(15): Shotgun vs. the Crazy Man

One of the only routine pleasures I have is driving to the waterfront and enjoying a cigar while looking around at the prettiest scenery in the south. I do it while listening to philosophy lectures or working through audio books.

Last week I was enjoying myself as I’ve described, when someone began yelling a few blocks away. It sounded like “Stalker! Stalker!” Or maybe it was “Smoker!”

I wondered if he was yelling at me? Maybe he was so inundated by pop-culture’s war against tobacco that he took it upon himself to publicly shame me for my antiquated vice? Others in the parking lot were looking around confused and uncomfortable. The old man, himself, was walking a small maltese, and ambled on his way without clarifying the nature of his angst. I chalked it up to one of those weird public encounters that can’t be explained.

I saw him again today, however, around 1230, so I’m making a public record here in case he acts against me in the future (be it by getting the law involved or trying to attack me or who knows what).

I’m working through a Graham Greene novel – “Monsignor Quixote”, about a Catholic priest and a Marxist ex-Mayor who befriend each other in post-civil war Spain. They get mixed up in local adventures while arguing with each other about their conflicting worldviews. It’s a great little novel – I’ll expound on it later.

Having finished my cigar, I pulled out and headed home. As I was leaving, I saw the man standing there, glaring at me. He began yelling something and making (ungentlemanly-like) gestures.

If someone has a problem with me I like to resolve it immediately, so I circled the block, came back around, and parked in front of him. I hopped out and walked over.

“Do you have something you want to say to me, sir?”

I wont recount the bizarre conversation word for word, but the gist of it is: he accused me of being a spy, working on behalf of his “sexually degenerate” neighbor, and that I was stalking him.

“Sir, I promise you…I promise you I’m just down here listening to my book and don’t know you from Adam…”

“You need to get your [redacted]ing mother-[redacted]ing lying self away from me right now! Jesus has a place in Hell for liars and stalkers and degenerates!”

I told him to calm down and promised that in the future I’d try to avoid the waterfront if I saw him there. I don’t think that endeared him to me in anyway.

The guy obviously has some sort of mental issue – a pathological paranoia maybe? I don’t know, but I don’t plan on changing my habits for his sake.

What do you all think I should do?

(14) Anyone Seen Kyle?

…he’s about *this* tall. Seen Kyle? Seen Kyle?

The NPI conference has become the most hip and controversial conference of the Alternative Right. It and the AMREN are about the only two big events we have. And this weekend’s NPI topped the charts for controversy, with numerous audience members throwing up a Nazi salute at the end of Richard Spencer’s emotionally charged speech. Of course, the news media are spiraling down on the footage.

Unfortunately, many Alternative Right outliers are suggesting this is all bad press: “Government plants!”they’re saying. “Idiots” others suggest. Then, there’s the ever faithful: “this doesn’t make us look good.”

I threw up a Roman salute once. A crowd of degenerate protestors were clucking around outside the American Renaissance conference and Heimbach and I went out to confront them. After about an hour, the park police separated us. As we were walking off with the jeers and taunts of the protesters following us, I turned around and tossed it up. Sieg Heil, bitches!

It infuriated them, of course. Someone snapped a picture of me doing it and I was the center of a brief maelstrom of controversy (not for the first or last time, I suspect). “You make us look bad”, was the most common objection.

I developed a sociological metaphor then that’s equally applicable to Richard Spencer’s “Heilergate”. I call it the Government School Lunchroom analogy:

My government school was about 90% negro and during lunch, we’d all be corralled into the lunchroom together. The negros were terribly loud and uncontrollable during this period and we white boys were at our most vulnerable. Of course, there’d be no teacher or authority figure in sight. A small group of us white boy outcasts would congregate over near the doors. We’d sit on the handicap ramp and hope the negros didn’t notice us. They did, though, of course. For sport, they’d throw loose change at us. Whites learned early to eat their own, so whomever was hit would be attacked and jeered at by the other whites. I put up with this for about a day before I simply broke the rules and left the cafeteria. The other white boys soon followed, and from then on, we’d have a peaceful time of it outside, under the awnings.

Imagine this scene, if you will: the “it makes us look bad” crowd are still trapped in that cafeteria, hoping to God no one lobs them upside the head with a nickle. “If we just stay calm, keep to acceptable talking points, and don’t raise our voice, we’ll slip by unnoticed.” Thinking this way is a government-school induced psychosis.

No. The correct emotion here isn’t fear and a desire to maintain respectability. The correct emotion is anger and a reassertion of personal values.

So, no. I’m not a national socialist. In fact, I really don’t like socialism of any sort. But I do love Hitler and the German National socialists because of their symbolism: when you piss off white boys, they don uniforms, high-step, and sieg heil! Make us angry enough and we’ll re-conquer Europe.

…and whatever my quibbles with National Socialism, I’d rather live in the Third Reich than modern America. At least there, I wouldn’t have to worry about mass degeneracy in the streets and the slaughter of unborn infants.

(13) The Aristocrat Remembers…

The aristocrat is the living embodiment of a people’s identity. He maintains the dignity of his race throughout the rigors of daily life: he dresses nicely when he’d rather be a slob. He holds his tongue when he’s seething with curses. When everyone loses hope, he maintains a stalwart resilience. In short: he holds fast to the ancient traditions passed on to him.

Whether or not he’s really the best of the lot is irrelevant. He’s judged by his willingness to make himself, and consequently, all of reality, seem to be as his people believe it to be. The best aristocrats go beyond forms and functions and actually love the image they project. They’re not just playing a part, they *are* the part. They intuitively realize they’re projecting the spirit of their people and they love the spirit and the people.

As a side note, spiritual integrity is what really makes a race. Modernists have tried codifying this human phenomenon by emphasizing DNA, psychological affinities, language grouping, and all manner of cultural forces of cohesion – but they fall short because they all miss this mytho-poetic aspect of the group. Modernists don’t know anything about the spiritual. That’s why none of them understand poets or men of letters, unless the poets and men of letters are also modernists (in which case, they may be understood by other modernists but at the expense of their role as keepers-of-the-folk-mind).

The aristocrat, then, must listen and learn from the poet as Kings of old would listen and learn from prophets. If the aristocrat is, himself, a poet, so much the better, but he doesn’t have to be. He just needs to listen and learn from them.

Additionally, the aristocrat doesn’t even need to be rich or the owner of capital. While these things allow him to assume his proper authority in society, giving him the requisite voice to maintain the integrity of the people, he would still be an aristocrat without them. Side by side with those who used to offer him deference, he may not be distinguishable from them at all unless the observer takes a close, second look.

Lined up you might see five rugged and dirty men, but the aristocrat among them will have taken measures to present himself as well as possible, despite his means. He does it because he knows that through his demeanor and appearance he’s representing an entire people. The other men in line don’t have that sort of concern. He’ll be more well-spoken than the other men – because what he says has to be tempered by the grace of generations. He’ll be more well-read because he’s more concerned with all the people than the other men, who think mostly of themselves.

And when the others in line are blinded by oppressive times and forced to forget who they are, the aristocrat remembers.

(12) Chivalry vs. The Mexican Mafia

(An anecdote from my time in the prison. As I’m no longer employed there, I thought I’d re-post it):

Some of you know I’ve taken a job as a prison guard. The rules say I’m not supposed to talk about my experiences but with apologies to my pagan state, I think I will anyway:

I’ve often told people I can spot white trash from a distance. I don’t know their history but I’m convinced they all share the same ancestry. They’re low class but not in the dignified way of many poor southerners. They slaughter the English language, engage in all sorts of depravity, and worst of all, they’re the whites most prone to race mixing. It’s odd, but the majority are scrawny and have blond hair and blue eyes. Their skin is tanned and their faces squint up like weasels. If all that sounds imaginary, tell yourselves it’s their bastardized accents that mark them. The shame of it is their women are usually gorgeous. So, with demoralizing certitude, I knew when I saw our new co-worker, she was probably infatuated with a negro.

Why think so? She’s of the class I’ve described above, in her late twenties, and still single. She’s never mentioned having children so I assume she’s either aborted them or…well, she did tell me her favorite television show was “Orange is the New Black” (a prison drama focusing on two lesbians). I never believe women when they tell me they’re lesbians. My bet, and I’m more certain of this as I watch her with our co-workers and the inmates, is that she’s infatuated with a negro, probably the whole lot of them.

I’ll leave that dark trail of thought and get on with the story.

She tries to deal with the inmates as if she were a negress. She tries to battle it out with them, will to will. She takes her cue from the black female prison guards (there are many and only they seem to gain rank). “Why yoooo disrespetin’ me?!”

But there was one day she called me and asked to be relieved on the yard. She looked a little sheepish and said she just couldn’t take it out there anymore and needed a break.

“What happened?” I asked.

Apparently, when they’re around white men, these girls find it easier to let go of their defense-mechanisms – I mean their anti-feminine machismo learned from the black race. They sometimes revert back to being white.

She lapsed into such a state and told me what happened. She had walked by a group of Mexican inmates and one of them had whistled at her. That struck me as an uncharacteristically lady-like thing for her to worry about, but there it was. She indicated the “tall one” who, maybe owing to his unusual size (most Mestizos are around five feet, he was probably six), had gained some level of respect among his fellows. I had no doubt he was showing off for them.

I walked onto the yard with all the voices of the Alt. Right in my head. They were cursing chivalry and calling me a “White Knight”. And even as I walked out there, I knew whatever I did wouldn’t be appreciated. Still, by God, a white woman had been insulted and, well, I’m no ordinary Alt. Righter.

I knew El Alto was associated with a Mexican drug gang and I also knew most prison guards give that group a wide berth. The last of us who tried disciplining them was shot at while pumping gas the next day. The police never caught the shooter.

On the inside, the Mexicans are smart enough not to openly cause problems but they do break the rules when no one is looking. The guards usually look the other way, especially over something as petty as a lustful whistle.

Not today, hombres…

I walked into the group, took El Alto’s arm, spun him around, and handcuffed him, right in front of his amigos. Then I marched him inside a dorm, kicked everyone out of a shower room (making a big commotion) and strip searched him… a long, slow process.

“Why choo doin’ dis mayun?” he kept asking.

“You like whistling at ladies, eh? That makes me suspicious. Makes me think you might have something on you. I’m going to find it.”

I drew it out as long as possible, speaking loudly, knowing my voice would echo around the bathroom tiles and into the dorm. His macho air was obliterated for all to see – a serious punishment among those degenerates.

I found multiple articles about El Chapo, the cartel leader getting publicity down in Mexico, as well as other cartel paraphernalia. But technically, he didn’t have anything against the rules; I wasn’t really expecting him to. It was the search that did the damage.

Long story short, I’ve warned my parents (both law enforcement) and I’ve taken measures for my own safety. As for my fellow officer, she’s warmed up to me but like all the blacks in that prison (employed or doing time) likely thinks white men are sniveling panzies, terrified of all the strong, virile black men. That sort of brainwashing is why her kind choose to race mix.

It seems like violence really is all savages understand. But her? She belongs to a people who, at least at one point, saw true Love and recognized it for what it was. Can the feminist be rescued by kind acts of chivalry?

…ought we even try?

That, dear readers, is up to each of you to decide. As for me, my heart decided and I acted accordingly, without much thought.

Now I’ll have to live with it.

(11): A Few Optimistic Updates…

A good friend of mine, Mr. Kirk Forlatt, is always giving me advice and helpful encouragement. For example, he noted that I spend too much time looking for acceptance among an internet crowd of friends who, when push comes to shove, don’t have my back in the real world. He’s right about that, although to be fair, there’s not much online friends can do for each other. Encouragement and prayers are about it. But there’s something more to it, I think. I’ve written before about how my generation is on the cusp of the internet age and we’re having to forge our way through new social-media territory, including new ways of forming social hierarchies and the like. It irks me how Alternative Right persons claim to hate democracy and yet organize themselves according to who has the most popular podcast or who hosts the most popular web forums, regardless of the intellect or abilities of the hosts. Make fart noises? Draw a large crowd? You’re a king. At any rate, I needed the reminder to watch out for those tendencies in my own use of social media. I ought to focus more on writing and bettering myself intellectually, rather than climbing the popularity ladder. Thanks Mr. Forlatt…

He’s also provided a sympathetic ear to my struggles with existential meaninglessness. He told me that one of my posts on the subject moved him to tears. Well, there’s good news on that front. I think I’ve discovered my purpose in life. I think I’ve finally figured out what God made me to be.

I had to read Stephen King’s book on writing to figure it out. After reading King’s anecdotes about being a struggling young author, I realized his experiences were almost identical to mine. I’ve known I was supposed to be a writer from as early as the fourth grade, when the teacher asked us to write a story. The other students irked out a few paragraphs while I had a seven page masterpiece. My first ever story. When asked who wanted to read theirs out loud, my hand shot into the air. I waved it and waved it but the teacher ignored me. She didn’t want everyone to hear my incessant rambling about a monster that kidnapped me from my bedroom and tied me up on an airplane (or how I escaped by breaking a glass bottle and sawing through my ropes). I thought it was a masterpiece.

Something else writers, including King, struggled with – finding a day job. All career choices bored the prose out of King, but it was wash laundry or starve, so he washed laundry. It’s the same way with me; I’ve been doing jobs I hate while supporting myself and gathering anecdotes.

I’m not a good writer yet. I may never be a great one. I doubt I’ll ever be as successful as  King. I do know that if I’m going to support myself in the meantime, I’ll need a job that’s sufferable while also giving me life experience. Working in the prison gave me more life experience than I ever wanted – look for posts about it in the future – but it wasn’t sufferable.

Given my Naval experience though, I’ve discovered a new path forward. I’m returning to the sea. I’ll be a deckhand (hopefully even a security officer) on a cargo ship. Robert Lewis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad found their muse in the ocean. I think I can too. Plus the pay is outstanding and I’m sure to get plenty of life experience, traveling around the world. Hopefully I’ll have the time and energy to keep writing while I’m out there. I know my creative juices were pumping full blast whenever I’d deploy in the Navy.

So, wish me luck shipmates…I’ll probably be out to sea come February.

(10): Why Not Me?

(**EDIT** I was riding out a caffeine high when I wrote this. Later, when thinking objectively about my writing, I realized there’s no way, even at my best, I could compete with the popular authors. God knows that’s evident to anyone who reads my material. Don’t judge me too harshly for what follows…)

I have a low opinion of myself as a writer and yet I’ve always tried to take St. Paul’s admonition – not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought – seriously. I mean, I’ve taken it to be an admonition to think of ourselves as objectively as possible, without pride or unwarranted humility. So despite my humility, I think can compete with many of the popular guys out there, at least pound for pound. Or, I ought to say, paragraph for paragraph.

I think I could keep up with Steven King, for example. His Dark Tower series was horrible. The more the narrative developed, the worse the writing became. He piqued with “Wizard and the Glass”, which was a book-long flashback constituting a stand-alone novel. The next best, in my view, was his “Wind Through the Keyhole”, which was another stand-alone departure from the series narrative and was written after the series was completed. The writing was so bad in the others, especially the final book, it was almost unreadable. Cormac McCarthy is another example. He’s lavished with praise and yet, I’ve just finished his popular novel “Blood Meridian” and couldn’t see what the fuss was about. Ten chapters in, I still didn’t care about the characters and his sentences were peppered with cliched similes.

Now I’m not arrogant. I think I can compete paragraph for paragraph, but I readily admit these guys are better authors than I am. The fact I suffered through the prose of “Dark Tower” is testimony enough of King’s ability to maintain readers’ interest.

Here’s an analogy: there are doubtless hundreds of young girls more pretty and talented than Taylor Swift, and yet Swift has the right combination of voice, charisma, and a loving personality that her fans respond to. Comparatively, I have no delusion I can match Steven King as an author. I don’t have an intuitive grasp of pacing, or how to structure a plot. And I don’t understand the average American. I’m too different. There’s an arsenal of tools the author needs that King has and I don’t.

One of my weaknesses, as I see it, is a lack of patience. Maybe it’s my financial situation, but I can’t squeeze out the passion that hours of creative output and tedious editing require. It’s too much work for too little gain. Cynicism is my kryptonite.

Nevertheless, I’ve promised you all – my readers, God, and whomever else – that after 100 posts and 100 read books, I’ll write a novel. I’ve been numbering my posts to keep track. With this, the 10th post, I’m 90 away from having to tackle my sizeable project. I’ve been steadily reading as well: Graham Greene, Cormac McCarthy, a few books on writing (“Robert Frost On Writing”, etc.), and so on.

I’m sure I’ll be able to string together a few hundred pages of narrative, but who will care? Maybe my struggles with existential meaninglessness fuel my cynicism? Who the Hell really cares what a conservative white guy daydreams about, anyway? Unless the narrative is packed with action sequences, zombies, vulgar sex and violence, and all sorts of trendy, social-justice-depravity, who will read it?

Furthermore, I’ve been rejected by modern society all of my life. Rejected from every group of peers as an outcast, as weird, as unattractive. I’m the epitome of “uncool”; how can I expect success with a novel?

Well, for all that, there’s a small part of me that thinks I can tickle the ears of the Evangelical community in America. Who speaks for them? Frank Peretti? Ted Dekker?

Why not me?

(8) What Am I?

My readers know how the full moon affects me. At least, you’ve all heard me write about it numerous times. I can feel it coming on before the moon even rises and the mania (because that’s what it feels like) lasts until the moon wanes. Whether you believe me, think I’m delusional, or think I might be on to something is neither here nor there. Whatever the case, I write odd things when the moon’s full, so, for this month’s episode, I ask the question, what am I?

That I don’t know the answer to this is the single problem of my entire life. There’s a gaping, widening, hole in the center of my being that affects everything. Just imagine: how to interact with others if you don’t know your place in society? Even in our supposedly classless, egalitarian utopia, social status looms over every encounter. It certainly wreaks havoc with romantic relationships. Family reunions are a nightmare – all the cousins have settled into life with varying degrees of success, while I, the man-with-the-gaping-hole-in-the-chest, is carried down the life-stream helpless and dashed on every rock.

Without a purpose or sense of self, there’s nothing but crass hedonism. One manufactured high to the next. Each attempt to wile away the meaningless hours becomes more and more difficult.

As a side note, I recall a preacher’s sermon once. He says there’ll be work in Heaven. I hope to God he’s right because a life of coasting from one meaningless pleasure to the next is insufferable. I couldn’t imagine doing it for eternity. Better to ask God if He might dump us in the mindless cesspit of Hell, where men lose their personhood and consciousness amid an endless, unrelated, stream of experiences.

Remember the old Soviet method of torture? They’d make their prisoners move rocks from one place to the other then back again, with no purpose. It wears a man down and breaks the soul. My soul, for example, has been worn to the point of apathy about all things but the next meaningless pleasure to wile away the next meaningless hour.

I guess that’s not totally true, though. There’s still enough of me left to put this issue into words and pray to God to fill the gaping void in my chest. If He can’t do it, who can? With apologies to the Nietzschians reading this, a man simply cannot fill that void on his own. And I gather the vast majority of men are casually ushered by life into their place without self-reflection.

Is it too much of a damned miracle for God to answer this one prayer? To tell me this one thing? What’s it to Him? It would cost Him nothing – a flick of His finger to send a lounging angel down tonight with a five minute dream. To me, it would change everything. Let God but give me that one firm place to stand and I’d move the world – or, at least, all foreseeable barriers – to grow up and into eternity.

If you’re reading this and you don’t suffer from the gaping hole of identitylessness, and think I’m weak or silly or made to be despised, I wont say a word to contradict you. Nor will I wish on you the same maddening self-consciousness.

…I’ll probably bum a smoke off of you, though.

(7) Do You Even LARP Bro?!

Andy Nowicki, ever the controversialist, is one of the few Alt.Right personalities with the courage to analyze and critique trends. In a recent Facebook post, he exclaimed how underenthused he was with repetitive Alt. Right lingo. A based claim, tbqh fam. Anyone who says otherwise is LARPing, right lads? See? I can do it too. It’s that last one – the “LARPing” – I’ll discuss in this post, mostly because I’m often accused of it.

An old codger, for example, attacked me out of the blue on Twitter for no apparent reason, then uncharitably blocked me after my friend and I made every effort to answer his questions with honest and forthright civility. Later, with Christian virtue and patience, I tried to patch things up with the guy only to have him accuse me of “LARPing” because I’m in the habit of standing up for women who’ve been publicly insulted. LARPing as an old Southerner enamored with gone-with-the-wind social mores, apparently.

LARPing, for the uninitiated, stands for “Live Action Role Playing”, a pastime of fantasy enthusiasts who take to vacant lots with foam weapons and make believe powers. They fight each other according to an agreed upon set of rules; when an appendage is hit with a foam weapon, that unfortunate has lost his arm and must continue the game with it behind his back. This was popularized during the “nerd” phase of American pop-cultural obsession through various documentaries and appearances in sitcoms and even a popular comedy “Role Models” starring Paul Rudd. Consequently, this spawned a series of LARP memes, where hopeless dorks, nerds, and social outcasts are said to live out their fantasies in ostentatious games of pretend, because, let’s face it, they’ll never amount to anything in actual society.

Ever the connoisseurs of memeology, Alternative Right pundits acquired the idea and began applying it to those unfortunates who live out their internalized ideals of ethics and social mores, but whom, it’s suggested, are really normal people unable to hack it in the real world. Some, for example, claim to be pagans and dress in old Norse garb. They’re not actually pagans though; they’re dressing up to fulfill fantasy desires – they’re “LARPing.”

This terminology has been helpful in Alt. Right commentary, as far as it goes, but I’m worried it’s being used as a way to force conformity with contemporary social mores. The Alt. Right, after all (and as I’ve noted elsewhere), is built on government school norms and habits. Swearing, profanity, talk of all sorts of gritty sexual practices, and all manner of filth, are the norm for a typical Alt. Righter. They’d feel at home in a gas station bathroom stall, seeing their ideals splayed on the walls with all the pluck and wit they could desire, even down to the swastikas and racial epithets. They’ve learned these social mores in government school and I’m afraid they simply don’t realize these patterns of action have been imposed on us, especially in the South, through force of arms.

It’s true, I was also government schooled. That’s why I can recognize the social mores when I see them. But by the grace of God, help from a group of friends, and a lot of hard work, I’ve rejected those mores. Also, reading George Orwell while hiding in the library from the feral packs of negros I was forced into contact with, I witnessed tyranny so awful that my…well, my soul rebelled against it. After Winston Smith had his face put in the rat cage, I swore, then and there, I’d never allow any man or group of men to impose their will over me; damn the consequences. Call it a stubborn streak made of iron, but from that point on, I refused, EVER, to allow society to dictate to me how I was to act, dress, and live.

But if not the fallen, decrepit, government schooled world, then who? After all, and despite what the Reformed pastors will tell us, we don’t perform a series of rational calculations every single time before acting. Rather, we act according to an accepted pattern of social mores and norms. If we don’t learn them from government school, or if we’ve rejected those, where do we turn?

I turned to the older mores of my Southern ancestors. Fortunately for me, there was still enough of them lingering around for me to soak them up naturally, along side my government indoctrination. These old mores were passed to us from the old Europeans and are all that’s left of the code of chivalry.

Call me a “LARPer” for holding to these mores if you will – I think you’ll find that, when push comes to shove, I’m not playing around about them. I really mean it: you will not swear and talk of disgusting sexual things when there’s a lady present and I have the means to stop it. And by God, Satan will not walk slickly through the modern tulips without stepping on at least one fit-to-be-tied southern sandspur. Mark my word on that. (For those raised in the government schools, when a Southern man gives his word on something, that has a deep and profound mark of truth).

I “LARP”…but as a government schooled, average American. I do this to get by in the world. But at night, when I’m home and the pressures of clandestine conformity fall away, by the God I serve, I’m a southern man, with all the chivalry inherent to the class.

…for the southerners reading this, make sure it’s not the other way around for you: A government schooled kid who LARPs occasionally as a southerner, with all sorts of head knowledge about a battle here, a fight there, an inflection yonder…

(6) Shotgun Forsakes the Assembly

I haven’t been a regular church goer for well over a decade. This started out innocently enough – I was in the Navy and often had to work Sundays. Also, being on the introverted side, I’d wait until I could visit home to attend where I felt comfortable. When I had a conversion experience and became a Calvinist, I stopped going all together. I didn’t want awkward clashes and theological debate with the low-church Arminians I grew up with. I experimented with a few churches in Washington D.C., but owing to my constant moving and deployments, never became a member. Over time I became so cynical with organized religion I’ve stopped looking and am steadfastly (if not proudly) unchurched.

I used to think I was doing both the church and myself a favor by not attending. If I went, I’d either be excommunicated for my “radical” political views, which would cause all sorts of drama in the congregation, or I’d have to sit there, Sunday after Sunday, listening to government-sanitized garbage without speaking up. That would slowly kill my soul, so it wasn’t an option either. Only lately have I begun thinking that the church, itself, at least, the bureaucratic and rationalized institution we know and love today, is illegitimate. Call this a switch from being a pragmatic unchurchian to a principled one, if you will.

I’m comfortable with this as far as my salvation goes, but there are three things that haunt me about it.

1. Tell the average Christian you’re unchurched and they reply with the same, reflexive, argument: The author of Hebrews said not to forsake the assembling together of yourselves! And this is true. It is in the Bible and an unchurchian has to deal with it. Ask them to point you to the nearest church and it’ll be their own. “That one, of course!”

There’s a lot of theological baggage there. If one isn’t baptized into the Presbyterian church, or the Baptist church, or the church of Christ, or even a Roman Catholic parish, is one not in the true church? Debates rage to this day whether Reformed churches ought to accept Catholic baptisms. But this is the main problem. We don’t come to God through church membership. Church membership is a result of our being in union with God (through Christ). This, some theologians refer to as the “universal church.” I began thinking, as a Kinist, we ought to simply have the universal church, made up of all those who love Christ, and beyond that, live tribally, without all the confusion of federated Enlightenment-inspired bureaucracy. Tribes have elders, don’t they? And what, exactly, is the difference between “church” and “state”, when the “church” is all those who love Christ? In the case of a Christian nation, the same body of people would have to be both the church *and* the state; what’s the difference? In this case, the church *is* our state, and it’s arranged tribally – in my view. There’s a lot here to work through, and I’m no theologian, but it’s a basic outline.

So when do those who actually love Christ tend to congregate? Well, they congregate at all sorts of places – plays, operas, orchestra performances. And when we’re all together in one room, listening to one of Haydn’s orchestras, for example, aren’t we communing with God?

2. Communion and the sacraments are another fear I have about being unchurched. Once, when I was forward deployed, I got my hands on grape juice and crackers (they weren’t even unleavened). I had never missed a communion to that point and didn’t intend on letting circumstances stop my religious practice. There’s probably all sorts of theological issues with serving myself – I had no authority, the bread and wine were all wrong, and who knows what else. Since then, I’ve stopped all together. I haven’t taken communion in years and I feel terrible about it.

Whatever someone might say about it theologically, I still retain an almost superstitious attitude towards communion and not taking it lays heavy on me; I’m not at all sure what to do about it. I’m not honoring Christ in one of the ways He specifically said He wants to be honored…and they don’t serve the meal at an opera.

3. I suppose the last big item I’m concerned about is the missing out on the culture and traditions that come with being part of an American church. I grew up with these and everyone I care about is mired in them. What if, God forbid, I get married and have a family one day? What would it look like, raising children without church?

I list this one last because I’m sure it will be challenging, but not impossible. I imagine unchurched Christian children will be as spiritually dominate over their peers as the homeschooled children are intellectually dominate over government schooled children.

What do you think, readers? Am I hell-bound?

(5) On Poverty…

In Graham Greene’s “The Power and the Glory” the fugitive priest gives mass in an impoverished Mexican village. Trying to ease their pain, he teaches that God makes them suffer so Heavenly rewards will be all the sweeter. We might call this the “Hellraiser” view of poverty – a grotesque horror movie where demons torture the damned to teach that true pleasure only comes after immense suffering. Or, that the greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure? I don’t know for sure, I can’t stand watching those movies. It seems arbitrary to me, though. Don’t we have enough trouble in life as it is, without having to be Mexicans (or tortured in Hell) to appreciate the treasures of Heaven?

I’ve never experienced poverty until recently. Whatever its mysterious, esoteric virtues, for me at least, it’s brought depressing clarity. For example: when you don’t know where your next meal is going to come from, charges of white “genocide” seem a lot less important. Oh, we might get away with defining biased news coverage, anti-white affirmative action, and the occasional murder of distant strangers, as “genocide” without trivializing the word, but what does all that matter to a guy who’s hungry? The majority of white people hate me anyway. They don’t want me on their plantation and I certainly don’t want to be their slave.

“Ah HA!” My enemies think they have me here. “You publicly advocated for slavery and now the sandal-wearing Christ-of-the-rainbow-flag is rubbing your nose in your own filth. You want slavery? Well, now you have to be a slave!”

To that: I’ve long conceded that owing to my mediocre intelligence, looks, and abilities, I’d be most suited to cleaning the stables of old Europe. Give me the life of a serf or peasant in merry old England! I’d bow, nod, and offer deference with more humility than any of the fortunate born at the time. And I’d do it proudly: proud of my humility, if that makes sense. So, no, dear enemies, I’m not at all averse to servitude nor too proud to slop pigs. But doing it in service to Satan? Work on a plantation where infants are slaughtered daily? Where the worst sort of sexual perversion is being taught to children through forced indoctrination?

Most of my enemies are also atheists, so here they think they have me again: “We can see how you’d view America this way, but isn’t it funny how you pray and pray and God simply refuses to deliver you from it? Ha! Curse Him and die!”

Die, I might, but curse Him? Never.

God knows I’m not smart enough to grasp whatever meaning lies in gross poverty. And I don’t know why He ignores all my prayers about it. But I can’t ever reject Him in favor of the sniveling effeminacy of pop-Atheism.

I have a final depressing point of clarity that may shed light on the mystery?

Americans define themselves by what they do in life. This isn’t unique. Vocational names crossed the Atlantic with our ancestors: Smith, Miller, Thatcher, and so on. I don’t know if it’s the case with everyone who’s in poverty, but for me, I’m spiraling into an identity crisis. What am I?

Cue the Aristotelian notion of place and the importance of society for defining one’s character and purpose, and for giving meaning to life. A seed planted in good soil grows a healthy plant.

…and I’m still on the shelf.