Withering Bloodlines

As a foreword, this essay features major spoilers for the show Justified.

A noteworthy aspect of American society is the phenomenon of the mass shriveling of bloodlines among the founding stock Caucasians and the dying of once prosperous towns their ancestors built while urban areas continue to grow. Young whites today simply lack the desire to stay in small towns and rural areas and reproduce, instead opting to move to degraded cities for the sake of degeneracy, money, and uncultured vanity. Even the cities are dying and only growing because outsiders, not native to them, move in – but that is not the focus of this essay. The trend described above manifests itself as a core component in the neo-Western crime drama TV series Justified.

Justified takes place mostly in Harlan County, Kentucky. This heavily rural area is riddled with crime and drugs with many of the local families, all of founding stock, being involved in organized crime and drug trade. They rule the county and surrounding areas and are the primary force driving the story of the show. Raylan Givens, the main character, is a U.S. Marshal and is relocated to Harlan to work with the local Marshal office to take down the families in the area, beginning the storyline of the show.

The four major white families featured in the series are the Crowder, Givens, Crowe, and Bennett families, with the Dixie Mafia, Detroit Mafia, and U.S. Marshals comprising other factions. By the end of the series, every major family featured in the show is whittled down to nothing, with the only surviving members moving out of state and hating their heritage. Raylan and his baby daughter are the only remaining members of the Givens family and do not live in Harlan by the show’s end. Boyd Crowder, Raylan’s rival and the primary antagonist of the series, is middle aged, ostracized from his former lover who has left Harlan, and is imprisoned with no knowledge of his child’s existence. Dickie Bennett is crippled and imprisoned. And, Wendy and her son, Kendal Crowe, hate their family and leave Harlan.

Even the main antagonist of the sixth season of the show mentions the decline of these families. In fact, the only intact family, really a very powerful community, left intact by the end is the large Negro community living in Noble’s Hollow led by Ellstin Limehouse. Mr. Limehouse’s community is the only antagonist faction not to receive any major losses during the series. While the showrunners may not have realized it, they inadvertently shed some light on how many native families, some of prestigious heritage, are dying.

In addition to the declining family trees, it is also noteworthy to see the decline of the rural areas within the show. Anyone with a real desire to find some sort of financial stability leaves Harlan. Boyd Crowder laments the death of the county in the show’s final season, and it is his primary driving force for staying instead of leaving. The coal mines closed down, the families are dying, crime business is on the decline, and everyone is leaving.

All of these factors describe the typical rural area seen today. The families die off or engage in dysgenic reproductive practices often via miscegenation and rampant promiscuity, assuming, of course, the youth do not move into the nearby cities or expire from drug addiction. In addition, this sits on the backdrop of, and fuels the continuation of, the economic decline of towns as well. Many of these towns are past the point of declining and have already hit rock bottom, especially in poorer rural states. These places are not waiting for the mythical collapse dissident circles are usually ranting about; the collapse has already happened.

While one could make the argument these collapsed towns are the perfect foundation for rebuilding communities for Southerners, there really is not much white pill to be had here. There is no way to convince middle class whites to downgrade from their soft suburbs and move into a mostly abandoned town and rebuild it. Additionally, the 1963 Supreme Court case Gray v. Sanders destroyed the Georgia county unit system method of voting in gubernatorial elections, which made it impossible to give rural areas a little more skin in the game during elections at the state level.

Much like Justified’s Harlan County, there is not much left for small towns anymore, only that they should slowly fade away as founding stock Americans die off.