A confrontation occured between various leftwing elements such as BLM, Black Panthers, and Antifa, and various supposedly rightwing groups such as the Threepers, Oath Keepers, patriotards, and regular people who are just plain stirred up. The setting was Rogersville, Tennessee, a pretty typical rural Tennessee town. What the Radical Left went there for, I’m not sure. I’ve heard a few reasons given, but it all seems to boil down to causing trouble in a quiet place for ordinary people. Naturally, there was outrage all throughout the region.
The most obvious and public frustration seemed to come from the Boomers on the internet. Many of them have spent the last couple months watching almost every major city in America vandalized and burned, and it recently arrived at their doorstep. Social media was flooded with 60-75 year old men writing out things that none of us would dare say for fear of being thrown in the back of a van. They expressed their outrage with threats of running down protesters blocking off streets and other very transgressive language, but the most common emotion, and soaked with desperation, was the question, “Where has my country gone?” Well, maybe when they were growing up they had a functioning society and a healthy community. That’s long gone, and it’s a moot point trying to point fingers at who let it slip away (or gave it away.) What I’m curious about is why this demographic is being riled up the way it is.
If I’ve learned anything about the way social media and social movements in general work in this country, it’s that none of them are genuine or organic. The outrage is always manufactured, although people’s reactions tend to fall nicely in line. When I see such a blatant attack on a small Southern town and our way of life, it makes me wonder why the only substantial reaction is coming from a largely inept segment of the population. Boomers are long past their fighting prime, and have consistently shown that they are less than willing to take a stand on the really important issues such as gun rights, abortion, immigration, etc. The men who really should be taking a stand are the 18-35 year old native Tennesseeans, the men who are most willing and able to defend their homes. However, they have been conveniently removed from the equation.
In a fairly recent episode of Rebel Yell, the guest spoke about his involvement in the Virginia National Guard. His description of the typical Guardsman as a patriotic, idealistic young man who wants to defend his state was spot on. In Tennessee, you see the same character in our Guardsmen, those men who felt it their duty to put skin in the game and be there when their fellow citizens of Tennessee needed them. Those good men were called up when the recent Color Revolution heated up and were sent to Washington, DC to protect the Lincoln Memorial. The absolute gall! After a week or so of standing around and getting spat at by communists, they were sent back to Nashville to support the state police in protecting the capitol building. Finally, they were allowed to return to their homes with great stories about their time in the imperial capitol, ready to relax a little and put the rioting behind them, just in time for the 4th of July.
I propose that the movement of these young men, who had identified themselves so strongly and publicly as those willing to stand and fight, was used as a tactic to keep them quelled. These men were flown hundreds of miles from their homes and communities at the time when their families needed their protection the most. While they were following orders and standing by their command, their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, wives and children were unsure if their block would be next for the BLM and antifa rioters to loot and burn. These were the men who could have stood up against the communists and won. Instead, they were turned in the wrong direction. Now, they’ve been deflated. They had a taste of the action and that’s all most people will really have the desire to try.
This isn’t to say that I had hoped to see a fight in Rogersvill3. No, a conflict in a small Southern town ending in bloodshed would make life substantially worse for our people. What I wish had happened was the rallying of our Guardsmen and other protectors of our communities to their hometowns. Their responsibility is not to some leviathan on the Potomac. It is to their kith and kin, those who should be able to call on them in any time of need. We need to encourage young men, especially those who have that fighting spirit, to engage with their neighbors, their town, their county, and keep their duties at home where it belongs.
We don’t owe anything to the Empire, and they sure as hell don’t deserve it.
-By Dixie Anon
O I’m a good old rebel, now that’s just what I am. For this “fair land of freedom” I do not care at all. I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won, And I don’t want no pardon for anything I done.
Nice! The post is spot on, particularly that portion I have quoted above.
I was once a young man who believed (fervently, even) I owed something to the Empire, and therefore joined the U.S. military in a ‘fit of patriotic ferver.’ But as the old saying goes, the time comes when a man shall ‘put away childish things.’ It took me a long time – too long, actually, but that’s beside the point – to figure out that my patriotism (although genuine and from the heart) was severely misplaced. My education on the matter came to me (or, was rather received) a little at a time, as I got older, wiser, had seen things first hand and so on. Alls I can say in my own defense is that I was young and dumb at the time. Not a very good excuse, granted, but it’s the only one I got. I’ve spent the better part of my existence since trying to correct, or make amends for, that youthful indiscretion/dumbassery. My children all know their duty, and to whom it is firstly required. Which is its own ‘consolation,’ or requital. But anyway…
T.
Thank you for your refreshing perspective, the decades since your service surely have proven you are spot on. God, family, and neighborhood are my current priorities. Time is precious.
I am very grateful to The Far Left for going out of their way to raid sleepy hamlets throughout Dixie, because one thing is sure – the vast majority of our willfully sleepy-headed Southern Brethren will never be awakened via any other route.
Mr. Dixie anon: I fall within that group 60-75. I’m closer to 75 than 60, The greatest problem here in the South is no true faith in God. We are in a spiritual war and we don’t have much ammo. It’s going to take a lot more than guns to win. for the last 50 years we Southerners have been told that Confederates were very bad and that slavery was very very, very evil, both of which is a lie. In case you are not aware, God is angry with us because we have turned to other gods. Look around you, see all the women with tattoos, men with tattoos women wearing long underwear in public, women in mens jobs, men in women’s jobs. Sodomy is the law, men marry men, women marry women and the list goes on. When we return to God he will forgive us, until then things will only get worse. If you don’t believe it just wait and see.
Dear Kenneth,
Probably God is angry with us, but, I suspect that the biggest reason why we are in the pickle we are in is because we do not wish to stand up for ourselves.
As a gardener, I am, oh, so well aware how it would go if I decided to pass many years without troubling myself to pull the weeds.
We never were perfect before, but, at least we would stick up for ourselves.
Consequently, things went better for us.
Dear Ivan,
Yes, I for one believe you have articulated the correct perspective on this. You have probably read where I have said, or iterated, before that God’s punishment is not needed at this point; that He may have just taken away his protective hand and let His nature and her immutable laws take their course.
On the gardening thing, you might have also read that I myself take little interest in gardening but that my wife is an avid gardener. I know, therefore, something of the art and why everyone says of her that she has a “green thumb.” Which reminds me: she has been after me for a few days (actually a couple weeks, I think) to take a look at her tiller and try to figure out why it isn’t running quite right. The last couple of days she has been applying a little more pressure on the subject since she is about ready to begin planting the fall garden stuff. Guess I’d better get on that! 🙂
@T Morris…
Thank you so much for your kind words and your thoughtful reply, Sir.
Sadly, I think that everyone is trying to reinvent the wheel to figure out why it is that we, Southerners, are the subject of, and have long been the subject of, Cultural Genocide. (See Rafail Lemkin’s criteria on it, below) when it is just as simple as we need to make people fear us again.
I’m sorry to use the word ‘fear’, because now everybody is going to think I am recommending vigilanteism, when I am not.
No, Sir, I am recommending that we stand together and simply refuse to go along any further. One street at a time, one business at a time, one little church at a time, little community at a time, I believe we ought become publically pronounced sanctuaries for America 1776.
Final note – When Eastern European Jew, Rafail, Lemkin, escaped the clutches of Nazi, and Nazi allies, reprisals, he resettled in this country and stewed upon that which he had just been through. He came up with the notion of ‘Cultural Genocide’, a measure which was adopted by the United Nations.
Article 7 of a 1994 draft of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples used the phrase “cultural genocide” but did not define what it meant.[11] The complete article in the draft read as follows:
Indigenous peoples have the collective and individual right not to be subjected to ethnocide and cultural genocide, including prevention of and redress for:
(a) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities;
(b) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources;
(c) Any form of population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights;
(d) Any form of assimilation or integration by other cultures or ways of life imposed on them by legislative, administrative or other measures;
(e) Any form of propaganda directed against them.
Kenneth, I am about the same age as you. I agree with you to a large extent. We have both seen our churches and preachers over these years. I was raised Baptist and now go to a United Methodist church. It has been many years since I have seen
anyone in the pulpit preach a “hell fire” sermon. Neither do I see anyone now come to the alter crying asking forgiveness of there sins and wanting to follow Jesus. Even the preachers our age that preach once in a while for a pastor on vacation are timid. They do not preach what is needed to bring people to even obey the Ten Commandments. They proclaim a feel good, cotton candy message. The preachers and staff seem more interested in a social justice type theology and want to support Black Lives Matter. They had rather give church collections to what they consider needy blacks and foreigners rather than help out some of the widows and elderly in their own church. The seminaries they go to share a lot of the blame. If my grandparents were alive, I do not believe they would even attend church now, but would continue to pray and read their Bibles at home. I’m pretty disgusted with what I am now witnessing.
@Gregg…
I can confirm that what you say about Southern Baptist Churches is very valid for what is going on in Northeastern North Carolina.
The spine is missing from the faith, and many churches seem little more than long established social clubs with a light liturgical veneer.
And, yes, if my grandparents were alive they all would be horrified, even though they are very very different people.
Can you imagine what would happen if a million White Southerners from the early 19th century happened to rearise?
There would be hell to pay, and quickly.
It has been said, of the South, that we don’t have “that kind of people anymore”.
And we don’t. National Guards are an extension of Federal power – State Militias were absorbed into the NG way back in the 40’s (all a matter of record). The predominately White NG’s disarmed White’s in New Orleans after Katrina and would shoot their own in their home state if some Negro General gave the command. The Confederate Generation were great people, the best this cult derived “nation” ever produced – but – Gone With the Wind.
“it makes me wonder why the only substantial reaction is coming from a largely inept segment of the population. Boomers are long past their fighting prime”
Of course, the obvious answer as to “why” is they are the only group of white people who still have an active First Amendment. To explain further, younger people have to maintain jobs to support a family or to have any hopes to get one. And if they are caught doing any type of right-wing wrong-speak or think then they will be de-platformed, fired and as Charlottesville demonstrates, even sued just for attending a so called “free speech” rally. Meanwhile, retired boomers on a guaranteed fixed income with no small children to support are still allowed to still speak their mind (for the moment).
Excellent essay focused on that one counsel.