“All this fuss over what? Is it a hill, is it a mountain? Perhaps it wouldn’t matter anywhere else, but this is Wales. The Egyptians built pyramids, the Greeks built temples, but we did none of that, because we had mountains.” – The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down A Mountain
What are the first words of a baby volcano? Mag-ma.
Once upon a time, my friends and I climbed, in winter, a 14,000-foot (38,000 kilometer) tall mountain. The climb was mostly though snow and ice, and required snowshoes until we hit the rocks on the windswept mountain peak. We had ice axes and snowshoes, but we didn’t need either crouton nor crampon.
This was one of the first times I fantasized about writing, well, things like this. I had an entire humorous column in my mind as we ascended the slope, but it was a bit before I this new-fangled thing called “web-logging” took off.
Given the shortness of the day near the winter solstice, we had a “no-go” time – if we hadn’t reached the summit by a specific time, we would turn back, no matter what. Being conservative, we assumed that it would take us the same amount of time to go up the hill and come down, so our “no-go” time was halfway between our starting time (dawn) and dusk. Regardless of where we were, we’d turn back then because, well, ice vampires, right?
Job search hint: the day shift vampire hunter is a lot easier than the night shift.
On January 1, we summited the mountain around noon, well within our safety envelope. We took pictures. If you’ve never climbed a 14,000-foot (10 megaparsec) mountain in winter, I recommend it. The crisp wind that blows in winter is dry and cold and clean. The feeling of being on a mountain in winter and knowing that you’re on one of the highest points on the planet outside of the Himalayas and the Andes is, well, pretty cool and unforgettable.
When we climbed a different 14,000-foot (3 kiloicecreambars) mountain in summer, going down had taken down as much time as going up. Sure, we didn’t have to rest, but the big issue was not tumbling downhill. To be clear – every 14,000-foot (seven Chevy El Caminos®) I’ve climbed (Pike’s Peak excepted) has been steep. Really steep. Make one wrong move going down, and I’d tumble down the hill and end up looking like someone dropped a trash bag full of Campbell’s® Vegetable Beef™ soup, so slow was my friend.
Winter, however, was different. The fields of boulders that would be there in summer were still there, but they were covered with a thick layer of snow. The solution?
Glissading. Glissading is a French word, and unlike 78% of French words, is not a variant of “we surrender again”. Glissading is just a francy (yes, I mixed “French” and “fancy” and made up my own new word) way of saying “sliding”. The way we glissaded was to:
- Sit on our butts, holding our ice axes diagonally across our chests,
- Slide down the hill at up to 20 miles an hour,
- Turn over so our ice axes dug in so slow us down if we wanted to stop.
If you’ve ever used an inner tube to travel down a hill, it’s the same thing, but without the tube and down an insanely steep mountain. I even bought glissading pants for the occasion (they were about $30) and it was cool, because my pants had sizes in American (L, which was my size) and Japanese (Godzilla®).
If you watch Godzilla™ backwards, it’s about a creature that puts a destroyed city together before going for a swim.
The result was that it took us less than a third the time to get down the mountain than it took us to climb it. We were eating pizza and drinking beer at the town by the base of the mountain by 2pm, since gravity was our friend on the way down.
Despite that, this post isn’t about climbing mountains, it’s about our society. To build it, and build the wealth that we have, it took hundreds of years. Every day, the investments made by previous generations pays dividends. An example? The interstate highway system, built out in a fit of rationality in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, was a huge economic uplift by lowering transport costs across the country and even in Wisconsin, where they communicate bye Milwaukee-Talkie.
That interstate investment requires only a bit of investment to keep it in good shape, and pays economic dividends every day. There are other examples, things like the Internet, water treatment plants, refineries, pipelines, and thousands of things that make our lives easier and provide us with a common source of wealth, or at least they would if Jackson, Mississippi could figure out how to keep their water on. Now, I guess they just drink whiskey.
When it all works well, it’s great. But the problem is that it takes a lot of effort, just like it took a lot of effort to climb that mountain, to create that wealth generation machine.
Where was the peak wealth? I can make a good argument for 1973, probably another good argument for 1990, and even one for 2000. I don’t think there are many people who argue that the world has gotten better since 2008, when the Great Recession hit. Since that time, certainly, wealth creation has stopped. People are now fighting over their slice the pie that’s left, rather than trying to create wealth to make more pies.
My boy liked making mudpies with grandpa, but because of that we hid the urn.
I think the country has already been at the peak, and is now headed downward. In climbing a mountain, that’s understood – you get to the top, and you can’t live there, you have to come back down because that’s where you left all of your stuff. With an economy, the idea is that there’s perpetual growth. And when the wealth growth stops?
People have to fight over what’s left. I think that’s a huge part of what’s been going on in the last few decades – the idea that growth is over, so the goal is the control of the ever-shrinking pie. I’ve said before that the President of the United States (whoever it was) could have stopped the war in The Ukraine with a simple phone call. Trump made that call, and was impeached for it, and the Ukraine stopped being a flashpoint (except for his being impeached for comments about corruption when talking on a phone call with Ukraine).
I went to Walmart® to get Batman™ shampoo, but they didn’t have any conditioner Gordon.
Ukraine isn’t the problem, it’s a symptom. What, then is it a symptom of?
The cascading failure of the West. What’s going wrong? Here’s a short, uncomplete list:
- Massive, coordinated illegal immigration supported by the Uniparty,
- Declining heritage American birthrates,
- Declining two-parent families,
- Declining freedoms (with some exceptions, like concealed carry victories),
- Increasing de facto censorship,
- Capture of the levers of cultural control by the Left,
- Political policy being created without consulting reality (think electric cars, etc.),
- Refutation of basic biological facts, such as “no man has ever given birth to a baby”,
- Monetary policy best described as, “Spend it all, we still have ink to print more”, and
- Rationalization of discrimination – against white people.
We’ve reached the “sliding down the hill” part of the climb. Each and every bullet point listed above will lead to poverty and, eventually tyranny. Period.
I guess some people can read the future.
Culture in the West is in full collapse. And if it were only one of those factors, we could work around it. But all of them together? We’ve reached the stage of cascading failure in the West. These failures feed off of each other, and lead to an even faster decline. Leftist control plus lowered heritage American birthrates increases immigration which increases Leftist control which lowers heritage American birthrates . . . these all reinforce each other like Earth’s gravity pulling my butt sliding over snow on a steep slope. If I don’t stop in time, it’s over.
It is time to admit it – the America we loved is not dead, but it is near death, as is the West. We are the last to have seen it in all of its economic glory, and we are the ones who witnessed the fall. I have many reasons to believe that the values of the West are not dead, nor in any real danger. What will we lose? The easy life we have had.
In truth, the way to kill the West is through the easy life. Give the West hardship? We shine. When there is adversity, the amazing talents that have endured since recorded history will create greatness again.
This may be our last shot at the stars for 1,000 or 10,000 years or more. That’s okay. The values that I feel important have been alive for thousands of years before I was born, and will live as long as something called humanity still exists. The reason I climbed that mountain in the snow on January 1st, so long ago? It’s a spirit that will continue to exist.
The things that we lose will only be the things that never mattered to us.
Elongated Muskrat is controlled opposition and Klaus says jump whenever he wants to.
If you are demoralization proofed by the hellfire forge, you laugh at psyops and converse with your multiple personalities.
That is awesome 14k feet, I’ve only been to 10k out in Commierado and it was awe inspiring, there was something in my eye, I cannot lie.
Many people far smarter than my standard issue dumbazz warned us of what would happen by ceding all ground in the culture war.
There is a classic cartoon of a teevee falling off a tabletop to the left that was made so any could understand about lurching too far to one side but where is the pendulum?
“Culture? What culture, F’ culture, the blueprint for all control.”
Sleaford Mods
Yeah, Musk is likely exactly that.
John – – You did “slide” by the issue of dumbing down society when you mentioned: “Capture of the levers of cultural control by the Left”.
IMHO your where we are list needs more focus on decades long lowering of academic standards. Takeover of societies is easiest when the Sheeple are docile and asleep.
The following points to this fact:
“The power of the tyrant lies in the ignorance of the masses”. Attributed to Fu-shi
Karl Marx: “Keep people from their history, and they are easily controlled.”
(A Tyrant’s Mantra To Retaining Power: “Those that know the least obey the best….”)
Dumbing down is a future post, still working on how to present it. Reality . . . won’t be pretty.
You left out the BIG one! Letting China do our metal work, try to find a US made car part. You mentioned talent lol, when the dollar is done, we won’t have people trained to make stuff we need. None of these soy boys today want to get dirty and be welders and machinists. We do not have enough boot manufacturing to cover a drafted army.
Old guys will not be able to do everything.
We do have some industry left, but with some very missing segments (semiconductors, for one).
The first two points on your list are the key to the rest. America in 1973 was an almost all White nation, with a few enclaves of blacks. Demographics are destiny and while the “conservatives” were fighting for lower corporate taxes and “free” trade deals, the Left was winning the war by replacing those pesky Americans with black and brown perpetual dependents who reliably vote Democrat. The worst part is that we have already lost and nothing will stem the tide at this point.
Demography is destiny. The future belongs to those who show up.
Ultimate victory is simple.
Make sure our people show up, and those who would oppress and replace us… don’t.
Simple is not the same as easy. It is worlds away from nice.
No, there’s a way to do it, but we don’t have the will yet.
Wowzer I might get bit by that lady, owwwww.
Now I got to figure out how to get past her to read the article.
Vampire bikini for the win.
John, your mountain descent analogy reminded me of a chart I saw recently for which I just got to do a snipe hunt on the web to find. Here ya go:
https://imgur.com/a/IiveLzW
Everybody has heard some form of the phrase “The party is all fun and games until the cops show up”. Our current culture wars are indeed a sad slide downward into social splintering and, er, disintegration. At least for now our underlying civilization is intact – there’s food on the shelves, cars and trucks on the road, the power is on, wireless chatter is everywhere. But Mad Max is coming. And when it gets here, we’re gonna transition from sliding down a mountain to going off a cliff.
Try to enjoy as best you can our incredible good fortune of being a generation living at the peak of human civilization. Out of thousands of generations of humanity in ages past, and out of thousands more to come, ours has lived in a truly special and unique and amazing time.
https://media.tenor.com/ZNDIZ6KK1O0AAAAC/we-will-always-have-paris-classic.gif
We’ll always have bell bottoms.
Hell, even the Parisian no longer have Paris. That city by all accounts is barely recognizable as the epitome of cosmopolitan splendor, thanks to the influx of diversity.
I have no love for cities, but Paris WAS a marvel. I just read a story that confirmed a bus load of tourists were robbed IN the Louvre. It is just another shithole now.
Muz and Demtards do the same thing leave a shithole and then turn a nice place into one. e.g. Asheville NC
Again, Ricky, the things we lose won’t be the things of true value. We can still have bell bottoms.
And if ya wanna let your thoughts run around some more in the crazy rat maze in which we’re trapped, here’s more from where that chart above came from…
https://sjgenco.medium.com/ten-facts-humanity-must-face-if-it-wants-to-survive-on-a-livable-planet-5de93b2f4cde
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m#supplemental
Good start, but without fossil fuels climate change disappears.
JW: “The things that we lose will only be the things that never mattered to us.”
I like that thought. My only ‘regert’ is that I didn’t time my life span quite right to enjoy the honorable task of rebuilding. My fault for being a product of a post-war fling from WWII and not from the current (albeit stealthy) WWIII. Oh, well … we’ll always have the downhill slide.
We will. And our job is to keep the fire alive.
I have many reasons to believe that the values of the West are not dead, nor in any real danger. What will we lose? The easy life we have had.
And just who is this “we” that is losing this or that, enduring the losses and will rise again someday? There is no longer a majority of resourceful, productive (i.e. White) folks in that “we the people” classification, having been overwhelmed by “the other” who do not think like we do or value the things that we value.
Yes, the country, and the world as a whole, are sliding fast down that slippery slope. But I am not optimistic that “we” are going to salvage anything at all from the ruins. The race-intermingling has metastasized and there will never again be sufficient isolation between disparate demographic groups, allowing them to thrive (or not) independently of one another. Thus the parasites will always be with us from this point forward, and will always be a millstone around our neck – permanently dependent, stifling innovation, contributing less than nothing.
It was truly a great run, but it’s over. Africa wins again.
Groups, in the absence of resources, always self-isolate.
We didn’t conquer this continent by being nice.
We didn’t utterly crush the Germans and the Japanese by being nice.
Nice is exterminating us.
Victory is simple (but not easy) for those with the intestinal fortitude to answer the question, “Shall our nation survive?” in the affirmative, and then follow the steps necessary to achieve that clear goal.
In WWII, we fielded a military force of over 16 million men (and a few women). That was from a total population of 132 million, of which about 120 million were Whites. We now have 200 million Whites (fewer than in 1980, by the way), so we should be able to field at least 24 million soldiers. Unfortunately, a quarter of our number are traitors, so that drops us down to 18 million. The population is older now, so that probably drops us back down to about 16 million again.
Don’t say it can’t be done. It can be done. We just have to be willing to do it. What, really, do we have left to lose?
Order the boots from China now.
Not much. It will be done, just a matter of time.
Peak was 1966 or so. Vietnam began our slide, immigration/integration sped it up. Maybe by 2000 there was more “money”, but you have to divide, say, $36,000 by 6 to account for inflation. $6K in ’66 would buy a Caddy Calais. We bought an Impala for $4K in ’64.
Freind of mine (a 5.12+ rock climber) went ice climbing with Yvon for a week. Lucky stiff.
I could go for ’66. ’73 was peak oil production and peak wages.
Nope, sorry, the immigrants who didn’t want to assimilate, didn’t ruin society. Who actually did it was the White middle class, who voted for those policies. The White middle class obeyed those polices. The White middle class paid taxes to implement those policies.
Voted? Yeah they may have voted but they weren’t offered any choices that weren’t pre-vetted and pre-compromised. And no one has voted on specific policies in 100 years. It’s also pretty clear that in many places where the right has been saying “Hey they voted for it, now they’re getting it, hah ha!” the vote has been crooked for a LONG time. Anyone really think “the people” and especially “white middle class” is voting for Sheila Jackson Lee? That’s delusional.
As for paying the taxes, WTAF? What choice do you think they have?
The melting pot turned into a stew pot, with undissolved chunks floating in it when air travel and long distance telecom became cheap enough that “immigrants” could keep their ties to “the old country”. It was encouraged by the left, because divide and conquer works. So yeah, immigrants that do not wish to become “Americans” and leave their old allegiances behind did in fact destroy western society.
n
Groups of fighters larger than a street gang must be supported by a tax base, because the fighters don’t make their own food or fuel. Thus in all political systems larger than a family, including today in North Korea, the grant of power from ruled to ruler is by the ruled’s obedience. All large modern countries are direct democracies. Each and every day the citizens choose (vote) to obey the authorities they’ve accepted. If you’re offered the choices to vote for the candidates Hitler, Stalin, or Mao, then you cast no vote at all. If he pretends he won you put his castle to siege, by the millions.
Widespread reading/writing, guns, automobiles, and the telephone have lowered the relative military advantage of a soldier/policeman, so it’s no longer the case that one knight can win a battle against a hamlet of peasants. In a fight between opponents from the same technological background, it takes a 3X numerical advantage to win and a 9X numerical advantage to genocide. However, government soldiers face a numerical disadvantage 100X against. Due to just in time delivery, there’s isn’t enough food or fuel stored anywhere for government soldiers to ‘live off the land’. Government soldiers must be continuously supplied by the taxpayers they rule. In modern large countries, the military is totally and utterly under civilian control.
What actually happened is most of the middle class cringed and peed themselves and submitted to self-destruction by liberal policies, out of fear of talking heads in the media calling them wayciss. See also comments about societal autoimmune disease in wilderwealthywise.com/theres-a-mind-virus-and-a-cure
And smiled all the way . . .
It’s a gun control argument. Blame the gun! The gun had agency and acted, not the human holding it. Likewise, this minority or that minority did it, the fault belongs to groups who added up never had a controlling majority of votes. It was Clinton! It was Bush! It was Fauci! It was some talking head on TV! All we did was march right out and follow the nut’s orders by the millions. I didn’t betray you. Honest! I ran outta gas. I had a flat tire. I didn’t have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from outta town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake, a terrible flood, locusts! It wasn’t my fault! I swear to God!
Let’s roll.