(Near) Escape from America: Dumaguete, Philippines

As published at SubStack, 2/14/24:

Before your trip to the Philippines, you entertained the idea of relocating there, so what made you choose that country? Also, why did you decide to possibly leave the US for good?

-I decided to move to the Philippines for a few reasons. First I had recently turned 65, I was starting to get Social Security and I was no longer tethered to a job. (I loath the cold and snow of my home state, Connecticut. We’re about to have a snow storm tonight and tomorrow which makes me miserable because it interferes with my jogging.) To get away from this bad weather; I wanted to go to a place with a warm, tropical climate where English was widely spoken and, perhaps most importantly, where the cost of living was low. Where I was in the Philippines, Dumaguete, I could live comfortably for less than $700 per month. Well within my relatively small budget .

In the city of my birth, Bridgeport, nobody but desperate people walk downtown streets. As the late Gore Vidal so aptly said, “Only two types of people walk in Southern California: fags and criminals.” That pretty much applies to anywhere in the good old U.S. of A. I’m gettin’ out while the gettin’ is good, I thought.

I read about your $300 a month rent. That’s far better than the $500 I was paying for a room in a vermin infested house, with surly housemates. America is past its expiration date. Its middle class is not coming back. The longer you stay here, the closer you get to joining the “blue tarp people” living under the highway overpass. I had enough. Basta!

Maybe I will find a home in Southeast Asia? I was only sure of meeting real human beings. Since returning from California, I hadn’t seen real human beings in “my” hometown.

I had read that Dumaguete was “The City of Friendly People.” From this, I extrapolated the Philippines would be a friendly, welcoming country for an old, retired American. In general, it was. I was always deferred to as “sir” while there, not that I expect people to bestow honorifics on me. In the States, I’m just, “hey, you,” “buddy” or something like that.

Unfortunately I got off to a bad start in the Philippines. I arrived at the hotel I had booked and paid for up front (just $491 for a one  month stay!). The next morning I walked downtown to get money from an ATM. (The banks were so heavily guarded by private, heavily armed men that I would be very hesitant to attempt to enter.) Since my ATM card didn't work at the first few banks, I began to panic thinking I would be in the country for a month without access to cash. I ran around under the tropical sun looking for a workable ATM. Finally, I located one but when I returned to my hotel, I had a mild case of sun stroke (if sun stroke is ever mild?), so I was confined to bed for about 36 hours and unable to keep food down. To make matters worse, I slept directly under the draft of an air conditioner which irritated my vocal cords terribly, so I could barely speak for several days.  

I located a small seaside cafe/bar half a mile from my hotel, but there was one small "flaw" in the situation. To reach this bar, I had to cross a heavily traveled road. During the day and on weekends, this road was heavy with traffic, not cars so much as the ubiquitous “trikes” (modified motorbikes) that were a constant source of noise as well as a threat to pedestrians. There was no sidewalk. 

Early in my trip, I walked all over the center of town and down the promenade or boardwalk. Planning my trip, I had seen YouTube videos put out by a very intelligent young woman with a wicked sense of humor. In Dumaguete, I was sort of hoping to run into her. As an aside, I didn’t use my computer because I couldn’t plug it into my hotel’s electrical outlets. I didn’t have much battery life anyway, so I just put my computer away. To my chagrin, I watched too much TV in my hotel room, and FOX News was the only American channel available. Though I loath FOX News, I watched it anyway.

Basically I spent most of the month at the little cafe down the street, looking out over the Pacific. Two islands were visible. One was Cebu and the other was something like Isquidor. One of the young ladies who was a barista/ bartender kindly made the effort to know me and I had the satisfaction of giving these young servers good tips. This, I could not do back home. In the States, I’m sort of a Scrooge due to my lack of discretionary income.

There were a dozen interesting things I could have done in the Philippines, but I did nothing, basically. There’s an American missionary founded university I had planned to take classes at should I relocate there. I found it but didn’t even go inside. I’m not sure why.

As I said, the people were generally kind and friendly but I never felt completely comfortable. As I get older, I’m just getting set in my ways and less able to adapt to new situations and environments. Philippine society is also very extroverted; during daylight the streets are packed with “trikes” and pedestrians. There was too much noise and commotion for me. Several mornings I got out before dawn just to be in the peace and quiet. Packs of dogs roaming seemingly everywhere also made me uncomfortable. I was never bitten or threatened but I was always a bit on edge. If I had a confrontation with an aggressive dog, I as a stranger might get blamed for provoking the dog or who knows what?

On January 30th, my visa was about to expire so I needed to get to the airport to catch a short flight to Manila. I got to the Dumaguete airport 48 hours before my departure, but both airlines told me they were booked up. Seeing my distress, they put me on a motorcycle/trike/bus/taxi ride to Cebu. From there, I could fly to Manila for my departure to New York. It was a hair-raising 10-hour ride, but I did make it to Manila in time. On this ride, I met a very gracious young Filipino who made sure I got to the Cebu airport without problems. Via email, I’ve just invited him to the States if he’s inclined to make the trip.

I’m just too old and set in my ways for these sorts of adventures. I’m not satisfied in my hometown of Bridgeport, having returned here 18 months ago after 37 years of working in Sacramento, CA. I had to leave because it’s too expensive. I’m looking for places in the States with a lower cost of living, especially housing. Maybe I’ll move to Ralph Nader’s hometown of Winstead, CT. His siblings have helped to initiate a community college there. I really like the intellectual stimulation of taking college classes without the stress of working toward a degree. 

In Sacramento, I took classes at Sacramento City College. In one, I learnt about a Southwest people, either Navajo or Hopi, who possessed a language that viewed the world “backward.” Unlike us, their orientation was toward the past and not the future. When an elder was asked by an anthropologist why this was, he said, “We know the past, but how can we know the future?”

Since Ronald Reagan’s dismal administration, housing costs have risen for the poor but wages have stagnated. Though I grew up middle class, I’m just barely getting by in today’s America. I sometimes feel “my” country was stolen right from under me. It’s perhaps presumptuous to think it was ever “my” country. 

Returning to Connecticut, I wasn’t sure if my old room had been rented out or if my landlady would even let me back in. I had told her I wasn’t coming back. I can’t afford $100 a night at some hotel as I look for suitable housing. Bridgeport doesn’t even have a hotel, I discovered, so I’m lucky to be in my old room.

On a lighter note, I’m corresponding with a young Mexican-American woman who promotes living in Mexico.  I’m looking into that but the cost of living there is increasing also. 

On the flight out, our enormous Boeing 777 flew over Laos. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t spot the Mekong River. I did see the Himalayas 120 miles to the north while crossing India, but from that distance and 41,000 feet, they’re not that impressive.

I must hope one doesn’t have to perish among the roaches here in the 4th World U.S. Rust Belt. They don’t eat human flesh, or do they?

—Tom Herzog, 65-years-old

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Here’s an entirely different account of Dumaguete, from another escaped American.

Fred Reed On Getting Out of the USA

As published on SubStack, 7/10/22:

 

When did you leave the US permanently, and what made you decide to do so?

-Twenty-one years ago, bored with Washington, had always had an interest in Mexico. Came to check it out, and never left.

Before Joe Bageant got cancer and had to return to the US, he moved from Belize to Ajijic, Mexico, where you are. How did you persuade him to do so?

-I made no active attempt to recruit him. I think, but may misremember, that he read my columns, emailed me, we talked by email but I do not remember just what about, he came, decided Mexico was better than Belize, and stayed.

How near death is the US? Will it break apart? Is there any hope for a reversal of decay and degeneracy?

-My take, for what little it is probably worth: The downward rush seems irreversible and rapid. Without a dominant culture the many groups are in conflict, crime high and can’t be fought without a racial explosion, education rapidly decaying, economy failing, and an autoimmune response against the culture that once held the whole shebang together. Today I would far rather raise children in Mexico and its schools than in America. I can’t see it breaking up—how do you get Philadelphia blacks to move to Mississippi and the whites to move to Idaho?—but I can imagine nationwide mayhem as with Floyd.

I’ve said all along that Mexico will need a border wall more than the US, to keep desperate Americans out. Do you agree with this?

-A literal wall, no, for reasons of organization, finance, and so on. But lots of gringos will doubtless head south if chaos descends.

What was best about the US? What do you miss most being away?

-In my high school days, almost no crime, no racial conflict because blacks were under control, no serious political divisiveness, no crazy shootings, no police in the schools, no shootings at all though in my rural regions guns were common for hunting, civility, boys didn’t say “shit” or “fuck” in front of girls, illegitimacy almost unheard of, anorexia and bulimia completely unheard of—we didn’t know the words—one cop for a huge county and he didn’t have anything to do, schools apolitical, all the advantages of a local monoculture. Hitchhiking without fear. Almost universal regional prosperity.

What is best about Mexico? How is your Spanish? How do Mexicans treat you?

-I married my Spanish teacher and that is the house language. Mexicans unvaryingly friendly, whether in Guad or the many pueblos we visit. While the narcos are out of control and there is corruption, Mexico approximates a monoculture except for Indian regions in the south. The towns are peaceful, all with a plaza, plazas all different and usually lovely as they are not designed at corporate, restaurants and bars locally owned, no goddamned American chains, a sense of oldness in the pueblos, always a church on the plaza, all different, Mexico is not a mass culture, none of the plastic sterility of America. Streets clean and plazas spotless, strong families, lack of stress. I don’t know how many are strong Christian believers but the church and the many celebrations of saints’ days are a social glue and, though Mexico has by constitution separation of church and state, there is no venom in it as in America, no lunatics trying to abolish crosses in public squares.

Finally, what advices do you have for Americans who are contemplating a leap from the burning ship?

-Get out. Get out. Get out. If you can find a way to work by internet, do it. Most countries, certainly Mexico, have good internet and cell phone service, medical care often good. Go for dual citizenship when you become eligible. Consider Southeast Asia or Latin America. Put your kids in local schools. Fluency in another language won’t hurt them and schools do not teach critical race theory. Once you decide you like the country, buy, don’t rent and to the extent possible get out of the dollar. Understand that countries in the “Third World” are rising out of it while the US falls into it and levels of morality, taste, and behavior are higher.

..............................................................

[Mexico City, 5/24/17]

[Mexico City, 5/27/17]

[Mexico City, 5/29/17]

[Toluca, 5/30/17]

[Tepotzotlan, 5/28/17]

[Juarez looking towards El Paso, 4/4/12]

[Mexico City, 5/25/17]

Escape from America: Moscow, Russia

As published at SubStack, 4/22/22:

To start with, please tell us how long you've been in Russia? Why did you decide to move there?

I have been in Russia since the summer of 2014. In fact, I came a week or so after Ukraine shot that passenger plane down and blamed it on Russia. 

In the beginning, I would half-joke that I was the first refugee from America, but nowadays when Russians ask me - and they often do - I usually make vague noises about wanting to travel, mainly to avoid discussing it. As it turns out, it’s a surprisingly personal question that leads to more questions and me giving long-winded explanations where I feel like I’m pontificating or lecturing them. And frankly I have gotten tired of hearing myself talk.

Part of the reason I moved here is that I have an escapist personality, but the other part was political. I grew up southern Alabama, in a left-wing family, which back then was rare to the point of non-existent in white society. My father especially was sympathetic to the Soviets/Russians, Cubans and Palestinians and having gone to Catholic school all my life, I took the moral lessons to heart, if not the religious ones.  I myself had my political awakening after 9/11 when I was just 20 years old. By the time 2014 had rolled around, I pretty much hated the US system and felt powerless and angry, so I made the conscious decision to leave. At that time, I figured that Russia or China was my best bet, but China seemed too foreign, so I went to Russia instead.

How old were you when you arrived in Russia? Did you come alone? Had you been to many countries before? What were some of the shocks, if any, of finally living there?

I went to Russia alone right after my 33rd birthday. My then-boyfriend of three years drove me to the airport and I never saw him again.

Before moving here, I had only traveled abroad a little in Europe; Ireland a few times, Greece, Scotland, Spain and France but never more than as a tourist. Since then, however, I have traveled much more widely. But I had never been to Russia, let alone Eastern Europe, and actually I knew little about it outside politics and clicking around on Google Earth. 

The first shock was actually right after I landed. Just leaving the airport, I was surprised at how dumpy everything looked. The apartment buildings, specifically those built in the late 80’s early 90’s look almost burned out. I remember staring really hard at these horrible edifices trying to see if they had actually caught fire and thinking it was impossible that so many apartments could have burned. And the cars were all covered in mud too. In fact my car is so dirty right now, you can’t even read the plates. It turns out that when you combine an extraordinarily harsh climate with frugality, overcrowding and the utilitarian aesthetic of the 1970s, everything looks pretty dismal.

Another shock but in a good way was how wonderful the food is: small, flavorful vegetables, real, raw dairy with loads of fresh cream that gently sours after a week instead of putrefying after three months, raw honey by the bucketful and the bread-making is an artform. I lost 15 lbs within a couple of months. But I want to be clear here, while the food is wonderful, the cuisine is bland and bizarre in equal measure. “Herring Under a Fur Coat” is as unappetizing as it sounds (and looks).

Another culture shock was that as an American smiling at everyone all the time, it took awhile for me to adjust to the grim expressionlessness of Russian people. Actually, I’ve never really gotten used to this. The flipside is that since most interactions with Russians “feel” rude, I have become far less sensitive when people are actually being rude. 

You came to Russia because you hated the American system, but what did you expect from Russia that the US didn’t have? After nearly eight years in Russia, have you found it?

I understood that there were no real alternatives to international neo-liberal/neo-fascist capitalism but I figured that Russia was, if not opposed to it, at least pulling in another direction. Russia was also really big and wild and - I secretly hoped - also lawless.

And really, I wanted to escape the vicious rigamarole of living in the US. For me, life there was like being a rat slowly dying in a glue trap; the more you struggle the more mired in it you become, and if you just go limp, you wither and die just the same. And even if you do everything right and never question and follow all the rules, you still get a raw deal. Mysteriously “autistic” pincushion-kids, garbage food, debt slavery, thuggish cops, endless insurance policies, fees, fines and taxes that nickel and dime you, and now, beyond my wildest imagining, transvestite sexual clowns reading to your kids in the public library.

So what I expected was to leave that life behind, and eight years later, not only did I find it, I am living a muddier version of the American dream in a Moscow suburb. My son is unvaxxed, the social services are broad and of good quality, the food is clean and natural, and our finances are so simple that we are building a house and paying in cash, and by that I mean stacks of rubles passed in envelopes and no bank involvement at all.

You mention the grimness or rudeness of Russians, at least on a superficial level, but what about the people you’ve gotten to know well? What sorts of friendship have you been able to cultivate there? What are the barriers, and how is your Russian?

I’d like to say that I have seamlessly integrated into the society and that I’m surrounded by Russian friends, but wouldn’t be true.

My Russian is coming along, but it is not at the level it should be.  I never had any interest in or exposure to foreign languages growing up, so at thirty-three I had to start from scratch after my brain was already calcified. Still I bumble through my lessons, twice a week, as my budget allows.

My relationships and conversations with Russians tend to be boring, superficial and vaguely uncomfortable. Part of this is due to the language barrier, but I suspect there is more to it. I’ve come to find Russians to be pretty bland in general but in a pleasantly wholesome, milk-moustache way that is devoid of all the egoism, drama and individual neuroses that drive Americans. But, to be fair, that toxic mental stew is also what makes American people interesting as individuals.

I’m loathe to admit it, but I get along best with the random Americans and Canadians I meet, if only because we know how to speak to each other. We know the unspoken rules of communication, the pop culture references, political clichés and touchy subjects. My best friend here is an American woman eight years my junior. 

No longer a rat in a glue trap, you’re living the American dream in a Moscow suburb, so your life sounds fine. The tension between the US and Russia has reached a toxic level, however, and it’s likely to get even worse. How has this affected your situation?

The tensions have been high the entire time I’ve lived here, but by the beginning of 2020, it became crystal clear to me at least, that the US was preparing for a war with Russia. So really, for the last two years, everything I have done has had that in the back of my mind so that the “American dream” I mentioned before is really the product of my own paranoia.

The house we are building is in a forest far outside of Moscow. I read somewhere that during WW2, the French who lived in the countryside fared relatively well and besides, I didn’t come all the way to Russia in order to grow old and die in a drab Moscow high-rise. The house is only about 2/3rds complete, but with the Ukraine situation, we decided to move out that way early, so now we are renting a small house near our property.

It took me eight years, but I only just got my Russian citizenship two weeks ago in a rather anti-climactic and even somber ceremony (if you could call it that), yet also like every other achievement or milestone I’ve crossed here, it was serendipitous and timely.

When I came here, I didn’t intend it to be the hill I would literally die on. As they say, all wars are banker’s wars, and while I am sympathetic to Russia, I also attended MGIMO back in 2017 and had a peek behind the curtain so to speak, and I was disappointed by the ideological inner workings of this country. Let’s just say that the anti-Soviet quislings of the 90’s are reformed, but are still the status-quo. So I think Russia needs to do a bit of housekeeping of its own before it goes around cleaning anybody else’s clock. But times are a changin’ and I think those pro-west diehards are going to start keeping their heads down. They were never popular to begin with. Today on the train I noticed huge slogans like “Socialism or extinction” painted along the route, instead of the usual dicks and swear words.

These days, reading Western mainstream media gives me a feeling as though I am staring into the horizon and seeing the dust cloud of an approaching stampede of powerful, dumb beasts. It’s a dull and unemotional feeling, but your blood still runs cold.

So even with all this turmoil and madness, Russia is still home, and beats returning to the US, not that your husband would want to move there. I’m assuming also you never considered relocating to a third country.

My husband works in the aerospace industry. He’s not allowed to leave Russia with his job, but even if he could, he would not want to go to the US.

I can imagine scenarios, like war, where I would return to the US, but it would never be with great relish or any intention to stay. Being an expat is not just a lifestyle, it’s a skill, as I’m sure you know. I lived in Czechia for a year and it was a breeze. Russia is one of the harder places to live. The only work I can really do in Russia is teaching English because they (rightfully) kicked all the NGOs out, but I do have a masters degree in international relations and I still am an associate with a US-based consultancy company, so I actually have better career prospects abroad than I do here in Russia. The only real threat to that is whatever medical tyranny/NWO crap is coming down the pipeline. But as of now, I have no intention of leaving Russia. I finally managed to drag the last load of my books over in January, so I consider it my home.

How have Russians reacted to their absurd demonization? Has this affected your relationships with Russians?

I don’t know how aware of it they actually are. If you notice, the Western media is careful to keep the focus on “Putin” and furthermore, Russians in general can barely speak English, let alone read between the lines. The linguistic culture of the Russian language is very direct; people say what they mean and mean what they say, in contrast to English which tends to be indirect and dissembling. This goes back to what I said about how Russians seem rude. But anyway, I have always gotten the feeling that Russians don’t realize how much the West hates them. Russians are not chauvinists so they don’t understand the chauvinist mindset.

So no, so far this has not affected my relationships with people here. People do ask me who I voted for in the last election, but they’re satisfied when I answer that I don’t vote. Actually, just the other day a man struck up a conversation with me on the street. I can’t hide that I’m foreign so naturally, he asked where I was from and I reluctantly admitted it. He was slightly taken aback, and started to back away. For some reason I felt compelled to explain that I live here and have a son and so on, and he perked right up and then introduced himself in English. 

Jessie (40-years-old)

Escape from America: Ukraine

As published at Unz Review and TruthSeeker, 6/20/21:

Graham, Oksana and their children in Kiev

You grew up in El Cerrito, just north of Berkeley, then attended Reed College in Portland. Reed was like a madhouse in the 60's. Then you went to Berkeley, before heading to Vietnam for four years, during the height of the war. Did you transform from a hippie to a gung-ho grunt?

I was too poor, too conservative and too goy to fit in well at Reed. At Berkeley I ignored the anti-war crowd and graduated in math in 1966.

I went to Vietnam to get out of the Army. IBM needed people to support the State Dept. and military. But… my National Guard signal company was a "designated reserve unit," first to go if called by Pres. Johnson. They were not letting communications people out.

My sergeant was sympathetic to my problem, and excited that I had the chance to go to Vietnam. He said "The Army ain’t gonna step on its own dick. How'd you like to be a cook?"

In Danang I developed a rapport with the Marines I worked with. Glad not to be one, but respected them as people.

I'm assuming Vietnam was your first foreign country. It's certainly not ideal to experience any place during a war, with all its social turmoils and distortions. Still, you stayed there for four years, and even married a Vietnamese. What did you like and hate about Vietnam? Shoot straight!

IBM literally had to throw me out after four years. I loved the work, the warm weather, the freedom, the Vietnamese people and the money. I accumulated $100,000.

All bachelors, we formed the Benevolent Association for Recreation and Fornication—BARFUP. Our mission was to make the most of the outstanding French, Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants. We joined the elite French Club Sportif and Club Nautique.

The frustrations were tolerable: beggars, "I watch boys" who would vandalize your car if you didn't pay protection, traffic cops who wanted bribes.

We developed what the French called la fièvre jaune, an appreciation of the beautiful young women. When one guy, who had divorced just to become eligible for Vietnam, brought his wife over we joked that he was "bringing a sandwich to a banquet."

It is telling that despite the great availability of women, monogamy won out. Most settled down and quite a few are still married to their Vietnamese sweethearts. And why not? They love children, take pride in their bodies, and generally respect their husbands.

Vietnamese in French schools adopted French names, so my wife was Josée. Josée's father, born in 1900 to the Bac Lieu province chief, studied law and lived in France. His firstborn of 12 came when he was 40. Mother, 20 years younger, was the daughter of the largest landowner. The incessant squabbles in their marriage presaged those in ours.

You ate your sandwich, and have apparently gotten over your yellow fever. You're now married to a Ukrainian woman who's 37 years younger! Can we assume she'd not have agreed to be your wife if you didn't have an American passport? If so, is there anything wrong with that?

You can't make that assumption. That would be the hard-up girls looking online to become "Russian brides."

Looking for a place to practice English, Oksana dropped in on the Anglican church. My decade-older friend Mike chatted her up and squired her to Rotary and Toastmasters—where I also happened to be. Through conversations at their meetings she learned that I wanted to start a family. Mike escorted her to the Toastmasters Ball, where I danced with her.

She wanted to learn to type. My computer had a typing program. I put my arms around her and my hands on hers to position them properly. She still contends that the kiss on the neck came to her as a surprise, but I doubt it.

She played a weak hand well. Just as if she had read The Rules, she gave herself to me by slow degrees. She didn't agree to marry until we had lived together for half a year. Encouraged by girls from her former dance troupe, she put my generosity to a one time test with diamonds and a fur coat. Satisfied, I heard nothing more. When burglars stole them they were not replaced.

While Oksana would like to see the United States, she has never had any desire to live there. Her family and friends are here.

We talk about our situation often in the context of encouraging mutual friends to get married. We were both somewhat unusual in that we were really committed to starting a family. The miracle is that we figured that out and were able to do something about it.

In between your Vietnamese and Ukrainian wives, you also had a Japanese one. How did you meet her?

I researched IBM overseas offices as my Vietnam tour ended. There was a sister office supporting the military in Germany. I booked an international telephone call—a rare thing in those days—to ask if they had openings.

I loved my time in Germany, learning the language and Spanish as well. I programmed what became an Army standard system—bit of a feather in my cap.

After Josée's constant fighting led to our separation I discovered that my instincts had been right—the German girls were unromantic, hard-edged feminists. My one love was a Hungarian girl. Had I been wiser, I'd have married her.

When I returned from Germany in 1976, Washington was supposed to be a bachelor's paradise—three women for every man. Yes, but each had read Sex and the Single Girl, The Feminine Mystique and Germaine Greer. They wanted careers and success—not families. The more attractive and intelligent, the more the corporate world would entice them. Those I met through church, the neighborhood and work were either uninteresting or uninterested.

I met this lovely half Japanese lady in my first week with Booz Allen just as short reconciliation with Josée failed. Within a month we were thrown together writing a government proposal. I had the expertise and the writing skill, Mary Ann knew Booz' resources and how a proposal should be structured. I asked her out shortly after the victory party. She was surprised when "the bicycle guy" arrived at her door in a 450 SL.

She wasn't sure that she wanted marriage or children, but gave it a try. However, she soon started her own company and career took precedence.

When you wed a foreigner, you're also marrying her entire culture. How difficult was this? How did you get along with your foreign in-laws?

My Vietnamese, Japanese and Ukrainian mothers-in-law have all seemed happy that their daughters married somebody who could care for them. With minimal language overlap conversation was scant with the first two. Oksana's mother and I talk easily about cooking, children and housekeeping. She can't give me crap—I'm five years older and rather generous. Josée's father enjoyed speaking of world affairs in French with somebody educated; subsequent fathers-in-law just weren't interested. I've never gotten close to any of my wives' siblings.

Josée's friend My Linh and her French banker husband looked askance at the American husband. They didn't trust America's or American motives. In Germany Josée was the queen bee in the circle of Vietnamese rural wives, the one with savoir faire, the one who could negotiate in four languages, Vietnamese, French, English and German.

I didn't form friendships with my wives' friends until Ukraine. Oksana is extroverted. Her friends tolerate my Russian and/or are eager to speak English. Interest in the world is part of their culture.

What made you come to Ukraine initially?

I came to look for a wife. My humorous speeches from fall of 2019 on the absurd situations I encountered dating in the United States are on YouTube. I had married two Asians and traveled extensively in Europe and Latin America. Money counts in the marriage market—you do better in a poorer country. The Eastern European wives I knew were as good as any and prettier than most. Ukraine didn't require a visa to study Russian and look around.

There is a lot of instability there, and even a simmering war that threatens to really explode. Still, you’ve decided to stay there with Oksana and your three children. Why is the Ukraine, with all its problems, still preferable to the US?

You writers at Unz know as well as anybody the vast gulf between propaganda and reality. Ukraine has never been that dangerous. Like tsars throughout history, Putin is a cautious aggressor. Russia simply could not administer a restive, hostile Ukrainian. No matter how much the Americans try to provoke a war, both the Russians and Ukrainians are smart enough to avoid it.

Ukraine has no illusions about its few minorities—mostly Jews and Gypsies. We don't have welfare or immigration. The adage I have coined for Ukraine is "We're too poor to be that stupid." I don't have a car—public transit is cheap and safe. People are more than courteous. They love to chat up my kids on the bus and Metro. They look at my kids as their own. They will scold me if they think I have not dressed them warmly enough or don't hold their hand crossing the street. We have genuine social capital.

America is not a good place for white men. Expensive private schools taught my quarter-Asian children their father was evil. Colleagues who worked after I retired were pushed aside for H1Bs, minorities and women. The University of Maryland's College of Education vomited me up like a hairball—students of color and feminists detested me even before I opened my mouth to offer common sense observations from what I had seen of the soixante-huitards, American Indians and Watts riots.

I carried a rifle in Watts during the riots. When I matter-of-factly told a class of education students at Maryland 40 years later that I found it curious that Blacks were burning their own neighborhoods, they attacked me en masse, telling me that I had not seen what I had seen. They liked it even less when I told that the soixante-huitards trashing the Champs Elysées in Paris in 1973 appeared to be little more than nihilists and thrill seekers.

Worse than that, I recounted that I had seen Blacks in Peru, Brazil, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Portugal, and observed the reactions of Vietnamese and Japanese to black American soldiers. Blacks are the same wherever they go—their behavior has nothing to do with the white man.

Adding insult to injury, I told them that Indians are pretty much the same from Canada to Tierra del Fuego. I spent a month with the Kayapó Indians in the Amazon and studied Indian education in both America and Brazil. Same people—they simply don't want to conform to the white man's civilization. Wrong answer! The right answer is that the white man is holding them back.

My Army basic training company included American Indians and, Eskimos. I became close to a black guy named Johnson, curious why such a smart guy seem to almost be driven to screw up. A black fellow surveyor named Davis had no interest in life beyond a Chevrolet 409. That's what we were talking about on the job the day Kennedy was shot.

My ancestors, Christian Europeans arriving between 1620 and 1850, built the most successful society in history only to see it stolen away at an ever-increasing pace. Why on earth would I raise another family there?

You made a YouTube video called “A Fossil Speaks about Sex,” which is basically your take on the decline of the family.

The talk is on the malleability of human sexual behavior. Beliefs and practices have changed radically and for the worse over the course of my lifetime. The hookup culture, homosexuality and transsexuality are cultural trends. They do not represent breakthrough insights into human nature.

The French and Russian revolutions had some of the sexual craziness of our sexual revolution. Two girl cousins a decade younger than me got swept up in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury scene. Five kids between them by five fathers, none within matrimony. One, recently dead at 48, wrote that the only way they knew who his father was was that he wasn't black. Both cousins are dead, one having lived the last few years of her life in a car. This cannot perpetuate itself. When these crazies go, they have to be replaced by the offspring of people who stayed within the bounds of a culture.

Successful cultures all have a belief in something bigger than themselves. Christians believe that God tells them how to behave. American Indians, Chinese and Japanese believe they have a duty to their ancestors to pass along the beliefs they have inherited.

Substitute culture for God in Chesterton's quote and you have: “When men choose not to believe in their culture, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything." The anythings of our age include the notion that homosexuality is natural and beneficial to society, the absence of any differences among human populations, and the need to do penance to Gaia by going on a fossil fuels fast.

You have to believe in something bigger than yourself to have children. Without them you are free to pursue whatever hedonistic desires you wish. With them you have to maintain the disciplines of steady work, a stable household, a cordial marriage relationship, and the burden of raising them to be civilized. My message is we need to believe in our heritage and ourselves, and express our beliefs by passing them on to children.

The irony is that people who sacrifice freedom for the sake of raising children lead more fulfilling lives than dedicated hedonists.

Even with gutted factories, rundown airports befitting the Third World, tent cities sprouting everywhere, human shit on downtown sidewalks, rigged elections as the norm, no news newspapers, Jew-screwed Holocaust freaks, genital-denial academics, cross-dressing grandpas, twerking second-graders and an overtly satanic pop culture, many Americans still think of the USA as “a light to all nations,” to quote Trump. What cause this insane smugness?

You are absolutely right. It is paradoxical that kids hate everything traditional about America, but still somehow think it's the best.

The schools do an incredibly bad job of teaching history. When I was a kid they preached American greatness. The distortions of recent generations have been an endless litany of capitalist corruption, racist oppression and patriarchy. Wrong both ways.

Fewer than half of Americans have been out of the country. Those have mostly gone to Canada and Mexico. Unless they are born into it, very few speak a foreign language. They don't learn much even when their cruise ship stops in Cozumel.

People have been told what to be concerned about by their textbooks, television and the curators of the Internet such as Google and Facebook. The problems you mention are largely ignored while made-up problems such as those you name—transgender issues, Holocaust denial, Covid 19 and climate change—dominate the news.

Ukraine is a case in point. A great many friends ask, as you did, how can I afford to live in such a dangerous country? The media has certainly promoted the false notion that we are extremely threatened by the Russian bear.

What goes unsaid is that United States media have extraordinary influence over world public opinion. The same elites who control the media in the United States do so everywhere, with the conspicuous exceptions of Russia, China and the Muslim world. World news is often just recycled American news.

I have a theory, one I have not read elsewhere, that the American media have attacked Russia so vehemently because Russian media and financial interests are not beholden to them. They will never forgive Putin for bringing the first generation of billionaire oligarchs to heel and throwing out the likes of Bill Browder.

While I love the fact that the Unz review is one of the few brave publications that offers alternative opinions on Jewish themes, I find it paradoxical that many of its strongest contributors are Jews.

How can a people who are so smart be so consistently wrong? And how can they fail to recognize the many sane voices in their midst? Bret Weinstein and Ron Unz are at the forefront of getting the truth out about Covid19. Ron is history on YouTube, but they have not yet deplatformed Bret, probably because he is both extremely well credentialed and a member of the tribe.

My take is that the Jewish problem will solve itself in a couple of generations. Jewish avarice and advocacy have so alienated their host populations, and so screwed up their own fertility, that they are a spent force.

We Anglo-Saxons owned the 19th century. As Yuri Slezkine writes, the 20th was the Jewish Century. Best bet for the 21st would be somebody else, Muslims (per Dutton) or Chinese.

Large monolingual populations tend to be insular throughout the world. Combine that observation with an increasingly divided and dumb population and dumbed down education and I think you have the answer to your question, and the reason for the twilight of America.

You have self-published a book on home schooling. What prompted you to do that?

I wrote the book shortly after nine-year-old Eddie was born. What we are learning about school will certainly apply to his sisters, almost 1 and almost 4.

The basic skills a person needs are reading, writing and arithmetic. Other subjects provide kids concepts to which they can apply these skills. Schools everywhere fold indoctrination into that intellectual fodder.

This year parents have risen up against the extreme indoctrination at super-expensive Brearley and Grace schools in New York City. As a school trustee 20 years ago in Washington I saw it all develop. Diversity demands that you dumb down the curriculum. You absolutely cannot afford to notice differences among groups of children. Differences among individuals are addressed by therapy instead of character development.

My millennial children had play dates with the Huffingtons. I had a premonition that things would not turn out well. You can read what happened—the Huffington story is easier to find than mine. They are representative of the whole snowflake generation.

The kids didn't learn their times tables. "Whole language" ensured that they did not learn how to write. Dumbed down texts didn't challenge their reading. Dear old dad, who tried to address these problems, has been totally cut off for years.

As a substitute in Washington DC I observed that I was prepared to teach every subject, and itched for the freedom to do it right. Homeschooling.

Nonetheless I relented. Eddie loves being around other kids. Ukrainian children expect to grow up to give their parents grandchildren. Heather does not have two mommies. No racial diversity means that teachers don't walk on eggshells. He attended a small private school close to our house through the fourth grade.

But… we have been homeschooling since school let out, because of Covid. We are moving quickly through the arithmetic that he didn't get—fractions, negative numbers and such. Reading and writing are the real issues. Just as his Puritan ancestors were not afraid to tackle adult-level Pilgrims Progress, he has embraced Bill Malden's Up Front, about World War II. I read a page after which he reads the same page.

He reads slowly, with mechanical difficulties in both English and Ukrainian. I stand my ground—no excuses, just keep at it! We digress frequently to talk about K and C rations, strategic bombing, officer ranks, propaganda, and war in general. Few other fifth-graders will have Pat Buchanan's Unnecessary War perspective. It is highly relevant—America is pushing Ukraine towards an unnecessary war with Russia.

I have him learning touch typing and dictation software. Today's challenge—and a huge one—is to write two pages on what he has learned from our reading to date. The hardest part about writing is getting started. He will need continued encouragement and a bit of pressure. Getting sentences into the computer will be hard work, but I can already anticipate his thrill of success.

Americans are becoming dumber and angrier, a terrible combination. Even at Unz, I see commenters using their stupidity as a weapon. Do you see this dumbing down as deliberate, and if so, what is its purpose?

Occam's razor favors evolutionary psychologist Edward Dutton's explanation. Intelligence is highly hereditary. Since the Industrial Revolution the bottom social class has been the only one to reproduce itself. The smarter people are paying enough taxes to sustain the dumb ones, and have better things to do than raise children.

As James Thompson notes, there are significant differences in average intelligence among peoples. Immigration is dragging down average intelligence.

Dumbing down may be, as Kevin McDonald would suggest, an unconscious strategy to handicap us goyim. They don't do it on purpose—it is just in their bones. If so, it is a blunderbuss approach. It has affected every group in society. However, with regard to feeding anger he is right on. The level of anger in society has increased exponentially over my lifetime, with elites working to set tribes other than theirs against one another.

I do not see any solution at a societal level. I am among the pessimists who think that the system has to "run to failure" and restart. My guess is that the West's financial and social collapse will arrive before my kids are grown. My task is to prepare them for life in a bleaker, poorer world that, having been swept clean, can also be more optimistic than today's.

Eastern Europe has considerable advantages. Our countries are more internally cohesive, of "one people." We don't have an alien underclass. We have recent experience with societal collapse.

Please elaborate on what you mean by “in their bones.”

I believe in evolution. Jews evolved to be who they are.

We Indo-Europeans evolved on the Pontic plains, north of the Caspian Sea, to be the meanest MFs in that part of the world. Horse-mounted herders, violently defending our very mobile assets. We became the world's best warriors.

Also, per MacDonald, altruistic. Unique in that we selected leaders based on merit rather than blood connections. Married for love rather than to cement alliances. It allowed us to form wider associations than mere kin groups. We benefited greatly from the collective intelligence of the group. We grew to support the weaker members because they added strength to the group. This led to larger polities, corporations, etc.

This drew to an end in the 19th century, when we had captured everything. Then we had to administer it. We became so nice we let the slaves go and instituted welfare. Might makes right gave way to legalisms.

Jews have cut us to shreds with legalisms. Forced integration, busing, etc. etc. Also gay and trans rights, etc. etc. Ended our (and their) ability to reproduce in neighborhoods of like people.

What comes next? I'm betting on a general collapse, which will favor a simple country of people able to grow their own food. Like Ukraine. Also Chinese, because of innate intelligence, and Muslims, because of their solidarity.

Graham Seibert (78-years-old)

Escape from America: Australia, Costa Rica, Colombia, Latvia, Spain and, Now, France

As published at Unz Review, 6/14/21:

Jack near Preixan, France

At 80-years-old, you’ve done and seen quite a lot, but you didn’t exactly have an auspicious beginning. You couldn’t even graduate from high school. What happened?

I was expelled! I wasn’t much of a student anyway. I signed up for welding class and woodworking class, so I didn’t have to do any work, but in welding class, the instructor was a friggin drill sergeant from the Korean War! This son of a bitch was always ordering me around, “Do this,” “Do that.” If he didn’t like what I was doing, he’d say, “You, get on the floor, do twenty pushups!”

Right in class?

There weren’t desks or anything, but yeah. I had to get this asshole, so after school, I went back to the shop. There was no one in there, except me, so I welded a bunch of tools onto the welding table! My parents got a call. He knew immediately it was me.

So now what?

I joined the navy, on my 17th birthday. I wanted to see the world. My parents had to sign for me. We were living in Bellevue, Washington. Back then, it only had about 10,000 people. So I flew to San Diego. I had never been on an airplane.

When you enlisted, you had to take a bunch of tests. They had to see what your aptitude was, whether you were a dishwasher, or swab the deck, or being an electrician or machinist. I took these tests and scored very high on them, so it made me eligible for a lot of technical programs. I went to submarine school for about three months, had psychological training there. You had to go through a 100-foot-tall escape tank, to simulate an escape from a submarine. None of that stuff bothered me. I graduated easily.

So where did you go?

My first submarine was a diesel submarine. It had completed patrols in the Pacific in World War II, successfully. It had sunk some Japanese ships, that kind of shit. It had about 70 enlisted men, and 10 officers.

On a submarine, everything was pretty loose. You can have long hair, you don’t need to shave, you don’t need to shine your shoes or any of that shit.

It was pretty cool. This was amazing stuff, I thought. Nobody was at war, 1957, so I had joined an adventure program.

They sent us to Pearl Harbor, but it was only to refuel and add supplies. Not much fresh vegetables. Lots of frozen stuff, frozen meats. The vegetables, they stacked them in the showers, so we wouldn’t be able to use the showers for a few weeks.

I got into a little trouble in Hawaii, because we were only there for a couple days. They only let us out for one night, to get drunk, chase women.

I climbed onto the roof of this nightclub place that had an open-air dance floor. I took these coconuts off this tree, and I was throwing them down onto the dance floor. Just crazy shit.

They didn’t really do anything to me. They just said, “OK, don’t do that shit any more.”

Were you drunk?

I might have been. I hardly drank anything, to speak of. When I was 16 or 15, I may have had a beer that whole time. I smoked, but I didn’t drink.

This was amazing, Linh, for an 18-year-old kid, to experience this, traveling across the Pacific. We ended up having to go through a hurricane on the surface. We were taking 45-degree pitch, and 65-degree rolls, and my job was helmsman, trying to steer this thing.

Cruising at night on the surface, my job was to look out at night, it was very peaceful.

In Hawaii, I bought ten cartons of cigarettes. I smoked Lucky Strike. They were a dollar a carton! I got paid $75 a month. Plus, we got another $30 hazardous duty pay, for being on a submarine. I really didn’t understand why. I didn’t see any hazard.

Seventy days later, we pulled into Yokosuka, Japan. Seventy days.

In Hawaii, we had seven or eight civilians come onboard, which was very unusual. Who are these guys? It ended up they were CIA. Our mission was to spy on a Russian naval base, right off the Russian naval base, submerged, and tap into their undersea cables, to monitor all their communication.

We were laying on the bottom, dead quiet, no engine running. No fans running, just dead quiet, hiding, and listening. There was a Russian destroyer that came out. You could hear their active sonar, looking for us. Apparently, they had an alarm that we were there, or some indication that we were right there.

We were just sitting on the bottom, in about 200 feet of water, not very deep. They started dropping depth charges. You know what those are? They’re big canisters they rolled off the destroyer, to try to kill submarines.

There’s your hazard pay!

Yeah, but we survived. So we were pinned down, and the air was getting low. The air was getting very screwed up. On the bunks, back in the crew’s quarters, we had carbon monoxide absorbent powder. The problem was we couldn’t turn on the air valves. There was no noise allowed. It was a little bit tense.

I remember going into the control room. That’s where they had the periscope and all that shit. I went up to the officer, and I said, “Hey lieutenant, you don’t mind if I smoke a cigarette?”

You couldn’t breathe and you wanted to smoke a cigarette?!

I figured I might as well have one more, if I was going to die soon. The officer said, “No, no, no, go ahead,” so I took out my Zippo and my Lucky, but the lighter wouldn’t light! He just laughed at me. There wasn’t enough oxygen to light the lighter.

So we weren’t caught by the Russians. We escaped, finally. They gave up after a while. Going deeper, we slowly crept out of there.

Eventually, we got back to Yokosuka, where the submarine was put onto a dry dock to be repaired. The hull of the submarine was damaged from the depth charges. It caved in from the compression of the explosions underwater.

It took six weeks to repair the submarine, so we had six weeks of rock and rolling! Can you imagine an 18-year-old kid, going into… Women everywhere, bars, 18-years old! Woo! Rock and roll!

Here’s a funny one. Halfway through, the chief of the boat, Jenkins, said we’re going to have a ship’s party. He said, “Everything in there is paid for! Everything.” Anyway, the ship’s party was in a brothel! It was at a fuckin’ brothel, with free pussy for everybody!

Jenkins was like a father to the other enlisted men. Besides organizing group activities for the crew, he also lent money to you if you were broke, and you paid him back on payday.

Did any man refuse to go to the party?

Oh no, no, no, we all went. What do you mean?

There might have been guys who were super religious, who didn’t think it was right.

No, no, no. They’re submarine sailors. What do you think?

It’s interesting, we had black guys on there too. Two or three black guys. At the time, black guys could join the navy, but they could only be stewards to the officers. You know, servants. Same with the Filipinos. They could join the navy, but they couldn’t be an electrician, torpedo man or anything. They had to work as stewards, as servants for the officers. It was pure racist crap.

It’s interesting, Linh, but where I grew up, during my entire existence, up to that point, I don’t think I had seen a black person, in person. Maybe on TV, you know. Like most things, I didn’t give it any thought.

One of the black guys became my best friend. We’d go get some women together, and stuff like that, and drinks.

He ended up with a girlfriend, after about two weeks there. I found a girl that I semi fell in love with, at 18. I stayed at her place most nights, that I could.

Then we went to Hong Kong. As a young, 18-year-old kid, and knowing very little, it was really amazing, the shit I went through, and discovered.

I got a little mouse tattooed on my shoulder. It was midnight or 1 O’clock, and we were just wandering around, half drunk, and we stumbled onto this tattoo shop. There was a woman in there getting a tattoo on her thigh. She was a British Army woman, and pretty neat looking. She was sitting there with her legs spread, getting a tattoo on the inside of her thigh, so we said, “Woo, got to see what’s going here!” The guy said, “You’re not supposed to come in unless you’re getting a tattoo,” so I said, “Sign me up!”

He charged me five Hong Kong dollars, which at the time was worth 17 cents.

So how long were you in the navy?

Ten years! I signed up again. It was the very beginning of the navy nuclear powered submarine program, so I applied for it. I had to take the equivalent of a two-year university engineering test, and I was accepted. For some reasons, I have this ability to pass tests, even when I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Near the end, though, I got very disenchanted. I couldn’t wait to get out. I was growing up. On our submarine, the nuclear missiles were programmed to hit different Russian cities, I found out. They were ready to kill millions of people.

I had been in the navy for 8 ½ years. Most of my other friends had gotten married. They had a pretty good deal, I thought, a wife making food for them and all that shit. They lived in a house, while I lived in a barrack.

So what did you do after the navy?

In 1965, I bought a brand-new Jaguar XKE. I had started road racing. In 1966, I married Betty. She was going to the University of Connecticut, majoring in English. Betty worked at the racetrack, as a volunteer. I met her there.

The next year, I got out of the navy and bought a one-bedroom house. I applied to the University of Connecticut, so we were both students, and I was making this $85 a month house payment.

I was a self-taught car mechanic, so I got a job at this foreign car repair shop.

What were you studying?

I wanted to study… My intention was… I wanted to get a degree in philosophy.

Philosophy?!

The thing about me, Linh, I have never, ever had any desire to be rich, or to make a lot of money. My intention in life, from a very early age, was to have the lowest stress life I could figure out for myself. As long as I had a roof over my head, as long as I had enough food to eat, I don’t really care what kind of clothes, or anything like that.

They wouldn’t let me into the liberal arts department, though, because I didn’t have a foreign language, but there was a way around it. I could take philosophy classes while enrolled in the business school, so I did that.

The idea of a college degree, in my view, was just to learn about the world around us, what’s going on, what it’s all about. It’s just a quest for knowledge, and not for the purpose to make money. It’s to obtain knowledge, you know.

In the navy… I had never read books in my life, but in the navy, because I was at sea for so long, I started reading books. I read historical novels, non-fiction books, because on a nuclear submarine, they had an extensive library. I just spent all my spare time reading.

As a student, I had such a desire to learn, to just absorb everything. I was in a maximum kind of mode. I wanted to know everything, what’s going on, so I could function, you know, and that continued my whole life. I’d travel to a place to find out what was there.

So how long did your marriage to Betty last?

Till 1979.

Wow! So you were married to her for a long time.

Yeah. I mean, I never disliked her. I liked her, but I wasn’t really in love with her, you know. There’s a difference.

Why did you marry her if you didn’t feel that strongly about her?

It was a thing to do at the time. All your friends are getting married…

I guess she fell in love with you, huh?

I don’t know. She had the same view of me as I did of her. We’re friends. I won’t hurt you, or anything like that.

We never had kids. Betty made it clear she didn’t want any.

On the other hand, I want more now. I’ve matured to the point where, you know, I want somebody to love.

Betty became mentally ill. She was manic depressive, in an extreme way, so I took her, I did some research, to the Yale University Hospital. They were supposed to have this advanced treatment for severe manic depressives. They kept her there for a week, put her on this lithium hydroxide treatment.

It’s supposed to balance her brain, but once you’re on this lithium program, you’re on it for life, basically. You can never get off, because it replaces the missing chemical in your brain.

Anyway, that was her deal. What I noticed, particularly, was how her personality changed, on this lithium. She wasn’t mean or anything, but just distant all the time. So it just accelerated the demise of our relationship.

So I got divorced in 1979. I gave her everything. I gave her the house. I mean, it wasn’t much, but I didn’t want to do anything that damaged her, or anything like that. I wanted her to survive.

Was Betty upset when you got divorced?

It was very weird. Not upset, not too much. I came back to see her a few times, to make sure she was alright. She eventually met some guy, married him. I was in touch with Betty until, probably, eight or nine years ago? Ten years ago?

That’s pretty good. That’s unusual.

I did care about her. I cared about her well being, you know, if she was going to be alright. It’s just, I wanted a woman to fall in love with. It’s hard to come by.

So let’s talk about your second marriage.

In 1979, I left for Charlotte. I had five thousand dollars to my name, and my race car.

I had friends down there, whom I had met through racing. A guy hired me to maintain his two race cars, and to act as his crew chief during races, and for that, he paid me $1,500 a month, so I was OK.

I went to Atlanta to see an old navy friend, and he said, “I just got a contract to search for the Atocha. It’s a Spanish galleon that sank in 1733, with lots of gold. You want to come with me?” I said, “Sign me up! Let’s go!”

I wasn’t actually paid, only fed, with the promise of a small percentage of whatever we could find. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I spent about seven months doing that. At the end, I had a hundred dollars to my name.

Finally, I got tired of it, so I went back to Charlotte, and that’s where I met my second wife.

There, I got a job from a friend, got paid. I went to a bar and met this woman, and we ended up going to bed, that night. Her name was Gail, and she was the assistant buyer at Sears, in Charlotte. She was 25-years-old. I was 40.

We had a relationship. One day, I said, “Gail, will you marry me?” She just laughed at me. She said, “I’m not going to marry somebody who’s just kinda wandering around, who’s semi-homeless!” She said, “If you get a normal job, I’ll marry you.”

That was the last thing I ever wanted to do in my life, but she talked me into it. There was an ad in the Charlotte newspaper, for a roofing company. They were looking for an account executive, to represent the company in the entire Southeast. The compensation was more than I ever made, with a company car, expense account, all that shit.

How the hell can I get this job? So I made up a resume. Obviously, I can’t tell the truth.

I did, in fact, have a degree from the University of Connecticut. I graduated with honor, in business, right? I had, in fact, started small businesses. One, I imported leather furniture from Brazil. When I got tired of that, I opened a foreign auto part store, selling parts for Jaguar, MG, Austin-Healey and stuff like that.

I was also racing during this time. In 1975, I bought a Lotus Super 7. It was basically a race car. Because of my engineering background, and knowledge I had picked up in the navy, I could heavily modify a car to make it run a lot faster, so in 1976, I started winning races.

Jack, Jack, let’s get back to you applying for this job!

I’m sorry, I got way off track!

OK, so you embellished your resume, but you did have business experiences.

Yeah, in a way, but I didn’t do it seriously. My passion was racing cars, and making enough money to do that.

OK, the new wife. 1983, we got married, and I had this job with this roofing company. It was kinda fun, because I didn’t do hardly anything. I had a very new company car, they paid my expenses and I could travel anywhere I wanted. I really didn’t care about the job, yet I had a natural ability to do it anyway.

After I worked there for about one year, their competitor approached me. I said, “What’s the deal?” They offered it to me. I said OK, but I wanted to take the Northeast. After I did that for about five months, their national sales manager, he either died or something, but somehow, I was appointed the national sales manager of this company!

We had moved to Connecticut. Gail had become the divisional vice president at this department store. Then we moved to Cleveland, Birmingham, then back to Connecticut, because Gail kept getting hustled, I mean recruited, by all these companies.

So we were living in Greenwich, Connecticut, and you know what that’s all about, right? It’s like Palm Beach and Beverly Hills. It’s where all the hedge fund managers live, from New York. The Wall Street scammers.

It’s 2001. By then, I was so sick of Gail, but I hadn’t left, because in 1988, we had a daughter. By the way, I quit my job in 1990 to take care of my new daughter, my baby girl, and I started another business, a shipping business in Cleveland, and I started importing race cars from England.

In Connecticut, Gail got recruited by this high-powered Australian company, to be their CEO. They flew us down there, first class, then they wined and dined us. It was an offer we couldn’t refuse, so we moved to Brisbane.

For myself, I was doing real estate, buying and fixing houses, but in 1995, you could trade stocks, equities and commodities on the internet, so I taught myself how to do that, to make money. By 1995, I could do it anywhere. It didn’t matter where I was. I could make money.

Gail was bringing in money like there’s no tomorrow. Just to give you an idea, she had a car allowance of a hundred thousand dollars a year, and she was on a list of either a hundred or 50 most powerful women in the world!

The downside is, she’s a complete fuckin’ psychopath, but most people are, to get into powerful positions, alright? She was a complete fuckin’ psychopath, man, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with her. She was such bad news. The only reason I stayed that long was because of my daughter. I had to take care of her. I didn’t feel I could leave.

My second daughter, Lena, is adopted. At a carwash in Pittsburgh, I saw a flyer that said, “INTERESTED IN ADOPTING A POLISH BABY?” It was just a hand-written note. When I got home, I called up that number, and it was a woman a couple towns over. It was a Polish woman, and she was single handedly trying to get as many Polish children out of these orphanages as possible. Her goal, more or less, was to save all these children.

It’s not that easy. Because of nationalism, the Polish government only wants Polish families to adopt these children, not foreigners. Poland only releases children from these horrible orphanages that are in terrible conditions. They only release a child if there’s something drastically wrong with them. Don’t go in there expecting a healthy child. It’s pretty crazy, and there are so many of them.

With Lena, both of her eyes were pointing to the middle, and she was way stunted in growth. She was chronically ill, with several things wrong with her. I didn’t know what all they were. To see her, it’s her eyes and her size. Right now, she’s 25-years-old, and she’s 4-foot-10, you know? Her eyes are OK now, got her eyes fixed.

The way the system works, you have to spend six weeks over there, to get to know the child. I picked Lena myself. I stayed in Szczecin. The orphanage was about 10 kilometers away, in Stargard. I’d see Lena and spend the day with her. At first, I couldn’t leave the orphanage. I’d go into the big room, where all the children were running like mice. There were 20 or 30 of them. I’d see Lena, pick her up and carry her, and all the other children would put their hands up. Please take me too! It tears your heart apart.

After six weeks, there’s a trial. They actually call it a trial. You go into a court room, with a jury, which are peers, from the community there, and you have to present your case of why you want to adopt this child.

Even after we were allowed to adopt Lena, we had to wait three more months, so I had to come back to Poland. I took the train from Warsaw to Szczecin. I was really touched when I came to pick her up. You’d think she wouldn’t remember. Lena was only a year and a half. She was in a crib there. Lena looked up and said, “Tata! Tata!”

So I got her out of the orphanage. I put her in my coat, it was December. We went to the airport. It was an open-air airport. There were no tourists or anything. There was a commercial prop plane that was supposed to show up and take us to Warsaw. We were there for about twelve hours, waiting for this prop plane, and it was December! Anyway, I had little Lena inside my coat. It was zipped up. She was like a papoose!

So you did this alone? Your wife was not there with you?

No, Gail was there. She had to be there, for the trial. They had to question both parents, you see.

It’s interesting that Gail went along with the adoption. She couldn’t have been too bad. She didn’t object to it.

She viewed it as some kind of prestige, it’s hard to explain. A psychopath like that, they just do weird shit. Normal people would never do some of the things she was doing. I saw how she reacted. She had a sister, right? Her older sister died at 56-years-old, of cancer, a horrible death of cancer. Gail never went to visit her sister, before she died. It wasn’t that complicated. She never bothered. It’s crazy.

When her mother was dying, she didn’t go see her either. She didn’t die suddenly, she was in the hospital. Gail never bothered to go.

Shortly after I met her, her father had a sudden heart attack and died, so I went to the funeral. I wasn’t married to her yet, but I went with her. There wasn’t a tear in her eyes.

So you got a divorce from Gail, and it was particularly nasty…

She tried to destroy me financially, but I got away. She withdrew a substantial amount from my bank account, which was a felony, but I didn’t press charges. I just wanted to get the hell away from her.

I found out, for sure, that the divorce was final during a 14-hour flight back to the US. The plane had a phone that cost like $10 a minute. I called this woman lawyer of mine, “Did you get the result yet?” “Yeah,” she said, “you’re free.” So I got a scotch whiskey after that, sat down and smiled.

Now, your wandering years really began.

Even before I got divorced, I went to Fiji, with this girlfriend from Australia, to this really remote island. The only power there was this one generator, in the middle of the island. Every night before dinner, they’d sit and drink this, ah, narcotic kind of drink.

I went to Bangkok, and places like that. Then I moved back to the US, near Seattle. Then I took two or three trips to the Ukraine, to Kiev. I had a girlfriend in Kiev I kept for quite a while. We went to Turkey together.

It was fun, I enjoyed doing it, but I knew it didn’t have a future, in terms of love.

Then I shifted to South America. I spent some time in Costa Rica. It’s kind of like Bangkok, San Jose, Costa Rica, so I lost interest. Then I got onto this Colombia kick, you know, so I went to Bogota. I was there for quite a while.

Finally, I met this woman. She kinda made sense. She seemed smart and pretty educated. I was trying to feel out if this was somebody I could fall in love with. Finally, the answer was no, so I decided to move on.

I knew it wasn’t the right one. I didn’t have too many years left to get this process moving. Then I went to Barranquilla, on the Caribbean side of Colombia. I spent a long time there. I went to Cartagena, Santa Marta, but I was based in Baranquilla. Then I met a really, really super nice woman there.

She was a beautician. She was genuine, I think. She wasn’t a gold digger. I’m very good at figuring that out. I understand what’s going on, and it has gotten me out of trouble.

This lasted probably six, seven, eight months, which was long for me. I kept testing the idea if this was going to work, if this was the right one, if this was going to be my wife.

I was actually, seriously looking for a woman who would fall in love with me, and I would fall in love with her, deeply and completely, for the rest of our lives, together, and actually, you know, it worked! When I met Olga in Latvia.

Part of it is the Russian traits. Different people have different traits. You can see it run through their culture. You have a few Russians that aren’t so good, but you have a bunch that are very good.

Russian women, they’re extremely loyal. Once they’ve committed to you, they mean it. Olga would fight to the death for me. She would, physically, and I’m not exaggerating.

She loves me without reservation, without this, without that. I’m the same for her. I’m so fortunate, I feel like I’ve won the lottery. It’s like night and day for me, those other marriages.

It’s very difficult to find, but with Olga, love happens like flipping a switch.

When I met her in Latvia, we went to dinner that night. We talked about things. She’s an English teacher as a second language. I talked about a recent book I was reading, and she said, “Oh, I just finished reading that same book!” It wasn’t that common. It was by Marquez.

Which one?

One Hundred Years of Solitude. She’s read most of his books. Love in the Time of Cholera… We started to talk about books, and things like that, and about family.

How old were you then, and how old was Olga?

I was 66, and she was 42.

At first, we’d spend six months in Latvia, and six months in the US, in Florida. We had a house in Marathon, in the Florida Keys.

In 2010, I was getting bored, and I’m a nomad anyway, so I said to Olga, “Let’s take a ride down to Portugal!” We spent the summer there. We almost bought a house, but didn’t, and the reason is: Portugal is a beautiful country, and the people are wonderful, but there’s no culture to speak of, and the restaurants are kinda primitive. It’s a country where the people haven’t changed in a hundred years.

In 2011, we spent four months in France, looking to buy a house, but we didn’t buy one until next year, in Brantôme. A beautiful village, it’s called the Venice of the Périgord.

In 2013, we sold that house, and moved to Spain, in the mountains east of Malaga. However, in 2014, the whole side of the fuckin’ mountain was on fire! We watched the fire almost encircle our house, right behind it, below it, so I thought, Oh, this house is toast. No insurance. When we went back the next day, the house was fine! Right after that, I decided to sell the house, and get the hell out of there.

Luckily… I’m always lucky, Linh. I should have been killed years ago.

There are two reasons why we’re in Europe now, permanently. Olga terribly missed her daughter, and her grandson, and I just thought she should be close to them.

The second reason was my lack of faith in the US financial system. The American economy is going to collapse.

That Lehman collapse in 2008 should have blown up the whole fuckin’ system, but this time, it’s going to, for sure, and maybe even during this summer.

It always amazes me that the country is still functioning, sort of, half-assed, today. There’s no way in hell it should be. It’s insane! Yesterday, they announced the monthly consumer index number, which is the measure of inflation in the US, supposedly, which it really isn’t, because they changed the way they do that, about 15 years ago. They used to include things like food and energy, but now, they don’t consider important how much food costs, or gasoline, or heating oil.

I just went through their bullshit list. All their data are phony. They lie about everything, the unemployment report, number of jobs, payrolls. It’s all lies. The GDP number, they lie about that, every single time.

Now, we’re in a village of 900 people, not far from Toulouse. Until this Covid bullshit, everything was fine, but the French are like scared little mice, afraid of their own shadows, cowering in the corner. They really believe in this Covid bullshit!

We have a very close French friend, a woman who’s about 60-years-old. She was broadly criticizing her French woman friends. The reason being, her mother died, which broke her up, she was very depressed, yet all her close friends wouldn’t come over to help her, to grieve with her. They were afraid of Covid!

Give me a fuckin’ break, you know. It’s sick.

I like to assign an adjective to each country, so for England, it’s arrogant. Germany is smartest. Italy is craziest. Spain is close to Italy. I’d say it’s the most irrational. Nothing makes sense in Spain. Poland is dumb as a doorknob. For France, it’s a work in progress, because I’m learning more about them every day, but I guess I’d say timid.

As for Russia, that’s a work in progress too, but the Russians are also extremely smart, in general. I give you an example: these artificial intelligence engineers who work in the Silicon Valley? A huge percentage of them are Russian, but they’re considered in Russia as traitors, for going to work for the Americans.

Everybody in Russia looks at America as a bad joke. They just laugh at them. They’re not afraid of the US attacking them, or anything else. If it does, it will get its ass kicked.

You told me that after reading my articles about Albania, you started to check housing prices in Tirana!

But I’m really too old to move again…

But you might have to, if France gets really crazy!

That’s true. As an ethnic Russian, Olga can move to Russia and become a Russian citizen. As her husband, I’m also welcome there, but it’s way too cold. We’d have to live in the Crimea, maybe.

Jack (80-years-old)

Escape from America: 18 Years and Counting

As published at Unz Review and TruthSeeker, 6/9/21:

Taipei, 2021

I just interviewed an American who'd traveled for five years straight, but you have been outside the US for 18 years altogether. Why, first off, and how have you been able to sustain yourself? Was there no place you wanted to settle? Will you ever return to the US to live?

I had always wanted to travel and see the world. I liked the idea of learning new languages, meeting different people and experiencing life in other countries. So, with a degree in literature I decided to go to Latin America and teach English. I worked in several small Latin American countries. The contrast between life in the USA and Latin America was striking. I was in Caracas soon after the banking crisis there. Students at the school where I taught had come to class crying after losing their life savings; the whole country became impoverished. I recall one morning a teacher showing up late for work because the police had literally kidnapped him off the street, taken him downtown, put a bag of cocaine on the table and said, “If you don’t pay us $200, this belongs to you.” That happened to a couple different people I knew in different countries. It almost happened to me, once. The trick is to be polite but firm, not to give in. “Officer, you say my papers are not in order? Let me show you again the visa stamp.” They don’t want a scene. I also worked in Ecuador, when, after just months in power, President Abdalá Bucharam embezzled millions of US dollars, held a party celebrating his young nephew’s own first million working as customs officer, then put out a CD of himself singing his favorite songs, which looked like an incredibly stupid distraction tactic. To the Ecuadorian people’s credit, Bucaram’s antics sparked a mass popular uprising. My boss told me not to go outside during the protests, because they might turn violent, but I couldn’t resist. There were marches and chants, tires burning in the streets, Bucaram hung in effigy. The Ecuadorian Congress voted him out of power on the basis of mental instability, and he fled to Panama with tens of millions of dollars. I saw how in Ecuador and many other Latin American countries, people didn’t trust each other, there was a higher tolerance for dishonesty, the public services were dysfunctional, there was endemic corruption, bad medical care, public littering, not much in the way of intellectual culture, but a good dollop of crime, and no shortage of people blaming America for their countries’ screw-ups. I didn’t want the United States to become like that.

When I went back to the USA in the mid-90’s, I tried talking to people about the problem of mass illegal immigration from Latin America. Back then, immigration was still a taboo topic. Pat Buchanan hadn’t been able to get the Republican nomination in ’96. Republicans let themselves be convinced he couldn’t get elected. I mean the guy actually wanted to build a wall to keep out illegal immigrants, for Christ’s sakes! I still tried to persuade people that our immigration policies, especially mass illegal immigration from Latin America, were going to cause real problems. I remember having a conversation with a young woman who had just graduated from Duke University. She was smart, well-adjusted, and good-looking. After explaining to me that the USA was a white supremacist country, I thought: another one off the deep end. But later, I remember watching a TV news segment on “whiteness”. It featured a traumatized teenage white girl emerging from some struggle session, whimpering through her tears and snot, “I’ll never take advantage of my whiteness again!” I remember the moment. I was stunned. The virus was spreading. I didn’t understand why so few people appreciated the risk posed by this rising tide of anti-white sentiment mixed with poorly controlled mass immigration of people of color.

I didn’t see the immigration-moderation movement having the power to effect much change. So, I left for Asia. China was my first stop. I taught English in Guangzhou. That was a great experience. The students sometimes told me about their lives in China, about their experiences growing up there, including what they themselves didn’t like about Chinese people and Chinese society. I learned a lot and grew to like many of them. Almost all of my enduring friendships from that time are with Chinese from the countryside. They are often earnest and sincere, very decent people. I spent some time in a western province, as well, where my Chinese teacher invited me to her home in the countryside for Spring Festival. I ate home-cooked Chinese food and got drunk on moonshine with the men. They assured me that if China and the United States ever went to war, they would protect me. But they wanted to know one thing: how could the people of the United State be so stupid as to have elected a black man president? Well ... at least it wasn’t delusional anti-white hatred.

Over the years, I worked as a teacher, an editor, and a writer. It was this last work that finally made me leave China. It’s difficult to be a writer in an authoritarian country, and unlike many expats, I never really bought the idea that China was going to democratize. Five thousand years of authoritarian government doesn’t suddenly democratize because neoliberal economists with PhD’s advance a nifty self-serving theory. I was also fortunate to come into some money at that point, which allowed me the luxury of getting started as a writer. Writers often need outside funding of some sort to take the plunge. I eventually wound up in Taiwan, which is a great country. Even if Xi Jinping and John Cena don’t know it.

You encountered rural Chinese who didn't understand how American whites could elect a black man. Was that racism? Did they simply expect people to vote for their own? Shouldn't we be above that? You've spent a lot of time in East Asia, so how have you been treated? How do Orientals perceive whites, do you think? And blacks?

I don’t like the word “racism” because lefties use it to attack opinions about race they don’t like. That’s its main function. Anyone on the right who uses it is agreeing to a conceptual exchange on enemy territory, where the opinion-makers have already built their fortifications. Basically, I think what motivated the question was a lack of understanding of the history of race relations in America. A (half) black man became president in part as a result of that history. Cause and effect. But I avoided all that history by simply stating that Obama's mother was white, which was a cheap answer. I suppose my teacher’s family must have had negative views of black people, or at least of their place in American society. Generally, I wasn't too aware of that view in China. It wasn’t common in my students, who liked one of my black colleagues. On the other hand, he did have some hurdles to jump through. Some students complained before even taking his class, and the Chinese management initially opposed hiring him. (The school was owned by a Westerner, who overruled them.) I do recall another black teacher from an English-speaking African nation telling me how difficult it was for him to get a job in China. I think it may be that Chinese are generally pretty open to interactions with black people, but that some are afraid to initiate those interactions. Racial perceptions are odd. One colleague was an Asian woman who emigrated from Macau to the USA when she was a few months old. The students were convinced she had a thick Cantonese accent, which in reality was completely nonexistent.

As for Asian’s perceptions of white people, I think it really varies. Your Asian girlfriend will occasionally get called a whore when she’s with you in public—in almost any Asian country. Unfortunately, there are foreign men of different races who become serial monogamists, which doesn’t help. But this attitude would probably exist, regardless. The impulse to protect one’s own is instinctual, and not always unhealthy.

What makes Taiwan a great country, exactly? What makes it a better society than the US?

In Taiwan people have much to be thankful for: crime is very low, public transportation is cheap and efficient, the food is good, the inexpensive socialized medical care is perhaps the best in the world (I’ve heard this from both one Chinese and one American doctor), and the education is decent and not expensive, though there is too much emphasis on rote memorization, like most schooling in East Asia. People, including mainland Chinese, remark on how Taiwanese seem friendly and confident, but not arrogant. Taiwanese neighborhoods are often contained within blocks that are several times larger than in the United States, so the interiors have their own self-contained spaces with parks, restaurants, cafes, nice liminal spaces. It’s the perfect mix of modern society with a laid-back island feel.

But it’s still a give and take. In Taiwan, like China, people tend to be more reserved about expressing their own opinions. This sometimes makes for boring conversation. There is also less risk-taking in business, which means many rich people prefer to sink their money into an already hyper-inflated real estate market, making it difficult for young people to buy their own homes and form families—the foundation of society in any country. Wealth inequality is high, and when young people aren’t forming families, they focus their energies on building identities that, while perhaps not unimportant, are peripheral to more fulfilling lives. Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalize gay marriage in 2017. So, while gay people can get married, straight people don’t because they can’t afford kids.

I’m getting older and thinking about where I might settle. It’s not likely to be the United States. Taiwan would be nice, but you always have to worry about China paying a visit. There are other options in Asia. And I haven’t ruled out some European nations that still have a healthy self-concept.

The USA does not have a healthy self-concept, you’re obviously saying, but there have been no miscalculations. America’s sickness has been preplanned and quite smoothly executed, with almost no resistance. What will it take to turn it around, if not for the whole country, then at least for portions of it?

It’s important to recognize where the opposition may have a point, concede that point to the less radical among them, then divide and conquer. In Taiwan, the wealth gap is about the same as in the USA. Maybe worse. People grumble, but there is no simmering threat of revolution. Perhaps this is because younger Taiwanese are united against China, but more likely it is because they receive high quality education and health care at very low cost, two services that most modern societies value very highly. Conceding these issues to the left would gradually create a schism between the irrationals who think we live in a white supremacist society, and those who mainly want our poorly regulated capitalist system reined in a bit. (There are still a lot of the latter.) Campaign finance reform would definitely make this easier by minimizing the power of the corporate lobby, another point that could be gainfully conceded. Actually, conceded is not entirely the right word. Actively making common cause on these issues might be a better way to put it. There are also conservative organizations to get involved in, like Stephen Miller’s new legal foundation, or Project Veritas, and many others. But conservatives have to want to win as badly as liberals do. And they have to form communities and help one another whenever and however they can.

It will take time, of course. The left’s delusions are deeply entrenched. So, it’s good to have at hand some ready facts to shift a liberal’s perspective, especially if presented from a point of view sympathetic to minorities. For example: in 1970, after the civil-rights movement, 70% of black men had good blue-collar jobs. In 1987, only 28%. What happened? The policies of mass legal and illegal immigration, outsourcing, and automization prioritized profits above all else. In the 1990’s, civil rights leader Barbara Jordan complained about immigration taking jobs out of the black community.

I’m not sure how planned the assault on Western society has been, or if it’s just developed in fits and starts. Radicals come from all backgrounds. It might not have gained so much support if the growing wealth inequality of the last 50 years had been better managed. But maybe David Horowitz can speak to one aspect of your question. He’s been described as the intellectual voice who everyone listened to within the Marxist-inspired radical movements of the 1960’s and 70’s, which in a somewhat different form—critical race theory—has now infested many of our institutions. He founded and edited Ramparts, a magazine which set the revolutionary tone of the New Left. (Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Warren Buffet was a donor.) He later became a right-winger and wrote an autobiography, Radical Son, in which, at one or two points, he analyzes the Jewish propensity to identify with the underdog and become radicalized:

My parents and their comrades had given their hearts to a foreign power. The Soviet Union was the land of their dreams, and they pledged their allegiance to its political future. It was not my parents’ idealism that elicited fear and provoked hostility from the goyim. It was their hostility toward the goyim, and indeed everything the goyim held dear, that incited the hostility back. Of course, if my parents were right and America was as unjust as they were convinced it was, if its institutions could be changed only by violent means, if Marxism were the map of a radical future—then their persecution was inevitable, and they really had no choice. But my parents were incapable of entertaining the alternate possibility: that they were wrong about each of these points; that they could have lived different lives and still made moral stands; that the politics they had chosen were both a provocation and a threat. To the end of their days, they remained incapable of self-reflection about the radical commitments that had defined their lives. In this they were typical among the inhabitants of the progressive ghetto, who believed in their truth with a ferociousness that left no room for dissent.

Marx and Freud were strategies for dealing with their predicaments as members of a despised social group. European Jews had been given rights and were admitted to civil society only after the French Revolution. But they had been denied full acceptance through a kind of “institutional racism,” a code of civility that continued to put them in their place […] The revolutionary ideas of Marx and Freud were attempts to deconstruct these civil orders, and replace them with a universal one in which they would finally be granted the acceptance they craved. Thus Freud claimed to show that bourgeois civility was a mask for sexual repression, while Marx argued that it mystified economic exploitation. Each had a vision of liberation—science for Freud, socialism for Marx—that would provide a universal solvent in which the significance of ethnic identities disappeared.

[…] I began to review events of the past to which I had paid little attention before, like the expulsion of the Jews from the civil-rights movement in 1966. Jews had funded the movement, devised its legal strategies, and provided support for its efforts in the media and in the universities—and wherever else they had power. More than half the freedom riders who had gone to the southern states were Jews, although Jews constituted only 3 percent of the population. It was an unprecedented show of solidarity from one people to another. Jews had put their resources and lives on the line to support the black struggle for civil rights, and indeed two of their sons—Schwerner and Goodman—had been murdered for their efforts. But, even while these tragic events were still fresh, the black leaders of the movement had unceremoniously expelled the Jews from their ranks. When Israel was attacked in 1967 by a coalition of Arab states calling for its annihilation, the same black leaders threw their support to the Arab aggressors, denouncing Zionism (the Jewish liberation movement) as racism. Rarely had a betrayal of one people by another been so total or swift. Yet radical Jews like myself had continued our dedication to the black movement for civil rights—to their struggle and their cause. What was it that made us so willing to support those who would treat us like this, who would not support us in return? Why did we think it was alright, even noble, to operate according to standards so different from those that governed others?

[…] I had written a cover story for Ramparts, “The Passion of the Jews,” in which I defended the denial engaged in by progressives like myself. It opened with an encounter that posed the same question. A Jewish doctor had asked me: “Do you have any Christian friends whom you could trust with your life?” I was appalled by his question, by the implication that there could be none. It was such a “plummet into tribal depths,” I wrote, that I did not want to confront it. Comfortable and safe as he was in American, this doctor could not forget the fate of Germany’s Jews, who had also felt comfortable and safe before being turned in by their Christian friends. In my answer, I attempted to place his anxiety in the frame of the revolution I still believed in and which I still believed would provide a solution. By rejecting their own societies, Jews had entered a stateless diaspora, like the Jews before the creation of Israel. Having no state to defend them, they identified with those who were powerless and oppressed. Out of this identification, a new community was forming—a community of faith in the revolutionary future which would rescue us all from this dilemma.

[…] What we had to ask ourselves was whether Marx wasn’t a self-hating Jew, and whether socialism wasn’t anything more than a wish to be included.

Although Horowitz admits to a persistent “Jewish hostility toward the goyim,” he attributes it solely to Jewish insecurity and anxiety, so Jews strive for universal solutions, where everybody is accepted and treated fairly. While I don’t deny there are many Jews who are genuinely idealistic, even to the point of sacrificing themselves for just causes, I see other Jews using such idealism as a smokescreen to enact their hostility towards goyim. After the success of the Bolshevik Revolution, for example, powerful Jews abused goyim with an unprecedented sadism, so there was no idealism there. Or we can look at how Jews treat Arabs in Palestine. Further, it’s Jewish racial supremacism, thus contempt for everybody else, that has led to their non-acceptance. In 2019, I interviewed Craig Nelsen. For trying to help troubled white youths, Nelsen has been targeted and demonized by Jews, so, again, I don’t see any idealism, only hostility. Do you agree that hatred of goyim is at the core of Judaism?

No, not usually. According to a Pew survey from last month, Jews in the United States who have married since the beginning of 2010 have a 61% intermarriage rate. So that would support a negative answer to your question. (Or would it indicate a yes?)

It may be more common to encounter irrational Jewish distrust and discouragement of non-Jewish whites taking an interest in their racial identity.

Ulysses (47-years-old)