of power. She advised human trafficking syndicates masquerading as refugee organizations. She is not of Boston. She does not belong in Boston and soon, I hope Boston will replace her.
Naturally I’m on record preferring the violence and the order of the Winter Hill gang over the corruption of the Harvard academia who are all too happy to sell seats to the scions of privilege be they named Kushner or after some Chinese potentate. If you think I exaggerate: Harvard gave us Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg and Jared Kushner and Ben Shapiro. Like a lot of WASP meritocrats I naively thought it a school worth going to. How wrong I was. But being Scotch-Irish, I was too drawn to the symbols. My apologies!
Academics should not run a country, especially if they hail from Harvard. Harvard hates America and I weep for the city of my birth. Wu’s disdain for the police and the police for her will likely give us another police strike in Boston. Our last police strike gave us a Calvin Coolidge presidency.
We can only hope…
A friend writes in:
Some more thoughts on the topics treated above now that turnout data has been more thoroughly analyzed in VA…It appears that key to Youngkin’s victory was turnout in non-White areas, especially ones with lower education levels, not keeping pace with 2020, while it exploded in rural areas. Seems pretty clear that the relative lack of appeal for McAuliffe with lower education Black (really 50% scotch Irish) and rural White (also probably 50% or more scotch Irish ) relative to Biden in 2020 is what did him in. Lack of enthusiasm for wokeness, school shutdowns and vaccine mandates among working class black and Latino voters is probably a big part of this.
Which brings us back to Eric Adams with this as a backdrop. I think it’s not so much that he’s anti-woke per se and is going to pick fights with people about it, but he’s very clearly NON-woke, I.e he doesn’t use the academic language of crt, he doesn’t talk much about gender and sexuality, he acknowledges America’s racial history and past instances of police abuse but doesn’t link that with academic postmodern theories, he doesn’t mind making the occasional non PC remark about the Js or other ethnic groups prominent in the city etc, much like everyone can really tell that the Joe Biden who was friends with Strom Thurmond isn’t all that interested in Judith Butler’s insights on cyborg feminism or Derrick Bell’s theories of “systematic racism.”
Also w Chapelle, the trans subject is what the press wanted to focus on in their coverage it seemed, but some of his most non-PC jokes referenced the Jews and Israel, and the former VP and his sexuality. Not woke or PC, but not right wing in the conventional sense either ! Eric Adams gives off much the same vibe as Charles says.
Too many people at the White House and probably in the city government of NYC do love all the woke business and that’s part of what’s been hampering the Democrats. The solution seems clearly to foreground the non-woke Centrist Dems, quite a few of whom are Black,to speak their mind and lay out practical solutions for the country.
Shalom Charles! Excellent article