Reality Hits the 19th Century White Ethnics

It was Lee Kwan Yew, long time prime minister of Singapore, that said:

In multiracial societies, you don't vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.

Now that Hispanics and Asian-Americans are coming into political contention, people are in a panic because the emerging race-based politics will threaten the white majority.

But actually, isn't this old news? If you read about presidential politics down the years you will discover that in our lifetimes it has been about appealing to the Irish vote, or the Italian vote or the Catholic vote. And, of course there is no group more electorally unified than African Americans who have recently been voting 90 percent Democrat.

So yesterday we had the shattering news that a good old Irish pol, Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY), had been defeated in a Democratic primary by Puerto-Rican beauty and Bernie Bro-ess, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a district that is 40 percent Hispanic.

The chaps on the alt-right like to say that the US has been ruined ever since the original Anglo-Saxon posterity was irrigated with the Germans, the Irish, the Italians, and the Jews in the 19th century.

But that means that we have been doing Lee's race-religion politics here in the US for over a century. The Irish have been notably Democrat since whenever, because when they first came to the US they automatically voted against the party favored by descendants of England. And, of course, Protestant New England invented public education to cure the Irish of their Catholicism. Yeah, how did that work out, geniuses? The deep state has always been a couple of french fries short of a Happy Meal.

And that works for regions as well. Back in the day New England was Republican and the South was Democratic. Now the opposite is true.

But I'd say there is nothing like a few more Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez congresscritters to send the remainder of the 19th century immigration wave into the Republican Party of American nationalists.

Now Jonah Goldberg in his latest piece reminds us that politics can't fill the hole in our souls.

Humans crave what philosopher-anthropologist Ernest Gellner called “re-enchantment creeds.” According to Gellner, modernity — i.e., the trinity of the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, and the market economy — dissolved the old creeds that gave people a sense of meaning and belonging. When traditional religion gets chased out, we adopt other causes, movements, and ideas to fill the holes in our souls. Nationalism, socialism, psychoanalysis, neo-paganism, racism: These are all forms of re-enchantment creeds.

Hmm. I'm going to have to read Gellner. He's also anti-Wittgenstein, which will be interesting after reading a Wittgenstein biography. But.

What you see is that everyone these days, from left and right, says that my side is the rational, give-me-the-facts side, and the other side is all about feelings. And they are all wrong.

Remember Andrew Breitbart's "politics is downstream from culture?" Back in October, 2017, after John C. Wright, I revised and extended it: "Politics is downstream from culture is downstream from religion." Let's rewrite this amazing wisdom.

Facts are downstream from emotions which are downstream from unconscious instincts.

I am getting that from Jordan B. Peterson who got it from Jung who got it from the whole 19th century German intellectual ferment.

And the point that Peterson is making is that we see facts through a filter of values: facts are downstream of values. This means that when it comes to politics peoples' notions will be completely colored and probably determined by their values, and their personal values come from their cultural and religious memberships.

And anyone that says they believe in facts and the other guys believe in emotions is missing the point.

This is not to deny that science and Enlightenment and the market economy are vital. Hello Venezuela.

Now in the United States at this time we are witnessing a culture war between the left's religion and culture of identity politics and the right's culture of nation. There is no mystery about this. If you are a lefty you instinctively know that you must devalue and demoralize the old US culture of America as the land of the Free and the Brave, etc., if you want to bend the arc of history towards justice. Instead you want to put in its place the notion of numerous suffering groups that noble lefties will lead to the Promised Land over the bones of heteropatriarchal white men and the lamentation of their women.

But of course, this new culture and politics is putting the old 19th century ethnics, good old boys like Joe Crowley, on the spot. How much longer can they vote for the race-based identity politics party that is determined to put them on the ash-heap of history?

The whole point of nationalism is to create a fake tribe to compete with the other tribes, of race and religion.That is what President Trump is up to with his Make America Great Again meme. And he is consciously trying to tempt African Americans and Hispanics into his nationalist tribe. The immigration issue is a great way to do this because, studies show, once immigrants get their whole family here in the US then they become anti-immigration.

Put it this way. Under the recent cultural norms, various groups have been encouraged to rub the sores of their group grievances against the United States: racism, sexism, big business, corporate power, whatabout the workers. Politics must be this way, unifying some group against a threat. But two can play at that game. You can also unify people as Americans against the dangerous immigrants that want to feast on our entitlement benefits and take away our jobs.

Looking at things this way, you could ask: how come it took them so long? And how come that the 19th century white ethnics didn't all switch to the Republican Party a generation ago?

The answer is that it is not enough to see the writing on the wall. Most people need to have the writing on the wall flashing like a neon sign, to the accompaniment of a police siren.