I too get a certain sense of delight seeing a map of the “Hillary archipelago” a few blue counties drowning in an immense sea of red. Yet I still remember that LA, NYC, or Chicago areas, each easily outnumber all the population of the mountains, northern Great Plains, and the Great Basin combined. The vast stretch in between Reno, Salt Lake City and Omaha up to the Canadian border has possibly less than 10 million in it out of a country of 330 million. If not for provisions protecting small states built into the constitution, these outlying provinces would be politically irrelevant.
Even aside from overwhelming quantity, cities have been the natural generators of culture, art, and ideas since the beginning of civilization. It is a common sentiment in the dissident right to be disdainful of the city, and having lived in cities, I vehemently agree with most of their points. I only disagree with the conclusion that the city ought to be written off and surrendered. On the contrary, the goal should be to take the city back.
When you have millions of people who can hop on a subway for a few bucks and see each other within the hour at any time, you can have groups of even highly unusual types of people that can meet up regularly. Nobody reaches their full potential alone. Throughout history look at any group of contemperaneous authors, artists, or thinkers and usually they all knew each other or at least corresponded. These social circles generally had to form in cities.
The internet made the fluid real-time formation and exchange of ideas possible outside of urban areas for the first time, but this interaction remains abstract and ghostly until it is consolidated by regular interaction in person between people. In the countryside a nascent high IQ counterculture is usually too diffusely distributed. The city allows for the concentration of a critical mass of neo-tribalists in close proximity where they can interact and their energies can be amplified.
We will know the internet dissidents have fully transitioned into the real world not just when they have rallies, but when there are urban neighborhoods people associate with their identity that have their own public events and meeting places. There are, however, the circumstances we have now that make cities ridiculously overpriced, unsafe, and dirty. The dissidents might begin as a rough urban enclave bringing improvement to a small area but with long term goals in mind of how cities ought to be managed to maximize civilizational creativity.
Firstly, we should reflect on the problem of unproductive underclasses flooding into urban areas. A properly run system wouldn’t allow this. The poorest will always be crushingly poor no matter where you put them. Productive people produce far more wealth if they have easy access to urban areas. It does not make sense to even allow underclasses near the cities. By simply occupying space, they drive up prices for scarce real estate. This is compounded by the fact that any place they congregate becomes uninhabitable for law-abiding cooperators. Even worse, crime spreads outward from these dead zones and further contributes to making cities into violent undesirable sinkholes people work a job in and then flee from at 4 PM.
In a righteous empire, the city should be seen as a desirable privileged place that non-rich cooperators are rewarded with access to, not a third world hellhole. Obviously every city has many lower IQ jobs that need to be done, but that just requires an orderly, properly vetted working class preferably with higher IQ and conscientiousness than their work strictly requires. Every person who lives in an urban area incurs a significant opportunity cost for society if they do not need to be there or are not the best choice to fill their scarce spot with.
When skilled professionals making six figures start living in their employer’s parking lot, we already know society has seriously mismanaged its resources and infrastructure. Just think of all the wealth that gets wasted in a huge bonfire as people compete for scarce access to the economy’s machinery! When poor planning and a dysfunctional undercaste prevent wealth producers from reaching the means of production, it’s kind of like cells getting blocked from processing oxygen by exposure to cyanide.
Of course, the main structural problem of cities in all times and places is they are “gene shredders” as Spandrell calls it. Civilizations rise as the brightest and most capable congregate in cities and declines as they fail to breed or are massively outbred by the peasantry and underclass. The automobile and with it the modern suburb allow people to participate in the urban economy while still reproducing at near-replacement levels. Real light rail systems would be a lot better still. Thus admission into the suburbs also must also be carefully controlled to have a sustainable high agency urban society.
In the longer run, I hope new technologies might even make cities less important and allow people to live outside of nodes on a narrow grid that are natural chokepoints for rent-seekers. The obvious strategic problem with modern mega-cities is their huge vulnerability to attack. Having all the best and brightest in one spot of course means it’s not that hard to decapitate an entire civilization with a single strike.
So long as the city remains the center of modern human power and organization, any dissidents require at least a foothold there.
FORWARD BASE B 
41 replies on “Dissident Success Requires Cities”
Perhaps, the only way to “regain” cities is to privatize them or start creating special economic zones.
Isn’t that pretty much true with Hong Kong and Singapore? It seems to work for them. Even in the movies, medieval European gate guards ask you what your business is before letting you into the city.
“The obvious strategic problem with modern mega-cities is their huge vulnerability to attack”
This will become more obvious as society transitions into a warrior society when the threat of vulnerability to attack increases to become notably alarming.
Cities as we know them today are a product of the hidden rule of the merchant caste and their societally degenerating values of free trade and financial parasitism.
Fortified walled compounds run by mini-potentates were the norm for the cities of the European.
As we rapidly return to neo-feudalism under threat of increased global conflict ‘fortified provisioning sectors’ will become cities redefined.
Desolate rural areas are good for training and counter-attacks using the most dangerous weaponry.
Cities have seemed to always breed degeneracy so any dissident who holds to their values may have to find alternatives such as military bases or religious places of the Most Holy.
I figure a group has its enclave in the city and various retreats in the countryside.
Unless cities have a way of purging degeneracy and leftism by their very nature. There is no salvaging them.
A majority of Americans live in urbanized areas and that centralization is only progressing. Adopting an anti-urban strategy pining for the rural traditions of yore is a losing strategy.
Do you have a solution for the leftism of cities? And how to deal with that?
How did the Salvadorans deal with the Mexican-ness of LA? They got together and formed a resistant endospore from which they later sprouted and spread. “Leftism” never seems to deter countless other groups from setting up in cities and doing what they want. The city enables a group to interact face to face daily so they aren’t prisoner to the prevailing ideological winds as individuals.
The easiest way to limit moral rot would require rather difficult economic changes
fundamentally you’d limit property ownership and how rich people can get which might as well be blasphemy in current America and after you limit voting to people who own a house free and clear and who are married and have children. Foreign adoptions are banned
This won’t stop all of it, a lot of church going family types types are pathological virtue signalers but it will reduce the power of urban areas since the expense of property means a much smaller voting pool
Make representation counted by number of voters as vs population and keep the food supply to cities controlled , no non national imports and while unstable it would give rural areas disproportionate control
Throw in a complete curb on immigration and the natural lower fertility rates engendered by cities will lower the population. Over along period somewhat ironically it will increase urban power since housing prices will go down and people will move in from the countryside but reducing population growth shrinks cities
Otherwise the only way to clean cities is to either find some technological means of moral enforcement, like an AI camera police state with robots everywhere and a willingness to imprison without limit
Or a society can simply end them down as useful economic centers through collapse war whatever
Neither seem very appealing though the later, if a hypothetical movement didn’t care about casualties would be marginally easier.
Historically this sort of thing was far from rare, archeology is littered with dead cities
The thing is though, a lot of cities are on prime real estate and even if they were nuked by enemy powers in a war someone sooner or later would rebuild them and the decadence would set in. Its the nature of cities to attract it
A more long term solution might be possible if R/K selection theory is a true and its seems to be and if its genetic which may be the case , a genetic vaccine that maximizes K selection given to each person as part of the standard vaccine regimen would make such a society profoundly conservative and even resistant to virtue signaling addiction
There would still be some R shift, this seems to be intrinsic to human behavior but a lot of it would be muted.
I have no idea what such a society would be like, the R/K shift from virtue to decadence is such a normal part of humanity, removing it would produce strange second order effects
Right wing secular authoritarian societies are fairly rare in modernity so models are limited. I’m fairly certain it would produced less , consume less and be fairly cautious , maybe some strange combination of Singapore, Switzerland and Utah with a smidgen of Saudi Arabia almost no one trying to opt out or cheating
It would be vulnerable to affinity scams and the like though it would be a clean, moral , pragmatic and entirely alien culture to many people even though all the behavior is normal within the human spectrum
It would be a fantastic place to raise children though its fixation on the past and being prepared might render problems. It also won’t be very artistic or baring natural monuments have much a tourist industry
“…How did the Salvadorans deal with the Mexican-ness of LA? They got together and formed a resistant endospore from which they later sprouted and spread…”
One thing you’re missing. A BIG thing. I’ve written about the set of books with the “Metapolitics of Violence” as a central point many times. It’s very important. Violence is ultimately how societies are ordered. The Salvadorans have less to lose and are willing to go to jail. The Police ARE the protectors of Blacks and other minorities. If there were no police the Blacks and other minorities would be shot to damn pieces in no time. The inner city uses minorities to vote the Mayors and councilmen into power so in any violent interaction with minorities if it’s your word against theirs the police proceed like the two of you, or more likely three minorities attacking just you, were in a “fight”, not that they were assaulting you and you go to jail where the minority control is even vastly more out of whack. It’s a shake down for control of the territory. If there’s ever a massive collapse I expect Blacks and other minorities will be killed in mass. About 30% to 40% minimum of Blacks are trouble so I’m guessing that 30% 40% would be whacked and the rest would learn to go WAY out of their way to not seem to be a threat. It’s frequently thought Whites are all pussies but it’s really just the case that we don’t want to go to jail where we have no control. If there was ever all out Man for Man with no rules we would do very well. Whites are tough. We didn’t get where we are now by being complete pussies. It’s still in us. We haven’t changed completely genetically and fighting tooth and nail is an intelligence test. We out range those arrayed against us and other minorities don’t have the numbers. They of course will have enclaves where they do but in a say, mass EMP attack with no power, they will be attrited very fast.
An urban enclave of dissidents … what would that be like? Not like 1966 Haight-Ashbury or 1990 Williamsburg, Brooklyn … why not, though? Because the dissidents that you have in mind wouldn’t spend their time milling about in public, I guess. And they wouldn’t make a big deal out of their clothing and hairstyles, which mainly served to indicate a kind of primitive tribal affiliation in those leftist bohemian enclaves. But the attraction of that sort of obvious primitive tribal affiliation, complete with ritualized public milling-about, is exactly what drew people into those leftist enclaves.
I frequently walk by a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu storefront place in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and have noticed that almost everyone in there looks like the sort of person that you might want to recruit for your rightist Haight-Ashbury. So maybe the thing could be organized in a semi-monastic way around schools that combine combat-training with the study of Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius? Only semi-monastic because you’d want people to marry and have kids, too. The women would have to have fun, interesting, serious things to do also, but not the same things. Maybe they would make pottery, weave, and do yoga-exercises together? I’ve noticed that women love carrying those rolled-up yoga-mats around, so maybe this would be a nice thing for them to do. We want them to be happy.
I would never imagine they’d be ostentatious, obnoxious attention whores like the hippies were but they’d have a place to live and back each other up. I figure the first dissident group to go cultural and not just activist will be the one that helps people access social capital and jobs in every big city just like the average Guatemalan can already take for granted.
Trader Joe’s might be an Rightist dissident front-organization. There’s something very strange about the people who work there. I imagine that the members of an urban dissident enclave would look and behave a lot like Trader Joe’s employees/initiates.
Trader Joe’s is basically whole foods knockoffs that are nearly as good and competitive with normal grocery stores. I bet all the fashy hipsters shop there. I could see Spencer going there to load up on 2 Buck Chuck and class-appropriate party snacks like pita chips and hummus for a large gathering.
The rural areas don’t want or need your urban dregs thank you very much.
And as far as the value of cities, granted they used to matter as intellectual aggregators , these they aren’t much good for anything but social posturing and breeding more Marxists and Money Obsessed Globalists
I don’t know — I’ve met a couple of nice people at the gym. One of them’s a libertarian who reads — what’s that site called again, the one that everyone was saying is a Kremlin front? A guy who calls himself “Tyler Durdan” or something like that posts or posted there regularly. Another is a former shop teacher with a slight stutter who installs cable in the subway system at night. Both have kids. See? Cities are okay. Oh, yeah — Zero Hedge.
The majority of Americans already live in urban areas and that percentage is only growing. Rural insurgency only worked in countries like China that were overwhelmingly rural. These kinds of movements are doomed to failure in America. Any kind of successful populist counter-culture has to bridge urban and rural and the class divide.
The defeat of Roy Moore should conclusively demonstrate that the age of folksy posturing with bibles, cowboy hats, and horses is over. There was likely vote fraud, but the election should never have been close enough for it to matter.
I’m not sure how stable the US is. Some insurgency or other might be able to set of a cascade failure which would resolve the urban/rural divide for all or we might pick the wrong fight or highly likely we have an economic collapse
As far as Moore, goes, he may well win on recount and his people “the Right.” didn’t come out to vote in numbers. Conservatives are politically lazy which cut into the power they might otherwise have
Thinking about that a mandatory voting with limited franchise might alleviate some of the problems . Only landowners vote and anyone who can vote, must vote
You have a rock solid point about the divide though I’m not a city Liberal, I was raised in an exurb, lived ion the country. But when I saw the old “Cowboy Roy” routine I rolled my house , who the frack does that in 2017 … Alabama isn’t that rural
“…The defeat of Roy Moore should conclusively demonstrate that the age of folksy posturing with bibles, cowboy hats, and horses is over…”
No. It was very likely stolen. The Supreme Court of Alabama ruled right before the election, hours I think, that the electronic records and the ballots should be destroyed. I know for an absolute fact that the paper ballots that are scanned into electronic vote counting machines used to be saved for a time in a secure position. They didn’t do that. They destroyed them. What will come of it. Maybe nothing. They require the challenger to pay for a recount. He probably doesn’t have the cash for that. Convenient. The likelihood of the election being rigged is very high. Let’s look at what happened. Supposedly 20,000 people went for just the special election with two candidates and voted for neither and then wrote in someone else. That’s the oddest damn thing I’ve ever heard of. If you don’t want either you just stay home. It defies human nature. I don’t believe it.
We’re going to have to get a electronic voting system that can’t be compromised. It can be done relatively easily. Controlling fraudulent voters voting will be more difficult but first steps first.
Undoubtedly there is normally foul play, but realistically the GOP candidate should be far enough ahead it doesn’t matter in a place like Alabama.
We really can’t be seen with trads and storm fronters. They ruin the brand. As you say, they reject it out of hand anyway. Please mind the food supply and leave strategy to us. Its just a better fit that way. We won’t forget you.
Yes, a dissident space requires a city to thrive, because that is the only place where any ‘underground’ movement can have a physical presence to survive.
But then again, are we really dissidents, or is that a word we use so we don’t have to call ourselves alt-right? We aren’t revolutionaries as depicted in Dostoevsky’s ‘Demons,’ our goals are almost precisely opposite theirs. Dissidents and revolutionaries have always wanted to overthrow society then centralize it with them at the center. Us neoreactionaries, on the other hand, want to strengthen society and decentralize power. If we employ revolutionary tactics, it is only out of necessity, not as a way of life.
So as anti-dissidents, it is rational for us to stay outside of the major power centers. I myself currently reside at a big-10 university, and most of my social activity is centered around building a right-wing political faction. The environment is urban, but my circle is small enough that it would be far more profitable for us to claim political control of podunk-nowhere than to try retaking the cities.
We need to stop thinking of ourselves as revolutionaries, and more as rebels of a traditional kind. When we fight, it is to maintain or expand our traditional rights, not to seize power centers.
And similarly, it isn’t really necessary for us neoreactionaries to meet with each other. If we want to practice the art of developing a functional social order, we should do so in a distributed manner, not through creating a centralized priestly class.
It only takes one man with a lot of generosity and ability to build a mannerbund, having these able-men exclusively associate with each other is a waste. Why have two men organize a social order when one will do? Alliance isn’t out of the question, but if we associate too closely, the only thing we will do is step on each other’s toes, or descend into navel-gazing.
“…When we fight, it is to maintain or expand our traditional rights, not to seize power centers…”
I agree with this a lot. I add that one of our goals should be to degrade their political power over us and let them rot in place. Degradation of their political power would be just going back to a political settlement in the US that was in place before they grabbed more power for themselves after the civil war and during the great depression.
One of the ways we can attack the power of the cities is to change a certain Supreme Court decision. They ruled that the traditional set up of States houses could NOT be like the USA House and Senate. Most States before the ruling gave regions power in their Senate. I think they were based on area. The Supreme Court ruled that there should be equal representation based on population. This of course gives enormous power to the cities in the State legislatures and negates any power at all the rural areas have. This is never talked about as being a big factor in the slide towards liberalism. I think it’s quite likely that it’s a big driver of that trend. Congress could declare that this ruling is incorrect and force the Courts to not hear any cases that deal with the set up of the States legislature with only 50% of the vote in the House and the Senate. That they refuse to correct the Courts ridiculous power grabs by ruling on things that are in no way germane to the Constitution and are the business of the States alone tells me they aren’t serious about change in the first place.
You need to have people meet up in the city first, form a mannerbund, and then you can send them to podunk or wherever you want. Look at MS-13. They were forged in their foothold in LA and they spread internationally with that initial neighborhood to start from.
Of course, the city is the best place to do our recruitment, but given our style of decentralized hierarchy, it is probably the worst place to pursue our political activities. Cities thrive on a politics of chaotic and shifting social networks, not our standard of fixed and durable loyalties. Cities breed demotism and revolution by their nature, especially with constant migration. If you want a stable society, you need a less transient population.
Right. Recruit and build a community in the city first and then you can spread into the suburbs, countryside, other cities, other countries.
Revolutions tend to be urban by nature because access to the city means you’re just a few miles away from key institutional structures and the neighorhoods where the bureaucrats and financiers live.
If you’re operating from the countryside alone, the cities can take a dump on you and you can’t do much about it.
Modern life is semi-nomadic, so I think a successful demand niche any group meets is to have people you can connect with every time you start up in a new city.
If you’re determined to take the cities you’re going to have to have more cohesiveness and willingness to be violent than Whites are now.
Here’s a simple plan to take over a Democrat city. First change the Supreme court ruling that demands representation just on population alone and no qualification for voters. At the State level make voting qualified. Say home ownership, marriage, education, could be any mix of these. If that didn’t go far enough the cities have open voting to allow fraud. Flood the cities with suburban voters and throw the city leaders out of office. That’s where the violence comes in they will forcefully try to stop Whites voting all the while massive fraud is going on for their voters. You can’t submit.
There is much merit to that idea . If every Right Winger were willing to be as viscous as MS13 they could quickly build a great power base especially if they were a bit smarter and used better impulse control. This would basically be a fascist system though
No matter what Rightists are going to have to relearn to cooperate in larger groups They lost that sometime during the late 60’s early 70’s to their detriment and the few that do, militias are most with exceptions far from good at it
The volunteer fire department and the Cajun navy are good examples of good organization but these don’t work with a mannerbund
Worst collective action outside business or the military is still psychologically associated with Collectivism” and “Communism” and that nonsense needs to go.
A longer term fix to the problems of modernity mandates a limited franchise and an end to demotic systems. This may not be possible until society erodes or shifts enough to allow it
If society is prosperous after the takeover actual rules against Leftism in the institutions needs to happen. Bring back In Loco Parentis and treat teaching any Leftism to anyone under 21 as extreme felony child abuse. After a trial Cultural Marxists who do that go into really serious confinement for a few years. I can promise you’ you’ll still have virtue signaling but all the Leftists will pretend to be Rightists.
This would require a rather serious realignment of the political system though this “one weird trick” would not precisely violate the first amendment , only require a rollback to older adulthood models. It flies under the rubric of preventing child abuse
Its not an likely solution and more likely society will erode either that or become a worse despotism till it can no longer survive .
In that sense the coring out of the rust belt was good for society, the trick is to find a way to do the same to the government fueled communities , less centralized power allows for more local power after all.
When you have millions of people who can hop on a subway for a few bucks and see each other within the hour at any time, you can have groups of even highly unusual types of people that can meet up regularly. Nobody reaches their full potential alone….”
You have a point there. Lots of things to do for everyone in a small distance. The counter is it cost so much you can’t afford them.
“…Firstly, we should reflect on the problem of unproductive…”
I follow a guys blog and he says it’s on purpose. They’ve destroyed the cities. Many retired people had paid for homes in the cities. Can’t have that so you move in the Nogs and they terrorize them until they leave. They destroy the housing and then move to the next area. Like locust. The plan is to completely run out everyone in the cities of modest means, move the Nogs into the suburbs and then refurbish the cities and crack down on crime like they did in NY. Notice there was never a continuous outcry when NY randomly stopped and frisk the Nogs. If you did that in the suburbs it would be…racis!
“…A properly run system wouldn’t allow this…”
It’s being properly run just not for us.
“…In a righteous empire, the city should be seen as a desirable privileged place that non-rich cooperators are rewarded with access to, not a third world hellhole…”
This IS the long term plan. Hunger Games.
“…Real light rail systems would be a lot better still. ..”
We can’t have this because of the Nogs appropriation of public spaces. When St. Louis extended the rail to the suburbs the only thing it brought was Nogs that would go to the malls, steal and attack the customers vastly crimping the malls profits as people just left and stopped shopping there. As far as I’m concerned we shouldn’t put one dime of money into public transport unless anyone who abuses the public space is forced out it and kept out. The Uber trend is actually torpedoing the Nogs public shake down scheme. Small independent drivers who can choose who to pick up. They see Nog they just sit. They’ll try to stop this in the future by forcing them to pick them up but I don’t think it will work. Drivers will abandon the companies that enforce it too hard. With the distributed web based public transport we only need trains or subways in the most congested parts of the city. Like airport hubs.
“…On the contrary, the goal should be to take the city back…”
I disagree because the effort would be so high and of little use to myself. They will never change their attitude unless they pay the price. They are flooding the whole country with aliens. I would move all the Nogs into the cities where they vote for diversity. Eventually we will break them of that habit by sheer volume of abuse by the Nogs. Then, Make America Great Again.
How much you bet this guy never gives another ride to a Nog.
Third-world population = third-word country, full stop. They’ll always vote to sponge off of whites even if the white population is only 10%. Race defines the modern American city and having a foothold in these tribal areas is useless. It isn’t where the sponges live that is important, it’s that they’re sponges, incapable of building or maintaining a high, complex level of society.
The bottom line is: fork America, it’s done. America is dead, that’s not something that’s going to happen, it’s already happened, and your only choices are seize territory on this continent by force, then you can build your cities, or go with the flow and accept living as a slave in a third-world dump. It’s the refusal, in a time of relative plenty, to face this stark reality that has white conservatives thrashing around and bellowing about patriotism. And the refusal to accept the implications of the fact that the U.S. government is the author of this disaster, this ethnic cleansing.
The importation of a new people, of colonists, is close to nullifying the right to vote among the traditional population, the mass media, even the so-call conservative media, goose-steps in totalitarian unison – there’s no democratic debate there. The censoring of the internet has begun, leftist thugs are openly and freely attacking the system’s opponents in the street, and the colonists will vote for leftist robbers who will shred the First and Second amendment, and criminalize dissent. All non-violent means of dissent are slowly being stripped away. Your soon-to-be future choice is fight or be a slave, you won’t be allowed any “footholds.”
That’s what all this has been about over the last half-century, the elites rejecting democracy and channeling all the wealth and power into their own hands, mostly using the weapon of race. It’s an insult to them that your vote counts as much as theirs does. Partnered with a foreign elite in our territory who simple hate our guts on a racial basis and want to exploit and exterminate us.
You can’t just hide in the hills and ignore the cities. In real life, most people have to live near enough to them to be able to go to work. Cities are the centers of culture, influence, and of economic activity. If you surrender the cities, you have surrendered. Then the enemy just has to mop up piece by piece.
In the past rural rebels had at least one big advantage: the self-sufficiency of landed peasantry. Our present system could beat most of the people with hunter’s camouflage and rifles by shutting down the local wal-mart for a couple weeks.
He’s saying the enemy has already won Giovanni and that waiting it out until the natural problems such systems collapse the system and an opportunity to do something better arises
I don’t necessarily agree and I’m not a passavist but its reasonable notion
Demography is destiny and in the end the hordes of immigrants will turn the West into 3rd world messes . That’s not all bad, 3rd world systems are often freer in some ways than 1st world ones since the State is far weaker and less capable
I agree with JB. The point is that we must make all the cities pay. They must scream for relief. They are voting to flood the hinder-lands with aliens. Obama purposely housed refugees by the hundreds of thousands in the red States. We can’t let them do thet. We need to force them to take the refuse they wish to push on us. I would do this by building massive, massive public housing in every single area where they cry, “Diversity, more Diversity” Let them have it. It would not be long before they were broken. I don’t see any other way to change their minds other than experience. We don;t own any of the major forms of communication but if every damn day they are being beaten down, sometimes literally, by Diversity they will either learn or perish. Those that move to the burbs, and there will be many, will do so because they learned. The ones that stay will learn also.
The idea that we’re going to conquer the cites with logic, reason or physically is just nonsense. I can’t see it happening.
How do you intend to divert where “refugees” are flowing to if you have no contact with institutions(that are all based in cities)?
I need to add so I won’t seem overly critical…
“…Cities are the centers of culture, influence, and of economic activity…”
I get your point and I’m not necessarily arguing with it altogether but…
“… If you surrender the cities, you have surrendered…”
This may not be true anymore because of the internet and the continual degradation of the cities. If it gets bad enough people will just leave like Detroit.
What do the cites have to offer? At one time cultural activities were mostly in the cities where you could get a big enough audience. Do you need that now? What exactly is the entertainment in the cites. Pozzed, very pozzed. Better to not be exposed to it.
Cities have always been eaters of the population but now we don’t have the excess to fill them from the countryside and why should we fill them to have them destroyed?
The cities allow groups of people to easily live in close proximity where they interact as part of daily life, not just at conferences and meetups. Also, having an urban presence means closer proximity to the incestuous few incestuous zipcodes where all the power players reside. Operating from the countryside only gives them an unchallenged urban fortress to rule from.
“…How do you intend to divert where “refugees” are flowing to if you have no contact with institutions…”
While we own power at the Federal level and in many places State level you just move them into the cites. The cites will either violate the law and fight or submit. I said earlier that a great deal of this is just seizing power we already have legislatively. We have the right to do this by law and if we get the balls there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.
The Supreme courts decision not to allow regional representation in the States, say the Senate in the States be voted on by region, can be overturned at the Federal level by a 50% vote of Congress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisdiction_stripping
With one house in the States legislature controlled by regions it would massively and rapidly shift power to the suburbs. Fast. These people in the Republican party are either stupid or blackmailed. They should seize the power they have and use it. Trump hasn’t even slightly even remotely begun to use the power he already has. Neither have the Republicans. You can bet that the Democrats use every single last vestige of power they have constantly.
Interesting comment. Is this view right or not?
It’s a core belief.
Whatever one believes on this point makes a big difference to what one does.
Whether the traditional population remains as such or not is the question.
For traditional America:
‘To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them’
My comment was in regards to jb’s comment re:
“The bottom line is: fork America, it’s done.”
Is it?
Well cities are clearly a byproduct of Dunbar’s Number except it has grown unsteady.
Obviously you can’t truly “hide” from the cities but you can obviously employ subterfuge to navigate through them and the restless masses.
A small idyllic village would be far better for the free minded to thrive and excel in. I suppose this blog somewhat functions as that.