Born in Bombay, Kipling spent most of his childhood in England. At age 17, he returned to India, where he would live until he was 24.
In 1888, just a year before leaving India for good, Kipling wrote about being deprived of his heritage. Uprooted from their civilization, Englishmen were “all backwoodsmen and barbarians together.”
Kipling evokes London, “At Home they, the other men, our equals, have at their disposal all that Town can supply—the roar of the streets, the lights, the music, the pleasant places, the millions of their own kind, and a wilderness full of pretty, fresh-coloured Englishwomen, theatres and restaurants. It is their right. They accept it as such, and even affect to look upon it with contempt.”
Kipling was also surrounded by millions, but not of his own kind, thus most of the women in his “wilderness” weren’t English. In India, the prey Kipling craved were extremely hard to come by.
As for “the roar of the streets,” India certainly didn’t lack that. Hell, I’m still recovering from just one month in Bengaluru and Chennai, but India’s population has been multiplied by 18 since Kipling’s days, and Rudyard didn’t spend five hours each day dodging tuk-tuks on a Delhi belly stuffed with greasy samosas. A calf I had just petted butted me. Enough of your sentimental bullshit! Thirsty, Kipling didn’t down Kingfishers in bars resembling rec rooms in insane asylums.
Kipling, “Calcutta holds out false hopes of some return. The dense smoke hangs low, in the chill of the morning, over an ocean of roofs, and, as the city wakes, there goes up to the smoke a deep, full-throated boom of life and motion and humanity. For this reason does he who sees Calcutta for the first time hang joyously out of the ticca-ghari and sniff the smoke, and turn his face toward the tumult, saying: “This is, at last, some portion of my heritage returned to me. This is a City. There is life here, and there should be all manner of pleasant things for the having, across the river and under the smoke.”
Instead of “the lost heritage of London,” an English newcomer is thrilled to discover one that’s not just greater, but truer, for “at last, some portion of my heritage returned to me,” but it is illusory. It’s not his.
What London and Calcutta had in common, though, was that boom of life, motion and humanity so starved from American society, even before recent lockdowns and the final nails in Main Street’s pine coffin.
Though loneliness is impossible to quantify, it shows up in alcohol, drug, pill and porn addictions, hours staring at the TV or internet, suicide rates and general deterioration of civility.
Good natured humor has been replaced by snarkiness and flippancy, with desocialized men sucker punching strangers on the streets or online. Mirroring their foreign policies, Americans hit and run, their homemade burqas swishing into the darkness. Muslims did it!
Despite all that, there are at least 1,193 sane and civil Americans left, for that’s the exact number of subscribers to my SubStack! Of these, three have allowed me to share with y’all how they’re coping with our atrocious New Normal and Great Reset.
On 3/19/22, I quoted from Troy, who confided he had enlisted to fight in Afghanistan to escape his isolation, despair and an aimless life punctuated by mind wringing bouts of boozing. Those six months overseas turned out to be the best of his life, though crowds of booing Afghans who gave Troy and his fellow grunts thumbs down made it clear they weren’t liberators. Troy was just grateful he didn’t have to shoot anyone. Enlistment over, Troy was back to his rut.
Before joining the Army at age 31, Troy worked in factories, warehouses and restaurants, “whatever bought the beer.” Discharged, he ended up in Colorado as a wrench turner in oilfields, but only lasted a couple of weeks. “I drank my way out. The other guys were loaded on medical pot, amphetamine and steroids.”
Nearly all the blue-collar Americans I've known drank too much and were also on drugs. It’s not just the steady and total exertion needed to perform mind numbingly repetitive tasks that drives men half mad. There’s also not much to look forward to after the day’s done. OK, so you have happy hour that can stretch to last call, or another evening on the couch staring at commercials intermittently broken up by laugh tracks or a bouncing ball. Special evenings may entail inserting half the week’s earning into neon colored garter or boobs squished together.
Troy doesn’t just drink but read, so I asked him about his favorite authors. Troy:
Early on it was Orwell, Huxley, Vonnegut, some science fiction, whatever I came across. In the army, I read most of Cormac McCarthy's stuff. Since then, Michel Houellebecq has been a favorite. The Elementary Particles was profound for me. Donald Ray Pollock from Ohio is a close-to-home favorite. I'm a big fan of short stories, Ron Rash from North Carolina comes to mind. There's Jim Goad, who I really credit with jumpstarting my inquiries.
At present my big four are Postcards, The Saker, Andrei Martyanov and Larry Johnson. James Howard Kunstler can entertain and inform as well. You all keep me going, Linh! It's truly appreciated.
Kunstler started me thinking about how badly laid-out space destroys not just the life of the community, but each man’s psychology. While living in a Denys Lasdun’s Brutalist building in Norwich, England, I read Kunstler’s Cities in Mind. I had already spent two years in the medieval section of a small Italian town, so knew folks hadn’t always had to endure some pompous architect or city planner’s nightmare. In Norwich, my door opened into a concrete hallway half sunken in the ground.
Plopped down onto Michiana, Troy speaks of his space, with its “rural, rustbelt despair”:
I'm just a typical Midwestern head case who by grace of circumstance ended up with a few extra brain cells in combination with a lot of space and free time. I've met some pretty perceptive addicts out there. Unfortunately, some of them haven't made it.
I remember watching the history of Rock and Roll documentary on PBS in the late 90’s. I was a stoner Doors fan, but when they got to this scrawny guy standing in front of a cornfield to the opening chords of The Stooges 1969, something changed. I remember Iggy saying something like, “I used to go out into the corn and create my own games. I think it was the space, the freedom of where I was, that gave me an ability to dream, concentrate and imagine...”
That resonated, along with the desire to simply “escape” it all. I'm not sure about the concentration part, but that kind of wide open innocence coupled with some intelligence can create anxieties and confusions in adolescent young men. Substances, for better or worse, often fill that space.
A lot of space beckons one to journey outward, thus Route 66, cutting right through the Midwest, has become an international icon of American freedom and mobility, with endless space to explore. From Bangkok to Beirut, that highway sign appears. In Johannesburg, there’s a Route 66 Video Arcade.
You need cash, though, to hit that road, and at the end of Route 66, there’s not so much boom of life, motion and humanity, but a kitschy boardwalk with chintzy souvenirs, and hundreds of homeless sprawled on the beach, even in daylight. Feel free to join them.
In San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles and San Diego, etc., California is where the American Dream goes to get doped up then die, and it’s only by default. The ocean prevents these desperate dreamers from drifting further.
Just before this Christmas, Troy told me he had moved into a men’s shelter, so I asked if this, too, was an escape from unbearable isolation? Sure was, Troy said, and it worked, for he felt “as balanced” as he had been in a while.
Troy, “It’s definitely getting hairy here in the States. Everything seems to be slowing down and falling apart in subtle ways. I feel like a ghost among zombies, even among my closest friends and family. Still, I’d rather be aware of the situation as opposed to stuck in front of the TV, as are many of the guys.”
Troy’s dad tested positive for Covid after four “vaccination” shots. After “a lifetime of robust health,” he suffered a minor stroke last year after his second jab.
There’s nothing Troy can do, “I've been through the stages of grief over this and know better than to say shit anymore, the dissonance is such. Love him regardless, he’s actually extremely intelligent but refuses to question anything that National Public Radio (damn them) reports.”
Out in Cleveland, 65-year-old Elizabeth Hayes doesn’t even have a bar to run to, not that she can dash much, for it hurts just to stand long enough to wash a few dishes.
Elizabeth:
There used to be a bar up the street. Well, it’s still there, but closed. Years ago it was a quite popular place—bands on the weekends and pretty good food for lunch and dinner. Judy, who’d been living with preschool Gracie at the time above the bar in an efficiency, had turned the back patio into a beautiful garden/playzone for Gracie, and customers could sit out there. That’s where Gracie charmed a couple into taking her on when Judy got too sick to care for her. Last I heard they were sending her to a private girl's school that costs $40,000 a year. Not bad for a crack baby who'd been born in a Florida prison.
When the owner died a couple bought it and spent a year renovating. It was named the most improved establishment in Cleveland's local paper. Within a few years the new owners drove it into the ground. Shortly after its opening, the guy, an ex-felon, beat the shit out of his girlfriend or wife or whatever in front of customers. He banned people at the drop of a hat. He couldn't keep a cook so no more food. No more bands. The hours were cut drastically. I'd go by there on a weekend evening and there would be maybe two cars. Then for some months there was a sign outside that the property was for sale, including a Sunday liquor permit. Then signs that it would be sold at auction. Apparently nothing came of it as it was open for maybe a month more and then came a “closed for vacation” sign. That was a month or two ago. I'll bet that motherfucker beat the shit out of his partner again and she vacationed in intensive care. Really a spectacular job of fucking up a business.
Any city dweller should have at least three or four bars within walking distance, not just one, whose closure means the end of her social life.
Long divorced, Elizabeth has also been disowned by her woke daughter. The final trigger was Elizabeth’s refusal to pay for Leah’s graduate studies in art therapy. On a Philadelphia sidewalk, I once met an earnest young man who said he wanted to be a “life coach,” though he had had only the most minimal of work and life experiences. A society’s sickness can be measured by its proliferation of jivey theparists, who are themselves, most often, mentally ill.
Elizabeth:
My daughter Leah once told me she’d decided she’s culturally Jewish because it appeals to her to be part of an oppressed group. I laughed; her father’s extended family owns a Savings and Loan. Leah has not talked to me in four years. Naturally, I think of her daily with mixed feelings, outraged by what a little shit she grew up to be and missing her deeply at the same time. For all I know, she could have three kids by now. She could be dead; I don’t check the obits and doubt her father would alert me, but essentially, she’s dead to me now. My mind is haunted by many dead people.
Troy feels like a ghost among zombies. Elizabeth’s mind is swarmed by the dead. Nominally ruled by a child-groping zombie who farts, snarls and shakes hands with thin air, America lurches towards a grave already filled with millions of its victims.
Elizabeth told me about a recent CounterPunch article, “The Kremlin Goes Neocon.” In it, Eric Draitser speaks of Putin’s “isolation,” “irrationality” and “the possibility of his insanity,” on and on, to conclude that this “King Lear, as mad as the vexed sea, his finger on the nuclear button, muttering launch codes to himself,” has learnt his lessons from Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and George Bush! “You can almost hear Putin’s words in that degenerate Texas twang.”
So a sideswipe at Texas on top of this cartoonish demonization of the hugely popular Russian leader, a statesman who’s dwarfing all other world leaders. Can this, ah, be coming from another Jewish warmonger, and one with Ukrainian roots, just like Victoria Nudelman? “Oh come on, you’re so anti-Semitic!” you howl. Meanwhile at Unz Review, Jewish Ron Unz continues to defend genocidal Jewjabs. They sure know when to close ranks.
Conforming wholesale, “progressives” march along, so they’re pro Big Pharma and censorship, with all questioning of Jewjabs deemed “misinformation.” So sanctimonous, they’re the true holocaust deniers.
Elizabeth:
All the people I know here in Cleveland who think they’re radical leftists think just like Democrats. They worshipped Greta Thunberg until she said it was a mistake for Germany to turn off their nuclear power. They get a reverential tone whenever talking about anyone who isn’t white. Black Lives Matter was a righteous protest and January 6th was an attempted coup. It’s an atrocity that Kyle Rittenhouse wasn’t found guilty. I know exactly what they’re going to think next just by looking at the headlines of Common Dreams.
Troy speaks of stocking up on “rice, beans, canned goods and pasta,” for “a can of cold corned beef hash can be a delicacy on cold winter days.” Going into survival mode, he’s just hoping to ride this out.
Elizabeth:
I don’t know how people are feeding themselves because they won’t take the fast food/grocery store/cashier jobs. The places where such work is done have all cut their hours, and often they close much earlier, unannounced, when the employees don’t show up.
I’m very alone but not really lonely. When I was a child and first watched that old black-and-white Frankenstein movie, I remember thinking of the hermit, “I could live like that.” I don’t have a lot of hope for the future—old age has been cruel to those I’m related
to, I wouldn’t go near a doctor these days, and dire poverty (or worse) looks more than likely – but I’m not really depressed, not like those bipolar depressions I used to have. Suicide is all the rage these days, and I’ve always had disdain for the next trendy thing.
Elizabeth’s disdain for suicide because it’s trendy may sound like some goofy joke, except she attempted it decades ago. I urge everyone to read her “Why I Jumped off the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge.” That’s as brave and beautiful a confessional piece of writing as any I’ve encountered.
Whether personal or societial, collapse is often boring and tedious, with destitution or even degradation increasing in small, or manageable, if you will, increments.
From Tacoma, James writes to tell me he has been turned down from yet another job. Like millions of Americans, he’s paying dearly for refusing to be Jewjabbed:
The shut downs caused me to fall into debt. Recovery is difficult when the Governor mandated teachers to become vaccinated. I lost my high school job and my part time college admissions job. Then Biden mandated vaccines which caused me to lose my computer repair job. The state requires me to repay my Covid unemployment when I refused to work at a redneck-run warehouse.
If James didn’t have multiple skills, he would be living in his car, if not under a bridge.
What’s wrong with “rednecks,” you may ask? Nothing, if you’re the great Joe Bageant, who was a self-identified redneck. As a black man, though, James has a different perspective:
When I was a kid my godmother said when she saw an emergency outside she would tell the 911 operator that a black man was roughing up a white woman outside. She said that otherwise, as they lived in a black neighborhood, the police would either never show up or show up hours later. Her method apparently worked because the police would then arrive within minutes.
And:
As the economy slips and there aren’t enough blacks around to scapegoat, then the whites will go “anarchy” as my godmother’s sister related to me from her memories of the 1930's Great Depression. It wasn’t till a few years ago that I finally realized that blacks are here to keep the white workers scared and quiet.
As always, race complicates matters, so any unified response against this well orchestrated assault against us all is difficult, especially in the West, with its dubious and often incoherent multiculturalism.
By contrast, consider the beginning of the Thai national anthem:
Thailand unites the flesh and blood of Thais.
The land of Thailand belongs to the Thais.
Long has been our independence,
Because we have been united forever.
Just in case you think James is some rabid racist, he and his wife get along fine with their white and Vietnamese neighbors.
Interestingly, James also uses “zombies,” like Troy, to describe people he encounters:
I almost got into an accident with a mixed youth who cut me off. Amazing! Your own kind will be the ones to get you killed. I saw a six car accident on the freeway coming home. After the accident the zombies proceeded to drive like Mad Max once again.
Like “zombies,” “Mad Max” is trending on the internet. Discounting fools, everyone can see what’s coming. Day by day, most of us can clearly feel ourselves increasingly squeezed, if not suffocated.
It’s remarkable how the most natural acts, breathing, touching, standing outside or just walking down the street, etc., have been circumscribed, while the most outrageously unnatural violation, that of being injected with a bioweapon, has been mandated, even for infants.
Covid deaths were pumped up by miscounting and, even more criminally, mistreatment in hospitals, so as to frighten everyone into accepting multiple Jewjabs. Millions, then, have been duped into paying for their own suicides.
On 1/2/23, the Rasmussen Reports revealed that its “national telephone and online survey finds that 49% of American Adults believe it is likely that side effects of COVID-19 vaccines have caused a significant number of unexplained deaths, including 28% who think it’s Very Likely.”
It’s encouraging that half of Americans are calling bullshit on the “safe and effective” injections still being pushed by Rochelle Walensky, Rachel Levine and, of course, Albert Bourla, who has made billions from his premeditated murder of millions, and counting.
When this genocide finally stops, will any of these Josef Mengeles x10, plus all the lying politicians, doctors and journalists who have been their accomplices, ever be held accountable?
With depopulation as its agenda, our ruling cabal has many more sick surprises to unleash. This war has just begun.
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