Sake White

I promised in this post that I would continue this topic.

The other subject I’m addressing concerns the chickenhawk meme or rather the tendency for decadent people to praise warrior virtues and various other traits of tribal cultures. When people live in uncertain times and feel a danger to themselves that their faction is not adequately addressing, they tend to look backwards in time to a more hardy age in which men were men and what not. That’s an instinctual response that depends upon a couple of factors such as how much nostalgia you are willing to engage in and how much of the past you really understand as opposed to just think you understand.

A symposium audience member made the remark that, unlike Bush, Leonidas and other Kings actually led from the front, fighting with their troops.

Continued later.

There’s two sources, as I see it, for why people now a days admire or value being in combat when it comes to the topics of war or conflict.

The first source is a direct result of Western decadence, which is simply a derivative of the more general civilizational decadence. It’s when a culture gets so prosperous that the skills, ethics, values, and fortitude that produced that culture’s success now becomes an anachronism and perhaps even an obstacle in the modern age.

Certain cultures from the steppes were master horsemen. Their skill was such that they could perform acrobatics on the horse while the horse is galloping. This was an extraordinary ability that was rare even amongst the steppe barbarian cultures. A more common skill to the steppe horsemen was the ability to command your horse while using both hands to shoot a bow. When this kind of culture settled down and put down roots in a farming culture, they could no longer field the horse herds that was necessary to maintain their previous lifestyle. This meant that the skills of horsemanship amongst settled steppe barbarians decreased. They could still shoot a bow quite well, but that relegated them to producing foot archers, not horse archers.

You can see such examples here in America as well when in the past many Americans hunted but now a days, few do. This means that few Americans are familiar with using violence as a tool to put food on the table, few Americans are familiar with using firearms to defend themselves against natural or unnatural threats, and even fewer Americans would be able to demonstrate marksmanship even if they were provided firearms.

In the past, hunting was a form of survival, it put food on the table or got you furs that you could trade for money. Now a days, we no longer need hunting to survive and thus our skills at such things decreased.

These cycles and periods of progression are, in essence, the decadence that all civilizations eventually produce. A civilization that is not decadent at all would then be called “anarchy”. But most often times what you see in civilizations is a few wealthy and elite few hording resources and prosperity while the rest of the people in that culture and civilization gets to eat grass. Take North Korea as an example. They are a “civilization” only in the sense that the top elite classes are decadent as hell. In barbarian cultures, the opposite of civilization, everybody starves more or less. Sure, the top dog may get all the best loot, but that’s still 1/100th of what the poorest person in a prosperous civilization gets.

Overall, it may be said that barbarism is at best, really bad. At worst, it is really really bad. Civilization can be either the Germans, not so good, or America, really good.

Since humans are humans, there will always be somebody who is not satisfied in their culture and society. Those people will try naturally try to improve their civilization, whether because they see decadence as threatening to send their culture backwards or because they have some kind of personal ambition at stake.

These people eventually find their way to a powerful tool of inspiration, which is ancestor worship. If members of a civilization are disaffected and demoralized, then they will try to go back in time to a time and place in which people were self-confident, vibrant, and tough as a way to either indulge in nostalgia or try to bring back the strength of the past into the decadent and weak present.

When Democrats and Leftists use the chickenhawk reference, what they are doing is calling up the vigor and strength of the past, when Kings and Queens led their armies personally in battle to slaughter and wipe out entire villages and nations, in order to inspire the people of today to great heights of frenzy.

When Islamofascists talk about the Caliphate and Islam’s glorious history before the West and Jews sabotaged it, they are calling up the vigor and strength of the past so that the people of today will be motivated to greater heights of fanaticism and murderous rage.

All of this leads us to the nice transition towards the second cause of why people now a days tend to prefer a time in history rather than the present time of prosperity and security. The second cause is tribalism.

Tribalism is a simple thing, really. It is the basic blood and community bond that humanity forged during our hunter-gatherer days when we weren’t the top predator on Earth and we didn’t have all the animals on earth afraid of us. Who do you count on when the going gets tough and the sabertooth tigers have come out to play? You count on your blood family, because they have a natural and instinctual interest in safeguarding your safety because you hold part of their genes. For extended family, this bond is rather weak depending on how long you have been around them. For close family, it is quite strong: strong enough to oftentimes overwhelm the instinct for self-preservation even. Tribalism, thus, is a more advanced form of the blood bond, in that it creates a political organization out of every member of an extended family. Because this produced great benefits to human beings, tribalism has a strong allure to human beings that wish to belong and who wish to have protection and security.

The Italian and Italian-American mafias, for example, were based upon tribalism. Specifically, it was based upon “amoral familism”. Meaning whatever is good, specifically economically good, for the family is right and just. It doesn’t matter who else you have to hurt and kill, what is good for the family is just and right.

Because of how the tribal mind operates compared to say… an American mind focused on national identity and loyalty, this can produce rather large amounts of strife and conflict. For example, a patriot who is loyal to his nation sees his nation as his family. Not a replacement for his family, but as the structure and the hierarchy that, if he stays loyal to, will in the long term protect his family. The tribal mind, however, sees anyone else which doesn’t share blood connections with the tribe as being automatically suspect and an enemy which must be annihilated for the good of the tribe. So while an American can work past ethnic, racial, or political differences, a tribal mind cannot.

Of course, in reality, every individual is neither totally tribal nor totally civilized. The military brotherhood which is forged in war oftentimes supersedes family loyalty, although for Americans it does not often supersede national loyalty. Last time that happened was the US Civil War, and even then the soldiers went to each side based upon loyalty to state and federal governments, not due to loyalty to some guy you fought with in a conflict. That bond of brothers connection is a perfect example of the values of civilization in action as well as the values of tribalism. Tribes put emphasis on loyalty, courage, valor, and the ability to kill and die for your tribe. Similar values to the military and essentially values to create the Band of Brothers bond in war.

So, I’m sure you’re wondering what tribalism has to do with people in today’s decadent civilizations talking about how if you wish to demonstrate valor, courage, and virtue in war, you must be fighting in that war right now, at the front lines cutting and dicing. The reason is simple. When a member of a tribe sees another member of the tribe who refuses to kill, slaughter, wipe out entire villages, and even refuses to be willing to die when the tribe is in danger, that original member loses all respect for the coward.

There are two alternatives for people who want Bush to be on the front lines of the war that Bush ordered, fighting, slicing, and slaughtering people. One, is that such people are part of Bush’s tribe and want Bush to achieve a sort of messianic glory by leading from the front. If Bush refuses, then such people taunt Bush and his daughters for being cowards. If Bush truly believed terrorism was such a major threat to America that he would order other Americans to fight and die in war, then Bush owes it to the tribe to be on the front lines fighting and risk death too.

The second alternative is if those people who want Bush to be in the war fighting are part of another tribe, separate from Bush’s, which may or may not be hostile to Bush’s tribe. When people from another tribe look at an enemy or foreign tribe, and they see that the foreign tribe’s leaders or members aren’t willing to fight and die for their tribe, then the people from the “other tribe” uses taunts such as “chickenhawk” about how Bush needs to fight in his own wars instead of sitting safe back at home while others die for him. The same thing happens when Arabs see how weak and decadent Americans and Europeans are. For example, Democrats don’t believe terrorism is a big threat to America, which is why they advocate that Bush fight the terrorists personally, if what Bush said about the threat of terrorism was something he really believed in. Bush’s enemy tribes sees Bush’s refusal to fight directly with our enemies as proof that Bush is the one that created Al Qaeda and setup the events on 9/11. After all, a “real member” of any tribe would be out risking his life for the tribe, right? So depending on which tribe is the one observing Bush, you can either get the Democrat response or the terrorist response to the West.

If you have noticed that these two alternatives are rather similar, then congratulations, because every tribal mind is the same as every other tribal mind. It does not matter which “tribe” they are part of. Only the creation of something that unites the tribes or demands higher loyalties than to “blood”, can ever change a tribal mind.

To discard the hypotheticals in favor of reality, Bush’s tribe is actually America. The nation of America. The members of Bush’s tribe are “supposed” to be every American. Of course, reality never goes by what it is supposed to be, you know. Currently, America is seeing a fracturing and division within itself. First the Left inculcated splinter groups and hostile victim groups in order to create groups within groups. This produced suspicion amongst tribe Al-Ameriki. In order to safeguard themselves and their progeny, more tribes within tribes were created inside America. Now it is such that many bureaucrats and Leftists hold as their ultimate loyalty, not to America, but to their family or their sub-tribe or their ideological group cum tribe.

What this means is that the danger and risk of self-destruction which tribes were designed to counter, no longer exists in any appreciable form here in America. Thus the need to survive, which bonds members of a tribe together even stronger than their bonds of blood, is weakening here in America. Combine this with enemy attempts to divide us against each other and what you get is identity politics combined with indoctrination into Leftist creed amongst our elementary, junior high, high school, and college level education systems.

Let me be very clear. It is not wrong to try to go back in time to a more hardy time in order to re-energize your failing and demoralized culture in the present. In fact, tribal and barbarian traits are essential to maintaining a healthy civilization, both to prevent outside threats (invasions) but also to prevent internal domestic threats as well (KKK, criminals, traitors, etc). When Americans go to help each other out even at the risk of their own lives, this is a tribal trait that has been sublimated to the interests of civilization. When the British stand by and wait for the police, while they are witnessing a fellow citizen having his head bashed in by “youths”, that is called decadence. The British subjects are now so used to the “fruits” of civilization, that they can no longer even think about doing things for themselves. That’s decadence. That is not part of tribal society, to watch an enemy hurt one of your tribe while doing nothing about it except wait. This is why the Shia were only able to wait and delay things for a short time when the Sunni terrorists came into their neighborhoods, but eventually the tribal instinct to strike back at enemies triumphed: as it should. If you don’t have those instincts, then you become like sheep led to the slaughter. These are the positives, but the negatives are quite dangerous. Too much of those instincts, unrestrained by loyalty to a nation or something larger than you and your family, and what tends to happen is Islam’s war with humanity.

When going back to a more hardy time is wrong is when “going back in time” means pitting your fellow citizens against each other because the only way you can gain power is through tribal organizations at the expense of national ones. Then that is called treason and it is something the Democrats and their Leftist allies are quite familiar with.

Here’s why. A nation is not like a fiefdom of a noble. A nation is not a “feudal system” in which the leaders, meaning the nobility, fight wars to protect peasants and in return the peasants call the knights ’sir’ and bow down to the nobility: their “betters”. A kingdom needs their fracking king to lead the army and to fight on the front lines, so long as it doesn’t get him killed. Why? Because the members of a kingdom don’t fight for themselves, they fight for the king and it is the king that protects the family members of that kingdom. That’s why the kings and queens go out and personally lead armies. The American nation functions differently from totalitarianism, dictatorship, military juntas, kingdoms, and aristocratic oligarchies. No, seriously, it really does.

If you think about it, what happens to the army when the King doesn’t show up? Can the soldiers write their Congressman about how their Supreme Leader hasn’t got the stones to back them up properly? No, the only thing that the soldiers can do is conduct a coup and get rid of their King if they are dissatisfied with how things are going at home and how that might impact their families and loved ones.

In a nation, soldiers serve for limited periods of time and are doing this to benefit themselves, their families, their nation, or a higher loyalty to humanity. Or any combination of the aforementioned. The soldiers, then, don’t need the “King”, meaning the President, to be out on the front lines risking his life. And for what? What material benefit does having the President at a battle provide to the soldiers, except the fear that they will be to blame if the President gets himself killed in a war zone? And then what will happen to the family members of the soldiers, what will happen to those women and children whose livelihoods depended upon the political stability of the United States? I’ll tell you what will happen. The Vice President, somebody unelected by the American people, will then hold power. And it is going to be a crap shoot whether that Vice President will be good like Teddy Roosevelt or disastrous like Johnson. Then what will happen? Then that Vice President will either have to be forced to stop that war cause the previous leader died in it, thus demonstrating cowardice and decadent traits, or that VP will have to continue that war. Ah, but to continue that war, that VP has to fight on the front lines. And if he dies, then we’re just going to go down the chain of succession, aren’t we, until at some point America erupts in civil war over a dispute that nobody will compromise.

That was a really good solution to helping soldiers and their families, wasn’t it.

So, essentially, when Democrats and Leftists talk about Bush being a chickenhawk, what they are really saying is that they wish us to go back to a feudal system in which the Supreme Leader was given Supreme Power in return for leading us at the front of battle. If you look at Obama and the Left’s views over government and strongmen, you will see that they infinitely prefer strong men over republican values of government. You will also see the Left attempt to invest spiritual and total government power into one person. They really do want their tribal leaders to lead from the front.

This kind of vision for human progress is pretty hellish all in all. Turning nations into squabbling tribes and reverting back to absolute monarchy and feudalism is not what I would call “good for humanity”. It is not even realistic, because any human being at the top of a hierarchy, whether you call it a tribe or a nation, does not get their hands wet with wetwork. Osama Bin Laden wasn’t on one of the hijacked planes. JFK wasn’t in a nuclear submarine primed to push the button when he risked war to get the nukes off Cuba. It is unrealistic to expect a leader, someone the entire group counts on for leadership not for his personal battle prowess, to take the same risks as the most expendable member of your hierarchy. Do you know how many military leaders risked their lives for unimportant tactical gains and ended up dying? Try Gustavus Adolphus. Do you know what happened to Alexander the Great’s child and wife when he got himself killed trying to take over the known world by being one of the first to get over a wall in a siege assault? Alexander’s lieutenants killed them in order to solidify their claim to parts of Alexander’s empire.

Civilization demands compromises from us. It also demands that we sacrifice many liberties in return for security. For example, I lose my liberty to kill anybody I want to in return for the protection of the law. I lose my liberty to shout fire and ramp up a mob to go on a murdering spree in return for the security of the law. The American nation demands that you sacrifice your petty little jealousies and whims about wanting President Bush to be dicing and slaughtering terrorists in return for political stability and peaceful transfer of power here in America.

Unfortunately, the Left and the Democrats are showing increasing signs that they will no longer tolerate having to accept losses in their freedom to act for the greater security and good of all Americans. The Left wants to preserve the freedom to betray and destroy, while wanting the cake of security, Marine protection, and American power at the same time. Not exactly ethical, if you ask me.

For background reading on tribalism, you can start here. Don’t miss Steven Pressfield’s article on Tribes.

Bookworm’s comment about a visit to the Reagan Library, is I believe, very relevant here.

What I found most moving was the footage of the assassination attempt on Reagan. As I blogged once before, that occurred when I was a student at Berkeley. I vividly remember people around me celebrating, not his survival, but the act of the attempt. Any disappointment they felt wasn’t with a crazy man trying to destroy the political process, or with four men, including the President, getting shot, but with the assassin’s failure to get the job done.

I mindlessly repeated those sentiments when I came home from Berkeley and my parents, appropriately, scolded me something awful. It was their moral outrage that reminded me that, whether I believed in Reagan’s politics (and I didn’t at the time), all life is valuable, and that the political process is invaluable. An attack on either is a blow to the heart of what makes us a free nation. I learned my lesson and had the decency to be embarrassed by my initial response.

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Notice that bit about the political process and how I differentiate the dynamics of such when you are living in a monarchy as opposed to a nation like America. It also gives a rather more ominous interpretation to why so many Leftists want Bush and his daughters to fight on the front lines.